The long-cherished Roman objective, to make the River Elbe the eastern border of the empire, was abandoned under Trajan at the turn of the first century. Hadrian, as he had done elsewhere across the frontiers of his empire, consolidated and expanded the fortifications of the Limes by building numerous wooden palisades; although these soon had to be reinforced with stone fortresses. The Marcomanni, who had fought Arminius and his Cherusci, now turned their furor on the Romans, battling their way south as far as Verona in northern Italy. It took Emperor Markus Aurelius thirteen years (AD 167–180) to subdue them. Rome’s high water mark had been reached; Aurelius’ son Commodus and all his predecessors remained on the defensive against the advance of the ‘barbarian hordes’ from the north, whilst at the same time having to face down a growing and equally threatening Persian advance from the east.
In AD 260, the Alamanni tribe breached the fortified Limes frontier and pushed the Romans back along the Rhine and the Danube, effectively reversing the Roman advance of AD 83 and putting the Roman border back where it had been 177 years earlier. Between AD 352–357 the Alamanni, together with the Franks, destroyed the Roman Rhine border from the North Sea to Lake Constance. Eventually, Emperor Julian was able to check their advance in AD 357, defeating the Alamanni at Straßburg, but the northern frontier had become a ceaseless tug of war, and with each tug, Rome was forced to give more ground.
On a chilly New Year’s Eve in AD 406, the dam burst and hundreds of thousands of marauding Germanic tribesmen crossed the frozen Rhine, permanently destroying the idea of a fixed northern frontier. By AD 410 the Visigoth King Alaric had sacked Rome. The Vandals did so again in AD 455, and Ostrogoth Odoacer unceremoniously relieved the last Western Roman Emperor, Romulus Augustalus, of his throne in AD 476. It was these Germanic tribes, among others, who built the successor states that filled the vacuum left by the collapse of the Roman Empire during the Voelkerwanderung, or the great migration of tribes. This cornerstone of European history is one that the Anglo-Saxon world has glossed over, referring to it as the Dark Ages — the time between the glories of Rome and the European Renaissance of the High Middle Ages. Yet this period laid the foundation for modern Europe, with many tribes, including the Franks in Gaul, the Angles and Saxons in Britannia, the Visigoths and Suebi in Hispania (Iberia), the Langobards (Lombards) in northern Italy and the Alamanni, the Saxons and Baiovari (Bavarians) in Germania, carving permanent settlements for themselves out of the ruins of these former Roman provinces.
THE GREAT MIGRATION OF THE GERMANIC TRIBES
From the late second century onwards, the multiple splinter tribes began to give way to larger and more powerful tribal groupings. The Saxons (so named after their favoured weapon, the axe) originated in a region along the Elbe and Weser rivers. Along with the Jutes from Jutland, and the Angles from Holstein, they moved south absorbing other tribes, including the Cherusci, before a part of the tribal conglomeration moved on to Britannia in the early fifth century. (The Saxons that did not cross the Channel remained to settle much of what is modern day northern Germany). They were initially conscripted by King Vortigern of the Britons as mercenaries to help restore order after the departure of the Roman legions, but the Saxons soon began to set their sights on making new conquests of their own. By AD 600, the Saxons had carved out seven new kingdoms in what had once been the united Roman Province of Britannia: Kent, Sussex, Essex, Wessex, Mercia, Northumbria and East Anglia. The names are revealing in their derivation — Sussex (South Saxons), Essex (East Saxons), Wessex (West Saxons) and East Anglia (the kingdom of the Angles).
The Franks (the free ones) were a combination of at least half a dozen smaller tribes, including the Alamanni, Attoarii, Bructeri, Chatti, Salii (Salians) Sicambri and various others. They became one of the most formidable tribes in the West, eventually conquering all of the Roman province of Gaul.(13) But the most prolific travellers of the age of the great migrations were the Goths and the Vandals who came from the central and eastern Baltic. The names of the Swedish town of Goteburg and the region of Goteland belie their origins. The Goths moved as far south as the Crimea on the Black Sea but split as a result of Hunic invasions. The Visigoths (Western Goths) eventually settled in what became modern day Spain, and the Ostrogoths (Eastern Goths) went on to conquer much of Italy. Meanwhile, the Vandals plundered and ransacked swathes of Gaul before crossing the Pyrenees to establish a new kingdom in the southern part of the former Roman province of Hispania (Spain). The Arab words ‘Al Andalus’ which are applied to this territory literally translate as ‘land of the Vandals’.(14) The Vandal King, Geiseric, then launched a spectacular seaborn invasion of the Roman province of North Africa, the grain basket of the empire, crossing a 2,000 kilometre stretch of harsh terrain with 80,000 people, to capture the empire’s third largest city, Carthage. The Vandalsi became pirates, sending out fleets of raiding ships to repeatedly sack Sicily, Capua, Naples and even Rome. The frequency and brutality of their raids on the former heart of the Roman Empire ensured that their name was kept alive as a synonym for wanton destruction, long after their kingdom and tribe was consigned to history.
