In the Bleak Midwinter
Upheaval Beyond the Frontiers
In the mid-fourth century the Germanic tribes beyond the Roman frontiers were thrown into disarray by new migrants from the east. The Huns, a nomadic people living on the Eurasian steppes, started expanding westward. In two separate passages, the fourth century Roman officer and historian, Ammianus Marcellinus, has this to say about them:
‘The seed and origin of all the ruin and various disasters that the wrath of Mars aroused, putting in turmoil all places with unwonted fires, we have found to be this. The people of the Huns, but little known from ancient records, dwelling beyond the Maeotic Sea near the ice-bound ocean, exceed every degree of savagery. The cheeks of their children are deeply furrowed with steel from their very birth, in order that the growth of hair, when it appears at the proper time, may be checked by the wrinkled scars, they grow old without beards and without any beauty, like eunuchs. They all have compact, strong limbs and thick necks, and are so monstrously ugly and misshapen, that one might take them for two-legged beasts…
‘When the report spread widely among the other Gothic peoples, that a race of men hitherto unknown had now arisen from a hidden nook of the earth, like a tempest of snows from the high mountains, and was seizing or destroying everything in its way, the greater part of the people, who, worn out by lack of the necessities of life… looked for a home removed from all knowledge of the savages.’
The impact of Hun expansion had a domino effect on the tribes of ancient Germania. Some were conquered and absorbed into the Hun Empire, whilst others moved further west looking for new lands where they might still remain free. Like water building up behind an inadequate dam, a huge conglomeration of displaced Germanic peoples flooded into the Roman Empire from the late-fourth to early-fifth centuries.
The Huns seem to have come west in two waves. The first was in the mid-fourth century when they moved against the Alans and Goths, who at the time were living north of the Black Sea. The Goths and Alans were defeated and some came under Hun control. Two Gothic bands, the Tervingi and some Gruethungi, fled further west and sought refuge inside the Roman Empire.
The first Gothic refugees were allowed to cross the border but the unscrupulous behaviour of local Roman officials, combined with the closing of the frontier to new arrivals, sparked off a rebellion. The end result was the famous destruction of the East Roman Army and the death of the Emperor Valens at Adrianople in 378. As he was a cavalry officer serving Valens, it may be that Stilicho’s Vandal father fought on the Roman side at Adrianople, but we have no direct evidence for this.
The events of the 370s are beautifully and succinctly summed up by Bishop Ambrose of Milan in a style that brings to mind a modern ‘Tweet’: ‘The Huns fell upon the Alans, the Alans upon the Goths and Taifali, the Goths and Taifali upon the Romans, and yet this is not yet the end.’
How right he was.
The story of the Goths will be told more fully in the next book in this series. The end result was that after four years of inconclusive campaigning, the Goths and Romans looked for a negotiated settlement. On 3 October 382 a treaty was agreed which gave the Goths land to settle on the southern bank of the Danube. In return for this and a semi-autonomous status within the Empire, the Goths were to provide troops for the Roman Army. On the face of it this was nothing really new. Barbarians had long been employed in the Roman Army and there was a history of settling defeated tribes as military colonists. The treaty of 382 may have seemed similar, but the reality was different. The Goths were not defeated and an entire people were now settled inside the Empire, remaining under their own laws and fighting as a distinct entity under their own leaders.
As the fourth century drew to a close the centre of Hun power was still to the east of the Carpathian Mountains, while the Danube border regions remained occupied by Germans and Sarmatians. The Vandals do not appear to have been particularly unsettled by the first Hun attacks and there is no mention of Vandals taking part in any of the Gothic incursions of the 370s.
Before continuing our narrative of the Vandals, it is worth examining the political and military situation in the Roman Empire at the turn of the fourth century. Only then can we begin to understand how the seemingly impossible occurred.
The defeat of the East Roman Army at Adrianople was a catastrophe, but as the fourth century drew to a close it seemed on the surface that Constantinople had managed to stabilise the situation. The Goths were more or less settled in the Balkans, providing manpower for the army. The Huns had made their presence known but were not yet pushing up against Rome’s borders. An equilibrium seemed to have been established beyond the frontiers. The Emperor Theodosius maintained a strong grip and was busy building a new Christian Empire. Things should have been looking up, but with the benefit of hindsight we can see that the Empire’s situation was highly precarious.
In 382, Magnus Maximus (Macsen Wledig of Welsh legend) was proclaimed Emperor by his British troops. With the backing of soldiers drawn from Britain and never to return, he defeated the Western Emperor Gratian, established his capital at Trier and for six years controlled the West. He was eventually defeated by Theodosius’ Eastern army in 388. The Theodosian forces included a sizeable contingent of Goths, while Maximus drew on the Alamanni as well as the British and Gallic garrisons. Drawing off troops from Gaul to fight Theodosius in Italy left the Rhine frontier sparsely defended and, in a harbinger of things to come, the Franks took advantage of this to move into northern Gaul and establish settlements on the west bank of the Rhine.
After Maximus’ defeat, the political situation in the West remained precarious. In 392, the new, youthful Western Emperor Valentinian II attempted to dismiss Arbogast, his Magister Militum (master of soldiers). The result was that Valentinian died in rather dubious circumstances and Arbogast (of Frankish origin) placed his puppet Eugenius on the western throne.
This perturbed Theodosius on several accounts. The greatest was perhaps that Arbogast and Eugenius were pagans and there were signs that they might be encouraging a pagan revival. Once again Theodosius decided that he had to intervene to sort things out and once again he called on the Goths to back him. Some sources say the Goths provided 20,000 men, but such a large number is highly unlikely. Together with the Goths and reinforcements from Syria, Theodosius and his general, the half-Vandal Stilicho, marched west in September 394 to defeat Arbogast in a two-day battle that took place in a mountain pass in modern Slovenia through which the River Frigidus flows (modern Vipava in Slovenian or Vipacco in Italian).
