Turkic nomadic pastoralist peoples from central Asia who moved westward into Hungary in about AD 372, causing many Germanic tribes in eastern Europe to flee to the Roman empire. They forced the Roman emperor Theodosius to pay them tribute in 432. In the 440s the Huns, under Attila, invaded the Balkans, followed in 451 by Gaul and Italy. After Attila's death in 453 they were destroyed by a confederation of Germanic tribes at the Battle of Nedao in Pannonia.