The larger Germanic tribes often joined forces to attain common objectives. The Alamanni and Franks shared a mutual goal to dislodge the Romans from the Rhine, as did the Vandals and Goths who sought to conquer territory from the Romans south of the Danube. From the late fourth century, the great migration of the Germanic tribes was rapidly accelerated by the arrival of the Huns, a new warlike menace from the east. A non-Germanic people of Turkic origin — short, squat, leathery and incredibly adept on horseback — these warriors initiated a seventy-year reign of terror from China to Gaul. The Huns instigated a domino effect; attacking the non-Germanic tribes of the Awars and Alans to the east, who in turn pushed on the Germanic tribes in the centre, who then surged forwards onto the Romans in the west.
In AD 376, the Visigoths allied themselves against the Huns with Rome and were consequently allowed to cross the Danube to seek sanctuary. Rome welcomed the reinforcements, but was poorly prepared to feed the 100,000 extra mouths. The Visigoths had to plunder and rob the local Roman populations to survive, which inevitably led to renewed conflict. In AD 378, at the battle of Adrianople, the Visigoths slaughtered 30,000 Roman legionaries, and the Emperor himself. Rome recovered reasonably swiftly and was able to put new legions into the field, but the relative stability of the border along the Danube had been destroyed, just as the Rhine frontier had been destroyed a century before. The Visigoths were now encamped on Roman soil. It marked a turning point in the fortunes of the Western Roman Empire, and by AD 380 Roman emperors had come to realise they were no longer strong enough to eradicate the multitude of threats that faced the empire alone. Soon hereafter a new treaty of alliance was signed between Rome and the Visigoths, and they were granted leave to settle in return for protecting the territory from further incursions and for service in the Roman army. This marked another key turning point in the fortunes of the Roman Empire, as such treaties meant Rome no longer received vital tax revenues from lands on which the Visigoths were now autonomously settled.
Between AD 380–395, the Roman Empire fractured into two halves politically, institutionally and militarily: The Western Roman Empire, which was based on Rome and its remaining Western Provinces, and the Eastern Empire, which was by now far richer and more secure, with its impregnable capital at Constantinople. This division of the empire also created a permanent schism in the Christian church, with Eastern orthodoxy separating off from the Latin Christianity of the west.
The Visigoths, in a mutual struggle for survival along with the bulk of the Germanic tribes, joined with the Romans for what was seen as a last stand against the all-conquering forces of Attila the Hun in AD 451. Necessity had made allies of the Romans and a considerable number of the Germanic tribes. Attila’s vast empire now stretched from the Caspian Sea to Gaul. With Rome stood the Franks, who had consolidated their hold of northern Gaul, the Visigoths who remained supreme i
n southern Gaul, the Alamanni from eastern Gaul and Germania Superior, and the Burgundians who had settled along the Rhone while a number of smaller Germanic tribes fought with the Huns.ii However, the strongest Germanic tribes sided with Rome, making a last-ditch attempt to halt Attila’s troops at the battle of Châlons, in eastern France, a site assumed to be near the modern day city of Troyes. Attila’s advance was checked, but not broken. He attempted to strengthen his hand by marrying the daughter of a German tribal king, Ildico (Hildchen), yet this attempt failed when he died under mysterious circumstances on his wedding night. Attila’s grave has never been found, and his death has variously been attributed to poisoning or a sudden brain haemorrhage. His Hun riders mounted up and rode back towards the eastern Steppe where they resumed their nomadic lifestyle as if their long list of conquests were but a distant memory.(16)
With the threat from the Huns vanquished, the Germanic tribes again began to cast their eye back to Rome and within twenty-five years they had torn down the entire edifice of the Roman Empire. It has been argued that the Hunic invasions actually extended the life of the Roman Empire, as Rome and the warring northern tribes had to make common cause to defeat the threat Attila’s armies posed to both of them. When the Huns disappeared, it left the way clear for the most ambitious Germanic tribal leaders to continue their conquest of Roman lands. Of all the Germanic tribes, none were more successful than the Franks whose rapid success in capturing much of the territory of the Western Roman Empire was undoubtedly because they moved the shortest distance of all the tribes of the great migrations and did not embark on epic voyages like the Visigoths; who moved from one end of the Continent to the other, or the Vandals, who left Europe altogether to conquer North Africa. The Franks stayed close to their origins in North Western Germany, and the first small kingdom that they established on Roman soil, which was centred at Tournai in modern day Belgium. Thus they were able to draw on a constant stream of new recruits from their nearby home territories. Another important reason for the success of the Franks lies in their efforts to assimilate the Romano-Celtic populations of the territories they conquered.