Theodosius’ victory over Arbogast was won with the blood of many Goths. Alaric, their leader, then sought some better understanding for future relations. Ideally he was looking for formal recognition for himself and his followers within the Roman military and political structure. The full narrative of Alaric and Stilicho belongs to the story of the Goths. As far as it concerns the story of the Vandals, the important point is that Stilicho was primarily focused on the political situation within the Empire rather than what was going on beyond the Rhine frontier.
After Frigidus, Stilicho became guardian of Theodosius’s 9-year-old son, Honorius, whom he had placed on the Western throne. When Theodosius died in 395 his eldest, 17-year-old son, Arcadius, ascended to the Eastern throne. As the vultures circled around the two young emperors, Stilicho held supreme military power. His only real rival was Alaric, who had become increasingly dissatisfied with being bottled up in the Balkans without a clear agreement about his official status as a Roman warlord.
As the fifth century dawned, Stilicho had his gaze firmly fixed on Alaric in the Balkans and Arcadius in Constantinople. The western Rhine frontier seemed immaterial to the more important and inevitable struggle to follow. Many of the troops previously stationed in Britain and Gaul had been drawn off, first to support Maximus and then to provide manpower for Arbogast and Eugenius. Settlements of Franks, Alamanni and Burgundians were engaged to hold the Rhine to replace the Roman forces drawn off to deal with other more pressing matters. When Alaric rebelled in 401, Stilicho withdrew more troops from the West to defend Italy from Alaric’s Goths.
We have a reasonably good idea of the theoretical strength and dispositions of the Roman Army from the Notitia Dignitatum. On paper the combined might of the two halves of the Empire could muster something close to half a million men. In the West there were two main field armies; one under the Magister Peditum in Italy and another in Gaul under the Magister Equitum. These had an official strength of around 25,000 men each. These field armies were mobile forces of high quality troops, who could respond in force to deal with major threats while more static forces guarded the frontiers. The main frontier forces in the West were located in Britain, Illyricum (modern former Yugoslavia), Africa and along the Rhine and Danube frontiers. In theory this should have provided more than enough men to defeat incursions by the relatively small barbarian armies that from time to time raided across the frontiers. If the garrison forces along the borders were unable to hold the enemy, then the field armies would intervene. After defeating their opponents they would often conduct punitive expeditions into barbarian territory to deter future aggression.
This system had worked reasonably well in the fourth century but it was unable to cope with the perfect storm that engulfed the Empire in the first decade of the fifth century. We have already seen how Maximus, then Arbogast, and finally Stilicho drew troops away from Britain and Gaul to either support their bids for power or to defend Italy. These troops never returned to their home stations, nor were new units recruited to replace them. Instead, Stilicho established treaties with the Franks and Alamanni to secure the Rhine frontier, while Saxons were invited into Britain to help defend the island from the Scots and Picts.
The Gathering Storm
At some point at the end of the fourth century or beginning of the fifth, the Huns moved westward again. They occupied the Hungarian plain and sent a new wave of refugees up against the Roman frontiers. This time the Vandals were amongst them. Led by Godegisel, the Asdings were probably the first to move and some were pushing up against the Danube and raiding into Raetia as early as 401. These early Vandal raiders were defeated by Stilicho and some of the survivors may have been engaged as foederati (federates), given land in exchange for military service.
It is worth pausing for a moment to consider just how momentous a decision it must have been for the Vandals to up-sticks and move. Despite their later wanderings, the Vandals were settled farmers and not nomads. They had lived in more or less the same part of central Europe for hundreds of years and by migrating westward they would leave everything that was familiar behind forever.
The decision would not have been taken lightly, nor quickly. Around the council fires there must have been many voices arguing to stay put and come to some sort of accord with the Huns. Other Germanic peoples, such as the Gepids, did take that option and in the end seem to have done fairly well by it. It may be that the decision to move was influenced by other factors than simply terror at the approach of the Huns. In all likelihood some warriors decided to strike out early, like those who raided Raetia in 401, then as conditions worsened others made the move, taking their families with them.
Procopius, writing in the sixth century, attributes the Vandal migration to famine. Perhaps there had been several poor harvests which made staying put in face of the advancing Huns a less than promising option. It is also interesting to note that Procopius also says that not all the Vandals migrated: ‘When the Vandals originally pressed by hunger, were about to remove from their ancestral abodes, a certain part of them was left behind who were reluctant to go and not desirous of following Godegisel.’
It is generally assumed that, unlike the Goths, all the Vandals – both Silings and Asdings, men, women and children – migrated west in the early fifth century. Archeology tends to back this up. Material goods connected with the so-called Przeworsk culture have been found in the Vandals’ central European heartland dating back centuries. Then, suddenly, from the start of the fifth century these artefacts disappear from the archeological record entirely. It may be that there was a split as Procopius says and that the end of the Przeworsk culture could be accounted for by the warrior elites moving on, leaving the others behind to fall under Hun overlordship or be absorbed by other tribes. We cannot know for certain but on balance it would seem as though most, if not all, Vandals moved west to seek a new home inside the Roman Empire. This would not have been a coordinated migration but rather decisions made by individual groups, with some moving earlier and others joining in later. As each group made their decision, they would have had to weigh up the difficulties of their present situation against the possibility of a better life in the future.
