Surprising Historical Facts

Surprising Historical Facts

We have published some of the research from the fabled Taurus Foemus Institute of Bologna, Italy (or TFIBI) that touched on the career of Attila the Hun.  We all know a little of the escapades of Attila and his hardy warriors as they wreaked havoc out of Asia through Europe even down to Italy and Rome.  For almost twenty years, Attila and the gang were a powerful force in the life and times of any individual who happened to be in their path.  We mainly know about the conquests, the destruction, terror, killing and looting.  All the good stuff.  But there are some hidden facts that have not found their way into any recent texts or historical treatises, until of course, it was discovered by one of our ace research fellows at the TFIBI.  Professor Claudio de Vermoulu has just published his findings and we are the first to reveal this information to the non-academic world.

Over the years, Attila had quite a run of success in his conquests and raiding from what is now Hungary into the area of modern Germany, France and Poland.  As the savage horsemen moved into these lands, they would pillage and plunder at will.  They would capture so much treasure, that they had to use carts and horses to carry all the loot since they could not easily carry it just on their individual horses.  It was in the midst of one of these adventures that Attila remembered what Mrs. the Hun, Jessica and his mother-in-law, LuAnn,   had told him before he left that year.   She saw all the nice gold, jewelry, china, carpets, and other trinkets that some of his men brought home to their family yurts.  Attila was always too busy to pick up anything for Jessica, because he was too busy coming up with the strategy for the campaign and keeping the boys in line.  So on this trip, he decided to participate a little more into the pillaging and before he knew it, he had quite the collection of stuff.  He also now noticed how much it was slowing up the whole gang when they had to keep track of all the carts and booty.  Attila decided that they would turn around and go back to the base with what they had and come up with a new plan.

On the way back, they were delayed by an attack from a large band of marauding Vandals, and also some unusually heavy rain and high winds.  They did not expect this bad weather as their oracle man had predicted, sunny and warm for the next few weeks.  So, after stopping to torture and execute Sunny the Oracle, they hastened back to their home base which was in the neighborhood of modern day Budapest.  When they got back, it had started to snow and winter set in early that year.  (The home base Oracle, Gore the Gaul, who had predicted 10 years of unseasonably hot weather, was also executed upon their return.)  Since it was so cold and icy, Attila had the band store all the booty from the recent campaign in storage yurts, and they would divide it up in the spring.

So that is how it was throughout the long and cold winter.  When spring finally arrived, Attila had come up with a solution to handle all the loot and at the same time keep his army lean, and also provide a great source of income to the troops.  Each spring, it was time for the annual clean up  of the area.  The women had to clean out the yurts, garbage needed to be hauled out, bodies buried and he would send the rookies out on police call to pick up all the cigarette butts left over from winter.  Then there was the unpleasant task of getting everyone to take their annual bath and overall bodily cleansing.  The HR department of the Horde required Attila to be sure that all the warriors were cleaned up before they departed for the new campaign.  This also required that each individual not only had to bathe, but also each one had to be de-loused and scrubbed up to remove any fleas that might be residing in their clothes, beards or elsewhere.  Most of the guys did not tackle to it kindly.  There was talk of resistance this spring and Attila knew that he had to come up with a solution, otherwise he might have a smaller army for the new season.  This is where Attila was able to show what a great leader he was and able to keep the vast army together for his whole reign.

Now Attila implemented the plan he devised over the winter.  At the morning formation, he announced to all the troops that they would have to begin the clean up that day so they could get going on this year’s expedition.  He heard all the moaning and groaning and then told them of the plan.  He said that once they had taken their baths, got de-loused and de-fleaed, they could go into the storage area and pick up their loot from the previous year.  Then he revealed the genius of his plan.  Now that they were cleaned up and respectable looking, he would take them across the river to a massive encampment that he had set up.  Unbeknownst to the troops, he had sent messengers to the north, to the east and to the south, to invited merchants across the vast area to come to this encampment.  There they would find food stalls serving all the latest delicacies, mutton chops, ox tail soup, beef steak, fried chicken, hot or iced kumiss cups, and other delights including a new invention of some type of fried cake, called funnel cakes.  Interspersed between all this food and beverages, would be his warriors and their wives, selling all the stuff that they had plundered from the year before.  The horsemen would be lightening their loads by selling the trinkets for gold and silver.  They would become rich and now have room for more plunder in the coming year.  Attila’s army was once again mobile, his men would have all their treasures in a more liquid form, they would make their wives happy and they might even be able to steal the stuff back again later in the season.  As Attila would say: it was a win-win situation.  Attila was happy with himself, and since this whole solution was something that came about during the annual spring cleaning and ridding the warriors of their louse and fleas,  he decided to call the festival the Annual de-louse and de-flea market, which eventually became shortened to the Flea Market.  So now we know that Attila did more than just become the scourge of Europe but was also the inventor of what became a spring and summer event across the globe.  Think about this the next time you are traipsing along at your local flea market and thank Attila.

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