<P> Attila may not have needed any excuse to turn West, but he received one in the form of a plea for help from Honoria, the Emperor's sister, who was being forced into a marriage which she resented . Attila claimed Honoria as his wife and half of the Western Empire's territory as his dowry . Faced with refusal, he invaded Gaul in 451 with a huge army . In the bloody battle of the Catalaunian Plains the invasion was stopped by the combined forces of the barbarians within the Western empire, coordinated by Aetius and supported by what troops he could muster . The next year, Attila invaded Italy and proceeded to march upon Rome, but an outbreak of disease in his army, lack of supplies, reports that Eastern Roman troops were attacking his noncombatant population in Pannonia, and, possibly, Pope Leo's plea for peace induced him to halt this campaign . Attila unexpectedly died a year later (453) and his empire crumbled as his followers fought for power . The life of Severinus of Noricum gives glimpses of the general insecurity, and ultimate retreat of the Romans on the Upper Danube, in the aftermath of Attila's death . The Romans were without adequate forces; the barbarians inflicted haphazard extortion, murder, kidnap, and plunder on the Romans and on each other . </P> <P> So long as the Roman dominion lasted, soldiers were maintained in many towns at the public expense to guard the boundary wall . When this custom ceased, the squadrons of soldiers and the boundary wall were blotted out together . The troop at Batavis, however, held out . Some soldiers of this troop had gone to Italy to fetch the final pay to their comrades, and no one knew that the barbarians had slain them on the way . </P> <P> In 454 Aetius was personally stabbed to death by Valentinian, who was himself murdered by the dead general's supporters a year later . </P> <P> (Valentinian) thought he had slain his master; he found that he had slain his protector: and he fell a helpless victim to the first conspiracy which was hatched against his throne . </P>

What are two ways in which civilization declined in western europe after rome fell