What realistic hope did the Vandals have of carving out new lands for themselves inside the Empire? Most barbarian incursions into Roman territory were doomed to failure. They might achieve initial success but eventually the Romans would prevail, destroying the invaders and following up with punitive raids against their homelands. The aftermath of Adrianople in 378 had broken this mould. When the Vandals were contemplating their options they would have been well aware that the descendants of the Gothic victors at Adrianople had both land and status within the Empire. The Franks had also been granted land on the west bank of the Rhine in exchange for military service, and all the tribes along the Rhine frontier – Franks, Burgundians and Alamanni – had done quite well out of recent treaties with Stilicho.
The Vandals must have thought that they too could hope for a similar arrangement, especially if the man in charge, Stilicho, was himself a Vandal on his father’s side. Jordanes goes as far as to say that the Vandals were invited into the Empire by Stilicho:
‘A long time afterward they [the Vandals] were summoned thence [to Gaul] by Stilicho, Master of the Soldiery, Ex-Consul and Patrician, and took possession of Gaul. Here they plundered their neighbours and had no settled place of abode.’
Could there be any truth to this claim?
Gaul had been a thorn in Stilicho’s side for years. It was the place where rivals could and did rise up to challenge him and the Emperor Honorius, whom he protected. His interest was in maintaining his power base in Italy, keeping an eye on Alaric’s Goths in the Balkans and playing politics with Constantinople. The Gallic Army had been decimated in the civil wars of the late-fourth century, and in 401 Stilicho withdrew more troops from Gaul to support his struggle against Alaric’s Goths who were threatening Italy. While the Rhine defences needed bolstering, the last thing Stilicho wanted was another strong Gallic Army to challenge him. Therefore it is not beyond the realm of possibility that he would have been tempted to have his Vandal cousins move into Gaul as his surrogates. Even if Stilicho had not formally invited the Vandals, maybe there had been communications which some Vandal leaders had interpreted as an invitation, even if they were only meant as polite diplomatic words.
Virtually all modern historians discount collusion between Stilicho and the Vandals, despite the former’s ancestry and despite the fact that he did very little to oppose their crossing into Gaul. The Vandals were not the only barbarians on the move. Goths, Suevi, Alans and others were forced out of their central European homelands by the Huns, famine or both in the first years of the fifth century. Even when the Vandals crossed the Rhine, they were probably a minority partner to the Suevi and Alans. Furthermore, Stilicho’s policy had been to rely on the Franks and other western Germanic tribes to secure the Rhine for him in place of Roman soldiers. This policy seemed to have worked relatively well and there would have been no reason for him to change it. In the unlikely event that there had been any understanding between Stilicho and some of the Vandal leaders, the chain of events in the first decade of the fifth century were so cataclysmic to overwhelm all involved.
All of a sudden hundreds of thousands of people were willingly or unwillingly on the move, and the Vandals were only a small part of this movement. Most probably the decisions to migrate were sparked off by the westward expansion of the Huns, but no doubt many other factors came into play as well. These may have included food shortages, although the climatic records from around 400 do not reveal any unusual weather patterns. Probably there was also a degree of opportunism on the part of the Vandals, Suevi and Alans, as they saw how Stilicho was otherwise occupied and knew that the Rhine defences were relatively thin.
As the Huns migrated from the Eurasian steppes into central Europe, the first wave of displaced Germans to break over the Roman frontier was led by Radagasius, a Goth, who brought a large army into Italy in 405. The composition of Radagasius’ force is not known but probably it was a coalition of various Germanic peoples, possibly including some Asding Vandals. It included women and children as well as warriors, so it was a migration rather than a raiding force. Radagasius’ force was large enough to require Stilicho to call on thirty units from the Roman field army as well as Hun and Alan auxiliaries to oppose him. He also withdrew yet more troops from the Rhine frontier to bolster Italy’s defences. This probably gave Stilicho something in the region of 20-25,000 men.
It is interesting to note that, according to the Notitia Dignitatum, the Italian field army contained seven cavalry and thirty-seven infantry units in the fifth century, with another twelve cavalry and forty-eight infantry units in the Gallic Army. These were on top of the border troops stationed along the frontiers. Yet it took a great deal of time and effort to gather the thirty units needed to oppose Radagasius, leaving the invaders plenty of time to ravage northern Italy while Stilicho marshalled his forces. This is good example of just how misleading official army organizational lists can be. Unit strengths and levels of readiness can vary hugely and often only a tiny fraction of the theoretical military capability can be deployed. This remains a problem even in the modern world. If we think of the huge efforts it took by NATO nations and others to maintain relatively small numbers of troops in Afghanistan to deal with insurgents, then we have some idea of the problems facing the Romans in the fifth century.
In the end, Stilicho decisively defeated Radagaisus near Florence on 23 August 406. Then he fixed his attention firmly on the east, oblivious or unaware of the storm gathering to the north and west.
The Storm Breaks
The coalition of Asding and Siling Vandals, together with Alans and Suevi, crossed the Rhine on 31 December 406. This is the date given by Prosper of Aquitaine. In recent years some historians have made a case for the crossing taking place a year earlier – that is on 31 December 405. This is partly based on the fact that Zosimus says that the ravaging of Gaul took place in 406 and it is unlikely he would have assigned that year if the barbarians only crossed on the last day of it. Also in 406 there were a number of usurpations in Britain and these are often seen as a reaction to the lack of response to the invasion of Gaul by the Imperial authorities. To make matters more confusing, Orosius says that the Rhine crossing took place two years before the Gothic sack of Rome, which would be 408.
I am not particularly convinced by the arguments for shifting the occasion of the Rhine crossing and therefore prefer to stick with the rather precise date Prosper has given us of New Year’s Eve 406. But before trying to reconstruct the actual Rhine crossing itself, we should look at what was happening in the months that led up to it.
