The Alamanni

The first documented reference to the Alamanni occurs in AD 213, when the Emperor Caracalla fought against them. The name Alamanni means "All Men" and describes an alliance of several tribes, which may very well have included the Hermunduri and the Suebi, since the area of Germany from which they emerged encompassed the old tribal lands of these peoples. Several Alamannic kings are recorded as ruling simultaneously, and even as late as the Fifth Century there seems to have been no strong, centralized authority.

In the 3rd century, the Alamanni began to trouble the most vulnerable sector of the Roman frontier between the rivers Rhine and Danube, an area finally abandoned by the Empire in 260. By about AD 300, the Alamanni were regularly to be found amongst Roman forces as the wholesale barbarization of the Roman Army began.

Throughout the 4th century, the Alamanni raided the Western Empire despite a series of defeats by Julian the Apostate, most notably at the Battle of Strasbourg (Argentoratum) in 357 where their leader, Chnodomar, was captured.

In the great invasion of 406, when several Germanic peoples swarmed across the frozen Rhine, the Alamanni played a significant part, and soon afterwards began to settle in Alsace and the Palatinate. From the first, though, they felt the growing power of the Franks to the north. Their energies were directed southwards, therefore, into eastern Gaul, Italy and Noricum. By AD 500, despite defeat by Clovis, they held a fertile region of land between Strasbourg and Augsburg but were not strong enough to force their way into the much-prized plains of northern Italy.

Neighbored by the powerful Franks in the north and west and by the Ostrogoths in the south, the Alamanni had nowhere to go and could not expand their lands. Between 486 and 508, they were crushed by Clovis' Franks, whose centralized power proved more than a match for them. By 536, their territory was ruled by a lieutenant of a Frankish king. "Alamannia" as the region became known (giving us the modern French word Allemagne - "Germany"), retained a distinct identity within the Frankish world until Charles Martel finally absorbed it into his empire early in the Eighth Century.

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The Anglo-Saxons

Whereas in France , the original Romanized inhabitants vastly outnumbered the invading Franks, in England the Germanic invaders, the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes from northern Germany and Denmark, drove most of the original Celtic inhabitants to Cornwall , Wales , and Scotland in the far western regions of the British Isle . The invaders, whom for convenience we call the Anglo-Saxons, ignored most of the Roman achievements they found. They disliked the land already being farmed, which was mostly light chalky soil on the hilltops, and preferred the clay lands of the river valleys. They paid no attention to Roman law, but introduced a wholly Germanic tribal system of government. They arrived as pagans, and were converted only at the end of the sixth century by St. Augustine 's mission sent directly from Rome. The Anglo-Saxons thus received what Romanization they had from the Catholic Church. From the Roman Empire itself, they acquired only the roads. By contrast even with Clovis 's Paris, life in Anglo-Saxon England was rough, drab, and dangerous.

Under the impact of these Germanic invaders, the control of the Roman Empire in Western Europe disappeared. The last emperor in the West was the boy ruler Romulus Augustulus, who was killed in 476 by the Germanic chieftain Odoacer. Odoacer however did not declare that he had put an end to the Roman Empire in the West. He sent the insignia of the emperor back to Constantinople with the message that the empire needed only one emperor, and that he would act as the representative of Constantinople in Italy . Odoacer felt, in short, that he had reunited the Roman Empire . However, the Roman Empire in the West had fallen. Britain, France, the Low Countries, Spain, north Africa, and Italy itself were all in the hands of Ger- manic invaders, whether or not those invaders paid lip service to the emperor in faraway Constantinople.

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The Burgundes

The Burgundians were an East Germanic people who spoke a language similar to Gothic and like the Goths, they traced their origins back to Scandinavia, originating on the island of Bornholm, a Danish island. By the First Century AD they had settled on the Vistula in Poland and later migrated south and east. They settled for a while in the area of modern Berlin, before being pushed westwards to the Rhineland.

