Eharding on the fall of the Roman Empire, Part XI/XII: rise of the Sueves, rise of Attila
Seeing the Romans concentrated on the Gallic front, troubled by the Hispanic front, and unconcerned with the African front, Gaiseric decided to seize Tunisia with the same intent of the Caliph Umar deciding to seize Egypt two centuries later. On October 19, 439, some one thousand years prior to the invention of the printing press, he reached Carthage and took the city by trickery. The second largest city of the Western Mediterranean was now in Germanic hands. It was the first of the Empire’s five great cities to fall into the hands of foreigners with the foreigners having an intent to hold it. The Roman church in the now Vandal-controlled city was largely extinguished and the city thoroughly looted and partly destroyed (Cambridge Ancient History 14, p. 556). The Vandal kingdom of Carthage which Gaiseric had desired for over a decade was a reality. The disproportionately absentee landowners of the Senatorial province of Africa Proconsularis (northern Tunisia) were expropriated, while those in the other provinces were left alone.
The Romans and Visigoths at last signed a peace treaty in late 439 (it’s not clear whether before or after Gaiseric’s seizure of Carthage). Mass conscription was imposed in the Empire on March 2, 440. The traditional prohibition on civilians bearing weapons was lifted. The Vandals, encouraged by an Eastern war with Persia that year, used the naval power they had gained with their seizure of Carthage to besiege Palermo and send raids into South Italy. However, the siege of Palermo, like the first siege of Hippo Regius, failed. Fearing both Western and Eastern attack, the Vandals retreated back into Africa. The Roman tax exemption for church lands was removed.
The Eastern expedition, commanded by five generals, did reach Sicily in 441. The attack, however, was aborted due to attacks by Bleda the Hun which began on the pretext that the bishop of Margus (modern Pozarevac) had been robbing Hunnic tombs. Bleda captured Viminacium (near modern Kostolac), Singidunum (Beograd) and Sirmium, burning them to the ground. According to Hydatius in his entry for this year year,
Hermericus, the king of the Sueves, died after having suffered for four years from a lingering illness. After seizing Hispalis, King Rechila brought the provinces of Baetica and Carthaginiensis under his control… Asturius, sent to Spain as dux utriusque militiae, slaughtered a great number of Bacaudae from Tarraconensis.
In response to the abortion of the anti-Vandal campaign, Bleda was convinced to end his campaigns against the Eastern Empire for a full year. Luckily for the Roman Empire, the Empire of Bleda and Attila would be just an extremely militarily capable dozen-year Reich, rather than, in the manner of the Vandals, Visigoths, and Sueves, a problem lasting many decades.
It is in this year that the Gallic Chronicles of 452 and 511 report the Saxons subjugated Britain. Anglo-Saxon migration into Britain at this time was likely at a rate of some one to two thousand immigrants per year. Perhaps ten thousand immigrants might be required for a “subjugation”. This suggests Anglo-Saxon immigration into Britain began in the 430s. The earliest and most thoroughly Germanized portion of England in the the fifth century was the region from the Thames to the Humber (Halsall, Barbarian Migrations and the Late Roman West p. 199). South of the Thames, the Romanizing “quoit brooch style” prevailed among local warlords (Halsall, p. 239). Like many things in Britain, the quoit brooch style substantially declined in quality and Germanized over time as a result of Saxon settlement. It is unlikely that the church visit to the regions of St. Albans in 429 mentioned in the Life of Germanus, suggested as plausible from coin finds up to Durocobrivis from early in the reign of Valentinian III, could have occurred had it been encumbered by Anglo-Saxon settlers. The beginning of Saxon subjugation is possibly associated with the violent destruction of Richborough, the most important Roman port in Britain; the last Roman coin there is also an early issue of Valentinian III. However, outside of a few places, there is not much evidence of large-scale destruction -that would imply that there was anything its inhabitants, living without any kind of state institutions, found worth defending. From archaeology, we know the Saxons began their settlement in Britain in small hamlets on poor soil near much better soil (see Esmonde-Cleary’s The Ending of Roman Britain), suggesting at least some local resistance to their enroachments. However, neither the early Anglo-Saxons nor the early post-Roman Britons in southeast England built fortified settlements -that would have implied a