By the end of 405, Stilicho had defeated Radagasius and incorporated 12,000 of the survivors into his army, while others dispersed to join Alaric’s Goths in the Balkans and the westward-moving Vandals. In 406, a series of revolts took place in Britain with the British Army proclaiming Marcus and Gratian in quick succession as Emperor before assassinating their candidates when they did not do as the army wished. Towards the end of 406, the British Army settled on a soldier with the suitably Imperial name of Constantine (Constantine III), who managed to retain their approval. Meanwhile Stilicho became embroiled in a fight with Constantinople over control of the Balkans. Parts of the Balkan provinces had previously belonged to the Western Empire but had been transferred to the East several years earlier. Stilicho wanted them back as they were a prime recruiting ground for soldiers. Additionally, it would give him territory he could offer to Alaric in order to finally come to a lasting and peaceful settlement with his troublesome Goths.
Meanwhile, the Vandals had been moving slowly westward as part of a greater movement of displaced peoples. After the failure of Radagasius’ migration across the Danube, the southern route into the Roman Empire had to be ruled out, leaving the Rhine frontier as their only hope. If we discount any collusion with Stilicho, it is unlikely that the Vandals had detailed intelligence of the state of Roman defences along the west bank of the Rhine, just as Stilicho was apparently unaware of the large westward movements beyond the frontier. This does, of course, call into question whether or not there may have been some collusion.
The problem for the Vandals was that if the west bank of the Rhine may have been relatively weakly defended, the east bank was not. The powerful Alemannic and Frankish confederacies were well established on the upper and lower Rhine respectively, with the Burgundians edging into the gap between them. These tribes had been in long contact with Rome and had benefited from it. Their societies had greater material wealth than the Vandals, more developed organizational structures and they were being subsidized by Rome to hold the Rhine frontier. The last thing they would have welcomed would have been a new group of illegal immigrants knocking on their door for a piece of the action.
Unsurprisingly, the arrival of the Vandal migrants led to conflict as the Franks and Alamanni attempted to close their borders. There were probably many small engagements as groups of new immigrants tried their luck, only to be repulsed. Most of these have gone unrecorded, but at some point there was a major battle between the Vandals and the Franks. Fragments of the contemporary writer Renatus Profuturus Frigeridus, preserved by Gregory of Tours, say that the Vandals were on the brink of a catastrophic defeat. Their king, Godegisel, was killed in the fighting but at the last minute the Vandals were saved by the timely intervention of a force of Alans under Respendial, who ‘turned the army of his people from the Rhine, since the Vandals were getting the worse of the war with the Franks, having lost their king, Godegisel, and about 20,000 of the army, and all the Vandals would have been exterminated if the army of the Alans had not come to their aid in time.’
This battle probably took place some time in the summer or autumn of 406, and it allowed the Vandals and their allies to move into Frankish territory on the middle Rhine. Although they had won a path to the Roman frontier, the new immigrants must have been in a fairly desperate state. Unable to grow or harvest crops and with no supply bases to call on, it would have been a monumental task to keep their people and livestock alive. The Vandals were a settled people with no nomadic history and no expertise in living off the land. If they managed to move up to the Rhine in the autumn of 406 they may have been able to take in some of the crops the Franks had planted, but this would at best only keep starvation at bay for a few months.
In the pre-industrial age armies rarely moved in a North European winter. Without the benefit of canned goods, mass production and mechanised transport that did not require forage, any movement of a large group of people in winter would inevitably lead to utter disaster. Yet the Asdings, Silings, Suevi and Alans crossed the Rhine in the depths of midwinter. What on earth persuaded them to do this when all sensible armies would have been in winter quarters awaiting the onset of the spring campaigning season?
The traditional view is that the winter was so cold that the Rhine froze over, giving the invaders the possibility to cross on a wide front. Although the Rhine remains open all year round in present times, it has frozen over in the past and it is not impossible that it froze in the winter of 406/7. Whether the ice would have been thick enough for tens of thousands of people with their wagons and baggage to cross is another matter. There are no contemporary accounts to support the idea of a crossing on ice, despite the fact that it has become a relatively accepted popular image.
The most evocative popular account of the crossing of the frozen Rhine is in Wallace Breem’s delightful novel Eagle in the Snow. Here we see the last remnants of the Roman frontier forces fighting a last stand, which is doomed as soon as the Rhine freezes. A story of civilization fighting off barbarism or established cultures digging in against impoverished migrants has a strong resonance today, just as it did in the eighteenth century when Edward Gibbon wrote his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. It was Gibbon who first gave us the story of the Rhine freezing over, possibly to explain his incomprehension at how the Vandals, Alans and Suevi were able to cross over into Gaul with such apparent ease. Many modern writers have followed Gibbon, although even he himself was not definitive about the river freezing: ‘On the last day of the year, in a season when the waters of the Rhine were most probably frozen [my italics], they entered, without opposition, the defenceless provinces of Gaul.’
In truth, the move of tens of thousands of people with all their belongings in the depths of midwinter must have been one of desperation. The Frankish lands the migrants had occupied on the east bank would not have sustained them for long. As winter began to set in, so would the prospect of starvation. On the west bank there were well-provisioned towns and a few probing raids would have given the Vandals and their allies some indication of the paucity of Roman defences, which had been stripped to support Stilicho’s campaigns in Italy.
The crossing of the Rhine probably took place at several points, with Mainz (Mogontiacum) as the centre of axis. It did not need the Rhine to freeze over to make such a crossing possible. The Roman Rhine bridges were still standing, and if the river was open then picked warriors in makeshift boats could have gone across first to secure the bridgeheads. If the river had frozen over then this could possibly have been done over the ice. If there was even partial freezing of the river, then the Roman Rhine fleet would not have been able to intervene.