In 411 AD Emperor Jovinus allowed a large group of Burgundians to establish a federate kingdom on the Rhine in Worms under king Gundahar. In 435 AD the Burgundians tried to expand into Gaul, but the Roman general Aetius called in Hun mercenaries to destroy Gundahar's kingdom. The battle cost Gundahar his life and later formed the basis for the Nibelunglied. The remnants of the Burgundians were later settled near Lake Geneva under Gundioc in 443 AD. In 451 AD they joined Aetius in beating off the invasion of Attila at the battle of Chalons, in which they fought other Burgundians who had joined the Huns. The second Burgundian kingdom was a loyal ally of the Romans, joining another usurper Emperor Avitus against the Suevi of Spain in 456 AD. After his death the Burgundians expanded their kingdom down the Rhone and took Lyon.

In 458 AD the Emperor Majorian re-asserted his dominance and Aegidius retook Lyon from the Burgundians, but when he died Lyons was retaken. Gundioc died in 470 AD and his successor, Chilperic, pushed back the Visigoths who were trying to expand up the Rhone into Burgundian territory and then fought a series of successful wars against the Alamanni.

In 480 AD Gundobad and his brother kings succeeded his uncle Chilperic after having supported his kinsman, the Roman general Ricimer, in Italy and then succeeded him briefly as commander in chief of the Western Roman Army. While Theodoric the Ostrogoth and Odoacer were fighting over Italy, Gundobad led his warriors to further expand his kingdom. With Theodoric now ruling Italy, the Burgundians and their expansionary neighbours the Franks were drawn into a complex series of marriage alliances with the Ostrogoths. But relations with both stayed tense and in 500 AD Clovis' Franks attacked the Burgundians.

In the wars which followed Gundobad's brother Godigisel allied with the Franks and the Visigoths intervened against him, killing him and defeating his Frankish allies. Then Gundobad switched sides and allied with the Franks against the Visigoths, probably due to pressure from another direction from the Alamanni. Frankish attacks on the Alamanni allowed the Burgundians to expand again, but when the Ostrogoths intervened in a war between the Franks and the Visigoths they suffered serious defeats at Theodoric's hands in 507 AD and again in 509 AD.

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The Franks

The Franks were a group of Germanic tribes that, about the middle of the 3rd century AD, lived along the middle and lower Rhine River. The Franks appeared in the Roman provinces around 253 and quickly established themselves in two principal groups, the Salian and the Ripuarian. The Salian Franks inhabited the territory along the lower stretches of the Rhine, and the Ripuarian Franks lived along the middle course of the river. The Salians were conquered by the Roman emperor Julian in 358 and became allies of Rome. During the early 5th century, when the Romans retired from the Rhine, the Salians established themselves in most of the territory north of the Loire River.

Under the Salian king Clovis I, founder of the Merovingian dynasty, the power and extent of the Frankish kingdom grew considerably. In 486 Clovis overthrew Syagrius, the last Roman governor in Gaul, and then successively subjugated the Alamanni, the Bourguignons, the Visigoths of Aquitania, and the Ripuarian Franks. Ultimately, the borders of his kingdom extended from the Pyrenees Mountains to Friesland and from the Atlantic Ocean to the Main River. Clovis was converted to Christianity in 496, and thus began the close connection between the Frankish monarchy and the papacy.

After the death of Clovis, the kingdom was divided among his four sons, and for the following century it went through several divisions and reunifications until finally consolidated by Clotaire II in 613. Shortly after his death, however, the kings ceased to exercise any influence, and authority passed into the hands of the great officers of state, most notably, the mayor of the palace (major domus). The office of major domus existed in all of the Frankish kingdoms. In the eastern part, Austrasia, however, arose a powerful family, the Carolingian, which retained exclusive possession of the palace mayoralty for more than 100 years, ruling as monarchs in fact if not in name. In 687 Pepin of Herstal, the Austrasian mayor of the palace, overthrew the forces of Neustria (the western part) and Burgundy, setting himself up as major domus of a united Frankish kingdom. His son, Charles Martel, extended the frontiers of the kingdom in the east and in 732 repelled the Moors in a decisive battle fought at a site between Tours and Poitiers. Frankish power attained its greatest development under Charles Martel's grandson, Charlemagne, who in his time was the most powerful monarch in Europe. On December 25, 800, he was crowned Carolus Augustus, emperor of the Romans, by Pope Leo III. Charlemagne's imperial title was later borne by the Holy Roman emperors until the early 19th century. His Frankish lands, more specifically, developed into the kingdom of France, which is named for the Franks.