level of social sophistication far too high for the period and region in question. The Thames at this time must have been quite similar in the eyes of the Roman observer to what the Congo of the early 2000s looked like in the eyes of the modern observer. It was likely this British anarchy that attracted the Anglo-Saxons at least as much as unfavorable developments in their homelands (e.g., war with Franks). The Anglo-Saxons did not merely constitute an elite -in fact, recent immigrants tended to be poorer than the native Britons, who often rose into the top ranks of the Anglo-Saxon social hierarchy. The migration of Saxons out of Niedersachsen and Angles out of Schleswig-Holstein was a truly mass migration. Whole regions of Frisia, Niedersachsen, and Schleswig-Holstein were depopulated during the late fifth and sixth centuries due to their sons and daughters settling in England, a fact confirmed by both archaeological and paleobotanical evidence (Halsall, Barbarian Migrations and the Late Roman West, p. 384). Denmark, however, was relatively richer and more immune to continental wars, thus retaining a greater degree of settlement continuity during the fifth century, though it did experience some disruptions during the sixth (see also Wickham’s Framing the Early Middle Ages p. 312 and Halsall, Barbarian Migrations and the Late Roman West, p. 379). Genetic studies confirm this. Britain during the Roman era had a population of at least two million. Given that at least 20% of England’s genetic stock is from the Anglo-Saxon-Frisian-Jute migration wave, it’s certain the actual number of migrants from, say, 440 to 800 has to be a minimum of 200,000, and probably substantially closer to a million. By the year 650, what were once the most Romanized portions of Britain were now the most thoroughly Germanized.
In 442, the Empire negotiated an agreement with Gaiseric recognizing the Vandals as de facto independent in exchange for his restoring grain shipments to Italy and the Empire taking Gaiseric’s son, Huneric, as a hostage. The agreement also specified that the regions outside the Kingdom of Carthage, ending somewhere to the West of the city of Constantine, Algeria, would continue to be subject to the Romans. During the same year, the Huns resumed their campaigns, but apparently suffered some kind of misfortune that led them to be a moribund force for a period of half a decade (on the chronology, see Maenchen-Helfen’s World of the Huns, p. 116-7). The Empire also attempted a reconquest of Hispania from the Sueves that year, but failed. Gaiseric thus began a new dating system in his realm, beginning the new era with his capture of Carthage. The recognition that Tunisia would no longer be unified with Italy meant that at this point, the Roman Empire had definitely ceased to be a Mediterranean hyperpower. The Western Empire’s population was down to perhaps 15-20 million -just over half of what it was in 404. The Empire’s hyperpower status had been killed by Gaiseric the Vandal. Bleda the Hun, Rechila the Sueve, Theodoric I the Visigoth, and Gundahar the Burgundian had assisted in its demise.
The first half of the fifth century was the peak of Late Antique church construction in the City of Rome, far greater than the late fourth, when imperial visits to Rome were still uncommon and the position of Emperor was more than a ceremonial one. The basilicas of Santa Maria Maggiore and Santa Sabina were built under Pope Celestine and the San Pietro in Vincoli and Lateran Baptistery under Pope Sixtus. Church building in the second half of the fifth century would be far less than in the first half, with the Basilica di Santo Stefano al Monte Celio being a prominent exception. Construction of churches in the City of Rome would not recover to its early fifth century peak until the Early Modern era.
From this point, precipitation would rapidly fall from its present extraordinary peak until about the year 500, when precipitation would hit an extraordinary trough. Temperatures, however, would remain moderate and see little change until the disaster of 536. From an economic perspective, the resulting changes for the rest of the century would probably be good for the Western Empire and the barbarians in the North, somewhat harmful for Carthage, and slightly harmful for the East. The effect of these changes on the Mediterranean economy would, despite their size, be very minor relative to political factors. From a political standpoint, none of these changes are important enough to matter in the slightest prior to the Roman-Carthaginian war of the 530s. No decline, or even stagnation in settlement of any kind occured in Syria until after the 530s (Cambridge Ancient History 14, p. 609) and none whatsoever in Palestine until the later seventh century.
