The Visigoths
In 382, Theodosius, Roman ruler at the time, under a treaty made the Visigoths the first independent barbarian nation within the Roman Empire. Visigoths allied with Rome in 394, and Alaric I led the Visigoths in the Roman army against the Huns. Theodosius, before his death, spilt the empire between his sons Honorius and Acradius. The empire was now permanently split into eastern and western empires. In 395, when Theodosius died, the Visigoths relinquished their allegiance with Rome.
In 401, Alaric decided to invade Italy, but was defeated by the Roman general Flavius Stilicho, and the Visigoths were forced to withdraw from Italy. Alaric's huge loss did not prevent him from attacking again, as he did. The second invasion also ended in defeat, but this time Alaric constrained the Senate at Rome to pay a large endowment to the Visigoths. An anti-barbarian party took over Rome after Stilicho's death and ordered that wives and children of the tribesmen who served in the Roman army be killed. The tribal soldiers then returned to serve under Alaric, increasing his military strength. Even though Alaric was eager for peace, the western emperor Honorius, refused to recognize Alaric's needs for supplies and land. This led Alaric to attack Rome once more and the Senate ended up paying an endowment to Alaric and granted Alaric the right to go and negotiate with Honorius. Honorius, close-minded, paid no attention to what Alaric wanted and refused to set up a meeting for the negotiations to take place. In 409, Alaric surrounded Rome. Honorius lifted his blockade and appointed Attalus as western emperor. Alaric soon deposed Attalus and besieged Rome for the third time. Allies that were in the city opened the gates for Alaric and for three days his troops occupied Rome. While in Rome Alaric and his troops took everything with them and burned things that were in their way. Soon after this Alaric died and the Visigoths moved northward towards Spain. After Alaric's death the Visigoths roamed and were vulnerable to attacks.
The Vandals
The Vandals were a Germanic tribe of Jutland (now in Denmark), who migrated to the valley of the Odra (Oder) River about the 5th century BC. During the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD they settled along the Danube River. This is approximately when they began their conquests over Rome. Today's usage of the word "vandal" reflects the dread and hostility the tribe precipitated in other people, especially the Romans, by their looting and pillaging of the many villages they conquered.
In the 420s, much of Spain was the playground of the ferocious Vandal tribes, who had arrived there in 409 after crossing the Rhine in 406. The Vandals, under pressure from the local Romans and the expanding Visigoths, decided to move on to the rich provinces of Roman North Africa; they elected as their king a crippled son of a slave, Gaiseric. This proud, ruthless king was a gifted conspirator and a genius of political maneuver. For 50 years, Gaiseric’s web of entangling treaties foiled the plans of Roman diplomats and Germanic kings, always to the Vandals’ advantage.
In 429, Gaiseric ferried all of his people across the Strait of Gibraltar and led them east along the African coast. One by one, the gleaming Roman cities with their abundant granaries fell to the hungry Vandals. The people of Hippo were rallied to the defense of their town by their bishop, Augustine. St. Augustine died in his city during the 14-month-long Vandal siege. In the end, Hippo, too, passed into the barbarian hands. The Vandal conquest of North Africa took a decade to complete. Cleaning up operations were still going on when Gaiseric turned restlessly to a new project: he built a swift fleet and launched himself on a lucrative career of piracy in the Mediterranean Sea.
The Vandals carved out big estates and made their homes among the Romans. They left administrative chores to Roman bureaucrats. But the relations of the Arian Vandals with the Catholic inhabitants were never better than strained. Gaiseric barely managed to hold animosities in check, and under his successors prejudice erupted into violence. The Vandals persecuted the Roman majority. They martyred scores of Catholic and provided medieval hagiographers with many grim tales for their lives of the saints.
