Attila’s most effective campaign against Rome never involved a siege of the Eternal City. In 452 CE, his forces swept through northern Italy, burning cities, destroying farms, and collapsing supply lines. The message was unmistakable: resistance meant annihilation; survival meant escape. Cities like Aquileia were erased so completely that contemporaries believed they would never rise again. Refugees poured southward, clogging roads and overwhelming towns that had neither food nor shelter to spar