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Goths

Goths, ancient Teutonic people, who in the 3rd to the 6th century AD were an important power in the Roman world. The Goths were the first Germanic peoples to become Christians. According to the 6th-century Gothic historian Jordanes, the Goths came from Sweden across the Baltic Sea to the basin of the Wis³a (Vistula) River. By the 3rd century AD they had migrated as far south as the lower Danube, around the Black Sea. During that century Gothic armies and fleets ravaged Thrace, Dacia, and cities in Asia Minor and along the Aegean coast. They captured and plundered Athens in 267 to 268, and threatened Italy. For about a century, wars between the Roman emperors and Gothic rulers devastated the Balkan territory and the northeastern Mediterranean region. Other tribes joined the Goths, and under the great king Ermanaric in the 4th century, a kingdom was established that extended from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea.

About 370 the Goths divided into two separate groups. The Ostrogoths (Low Latin Ostrogothae,"the eastern Goths") inhabited a large kingdom east of the Dniester River on the shores of the Black Sea (part of modern Ukraine and Belarus). The Visigoths (Low Latin Visigothi,"the good Goths" or "the noble Goths") were the western Goths, with a domain extending from the Dniester to the Danube rivers.

About 370 the Goths divided into two separate groups. The Ostrogoths (Low Latin Ostrogothae,"the eastern Goths") inhabited a large kingdom east of the Dniester River on the shores of the Black Sea (part of modern Ukraine and Belarus). The Visigoths (Low Latin Visigothi,"the good Goths" or "the noble Goths") were the western Goths, with a domain extending from the Dniester to the Danube rivers.

About 100 years after the birth of Christ an ancient Teutonic people began moving out of northern Europe. In time they overran the Roman Empire. The first of these barbarians to conquer Rome were the Visigoths, or West Goths.

Where the Goths first came from is not definitely known. According to their folklore, their people had once lived far to the north, on the shores and islands of what is now Sweden. After long, slow wanderings through the forests of western Russia, the Goths reached the shores of the Black Sea. In 100 years of contact with the Romans, they learned many things, especially the Christian religion.

Christianity was spread among them by a converted Goth, a saintly scholar named Ulfilas. For more than 40 years he labored, first making a Gothic alphabet so that he could translate the Bible and then teaching his people the new faith. This Bible translated by Ulfilas has great historical value because it is centuries older than the earliest writing to survive in any other Teutonic language.

For a time the Goths ruled a great kingdom north of the Danube River and the Black Sea. Then, in AD 375, the Huns swept into Europe from Asia. They conquered the Ostrogoths, or East Goths, and forced the Visigoths to seek refuge across the Danube within the boundaries of the Roman Empire.

In a battle fought near the city of Adrianople in 378, the Visigoths defeated and murdered Emperor Valens. For a time they lived peaceably on Roman territory. On the death of Emperor Theodosius in 395, they rose in rebellion under their ambitious young king Alaric and overran a large part of the Eastern Empire. Rome itself fell into the hands of the Visigoths in 410. Alaric led the attack.

Alaric's successors led their people out of Italy and set up a powerful kingdom in southern Gaul and Spain. In the year 507 the Visigoths in Gaul were defeated by the Franks and were forced beyond the Pyrenees. For 200 years their kingdom in Spain flourished. In 711, when the Moors crossed to Spain from Africa, the Visigothic kingdom was destroyed.

The Ostrogoths for a time formed part of the vast horde that followed the king of the Huns, Attila. They settled in the lands south of Vienna when the Hunnish kingdom fell apart. Their national hero was Theodoric the Great, a powerful and romantic figure who became king in 474. As a boy he had been sent as a hostage to Constantinople (now Istanbul) and had been educated there. In 488 he invaded Italy with the permission of the emperor at Constantinople. After several years of warfare, Theodoric captured and killed Odoacer. Odoacer was a barbarian who had usurped the Roman power and had founded a powerful kingdom that included all Italy together with lands north and east of the Adriatic Sea. Theodoric's reign was one of the ablest and best in this period. He failed, however, largely because no permanent union was effected between the barbarians and the Christian-Roman population. All his wise plans for bringing this about proved futile because the Ostrogoths, in common with most German barbarians, had been converted to Arianism, a heretical form of Christianity, and so were hated by the orthodox.