Gratuitous cruelty was only one symptom of the Vandals’ swift degeneration after Gaiseric’s reign. The warriors, seduced by the luxuries that their rich land supplied, grew weak, corrupt, and disorganized. They succumbed quickly when their kingdom was invaded by an army from the Eastern Roman Empire in 533. Soon afterward, the Vandals disappeared as a distinct people. They melted in with the highly mixed local population and tried to continue to live non-distinct lives. They left little behind but lingering bitterness, anger, and a new desire for justice.
Franks
The name "Frank" is closely related to the word that means "fierce" or "free" in the Frankish language. From a linguistic point of view, the most direct descendants of the Franks are the Dutch and the Flemish-speakers of Belgium. The early Franks were a loose confederation of tribes who shared a similar culture. Tribal loyalty came before loyalty to the confederation and because of this the confederation was extremely weak.
The concept of the Franks as a people was first realized under the reign of the Merovingian dynasty. The Merovingians took their name from the chief of the tribe, Merovech (Merowen), who was one of the leaders (reguli) of the Salian Franks. Merovich and his successor, Childeric, (d. 481), extended Frankish dominion as far south as the Somme River.
Childeric was the father of Clovis (481-511), the first ruler of the Merovingian dynasty. Clovis was a ruthless warrior and he and his immediate successors destroyed all resistance within their empire. He drove the Gallic Visigoths into Spain and absorbed much of the Burgundian kingdom as well as much of the territory of the Alemanni into his kingdom. In addition, Clovis also converted to Orthodox Christianity, an act which made him king of the Franks in the eyes of the pope.
After AD 700, the Merovingians gradually lost control of the Frankish kingdom to the Carolingians, a family of ambitious landowners who served as court advisors to the Merovingians. Frankish troops secured the fate of Christian Europe in the Battle of Tours, in which the Muslim forces were defeated by the Carolingian general Charles Martel (Charles the Hammer).
Pepin the Short, son of Charles Martel, became king with the votes of the Frankish nobles and papal approval. In return for this ecclesiastic recognition, Pepin crushed the Lombards of Italy and gave the newly conquered lands to the pope. These territories later became the Papal states and this agreement is known as the Donation of Pepin.
However, the most notable of all the Frankish rulers was Charlemagne (Charles the Great). He built up a capable bureaucracy, a fair judicial system, and revived the arts. he was also the ruler of a vast domain that was gained by his military exploits. Charlemagne followed up his victories in these areas by converting most of the people to Christianity and he was justly honored for his military and religious activities. On Christmas day of the year AD 800, Pope Leo III (795-816) crowned Charlemagne "Charles Augustus, Emperor of the Romans," and made him the first Holy Roman Emperor.
The end of the Carolingian era began in 843 when Charlemagne's grandsons divided the empire into three parts, and thus hastened the splintering of Western Europe into smaller kingdoms.
The Ostrogoths
When they went into Italy they wanted to adopt Roman culture and to be accepted and equals with the Romans. They helped protect the civilized world against other barbarians. Although the Ostrogoths were a barbarian people, they fought against them. The Ostrogoths became Arian Christians, which caused conflict between them and orthodox Roman Catholics.
The most important Ostrogoth leader was Theodoric the Great, who reigned from AD 493 to 526. In 488 the Ostrogoths were commissioned by the Emperor Zeno to attack Odoacer, a German usuper, in Italy. Odoacer surrendered in 493 on the condition that he was allowed to retain his half of the kingdom but he was killed by Theodoric, who then became sole ruler of Italy. Under Theodoric the old Roman law, taxation, and administrative systems were continued unbroken. There was also a great deal of peace and prosperity. He attempted to secure good diplomatic relations with his German neighbors by offering his daughters and sons to their kings in marriage.
After Theodoric's reign, the Ostrogothic kingdom continued to exist until the middle of the sixth century, when it was overthrown by Emperor Justinian. Eighteen years of hard fighting and devastation of the countryside were needed before the last Ostrogothic army was destroyed. Then the Ostrogothic state and people disappeared from history.