In terms of assimilation, the subsequent conquest of Gaul by the Franks, and the conquest of Britannia by the Angles and Saxons proved to be polar opposites. In Gaul, the Franks adopted the lingua Romana, whereas in Britannia the Romano-Britons adopted the language and culture of the Saxon invaders. Accounts by the venerable Bede and Gildas of the slaughter of indigenous Romano-Britons in large swathes of the country, pushing the survivors to the fringes of the British Isles, have been supported by recent DNA evidence showing that around 70 per cent of England’s population today is of Saxon origin.(18)
However, the question of when linguistic assimilation took hold, and when the Franks adopted the lingua Romana, remains uncertain. The first document written in old French was the ‘oaths of Straßburg (Strasbourg)’ in AD 842. The chronicler, Nithard, recorded that the oaths were written in Old High German and also in Old French, confirming that the western Franks were strengthening their claim to the Roman heritage of Gaul through the use of its Latinate language.iii It is also important to note that the old language of the Roman Empire did not die out with the fall of the last Roman Emperor. Latin continued to be a visible sign of continuity with the past, and was used by the Germanic tribes as a lingua franca particularly among those assorted tribes where emerging differences in dialect were becoming harder to bridge. Latin also remained the language of the Church, high politics and literature. Nevertheless, Latin and local Latinate dialects were not uniformly adopted by all the Germanic tribes. Whether conquerors imposed their own language or adopted that of the conquered appears largely to have depended on who became numerically superior.
To maintain continuities with the fallen Roman Empire in the west, the Germanic tribes, particularly the Franks, sought to establish links with the Roman past and to impress upon the people they conquered that they were the successors to Rome. They took on traditional forms of Roman administration and new written legal codes were set down in which Roman law served as the model. The adoption by the Germanic tribes of many aspects of Roman law provided a unifying cultural resonance, as well as underpinning the idea that they were the inheritors and guarantors of the notion of a civilised society based on the rule of law. In ideological terms the Germanic successor states also used written Roman law as a core ingredient in their claim to continue to uphold the idea of a divinely ordained Christian social order, just as the Roman Empire had done.
Many of the Germanic tribes had come to adopt the religious beliefs and practices of Rome.iv Since Emperor Constantine made Christianity one of the official religions of the Roman Empire, Roman Christianity had flourished like no other, quickly becoming the dominant religion across the territories of the Western Empire. As the interaction between the Germanic and Roman worlds increased, many of the Germanic tribes had initially adopted Arian Christianity, a form of Christianity that essentially did not recognise the divinity of Jesus Christ. The adoption of Roman Christianity over Arianism by the King of the Franks became an important factor in the assimilation of the Franks with their Gallo-Roman subjects; and later helped accelerate their conquest of former Roman territories that lay in the hands of other Germanic tribes.
