The Dark Ages Collection. David Hume
on August 24, A.D. 410.26 This time the king was in no humour to spare the capital of the world. The sack lasted for two or three days.27 It was confessed that some respect was shown for churches, and stories were told to show that the violence of the rapacious Goths was mitigated by veneration for Christian institutions.28 There is no reason to suppose that all the building and antiquities of the city suffered extensive damage. The palace of Sallust, in the north of the city, was burnt down, and excavations on the Aventine, then a fashionable aristocratic quarter, have revealed many traces of the fires with which the barbarian destroyed the houses they had plundered.29 A rich booty and numerous captives, among whom was the Emperor’s sister, Galla Placidia, were taken.
On the third day, Alaric led his triumphant host forth from the humiliated city, which it had been his fortune to devastate with fire and sword. He marched southward through Campania, took Nola and Capua, but failed to capture Naples. He did not tarry over the siege of this city, for his object was to cross over to Africa, probably for the purpose of establishing himself and his people in that rich country. Throughout their movements in Italy the food-supply had been a vital question for the Goths, and to seize Africa, the granary of Italy, whether for its own sake or as a step to seizing Italy itself, was an obvious course. The Gothic host reached Rhegium; ships were gathered to transport it to Messina, but a storm suddenly arose and wrecked them in the straits. Without ships, Alaric was forced to retire on his footsteps, perhaps hoping to collect a fleet at Naples. But his days were numbered. He died at Cosentia (Cosenza) before the end of the year (A.D. 410); his followers buried him in the Basentus, and diverted its waters into another channel, that his body might never be desecrated.30 It is related that the men who were employed on the work were all massacred, that the secret might not be divulged.31
Alaric’s Ostrogothic brother-in-law Athaulf was elected by the Visigoths to succeed him as their king.32 They must have remained for some time in southern Italy, perhaps still contemplating an invasion of Africa, but they finally abandoned the idea and marched northward along the west coast, to seek their fortunes in Gaul. Of their doings in Italy during the thirteen or fourteen months which elapsed between Alaric’s death and their entry into Gaul we hear almost nothing. It is hardly probable that they visited Rome and plundered it again,33 but they laid Etruria waste. Five years later a traveller from Rome to Gaul preferred a journey by sea to traversing Tuscany devastated by Gothic sword and fire.
Postquam Tuscus ager postquamque Aurelius agger
perpessus Geticas ense vel igne manus non silvas domibus, non flumina ponte cohercet,
incerto satius credere vela mari.34 Athaulf crossed the Alps early in A.D. 412, perhaps by the pass of Mont Genèvre,35 to play a leading part in the troubled politics of Gaul. But to explain the situation which confronted him we must go back to A.D. 406 and follow the course of events of six years which were of decisive importance for the future histories of Gaul, Spain, and Britain.
§ 2. The German Invasion of Gaul and Spain, and the Tyranny of Constantine III (A.D. 406-411)
On the last day of December A.D. 406 vast companies of Vandals, Suevians, and Alans began to cross the Rhine near Moguntiacum and pour into Gaul.36
The Asding Vandals, who, as we saw, invaded Raetia in A.D. 401, were finding their lands on the Theiss insufficient to support their growing numbers,37 and joining with the Alans, who were living in Pannonia, and with Suevians, who probably represent the ancient Quadi, they migrated northward to the Main. We may conjecture that this movement had some connexion with the unsettled conditions beyond the Middle Danube, which caused Radagaisus and his followers to invade Italy; and that the smaller German peoples who lived in those regions found themselves pressed and harried by their more powerful neighbours the Huns and the Ostrogoths. The idea of wandering into Gaul was naturally suggested by the fact that the Rhine frontier was no longer adequately defended. A large number of the Roman troops stationed there had been withdrawn recently by Stilicho, for the defence of Italy. On the Main, the host was joined by the Siling Vandals, who lived there with the Burgundians, to the east of the Alamanni.
The Alans were the first to reach the Rhine. They were led by two kings, Goar and Respendial, but here Goar separated himself from his fellows and offered his services to the Romans. The Asdings, under their king Godegisel, were some distance behind, when their march was interrupted by the appearance of an army of Franks,38 who as federates had undertaken the duty of protecting the Rhine for Rome. Godegisel was slain, and the Vandals would have been utterly destroyed had not Respendial returned to their aid. His Alans changed the fortunes of the battle, the Franks were defeated, and the invaders crossed the Rhine. Their first exploit was to plunder Mainz and massacre many of the inhabitants, who had sought refuge in a church. Then advancing through Germania Prima they entered Belgica, and following the road to Trier they sacked and set fire to that Imperial city. Still continuing their westward path they crossed the Meuse and the Aisne and wrought their will on Reims. From here they seem to have turned northward. Amiens, Arras and Tournay were their prey; they reached Térouanne,39 not far from the sea, due east of Boulogne, but Boulogne itself they did not venture to attack. After this diversion to the north, they pursued their course of devastation southward, crossing the Seine and the Loire into Aquitaine, up to the foot of the Pyrenees. Few towns could resist them. Toulouse was one of the few, and its successful defence is said to have been due to the energy of its bishop Exuperius.
Such, so far as we can conjecture from the evidence of our meagre sources, was the general course of this invasion, but we may be sure that the barbarians broke up into several hosts and followed a wide track, dividing among them the joys of plunder and destruction. Pious verse-writers of the time, who witnessed this visitation, painted the miseries of the helpless provinces vaguely and rhetorically, but perhaps truthfully enough, in order to point a moral.
Uno fumavit Gallia tota rogo.
The terror of fire and sword was followed by the horror of hunger in a wasted land.
In Eastern Gaul too some famous cities suffered grievously from German foes. But the calamities of Strassburg, Speier, and Worms were perhaps not the work of the Vandals and their associates. The Burgundians seem to have taken advantage of the crisis to push down the Main, and at the expense of the Alamanni to have occupied new territory astride the Rhine. And it is probably these two peoples, especially the Alamanni dislodged from their homes, who were responsible for the havoc wrought in the province of Upper Germany.40
It may have been in the early summer of A.D. 407 that the situation was changed by the arrival of Roman legions not from Italy but from Britain. That island had the reputation of being a fertile breeder of tyrants, and before the end of the previous year the Britannic soldiers had denounced the authority of Honorius and set up an Emperor for themselves in the person of a certain Marcus. We have no knowledge of their reason for this step, but we may conjecture that the revolt was due to discontent with the rule of the German Stilicho, just as the revolt of Maximus had been aimed at the German general Merobaudes. There was a certain Roman spirit alive among the legionaries, jealous of the growth of German influence. And we can well understand that they were impatient of the neglect of the defence of the Britannic provinces by the central government. One of the legions which guarded the island had been withdrawn in A.D. 40141 for the defence of Italy, but we are not informed whether it was sent back. In any case the troops in the island were probably not kept up to their nominal strength and were insufficient to contend against the constant inroads of the Picts and the expeditions of the Irish from beyond their channel, as well as the raids of Saxon freebooters from the continent. To subdue these enemies had been a task which had demanded all the energy of Theodosius himself. A victory over the Picts seems to have been gained in the early years of Honorius, but it was not of great account,42 and when events in the south forced Stilicho to denude the Rhine of its defenders, little thought can have been taken at Rome or Ravenna for the safety of remoter Britain. It was a favourable opportunity for such an expedition as that which Irish Annals record to have been led against the southern coasts of Britain by the High King of Ireland in A.D. 405.43