Early European History Part 47

Alaric and his Goths had been repulsed; they had not been destroyed.

Beyond the Alps they were regaining their shattered strength and biding their time. Their opportunity came soon enough, when Honorius caused Stilicho to be put to death on a charge of plotting to seize the throne.

The accusation may have been true, but in killing Stilicho the emperor had cut off his right hand with his left. Now that Stilicho was out of the way, Alaric no longer feared to descend again on Italy. The Goths advanced rapidly southward past Ravenna, where Honorius had shut himself up in terror, and made straight for Rome. In 410 A.D., just eight hundred years after the sack of the city by the Gauls, [8] Rome found the Germans within her gates.

SACK OF ROME BY THE VISIGOTHS, 410 A.D.

The city for three days and nights was given up to pillage. Alaric, who was a Christian, ordered his followers to respect the churches and their property and to refrain from bloodshed. Though the city did not greatly suffer, the moral effect of the disaster was immense. Rome the eternal, the unconquerable, she who had taken captive all the world, was now herself a captive. The pagans saw in this calamity the vengeance of the ancient deities, who had been dishonored and driven from their shrines.

The Christians believed that G.o.d had sent a judgment on the Romans to punish them for their sins. In either case the spell of Rome was forever broken.

KINGDOM OF THE VISIGOTHS, 415-711 A.D.

From Rome Alaric led his hosts, laden with plunder, into southern Italy.

He may have intended to cross the Mediterranean and bring Africa under his rule. The plan was never carried out, for the youthful chieftain died suddenly, a victim to the Italian fever. After Alaric's death, the barbarians made their way northward through Italy and settled in southern Gaul and Spain. In these lands they founded an independent Visigothic kingdom, the first to be created on Roman soil.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Map, THE GERMANIC MIGRATIONS to 476 A.D.]

ROMANIZATION OF THE VISIGOTHS

The possessions of the Visigoths in Gaul were seized by their neighbors, the Franks, in less than a century; [9] but the Gothic kingdom in Spain had three hundred years of prosperous life. [10] The barbarian rulers sought to preserve the inst.i.tutions of Rome and to respect the rights of their Roman subjects. Conquerors and conquered gradually blended into one people, out of whom have grown the Spaniards of modern times.

84. BREAKING OF THE RHINE BARRIER

THE GERMANS CROSS THE RHINE, 406 A.D.

After the departure of the Visigoths Rome and Italy remained undisturbed for nearly forty years. The western provinces were not so fortunate. At the time of Alaric's first attack on Italy the legions along the Rhine had been withdrawn to meet him, leaving the frontier unguarded. In 406 A.D., four years before Alaric's sack of Rome, a vast company of Germans crossed the Rhine and swept almost unopposed through Gaul. Some of these peoples succeeded in establishing kingdoms for themselves on the ruins of the empire.

KINGDOM OF THE BURGUNDIANS, 443-534 A.D.

The Burgundians settled on the upper Rhine and in the fertile valley of the Rhone, in southeastern Gaul. Alter less than a century of independence they were conquered by the Franks. [11] Their name, however, survives in modern Burgundy.

VANDAL KINGDOM IN NORTH AFRICA, 429-534 A.D.

The Vandals settled first in Spain. The territory now called Andalusia still preserves the memory of these barbarians. After the Visigothic invasion of Spain the Vandals pa.s.sed over to North Africa. They made themselves masters of Carthage and soon conquered all the Roman province of Africa. Their kingdom here lasted about one hundred years. [12]

THE FRANKS IN NORTHERN GAUL

While the Visigoths were finding a home in the districts north and south of the Pyrenees, the Burgundians in the Rhone valley, and the Vandals in Africa, still another Germanic people began to spread over northern Gaul.

They were the Franks, who had long held lands on both sides of the lower Rhine. The Franks, unlike the other Germans, were not of a roving disposition. They contented themselves with a gradual advance into Roman territory. It was not until near the close of the fifth century that they overthrew the Roman power in northern Gaul and began to form the Frankish kingdom, out of which modern France has grown.

THE ANGLES AND SAXONS IN BRITAIN, FROM 449 A.D.

The troubled years of the fifth century saw also the beginning of the Germanic conquest of Britain. The withdrawal of the legions from that island left it defenseless, for the Celtic inhabitants were too weak to defend themselves. Bands of savage Picts from Scotland swarmed over Hadrian's Wall, attacking the Britons in the rear. Ireland sent forth the no less savage Scots. The eastern coasts, at the same time, were constantly exposed to raids by German pirates. The Britons, in their extremity, adopted the old Roman practice of getting the barbarians to fight for them. Bands of Jutes were invited over from Denmark in 449 A.D.

The Jutes forced back the Picts and then settled in Britain as conquerors.

Fresh swarms of invaders followed them, chiefly Angles from what is now Schleswig-Holstein and Saxons from the neighborhood of the rivers Elbe and Weser in northern Germany. The invaders subdued nearly all that part of Britain that Rome had previously conquered. In this way the Angles and Saxons became ancestors of the English people, and Engleland became England. [13]

POLITICAL SITUATION IN 451 A.D.

By the middle of the fifth century the larger part of the Roman Empire in the West had come under barbarian control. The Germans ruled in Africa, Spain, Britain, and parts of Gaul. But now the new Germanic kingdoms, together with what remained of the old empire, were threatened by a common foe--the terrible Huns.

