The Rise of Kingdoms in the Roman Empire: Part IX
Kings and their kingdoms in Europe did not spring up all at once, but a political map of the area in 400 looks very different from one 76 or a hundred years later. Peter Heather says the kingdoms we see on the period maps show new barbarian supergroups.
Visigoths: Visigoths (settling in Aquitaine) hadn't existed as an independent division of the Goths before the Huns impinged on imperial territory. They were the result of the merging of Tervingi and Greuthungi tribes that had arrived at the Danube in 376.
Vandals: The successful Vandals were a combined force of the Hasding and Siling Vandals, Alans, and Suevi, who had migrated from the Baltic region to Germany, Gaul, Spain, and finally Carthage between the first and fifth centuries.
Huns: The Huns moved west in the later part of the fourth century (Peter Heather, p. 450) into the land north of the Black Sea. They forced Germanic tribes into Roman territory from 376-80 and 405-08. Nomadic Alans pushed on into Roman territory, in Spain, Gaul and Africa, and then teamed up with the Huns, who terrified Europe under their leader Attila, whom Pope Leo I persuaded not to sack Rome in 452. Attila died soon after and his empire disintegrated.
Honorius and the Vandals: The Emperor Honorius gave the Germanic Vandals land in Spain, but the Vandals were on the move not much later, taking over part of the Romans' province of Africa. In 455, Vandals, led by their King Gaiseric, sacked Rome and then conquered Sicily. The Gothic historian Jordanes describes the machinations of Gaiseric:
XLVII (244) But first let us return to that order
from which we have digressed and tell how Eurich, king of the
Visigoths, beheld the tottering of the Roman Empire and
reduced Arelate and Massilia to his own sway. Gaiseric, king
of the Vandals, enticed him by gifts to do these things, to
the end that he himself might forestall the plots which Leo
and Zeno had contrived against him. Therefore he stirred the
Ostrogoths to lay waste the Eastern Empire and the Visigoths
the Western, so that while his foes were battling in both
empires, he might himself reign peacefully in Africa. Eurich
perceived this with gladness and, as he already held all of
Spain and Gaul by his own right, proceeded to subdue the
Burgundians also.
The Origins and Deeds of the Goths
Africa: The same Byzantine Emperor Zeno who recognized the first king of Italy formally recognized Gaiseric's Vandal kingdom, although Gaiseric turned part of it, Sicily, over to Odoacer in exchange for money. Vandals ruled Africa (the province) until Emperor Justinian sent his general Belisarius to retake it in 534.
Gaul, France, and Various Goths: The Goths defeated the Eastern emperor at the Battle of Adrianople in 378. Visigothic King Alaric, a Christian, sacked Rome in A.D. 410. By then Rome's importance as a capital city had long been supplanted, especially by the rival New Rome Constantine had established as an imperial residence, on the Bosporus at the end of the Egnatian Way (road across the Balkans), at Byzantium, Constantinople (which became the permanent capital of the Eastern Empire under Theodosius I and Arcadius), but the old Rome was still symbolically the heart of the Roman Empire. It was a devastating blow and a contending event to date the fall of Rome. Caesar had conquered Gaul. Now, in 419, almost five centuries later, Visigoths set up a kingdom at Toulouse, in southern Gaul, under their King Theodoric I. By 476, their kingdom spanned Spain and France. Ostrogoths settled in Moesia under their King Theoderic the Great (r. 493-526).
Burgundy: A Germanic-language-speaking people, the Burgundians led by Gundahar established a hold on the middle Rhine in the early fifth century. They supported Jovinus, a local usurper to the imperial throne, in 406-7, at Moguntiacum (Mainz). As emperor, Jovinus declared the Burgunidians allies of Rome. Their capital was at Borbetomagus (Worms). In 436, Aetius used the Huns to destroy the Burgundians. Then Burgundians, under their next king Gundioc (r. 437-74) fought at the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields, in 451, and were awarded a kingdom in Sabaudia (Savoy). Soon they spread out to Lugdunum (Lyon), Divio (Dijon), Vienna, and elsewhere. held a kingdom in southeastern Gaul, which included the area still known as Burgundy.
The Franks set up what turned out to the start of France, in the northwest corner of Gaul.
Danube: The kingdom of the Heruli (Odoacer's people) was located southwest of the Carpathians. Along the middle of the Danube were kingdoms of the Heruli, Suevi, and Rugians. Lombards (from northern Germany) settled along the middle Danube in the 6th century.
Denmark: The Thuringians had a kingdom in roughly modern Denmark.
The Rhine: The Allemanni straddled the Rhine.
Portugal: Suevi held the area that is roughly modern Portugal.
Britain: Across the English Channel, there were changes, as well. The Roman military left Britain in 410 when Emperor Honorius wrote to the cities of Britain telling them to fend for themselves [Whittacer p. 248, from Zosimus 6.10.2]. Hadrian's and the Antonine Walls no longer kept the Caledonian Picts from invading. The Roman Britains called on the Angles and Saxons for help, but like Caesar when he went to the aid of his allies in Gaul, this was a mixed blessing.
There were more, but quite clearly, the Roman Empire had been broken up into many, many pieces with local rulers.
The Start of the Middle Ages
The period of Roman expansion had been over for a couple of centuries. The attempt to hold it all together under a single monarch started to crumble under Diocletian. In 395, the East-West split became permanent. By the end of the fifth century, the western section of Diocletian's great divide had crumbled into parcels held by the chieftains or kings of what the Romans had once considered barbarian tribes. With these kings, settled in kingdoms on formerly Roman imperial territory, came the Middle Ages. The beginnings of the architecture that defines the medieval period, some crenellated walls and look-out towers, were already in place [see Roman castra], and serfs were tied to their plots of land, struggling to get enough to eat while satisfying the tax demands of whichever ruler happened to be in charge. Landowners were once again being summoned to military service that threatened their families' survival. With Constantine had come that religious system, the organized Christian church with its wealthy episcopate that dominated so much of medieval life. The problems of the East-West divide endured. When the Roman Empire, by now meaning the small section centered in Constantinople, requested the help of its allies in Europe to face the Turks, the aid was not forthcoming because of irreconcilable differences in the Christian hierarchy, and so a bare shadow of the Roman Empire was all that remained to fall to the Ottoman Turks in 1453.
The Rise of Kingdoms in the Roman Empire Part
1 - Ancient History: From Prehistory to the Early Middle Ages
2 - Other Dates for Rome's Fall: Pros and Cons
3 - How the Romans Handled Problems of Imperial Successions
4 - The Barbarian at the Gates
5 - Early Rome and the Issue of Kings
6 - Caesar's Role in the Collapse of the Roman Republic
7 - Challenges the Empire Faced and Resolved by Division
8 - Administrative Units of the Later Roman Empire
9 - Kings Replace the Roman Emperor
Notes