After Theodoric died in 526, the generals of the Eastern Roman Empire reconquered Italy (see Justinian I). After fighting a last battle near Mount Vesuvius in 553, the Ostrogoths marched out of Italy. They merged with other barbarian hordes north of the Alps and disappeared as a people from history.

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The Ostrogoths

When the Huns swept into Europe about 370, many of the Ostrogoths were conquered and compelled to aid their conquerors. They joined the king of the Huns, Attila, in his expedition against Gaul in 451 and many Ostrogoths were killed by the Visigoths at the Battle of Châlons. When the Huns were finally forced back, the Ostrogoths again became independent.

Once they had broken loose from Hun control, the Ostrogoths moved slowly toward northern Italy . Their leader was Theodoric, one of the most talented leaders of all the Germanic peoples. He had spent ten years in Constantinople as a hostage, knew both Latin and Greek, and had developed a profound admiration for the ancient civilization he had been forcibly acquainted with. He had not, however, lost his tribal skills, for after conquering most of northern Italy , he demonstrated his ability with the broad- sword by slicing in two his rival for control of Italy and his ruthlessness by exterminating the rival's family. Theodoric then showed more constructive statesmanship. From 493 till his death in 526, he governed Italy and large parts of the Balkans as the regent of the emperor in Constantinople and as King of the Goths, establishing both in title and in actuality a successful policy of racial coexistence. The Goths took one-third of the land and houses and all military duties. The Romans kept the rest, and devoted themselves to peaceful pursuits. Gothic law applied to Goths, Roman law to Romans. Intermarriage was forbidden. Although Theodoric was an Arian Christian, he tolerated the Catholic religion and even the Jewish and other faiths. "Religion is not something we can command," he said. "No one can be forced into a faith against his will." He showed great concern for Roman culture. He restored monuments that had fallen into ruin, including the Coliseum in Rome , where circuses were still presented. But it was at the capital of Ravenna that the Ostrogothic king showed the heights of civilization that could be achieved with the fusion of Germanic and Roman skills.

Ravenna had been made the capital of the western part of the Roman Empire because of its excellent harbor and because it was protected by wide marshes. It was a city of islands, canals, bridges, and causeways, looking across lagoons to the Adriatic Sea . Here Theodoric found that the Roman artists had brought to perfection one of the most demanding and un- compromising of all artistic forms, the art of mosaic; and it was for this achievement that his Ravenna would be principally remembered. In mosaic the artist must set enormous numbers of tiny bits of marble, enamel, glass, and colored stone into damp cement. He cannot produce those subtleties of expression possible in an oil painting, but must seek an overall effect usually visible only from a distance. But in return he is able to use the play of light not only upon the many different angles of the tiny mosaic stones but within the mosaic itself. In Ravenna , the artists were developing new materials for this art, applying gold leaf to glass cubes and covering them again with a thin film of glass, using metallic oxides to produce variations of color, or employing mother of pearl to produce just the right effect of creamy perfection. In the windows, they often used thick sheets of alabaster, so that the entering light already had a soft opacity before playing upon the planes of yellow marble and the complexity of the mosaic surface. In Ravenna, they constructed buildings as though they were galleries meant to display mosaics, with bare wafls designed to permit the artist to create the largest, most complex compositions yet attempted in that exacting form of art. One last advantage is still evident today; the process is almost permanent. Unlike frescoes, which fade fairly rapidly, many of the mosaics in Ravenna have required no restoration, and shine as brightly today as in the sixth century.