The Defence of the Roman Empire AD 400. This shows the major administrative divisions of the Roman Empire and the location of her armies according to the Notitia Dignitatum at the beginning of the fifth century. It also shows the movements of the barbarians up to the Gothic treaty with Theodosius in 382.
In order to understand how easily the Vandals, Alans and Suevi crossed the Rhine once they had defeated the Franks on the east bank, we need to appreciate the Roman system of defence. The frontiers, were defended by troops deployed in fortifications along the borders of the empire. Known as limitanei (soldiers defending the frontiers, or limes) or riparienses (soldiers defending the rivers), these men occupied strongpoints along the frontiers and patrolled the borders. Deployed in relatively small detachments, they were able to deter or intervene to deal with small-scale incursions but were neither expected nor able to deal with a major invasion. To think of them in modern terms, they were more like a border force or home guard than regular armed forces, even though many of the units could trace their heritage back to the legions of previous centuries. Backing them up, in the Western Empire, there were two main field armies, one based in Italy and the other in Gaul. Each of these field armies were, on paper, about 20-30000 strong and it was their job to intervene once the frontiers has been breached to defeat the invaders and restore order. The field army units were known as palatini – the most senior units who were originally part of a central army commanded in person by the Emperor – and comitatenses – units of the regional field armies. Units of limitanei drawn from the frontier to reinforce the field armies took on the title of pseudocomitatenses.
This was the theoretical principle of defence, but in reality the field armies in the fifth century were more occupied supporting various political interests than they were in defending the empire from external threats. Stilicho had the support of the Italian field army but not that of Gaul. When Constantine crossed over from Britain in early 407, the Gallic Army went over to him.
The Gallic field army was commanded by the Magister Equitum intra Gallias who in theory had twelve cavalry and forty-eight infantry units at his disposal, with unit strengths probably averaging out at roughly 500 men each. However, we have already seen how Stilicho struggled to field an army of thirty units to fight Radagasius and so we should not assume that the Magister Equitum’s entire force could be quickly and easily deployed. Furthermore, many of these units would have been severely weakened after their defeat in the civil wars and may well not have been anything like at full strength.
The defence of the middle Rhine, where the Vandals crossed, fell to the Dux Mogontiacensis (Duke of Mainz). According to the Notitia Dignitatum, he had eleven prefects under his command. The units commanded by these prefects and their home stations are recorded as:
Praefectus militum Pacensium, at Saletio (Seltz)
Praefectus militum Menapiorum, at Tabernae (Rheinzabern)
Praefectus militum Anderetianorum, at Vicus Julius (Germersheim)
Praefectus militum Vindicum, at Nemetes (Speyer)
Praefectus militum Martensium, at Alta Ripa (Altrip)
Praefectus militum Secundae Flaviae, at Vangiones (Worms)
Praefectus militum Armigerorum, at Mogontiacum (Mainz)
Praefectus militum Bingensium, at Vingo (Bingen)
Praefectus militum Balistariorum, at Bodobrica (Boppard)
Praefectus militum Defensorum, at Confluentes (Koblenz)
Praefectus militum Acincensium, at Antennacum (Andernach)
Some of these units are also listed under the Gallic field army, which may indicate that they had been pulled back from the Rhine. Alternatively, it could also mean that a few units of the field army such as the Menapii and Armigeri (senior legions of the Gallic field army and also listed under the Dux Mogontiacensis) had been sent to reinforce the frontier. However, as the trend had been to strip the frontiers to bolster the field armies it seems that the first possibility is the most likely.
These units probably only contained few hundred men each. While they could hold the walls of a fortified strongpoint and mount patrols, there could never have been any possibility that these dispersed garrisons could block a crossing of the frontier by many thousand warriors, even if the latter were weakened by hunger and bogged down with their families and chattels. At best all these men could hope for would be to hold out behind their fortifications while the barbarians moved past, to be dealt with by the field army at a later date.
There was also a Rhine fleet, the Classis Germanica, which patrolled the river and was an integral part of the Roman defensive system. We do not know how large it was, but in 359 Ammianus Marcellinus tells us that a squadron of forty ships was used against the Alamanni. Later inscriptions testify to ongoing clashes with Germanic tribes up until the Rhine crossing in 406. If the Rhine had been frozen or partially frozen, then it would have prevented any ships from intercepting the invaders. The Classis Germanica seems to have disappeared after the Vandal invasion as there is no mention of it in the Notitia Dignitatum.
So if the Dux Mogontiacensis and his border force were never expected to hold back a major invasion, what did the Gallic field army do?
Apparently very little.
In the fourth century the Gallic capital had been at Trier on the Rhine, but by the fifth century it had moved to Arles at the mouth of the Rhone in the south. The Rhine had been abandoned psychologically, if not yet in reality. From Arles, the focus of the authorities was far more towards Italy and the Mediterranean than to the northern frontiers.
The explanation for the apparent inaction by the Gallic Army rests in the convoluted Imperial politics of the time. On paper the Gallic Army should have had enough men to deal with the barbarian incursion across the Rhine. However, as the Vandals and their allies were crossing into Gaul from Germany, so too was Constantine from Britain. Unloved and run down by Stilicho, the Gallic Army threw in their lot with Constantine and their main worry was to hold their own against the Imperial authorities with the barbarian incursion a secondary concern.
Constantine probably crossed the channel in early 407, bringing with him the last remnants of the Roman Army in Britain. He forged alliances with the Franks and Alamanni and there is some evidence that he fought against the various bands of Vandals, Suevi and Alans to bottle them up in northern Gaul for a while.
Most of the military might of the Western Empire resided under Stilicho’s command in Italy. He was about to embark on a war with the Eastern Empire over control of Illyricum. So what did he do when he learned that the barbarians were overrunning Gaul and that Constantine was doing his best to contain them?
