The Second Council of Ephesus opens on…

Western Emperor Valentinian III sends an embassy to Attila, the purpose being a long-running dispute over spoils of war during the Danube offensive (441–442).

Attila claims his lost property, but Valentinian and Flavius Aetius (magister militum) refuse this request.

Flavius Orestes, a Roman aristocrat, is sent to Attila's court and becomes a high-ranking secretary (notarius).

He is the father of the yet-unborn future emperor Romulus Augustulus.

Theodosius II also sends an embassy to Attila; Priscus of Panium, envoy for the Eastern Roman Empire, records one of few eyewitness accounts of Hun kingdom.

Priscus, who visits Attila's headquarters in Wallachia in company with the Roman embassy in 449, describes him as a short, squat man with a large head, deep-set eyes, flat nose, and a thin beard.

According to the historians, Attila, though of an irritable, blustering, and truculent disposition, is a very persistent negotiator and by no means pitiless.

When Priscus attends a banquet given by him, he notices that Attila is served off wooden plates and eats only meat, whereas his chief lieutenants dine off silver platters loaded with dainties.

No description of his qualities as a general survives, but his successes before the invasion of Gaul show him to have been an outstanding commander.

A synod held in Constantinople condemns Eutyches on a charge of heresy; Flavian, bishop of Constantinople, deposes him from his position as archimandrite there.

Pope Leo, in his dogmatic "Tome to Flavian," condemns Eutyches’ denial of Christ's human nature.

Theodoret, accused in 448 by Cyril's successor, the politically powerful Dioscorus, of dividing Christ into two natures, is anathematized in 449 despite his insistence on the unity.

Aetius' Campaigns in Gaul: Suppressing the Bagaudae and Defeating the Franks

By the mid-fifth century, Flavius Aetius, the magister militum of the Western Roman Empire, struggles to maintain imperial authority in Gaul, where both rebellious peasants and barbarian incursions threaten stability.

The Suppression of the Bagaudae in Armorica

In Armorica, Aetius leads a campaign to suppress the Bagaudae, a movement of discontented peasants, runaway slaves, and deserters who have formed semi-autonomous communities in opposition to Roman rule. These groups, disillusioned with both the Roman administration and the growing barbarian presence, have long resisted imperial taxation and conscription. By crushing their resistance, Aetius attempts to restore some measure of Roman control in the region, though Armorica remains difficult to govern.

The Defeat of the Salian Franks at Vicus Helena

At the same time, the Salian Franks, under their king Chlodio, continue their southward push into Belgica Secunda, threatening Roman strongholds along the Scheldt River. In response, Aetius marches north and confronts the Franks near Arras.

The decisive battle takes place near Vicus Helena, a river crossing that serves as a key strategic point. Aetius' Roman army, likely bolstered by federate auxiliaries, defeats Chlodio’s forces, halting further Frankish expansion—at least temporarily.

The Aftermath and Long-Term Consequences

• Although Aetius successfully contains the Franks, he does not expel them entirely. They remain entrenched in northern Gaul, awaiting a future opportunity to expand.
• Chlodio’s defeat at Vicus Helena does not stop the eventual rise of the Frankish Kingdom, but it delays their territorial consolidation, allowing Rome to retain a precarious foothold in Gaul for a little longer.
• Aetius’ campaigns reinforce his reputation as Rome’s last great general, though his efforts only postpone the inevitable collapse of imperial control in the West.

Despite these victories, Roman power in Gaul continues to erode, and within a few decades, the Franks—under Childeric I and later Clovis I—will overcome Roman resistance entirely, laying the foundations for medieval Francia.

Rechiar also impels the first contact between the Suebi and the Basques: he makes war on them in February 449.

The expedition may have been a mere raid or an attempted conquest of Vasconia as a prelude to the conquest of the Ebro valley.

Rechiar visits his father-in-law in Gaul later in 449.

On his return home to Galicia, Rechiar allies with Basilius, leader of one of the Bagaudae, and raids the Ebro valley, attacking Zaragoza and even ...

…entering Lérida (Ilerda) "by a trick".

He takes many prisoners, but he fails to take the region and thus complete the Suebic conquest of Hispania.

Rechiar does not approach Tarragona, the provincial capital.

A Roman synod held in October repudiates all the decisions of the Second Council of Ephesus.

Yazdegerd II had gathered his forces in Nishapur in 443 and launched a prolonged campaign against the Kidarites, the last dynasty to regard themselves (on the legend of their coins) as the inheritors of the Kushan empire, which had disappeared as an independent entity two centuries earlier.

After numerous battles, he crushes them and drives them out beyond the Oxus river in 450.

The gentle and scholarly Theodosius, an easily dominated man who has allowed his government to be run by a succession of relatives and ministers, dies on July 28, 450, from injuries suffered during a hunting accident.

Aspar's influence has increased: on August 25, he and Theodosius' Christian sister, Pulcheria, appoint as emperor one Marcian, an Illyrian (or Thracian) officer and senator who had begun his career as a professional soldier and came to hold a high position in the service of Aspar.

As part of this arrangement, the fifty-eight year old Marcian is made the nominal husband of Pulcheria in order to formally perpetuate the Theodosian dynasty.

She gives the imperial diadem to the Marcian and is crowned as empress in the Hippodrome at Constantinople in a first religious coronation ceremony.

Aspar is made a patrician.

Marcian orders the execution (or assassination) of the unpopular court eunuch Chrysaphius, and discontinues the tribute payments to Attila.

Yazdegerd summons the leading Armenian nobles to the Persian capital Ctesiphon, pressuring them to cut their ties with the Western Church.