The building that turned Theodoric to the use of mosaic for his churches and palaces was the tiny mausoleum of Gaila Placidia, probably the tomb of an emperor's daughter who had been married to a Visigothic prince. The architecture was simple, a cross of unadorned brick with very small windows. Its mosaics however are the loveliest possible introduction to the art that was the glory of Ravenna and later of Constantinople itself. The mosaic over the entrance to the mausoleum represents the good shepherd, a kindly protector, not feeding his sheep but patting them benevolently on the nose. He is dressed in a stunning robe with red piping and deep blue stripes that could appear unchanged at a present-day fashion show. In the center of the tiny chapel, one turns to look upward to the dome, the Dome of Heaven, lit up by almost eight hundred golden stars; these become smaller as the dome rises, increasing the sensation of the swirling distance wherein a gold cross symbolizes Redemption.

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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 homeof the 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.

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The Visigoths

The first Germanic people to penetrate the frontiers of the empire were the West Goths, or Visigoths. The Goths had originally lived in southern Scandinavia and around the Baltic. But moving south in the second century they had split into two groups, the East Goths, or Ostrogoths, who had remained in southern Russia to live off the land as an army of conquerors, and the West Goths, or Visigoths, who drove the Romans out of Dacia (modern Rumania). The Goths were receptive to Roman ways of life, developed a taste for Roman luxuries, and adopted the Arian form of Christianity. Many were recruited into the Roman army, and even took offices of state in Constantinople itself. Thus, when the westward drive of a Mongolian people called the Huns from the steppes of Russia overwhelmed the Ostrogoths, the emperor Valens of Constantinople was not unwilling to permit the Visigoths to move into the empire in 376 to defend its Danube frontier.

In 376 the Visigoths, threatened by the Huns, sought the protection of the Roman emperor Valens, and they were given permission to settle into the empire's province of Moesia, which was south of the Danube. When Gothic soldiers were maltreated by Roman officers, the Goths revolted, and the resulting war climaxed in a decisive battle in 378 near Adrianople (now Edirne, Turkey), in which Valens was killed. The victorious Goths then threatened Constantinople (present-day Ýstanbul). Theodosius I, who succeeded Valens as emperor in the East, made peace with the Goths and incorporated their army into the Roman forces. From that time on, the Visigoths were an important influence in the Roman Empire. Many who had settled in Moesia became farmers and were known as Moeso-Goths. Ulfilas, bishop of the Goths, translated the Bible into Gothic and was largely responsible for the conversion of the Goths to a form of Christianity called Arianism.

On the death of Theodosius in 395, the Visigoths renounced their allegiance to Rome and chose Alaric I as their ruler. Alaric invaded Greece and then Italy, and in 410 he captured and pillaged the city of Rome. In that same year he was succeeded by Ataulf, who led the Visigoths across the Pyrenees mountain range into Spain.

From 415 to 418, under the next ruler, Wallia, the Visigoths extended their realm over a great part of Spain and southern Gaul, with Toulouse as their capital. Wallia was succeeded by the reputed son of Alaric, Theodoric I, who died fighting as an ally of Rome against the Huns at the Battle of Châlons. The most notable of the Spanish Visigothic kings was Euric, who reigned from about 420 to 484. He was a son of Theodoric I. Under Euric, who declared his rule to be independent of any federation with Rome, the kingdom of Toulouse included almost all of Spain and most of Gaul west of the Rhône River and south of the Loire River. Euric introduced many aspects of Roman civilization and drew up a code of law combining Roman and German elements. The kingdom was, however, continually beset by both internal and external difficulties. The kingship was nominally elective, and the powerful Visigothic nobles stood against attempts to found a hereditary royal house. Externally, the Byzantine Empire and the Franks menaced the Visigothic lands. In order to instill greater loyalty in his rebellious Roman and Christian subjects, Alaric II in 506 introduced the collection of laws known as the Breviary of Alaric. A year later, Clovis I, king of the Franks, defeated the Visigoths at the Battle of Vouillé, in which Alaric II was killed. Most of Provence was separated from the Gothic lands, and the Visigothic kingdom was confined almost entirely to Spain. Despite the attempts of a long line of Gothic kings to hold the kingdom together, the power of the Visigoths steadily declined. The last king, Roderick, was defeated and probably killed by the Muslims in the Battle of Río Barbate in 711. By 713 Spain was partially conquered by the Moors, and the Visigothic power survived in the independent Christian kingdom of Asturias.

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