The road from the fall of Tunisia to the fall of Gaul -that is, the transformation of the Western Roman Empire into the Kingdom of Italy- would, as one might expect, first go through a series of coups and resulting civil wars.
The years between the peace treaty with Gaiseric in 442 and the killing of Valentinian III in 455 would, aside from the campaigns of Attila the Hun and the inability to quell the Suevic problem, be relatively decent ones for the Roman Empire. The defeated Burgundians were settled in the region of Geneva in 443. The Western Empire again attempted to retake Hispania this year. According to Hydatius,
The son-in-law of Asturius the magisler utiusque militiae, Merobaudes, was sent as his successor, a man of noble birth who merited comparison to the ancients for the quality of his eloquence, most especially in his poetic skills. He was also celebrated by the testimony of statues. In the brief time that he held his command he smashed the arrogance of the Bacaudae of Aracelli. Soon, as a result of the jealous lobbying of some, he was recalled to the city of Rome by an imperial rescript.
A war with the Franks also broke out this year. Aetius also made a treaty with the Hunnic empire this year, giving them the rest of Pannonia. Valentinian III permitted private armies in Western Roman North Africa and reduced their taxes to one eighth their former value in 445, as Algeria and Morocco were in a poor state due to Moorish raiding. A new sales tax was also imposed that year to compensate for revenue lost from the failure to recapture Carthage. Meanwhile, the Eastern Empire gave a tax cut to its subjects, probably due to ending payments to the Huns. A treaty with the Franks was signed in 445 which restored to the Western Empire Cologne and Trier. The Vandals also raided the Sueves this year due to their desire to improve relations with Aetius’s government. The Roman Empire tried to destroy the Sueves with the help of the Visigoths in 446, but this was a failure; only Eastern and Southern Hispania (including, apparently, Toledo, as a church council was held there the following year) was recovered for the Romans due to the Sueves’ low number of garrison troops. The constant warfare with the Sueves would have a clear negative impact on Hispania throughout the rest of the century. Esmonde-Cleary (The Roman West, p. 476) reports
Thereafter the pottery production and trade of at least the northern half of the peninsula was increasingly marked by smallscale centres with a limited distribution, related in part to the geographical constraints of the interior of the peninsula.
It was presumably at this time, if Gildas is to be taken as an even remotely reliable source, that the Britons (presumably the warlords of the quoit brooch style South of the Thames) unsuccessfully appealed to the Western Empire for help against the barbarians. Presumably this is how the northern English historian Bede, who wrote his history in 731, derived his date for the adventus Anglorum. The year 446 is also the year Pope Leo I, in his letter to the bishops of Western Roman North Africa argued nuns raped by barbarians should not be considered of an equal rank to virgin nuns, as “this will be less to their detriment, if they grieve over losing even in the body what they did not lose in spirit.”
Sometime in the mid-440s, Bleda was killed by Attila the Hun. In 447, Attila set the entirety of the Balkans north of Thermopylae on fire in response to the Eastern Empire not having paid tribute for ~4 years, only Heraclea Perinthus, Philippopolis, Hadrianopolis, and a few other heavily fortified towns being exempt. Rural settlement in the Balkans would not recover for well over three hundred years, forcing the cities that would be rebuilt in the region to be supplied by Egyptian imports. Greece, on the other hand, prospered due to the influx of refugees (Cambridge Ancient History 14, p. 722). The Eastern Roman land armies that tried to stop him were defeated. In 449, with military options few, the Eastern Roman government attempted to bribe one of Attila’s compatriots, Edeco, into assassinating him, but Edeco betrayed the Romans and the Eastern oligarchy was humiliated by Hunnic ambassadors in Constantinople. Constantinople was (not for the last time) subordinate to the Turk.