Angles
The Burgundians
It was twice that the Burgundians faced destruction, the second time being fatal. The Huns attacked in 456 AD; with the aid of Aetus, the Burgundians narrowly escaped destruction. The few survivors fled to the territory surrounding Lake Geneva in Switzerland. Later, after repeated invasions, they moved to the valley of the Rhine River where they occupied eastern Gaul. Lyon became the capital of the Burgundian Kingdom. They gave their name to the region that still remains today as the region Burgundy. But later in 554 AD, the Burgundians were attacked by the Franks, their former allies, and their kingdom was annexed.
The greatest of the Burgundian kings was Gundobad, who reigned from 473 to 517 AD, his greatest contribution being Burgundian law. In 484, he formulated a law code for his Burgundian subjects, the Lex Gundobada, or Lex Burgundionum. Years later, he sponsored a more significant law code, the Lex Romana Burgundinum, this time benefit of his Roman subjects, "[w]hich applied also to cases in which both Romans and Burgundians were involved," (Jones, p.22). Finally, the Burgundians, like many other Germanic tribesmen, were Arian Christians. However, in 493 AD, Clotilda, the Burgundian princess, married Clovis, and having embraced the Roman Rite herself, helped convert Clovis to Roman Christianity.
The Lombards
When the Lombards --whose original name, Langobards, refers to their long beards-- descended on Italy in the 6th century, they had to deal with several earlier waves of German invaders (particularly the Goths) as well as the resurgent Eastern Romans (who were a power in Italy into the 8th century). However, twenty years after the last of the Eastern Romans were expelled from Italy (751 AD.), the Lombards were stomped by the better organized Franks. This was, technically, the end of the Lombard kingdom in Italy. But unlike earlier Germans, they had not maintained the ancient Roman forms of government during their domination of the Peninsula, nor did the Lombard duchies which survived the Frankish onslaught in the South. The political landscape in Italy was given a German overlay by the Lombards, where eventually they spoke Italian and became Catholic. Basically, Italy became another Germanic area.
Perhaps most importantly, the Lombards got involved in political arguments with the Pope, and this was what caused the papacy to call upon the Franks for aid. The papacy was a prize every Medieval magnate wanted to possess. But the popes knew that they could not survive long if they were the creators of one king or emperor. The Moslems had conveniently removed the authority of the Eastern Roman emperor from Italy (with a little help from the Lombards), but someone was needed to keep the Germans in Italy (and elsewhere) from controlling the papacy. For several centuries the protector of the papacy became the Franks (and later the French). Out of all of this came a papacy that became an arbiter of Medieval Politics. While the papacy controlled extensive lands in central Italy, the pope was never temporal power. The papacy created a balance of power between the various German kings that provided the Church an independence it would have never had if there were an effective Roman, or Holy Roman, emperor.
Saxon
Saxons participated in the Germanic settlement of Britain during and after the 5th century. It is unknown how many migrated from the continent to Britain though estimates for the total number of Germanic settlers vary between 10,000 and 200,000.[1] Since the 18th century, many continental Saxons have settled other parts of the world, especially in North America, Australia, South Africa, South of Brazil and in areas of the former Soviet Union, where some communities still maintain parts of their cultural and linguistic heritage, often under the umbrella categories "German", and "Dutch".
Because of international Hanseatic trading routes and contingent migration during the Middle Ages, Saxons mixed with and had strong influences upon the languages and cultures of the Scandinavian and Baltic peoples, and also upon the Polabian Slavs and Pomeranian West Slavic peoples.
The pre-Christian settlement of the Saxon people originally covered an area a little more to the northwest, with parts of the southern Jutland Peninsula, Old Saxony and small sections of the eastern Low Countries (Belgium and the Netherlands). During the 5th century AD, the Saxons were part of the people invading the Romano-British province of Britannia. One of the other tribes was the Germanic Angles, whose name, taken together with that of the Saxons led to the formation of the modern term, Anglo-Saxons.