Clovis, King of the Franks, defeated the last Roman Governor of Gaul in AD 486, establishing the beginning of the Merovingian dynasty. Clovis lost no time extending his tribes control over the parts of Gaul that were held by rival Germanic tribes. The first Germanic tribe Clovis targeted was the Alamanni (‘all men’);v the decisive struggle between the Franks and the Alamanni taking place at the battle of Zuelpich in AD 497. Clovis came close to defeat during the battle and in prayer swore to convert from Arianism to Roman Catholicism if God helped him win; he emerged victorious and consequently converted. He was the first Germanic king to be crowned and anointed by a Bishop of Rome and to accept the religion of the former Western Roman Empire. The Roman Empire’s military authority may have withered and died as a result of internal division and the onslaught of the Germanic tribes, but out of the ruins emerged a new form of spiritual authority centred on Rome — one that showed an equally insatiable appetite for power and aggrandisement. The Pope was, in effect, the spiritual emperor of Rome, and successive popes were equally determined to destroy all pagan and Christian rivals to their newly espoused universal authority throughout the former western provinces of the Roman Empire. In this mission, the Franks became close allies of the Pope and offered their services as the army of Roman Catholicism, both sides seeking further expansion with the acquiescence of the other.
The Franks zealously took to their ‘supranational religious mission’ of destroying Arianism and all rival forms of Christianity, thereby expanding their territories at the expense of their fellow Germanic tribes. The Alamanni were only saved from extinction by the appeals and interventions of their powerful southern neighbour, Theoderic the Great (the king of the Ostrogoths), who reigned supreme in Italy and appealed to his brother-in-law, Clovis, to show mercy.(21) The next tribe to fall was the Visigoths whom the Franks forced out of southern Gaul at the Battle of Vouille in AD 507. The Visigoths fled across the Pyrenees where they managed to establish a new kingdom in central Spain centred in Toledo, where they remained until they were pushed to the very fringes of the Iberian Peninsula by the Muslim invasions of the Berber Moors from AD 711 onwards.vi With the removal of the Visigoths, the Franks had conquered all of Gaul. Clovis went on to establish a strong state built on the three pillars of king, army, and Church, which would become the founding principal of all the successor states. Not surprisingly, Clovis is acknowledged in France as the founding father of the modern French state. The idea of a separate French identity, superior to, and different from other Germanic tribes began with Clovis. Notwithstanding the fact that his four sons went on to divide, take over and expand his kingdom pushing further east to incorporate many more Germanic kingdoms. For Clovis’s successors, Gaul was not
enough; they set their sights on conquering all of the territory of the former Western Roman Empire and beyond, and they subjugated any and all of their Germanic rivals in this endeavour. The relentless march of the Franks conquered one Germanic tribe after another. They swept aside the kingdom of the Burgundiones (Burgundians)vii centred on Lyon, and a region that stretched from Provence to Lake Geneva and along the Saône river; a region which still carries the name of Burgundy to this day.(22) The Franks then moved east, overwhelming the Thoringi (Thurigians), further stretching their dominance as far east as the river Elbe, a feat that even the Romans had failed to achieve. This was swiftly followed by the conquest of the lands of the Baiovarii (Bavarians) and their kingdom centred on the city of Ratisbona (modern day Regensburg), absorbing their lands and introducing Roman Christianity to the region.
The only tribe that remained strong enough to resist the inexorable progress of the Franks’ advance was the Ostrogoths, who had been given territory in northern Italy as recompense for their alliance with Rome against Attila in AD 451. The Ostrogoths had gone on to conquer the heart of the Roman Empire, establishing their dominance over Italy. Under the politically astute leadership of Theoderic the Great — the only king of a Germanic tribe to be remembered by this epithet — the Ostrogoth kingdom maintained the longest period of peace and stability on the Italian Peninsula in over a century. Theoderic married King Clovis’s sister enabling him to build a network of family alliances through marriage with the Franks, Vandals, Burgundians, Alamanni, Visigoths and Thurigians. His kingdom eventually encompassed Italy, Sicily, Dalmatia (Croatia), Pannonia (Slovenia and Austria), the Alpine region and Raetia (part of southern Germany, Switzerland and Lombardy).(23) During his thirty-year reign, war and bloodshed reached every corner of the former Roman Empire, except Italy. Although the Ostrogoths were Arian Christians while the Romans were predominantly Catholics, his kingdom became a model for religious coexistence and tolerance. Theoderic presided over the first shoots of post-Roman civilisation in Italy, restoring ancient monuments and constructing new public works and roads; he established a stable economic and financial administration, and encouraged the arts. Ravenna still boasts architectural and artistic examples of Theoderic’s reign, most famously his mausoleum.viii After Theoderic’s death in AD 526 peace reigned on the Italian peninsula for a further twenty-six years before storm clouds gathered over this Germanic kingdom.
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