85. INROADS OF THE HUNS

THE HUNS

We know very little about the Huns, except that they were not related to the Germans or to any other European people. Some scholars believe them to have belonged to the Mongolian race. But the Huns, to the excited imagination of Roman writers, were demons rather than men. Their olive skins, little, turned-up noses, and black, beady eyes must have given them a very frightful appearance. They spent most of their time on horseback, sweeping over the country like a whirlwind and leaving destruction and death in their wake.

ATTILA THE HUN

The Huns did not become dangerous to Rome for more than half a century after their first appearance in Europe. [14] During this time they moved into the Danube region and settled in the lands now known as Austria and Hungary. At last the Huns found a national leader in Attila, "a man born into the world to agitate the nations, the fear of all lands," [15] one whose boast it was that the gra.s.s never grew again where his horse's hoofs had trod. He quickly built up a great military power obeyed by many barbarous nations from the Caspian to the Rhine.

INVASION OF GAUL BY ATTILA

Attila, from his capital on the Danube, could threaten both the East and the West. The emperors at Constantinople bought him off with lavish gifts, and so the robber-ruler turned to the western provinces for his prey. In 451 A.D. he led his motley host, said to number half a million men, across the Rhine. Many a n.o.ble munic.i.p.ality with its still active Roman life was visited by the Huns with fire and sword. Paris, it is worthy of note, escaped destruction. That now famous city was then only a little village on an island in the Seine.

BATTLE OF CHaLONS, 451 A.D.

In this hour of danger Romans and Germans gave up quarreling and united against the common foe. Visigoths under their native king hastened from Spain; Burgundians and Franks joined their ranks; to these forces a German general, named Aetius, added the last Roman army in the West. Opposed to them Attila had his Huns, the conquered Ostrogoths, and many other barbarian peoples. The battle of Chalons has well been called a struggle of the nations. It was one of the fiercest conflicts recorded in history.

On both sides thousands perished, but so many more of Attila's men fell that he dared not risk a fresh encounter on the following day. He drew his shattered forces together and retreated beyond the Rhine.

ATTILA INVADES ITALY, 452 A.D.

In spite of this setback Attila did not abandon the hope of conquest. The next year he led his still formidable army over the Julian Alps and burned or plundered many towns of northern Italy. A few trembling fugitives sought shelter on the islands at the head of the Adriatic. Out of their rude huts grew up in the Middle Ages splendid and famous Venice, a city that in later centuries was to help defend Europe against those kinsmen of the Huns, the Turks.

DEATH OF ATTILA, 453 A.D.

The fiery Hun did not long survive this Italian expedition. Within a year he was dead, dying suddenly, it was said, in a drunken sleep. The great confederacy which he had formed broke up after his death. The German subjects gained their freedom, and the Huns themselves either withdrew to their Asiatic wilds or mingled with the peoples they had conquered. Europe breathed again; the nightmare was over.

86. END OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE WEST, 476 A.D.

VANDAL PIRATES

Rome escaped a visitation by the Huns only to fall a victim, three years later, to the Vandals. After the capture of Carthage,[16] these barbarians made that city the seat of a pirate empire. Putting out in their long, light vessels, they swept the seas and raided many a populous city on the Mediterranean coast. So terrible were their inroads that the word "vandalism" has come to mean the wanton destruction of property.

SACK OF ROME BY THE VANDALS, 455 A.D.

In 455 A.D. the ships of the Vandals, led by their king, Gaiseric, appeared at the mouth of the Tiber. The Romans could offer no resistance.

Only the n.o.ble bishop Leo went out with his clergy to meet the invader and intercede for the city. Gaiseric promised to spare the lives of the inhabitants and not to destroy the public buildings. These were the best terms he would grant. The Vandals spent fourteen days stripping Rome of her wealth. Besides shiploads of booty the Vandals took away thousands of Romans as slaves, including the widow and two daughters of an emperor.

THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE WEST, 455-476 A.D.

After the Vandal sack of Rome the imperial throne became the mere plaything of the army and its leaders. A German commander, named Ricimer, set up and deposed four puppet emperors within five years. He was, in fact, the real ruler of Italy at this time. After his death Orestes, another German general, went a step beyond Ricimer's policy and placed his own son on the throne of the Caesars. By a curious coincidence, this lad bore the name of Romulus, legendary founder of Rome, and the nickname of Augustulus ("the little Augustus"). The boy emperor reigned less than a year. The German troops clamored for a third of the lands of Italy and, when their demand was refused, proclaimed Odoacer king. The poor little emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was sent to a villa near Naples, where he disappears from history.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Map, EUROPE at the Deposition of Romulus Augustulus 476 A.D.]

POLITICAL SITUATION IN 476 A.D.

There was now no emperor in the West. To the men of that time it seemed that East and West had been once more joined under a single ruler, as in the days of Constantine. The emperors who reigned at Constantinople did not relinquish their claims to be regarded as the rightful sovereigns in Italy and Rome. Nevertheless, as an actual fact, Roman rule in the West was now all but extinct. Odoacer, the head of the barbarians in Italy, ruled a kingdom as independent as that of the Vandals in Africa or that of the Visigoths in Spain and Gaul. The date 476 A.D. may therefore be chosen as marking, better than any other, the overthrow of the Roman Empire in the West by the Germans.