Naturally he did what any late Roman potentate would do. He sent an army to Gaul to destroy Constantine. A usurper was, after all, a far greater threat to his power than a mere barbarian invasion. Stilicho’s army, led by the Goth Sarus, was defeated, leaving Constantine in control of Britain and Gaul, with Spain also recognizing his authority. So it was, that rather than concentrating their forces to defeat a foreign invader the Romans fought amongst themselves and left the field open to the Vandals and their allies.
A Funeral Pyre
In this age of Twitter and 24/7 news, we could be forgiven for thinking that we have invented the art of the short soundbite. However, the ancient Romans were just as happy as we are to condense complex ideas to 140 characters or less. So it is that the poet Orientius gives us a wonderful line that encapsulates the impact of the Vandal migration: ‘All Gaul was filled with the smoke of a single funeral pyre.’
Deconstructing exactly what happened to create this funeral pyre is difficult, if not impossible.
In all likelihood, the Vandals, Suevi and Alans crossed the Rhine on a fairly wide front, with Mainz as their main crossing point. It is the first town mentioned by St Jerome (see quote below) and there was a good Roman bridge over the river at this point, the remains of which can still be seen today. Mainz was near the southernmost boundary of Frankish-held territory, after which there was a stretch of river under contention. Further south the Alamanni held sway, while the Burgundians were pushing into the buffer zone between them. After defeating the Franks in the summer of 406, the Vandals and their allies would naturally have moved into the contested border regions. As winter set in, bringing the prospect of starvation, they would have been well aware that Mainz, just over the river, was well stocked with provisions.
Mainz possibly fell without a fight, the garrison of the Praefectus militum Armigerorum either fleeing or having already been withdrawn before the crossing took place. As the Armigeri (Armigeri Defensores Seniores) are also listed in the Gallic field army, the latter may well have been the case. After capturing Mainz, the Vandals would have been able to supply themselves and contemplate moving on beyond the frontier, where the towns had no garrisons at all. St Jerome lists the towns that fell to the barbarians in an evocative letter written in 409 in which he warns of the coming of the Antichrist:
‘Savage tribes in countless numbers have overrun all parts of Gaul. The whole country between the Alps and the Pyrenees, between the Rhine and the Ocean, has been laid waste by hordes of Quadi, Vandals, Sarmatians, Alans, Gepids, Heruls, Saxons, Burgundians, Alamanni and – alas for the commonweal—even hostile Pannonians. For “Assur also is joined with them.”
‘The once noble city of Mainz has been captured and destroyed. In its church many thousands have been massacred. The people of Worms after standing a long siege have been extirpated. The powerful city of Rheims, the Ambiani, the Altrebatae (Amiens and Arras), the Belgians on the skirts of the world, Tournay, Speyer, and Strasbourg have fallen to the Germans: while the provinces of Aquitaine and of the Nine Nations, of Lyons and of Narbonne are with the exception of a few cities one universal scene of desolation. And those which the sword spares without, famine ravages within. I cannot speak without tears of Toulouse which has been kept from failing hitherto by the merits of its reverend bishop Exuperius.
‘Even the Spains are on the brink of ruin and tremble daily as they recall the invasion of the Cimbri; and, while others suffer misfortunes once in actual fact, they suffer them continually in anticipation.’
In most cases there seems to have been little or no opposition apart from the protracted siege at Worms, which may have been undertaken by the Burgundians rather than Vandals, Suevi or Alans. We need to take the list of towns with a pinch of salt. We mostly have the writings of early Christian bishops to go on and the stories that survive often mix fact and legend. For example, Bishop Nicasius of Reims was allegedly killed by the Vandals and the city pillaged. However, another version of the story has Nicasius being killed by the Huns half a century later and yet another has him dying of smallpox. One thing is quite clear, which is that much of Gaul fell to the ravages of the barbarians in the months and years following the Rhine crossing.
So what were the Vandals seeking? The stories passed down to us imply wanton destruction, but rape, pillage and plunder could not have been their ultimate goal. Like migrants risking all to cross the Mediterranean today in order to get into Europe, they were desperate, impoverished and seeking a better life for themselves and their families. The very fact that they made their move in the depths of midwinter shows just how desperate they were. Each Roman town they took gave the invaders enough supplies for a brief period and then they would have to move on again, probably splitting up into small bands to range over a wide swath of territory to keep themselves fed and watered.
Later, in 451 when the Huns moved into Gaul, many of the Gallic towns closed their gates and resisted the onslaught. Then Aetius, the most important man in the Roman Empire at the time, saw Gaul as his power base. In 407 Stilicho cared little for Gaul, and the inhabitants felt cut off and excluded from Imperial power. As the Vandals approached their towns, the Romans inside the walls probably knew that the Imperial armies were unlikely to come to their rescue and so opening their gates may have been seen as the lesser of evils. Another stark difference between the Vandal and Hun invasions is that the latter crossed the Rhine in late April, when there would have been forage and supplies available in the countryside. Campaigning in winter made capturing towns with their stores a matter of life and death for the Vandals rather than simply an opportunity for loot.
An Unlikely Coalition
This is the story of the Vandals but they were only minority partners in a wider coalition of tribes at the time that they crossed the Rhine on the last day of 406. Of the Vandals themselves, we have already seen how the Asdings and Silings may have shared a common heritage and language but that they were two very separate groups with no sense of a common Vandal nation. If it had not been for the Alans, the Asding Vandals would probably have been wiped out by the Franks before the Rhine crossing. Later Roman chroniclers state that the Alans were the dominant partner in the coalition and it was only later that the Asdings came into ascendancy.
So who were the Alans?