The Sueves also attacked the Basques this year under their new king, Rechiar, who began minting coins in his own name, the first among the barbarians to do so. New fortifications in Naples, presumably begun prior to 442, were also finished in this year. In 450, Attila made peace with the East and withdrew from the Balkans, deciding to focus on the West, instead. However, just after this, the age of figurehead emperors in the East at last came to an end. Marcian, who had served in the Vandalic containment war of 432-4, became Eastern Emperor in August, to the disapproval of Valentinian III. He revoked all payment of tribute to the Huns, reasoning that it would be of no use in preventing the Huns from attacking the Eastern Empire and that money spent on tribute would be better spent on destroying the Hunnic threat. Huneric, the son of Gaiseric, was returned by the Western Empire to Carthage by this time. In 451, Attila crossed the Rhine and raided Gaul, reaching Orleans. Aetius, who had long experience with the Huns, assembled in Gaul a large army of Visigoths, Burgundians, and even Italians. As the Huns were retreating, Aetius, desiring the destruction of the Hunnic army, forced the Huns into a massive set-piece battle near Troyes on June 19, 451. The attempt did not succeed, the Western Empire apparently having suffered severely in the fighting. The Visigothic king, Theodoric I, was killed in this battle. The Huns, however, were weakened by battle enough to retreat into Germany. That year, Valentinian III granted to landowners expelled by the Vandals thirteen thousand centuriae of abandoned land in present-day Algeria.
That year, Marcian, who had been partial against the doctrine of the relationship between Christ’s human and divine natures expressed in 449 at the Second Council of Ephesus convened under Theodosius II (i.e., that the Christ’s human and divine natures became united at the incarnation) convened his own church council in Chalcedon, a city directly across the Bosporus from the second Rome, in late 451. Doctor of the Church and Bishop of Rome Leo I, much unlike the Miaphysite Dioscorus I of Alexandria, was a vehement defender of Marcian’s council and opponent of the Second Council of Ephesus. The decisions regarding the doctrine of the two natures of Christ made at Chalcedon, that is, that the Christ had separate human and divine natures that were never united into one nature, were not accepted in Egypt, Armenia, or Aksum, all of which had church leaderships which considered the Chalcedonian doctrine too similar to the Nestorian. Marcian’s council eventually led to the third major schism within the Christian religion of the Romans, and the first to result in the creation of one of the six major Christian denominations (Miaphysitism, Western Roman Christianity, Eastern Roman Christianity, the Porvoo Communion, Calvinism, and Southern Baptism) exerting influence upon the world today. As with the council of Nikaia, it would take several decades for the Roman Empire to fully establish the decisions made at Chalcedon as binding. At no point would the Chalcedonian schism result in any great support among the Miaphysites for the Empire’s enemies; of all the religious factions present in the Empire, only Jews and Samaritans would do that. Both the Chalcedonians and Miaphysites called themselves fully Orthodox and fully Catholic; the church of the first of these is today called “Eastern” and the church of the second is confusingly called “Oriental”.
The Huns regrouped in Pannonia and, fifty years after Alaric withdrew his Goths from the same region, attacked northern Italy in June 452, sacking Aquileia after three months of siege (the city would be rebuilt later, though obviously not to its former glory) and most of the major North Italian cities thereafter. Not having the help of the Visigoths, Aetius preferred that most of his forces be confined to garrisons -a tactic that would be successful against the Mongols eight hundred years later, but would be of only moderate utility against the more relatively sophisticated Huns. Marcian sent men to help Aetius in the West and also sent forces to attack the Hunnic heartland. Attila retreated back into Pannonia to defend the Hunnic heartland. He then died in March 453, one thousand years prior to the fall of the second Rome to the Turks. The Western Empire made a treaty with the Sueves this year, presumably resulting in the Sueves recognizing Roman control of Eastern Hispania. Attila’s sons would not be up to the task of continuing the six-year legacy of the scourge of the Balkans, Gaul, and Northern Italy. The Huns were supposedly defeated decisively by an uprising among their Germanic subjects (Nedao) in Pannonia in 454, after which their empire remained broadly in today’s Romania. The resulting Ostrogothic and Hunnic raids into the still devastated Balkans resulted in Marcian settling these groups into former Roman Pannonia. It’s not entirely clear what the border between the Eastern and Western spheres of responsibility was at this point; it is known the bulk of Dalmatia was in Western hands as of October of 452 and the Roman-held parts of present-day Austria were also definitely in the Western sphere. However, the question is sort of irrelevant; it is known that no Roman soldiers between the Alps and the Danube were receiving their pay by this point.