Avars, [1] remains of the nation of Huns [2] that spread into Thuringia [3] under Sigebert. [4] See the terrifying description of them given in the Dictionary of Trévoux. [5]

1. A nomadic people now known as Avars in English and as Avars or Avares in French. Diderot calls them Abares. In Ancient Greek they were called Αβάροι or Abaroi and in Latin, Avari . Little is known for certain about this people, now often called the Pannonian Avars in order to distinguish them from the Avars of the Caucasus, with whom they may or may not have been linked.

2. “In Central Asia the Juan-juan or Avars founded the first Mongol empire throughout Mongolia (407-553)” (William L. Langer, An Encyclopedia of World History, rev. ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1952), p. 136. The relation of this group to the Pannonian Avars is not known.

3. “The Avars arrived (c. 560) from the Volga, entered Thuringia (562), were defeated by the Franks, and allied themselves (c. 565) with the Lombards against the Gepids, who were annihilated. The Lombards moved on toward Italy and the Avars occupied Dacia” (Ibid., p. 150). According to some, those known as Avars in Europe had usurped the prestigious name of the empire-founding Mongols.

4. Sigebert I (c. 535-c.575), the Germanic king of Austrasia who, though he twice repelled the attacks of the Avars, in 562 and c. 568, was forced to move his capital from Rheims to Metz.

5. In the first volume of the Dictionnaire universel François et latin , commonly referred to as the Dictionnaire de Trévoux, we read: “The mere appearance of these Huns was enough to terrify people less intrepid than the French. They were for the most part of a height approaching the gigantic, with a wild gaze and a frightening ugliness. They had great heads of hair that they tossed back, separated with cords in tresses, that made their heads resemble those of those Furies we see depicted with snakes for hair” (Tome I of the 1721 edition, p. 11)