Ammianus Marcellinus has this to say about them:
‘The Alans (whose various people it is unnecessary now to enumerate) are divided between the two parts of the earth, but although widely separated from each other and roaming over vast tracts, as nomads do, yet in the course of time they have united under one name, and are, for short, all called Alans because of the similarity in their customs, their savage mode of life, and their weapons. For they have no huts and care nothing for using the ploughshare, but they live upon flesh and an abundance of milk, and dwell in wagons, which they cover with rounded canopies of bark and drive over the boundless wastes….
‘Young men grow up in the habit of riding from their earliest boyhood and regard it as contemptible to go on foot; and by various forms of training they are all skilled warriors….
‘Almost all the Alans are tall and handsome, their hair inclines to blond, by the ferocity of their glance they inspire dread, subdued though it is. They are light and active in the use of arms. In all respects they are somewhat like the Huns, but in their manner of life and their habits they are less savage…. Just as quiet and peaceful men find pleasure in rest, so the Alans delight in danger and warfare. There the man is judged happy who has sacrificed his life in battle, while those who grow old and depart from the world by a natural death they assail with bitter reproaches, as degenerate and cowardly; and there is nothing in which they take more pride than in killing any man whatever: as glorious spoils of the slain they tear off their heads, then strip off their skins and hang them upon their war-horses as trappings….
‘They do not know the meaning of slavery, since all are born of noble blood, and moreover they choose as chiefs those men who are conspicuous for long experience as warriors.’
The Alans were a Sarmatian people whose language was Iranian rather than German. In stark contrast to the Germanic Vandals, they were nomads rather than settled farmers and they had developed a horse-based culture with warriors going into battle as a combination of light horse archers and more heavily-armed lancers. In the earlier years of the Roman Empire there are plentiful references to Sarmatians, with armoured horse archers being famously depicted on Trajan’s column. In the fifth century, references to the Sarmatians tend to die off and the Alans show up everywhere. In all likelihood these are the same people – nomadic or semi-nomadic Iranians, some of whom occupied the Danube frontier in the late fourth century with others still out on the Eurasian steppes to the north of the Black Sea.
Although they were horse warriors, how many of the Alan horses could have survived a winter campaign with no forage? After spending early winter in the forested, hilly terrain of the east bank of the Rhine, it is quite likely that many or most of their horses would have perished or become food for the migrants. Even if some horses survived until Mainz was captured, it is unlikely that the town or others around would have had sufficient forage to supply a proper cavalry army. Therefore it is possible that in the early months of their campaign many Alans may have found themselves unexpectedly and uncomfortably on foot until they were able to round up more mounts from the countryside in the following spring and summer months.
When the coalition of Asdings, Silings, Alans and Suevi moved into Gaul in 406/7, it would seem that, like the Vandals, the Alans were themselves not a single cohesive entity. One group of Alans led by Goar broke off to find accommodation with the Imperial authorities and was given land to settle around Orléans as foederati. Others led by Respendial remained with the coalition which moved into Spain. Renatus Profuturus Frigeridus (quoted above) leads us to believe that this split amongst the Alans took place before the Rhine crossing.
The Suevi (also Suebi, or Sueves) were Germans whose homeland was between the upper Rhine and Danube. They were known to the early Imperial Romans and in their early days were famous for their hairstyle, which involved tying their long hair into a ‘Swabian knot’. Those Suevi who joined up with the Vandals and Alans probably included remnants of the Marcomanni and Quadi, who disappear from the historical record at this time. They most likely also incorporated a number of Alamanni who were not content with staying put on the upper Rhine. As with most of the other migrants, some Suevi remained behind, lending their name to the region of Swabia in modern Germany, while others joined up with the Vandals. Like the Vandals they were primarily foot warriors who favoured hand-to-hand combat. Like the Vandals. Most were those who could afford it probably had horses but they would have been perfectly happy to dismount and fight on foot depending on the circumstances. Of course, with the problems of a winter campaign in early 407 most or all Suevi probably found themselves on foot.
Interestingly, Jerome does not mention the Suevi in his list of barbarians ravaging Gaul between 407 and 409. Instead he lists Quadi, Gepids, Heruls, Saxons, Burgundians and Alamanni as the German tribes, in addition to the Vandals. Probably both the Vandal and Suevi migrants had picked up various elements of these peoples, with some Quadi in particular merging with the Suevi. For the most part the Gepids and Heruls, whose homeland was to the east of the Siling Vandals, stayed put and came under Hun overlordship but it is quite possible that some individuals joined up for the move west. Romans were notoriously casual in the names they gave the barbarian peoples beyond their frontiers, often preferring to give them ancient classical names in preference to more accurate nomenclature. So it was that the Huns, Goths and other eastern tribes were often referred to as ‘Scythians’. As neither Gepids nor Heruls were classical barbarians, and their full impact on the Roman world came much later, it is certainly possible that in naming them Jerome was being accurate rather than showing his learning as a classical scholar.
Although most of the Burgundians and Alamanni remained on the Rhine rather than moving deeper into Gaul, it is quite likely that they took the opportunity of the general confusion to expand their territories to the west bank of the Rhine while some individuals joined up with the Suevi or Vandals. A few years later the Burgundians were on both sides of the river, with Worms their new power base. So if Worms fell after a siege then it is quite possible that this was the work of the Burgundians.
Jerome also says that Strasbourg fell to the barbarians. This town lies well to the south of Mainz and is opposite the Alamannic heartland which the Vandals seemed to have bypassed. The modern German-speaking inhabitants of Alsace, of which Strasbourg is the most important city, are the descendants of the ancient Alamanni who expanded their territory to include both sides of the upper Rhine including modern Alsace, Baden and German-speaking Switzerland. Today their local dialects are very similar, even if the Alsatians disparagingly refer to their cousins on the east bank of the Rhine as ‘Swabians’ despite the fact that Swabia-proper is further east. Even Gregory of Tours mixes them up in his brief description of the migration: ‘The Vandals left their own country and burst into the Gauls under King Gunderic. And when the Gauls had been thoroughly laid waste they made for the Spains. The Suebi, that is, Alamanni, following them, seized Gallicia.’ Possibly the Suevi crossed the Rhine further south near Strasbourg in league with their Alamannic cousins. Then the Alamanni, like the Burgundians at Worms, took advantage of the general confusion to take over Strasbourg and all of the Upper Rhine Valley, while the Suevi moved on.
The Notitia Dignitatum has a section for a Comes Argentoratensis, (Count of Strasbourg) but assigns him no troops, no officials and no towns. In the late-fourth century, Strasbourg and the upper Rhine into northern Switzerland was held by the Legio VIII Augusta Pia Fedelis Constans. This is probably the same unit named as the Octavani in the Notitia Dignitatum as part to the Italian field army. Maybe this was one of the units withdrawn by Stilicho to help him against Radagasius, leaving Strasbourg open for the Alamanni to take over. As Stilicho concluded a number of treaties with the Alamanni as well as the Franks to hold the Rhine for him, then it is also possible that Strasbourg was part of the deal. Either way it is more than likely that it was the Alamanni, not the the Vandals, who took the town in 407.
This leaves the Saxons. Here again Jerome is probably correct, although there is very little chance that Saxons formed part of the Vandal-Alan-Suevic coalition. Saxon raiders had been active in the North Sea and English Channel for several years before 407. The Notitia Dignitatum lists a command of the Comes litoris Saxonici per Britanniam (Count of the Saxon Shore of Britain) who defended the east coast of Britain against them. Several bands of sea-borne Saxons also penetrated the rivers of western France and there is some evidence to conclude that they also established settlements there. So as Jerome is describing the general state of Gaul rather than the specifics of the Vandal migration, his inclusion of Saxons makes some sense.
Going back to Jerome’s list of barbarians, we have already seen how the Sarmatians and Alans were probably one and the same. This just leaves the ‘Pannonians’. Pannonia is the region south of the Danube, before the bend, that includes parts of modern Austria, Hungary and Slovenia. This was Roman territory and, as Jerome’s lamentation implies, some of the Roman inhabitants of this oft-ravaged region decided to throw in their lot with the migrants as a better option than remaining loyal to the Empire which had failed to protect them. Several years before the Rhine crossing, the Asding Vandals had crossed into Pannonia only to be driven back. Then in 405 Radagasius and his horde took the same route. The Pannonian peasants would have taken the brunt of these invasions and their livelihoods would have been destroyed.
As Roman power receded, the Imperial authorities were hard pressed to uphold the interests of the aristocracy, let alone protect the poorer elements of society. Throughout much of the fifth century there were endemic uprisings where groups of people took matters into their own hands to set up semi-independent enclaves which broke free from the heavy hand of taxation to basically rule themselves. These groups, called Baccaudae by Roman writers, were particularly active in Gaul and Spain in the mid-fifth century. Well before then, many Romans decided that they would be better off joining up with the invaders rather than passively accepting their depredations. When the Gothic refugees took up arms against Rome in 376 they were certainly joined by disaffected Romans, and the same was probably the case in 406/7.
Another explanation for Jerome’s Pannonians could be that they were the survivors of the earlier Asding invasion of 401 who had been settled inside Roman territory as federates. This seems less likely. Most Germans who had been granted federate status tended to remain loyal to their new paymasters. After all, if they had found both land and a secure income why would they suddenly throw in their lot with new immigrants whose prospects were far from certain?
Coalitions survive when the mutual interests of the various partners are greater than the differences that separate them. We have seen this in modern politics where unlikely coalitions of political parties have held together against the odds. The Iranian Alans had nothing in common with the German Vandals and Suevi, yet although some bands split off, the coalition held together for many years after the Rhine crossing. Probably operating in dispersed groups, they survived a winter campaign by taking the towns of northern Gaul to supply themselves and, as they recouped their strength, they looked to find lands that they could call their own.
So how many barbarians crossed into Gaul in 406/7? Although we have no reliable figures, it is possible to make some deductions.
In 429 the Vandals probably crossed into Africa with 80,000 souls. This group included the survivors of the Silings and Alans who had been decimated in a devastating war with the Goths. After years of wandering, they would have lost many people along the way but also would have picked up others including disaffected Romans, not to mention more women and slaves. Furthermore, Goar’s Alans had broken off from the main coalition and stayed behind in France. Taking all this into account, it is not unreasonable to assume that the Silings, Asdings and Alans may have had an average of 30,000 people each when they crossed into Gaul. The Silings probably the smallest group and the Alans the largest. The Suevi who stayed behind in Spain in 429 were concentrated in the region of one or two cities, which probably implies that they were not very numerous, probably no more than 20,000 people. Putting this all together gives us a rough estimate of just over 100,000 people, possibly up to a quarter of whom would have been fit males able to bear arms.
The Vandals, Alans and Suevi in Gaul AD 407-409 (after Jacobsen). After they crossed the Rhine on 31 December 406 the majority of the Vandals, Alans and Suevi broke up into small bands and ranged widely over the country looking for supplies, while Goar’s Alans broke away and were settled as Roman allies around Orléans. Constantine III bottled the others up in the north for a while after defeating some of them in battle. Roman civil wars gave the barbarians the opportunity to break out to the south, probably in late 408 or early 409. The routes shown on the map are conjectural, based on towns mentioned by various Roman writers.