A Spanish Interlude
Constantine and the British Usurpations
Although Stilicho was otherwise occupied when the Vandals, Alans and Suevi moved into Gaul, the barbarians did not have everything their own way. Constantine crossed from Britain into Gaul at some point in 407 and Zosimus recounts his actions:
‘The Vandals, uniting with the Alani and the Suevi, crossed [the Rhine], and plundered the countries beyond the Alps. Having there occasioned great slaughter they likewise became so formidable even to the armies in Britain, that they were compelled, through fear of their proceeding as far as that country, to choose several usurpers, as Marcus, Gratian, and after them Constantine.
‘A furious engagement ensued between them in which the Romans gained the victory, and killed most of the barbarians. Yet by not pursuing those who fled, by which means they might have put to death every man, they gave them opportunity to rally, and by collecting an additional number of barbarians, to assume once more a fighting posture. For this cause, Constantine placed guards in these places, that those tribes should not have so free access into Gaul. He likewise secured the Rhine, which had been neglected since the time of the Emperor Julian.
‘Having thus arranged affairs throughout all Gaul, he decorated his eldest son, Constans, with the habit of a Caesar, and sent him into Spain. For he wished to obtain the absolute sovereignty of that country, not only through the desire of enlarging his own dominions, but of diminishing the power of the relations of Honorius [who were of Spanish origin].’
The British field army at this time was not large, probably no more than 4-6,000 men. However, most of the Gallic Army, which was probably dispersed over several towns, came over to Constantine, although for a time Arles apparently remained loyal to Honorius and Stilicho. Constantine established a base at Orléans and if we are to accept Zosimus’ account he engaged the Vandal coalition in battle, defeated them but failed to destroy them. Given a free hand, perhaps Constantine could have finished the job but he had to turn his attention south to deal with Sarus’s army that Stilicho had sent against him.
After defeating Sarus, Constantine controlled most of Gaul. Zosimus’ account leads us to believe that the Vandal coalition was licking its wounds in northern parts, leaving Constantine to turn his attention to Spain. Unfortunately for him, Gerontius, one of his generals whom he sent to Spain, took exception to the appointment of a rival and rose up in revolt. With Constantine’s attention thus turned towards Spain and Italy, the Vandals were able to break loose from the frontier regions where they had been previously constrained. As Zosimus says:
‘The greater part of his army being in Spain, the barbarians beyond the Rhine made such unbounded incursions over every province, as to reduce not only the Britons, but some of the Celtic nations also to the necessity of revolting from the Empire, and living no longer under the Roman laws but as they themselves pleased. The Britons therefore took up arms, and incurred many dangerous enterprises for their own protection, until they had freed their cities from the barbarians who besieged them. In a similar manner, the whole of Armorica, with other provinces of Gaul, delivered themselves by the same means; expelling the Roman magistrates or officers, and erecting a government, such as they pleased, of their own.’
Here we have a story not only of barbarian depredations but more interestingly a story of local inhabitants taking matters into their own hands in despair of official protection. The last remnants of the British field army left with Constantine and the inhabitants had no choice but to look to their own interests without any prospect of help from the authorities, whether these were in Italy or Gaul. Armorica (roughly modern Brittany) became a centre of the Baccaudae who defied Imperial control for decades. So with Constantine worried about Gerontius’ usurpation in Spain and the threat from Stilicho in Italy, and the latter still focused on Alaric and his Goths, the Vandals, Suevi and Alans were presented with another opportunity.
Picking up Zosimus’ narrative we learn that:
‘Thus happened this revolt or defection of Britain and the Celtic nations, when Constantine usurped the Empire, by whose negligent government the barbarians were emboldened to commit such devastations. In the meantime, Alaric, finding that he could not procure a peace on the conditions which he proposed, nor had received any hostages, once more attacked Rome, and threatened to storm it if the citizens refused to join with him against the Emperor Honorius.’
Stilicho was executed by Honorius on 22 August 408. The convoluted politics which led to this are part of another story, but his fall from grace was no doubt tied to his failure to keep Gaul under Honorius’ control. Following Stilicho’s demise, Alaric’s Goths were at the walls of Rome and the Vandals, Alans and Suevi crossed into Spain. So why did the Vandal coalition decide to move into Spain rather than trying to carve out a place for themselves in Gaul?
Most probably this was down to the actions of Constantine, combined with the ups and downs of Imperial politics. Constantine had the Gallic field army under his command, supplemented by the troops he had withdrawn from Britain as well as Frankish and Alammanic allies. In the immediate aftermath of Stilicho’s execution there was no one of his stature to lead the army of Italy to defend Rome against Alaric, less alone intervene in the affairs of the West.
Therefore, as the first decade of the fifth century came to a close Italy was in chaos. Spain was tenuously held by the usurper Gerontius while Gaul, although devastated and with parts under the control of the Baccaudae, had the only leader capable of taking decisive action. Had they remained in Gaul, the Vandal coalition would have had to defeat Constantine. If Zosimus is correct then they had already had the worst of such an encounter.
So the Vandals and their allies moved south into the vacuum. If we accept Jerome’s story (quoted in the previous chapter), they tried but failed to take Toulouse, thanks to the efforts of Bishop Exuperius who rallied the inhabitants. Ranging over the countryside and probably taking several routes, they would then have had to concentrate their forces to breach the Pyrenees. The passes were lightly held by troops locally engaged by Gerontius who seemed more interested in pillaging the country to supplement their wages than offering a defence to a determined enemy.
On the Road Again
The Spanish Bishop Hydatius says that the Vandals, Suevi and Alans crossed the passes into Spain in 409, ‘on a Tuesday, some say 28 September, others say 13 October.’ The passage of the mountain passes by tens of thousands of people with all their baggage and belongings would have taken quite some time. Possibly the period from 28 September to 13 October may have been the time it took for the migrants to move across the mountains and reach the yet unravaged country beyond. As it was highly unlikely that they were moving as a single body, most probably the first groups made it through the passes in late September with other groups following along behind.
By this point the coalition of Vandals, Alans and Suevi must have been a pretty hard-bitten lot. They had survived a winter campaign despite being burdened with families and baggage, and they had taken a good number of fortified Roman towns. They had survived a tough encounter with the Franks on the east bank of the Rhine and a defeat at the hands of Constantine’s Roman Army. Yet against all the odds they had not only survived but had managed to stick together, despite the differences of language and culture. Amazingly, there seems to have been no single charismatic leader to hold the coalition together. After Godegisel’s death in the battle with the Franks, his son Gunderic took over kingship of the Asdings, but there was no single leader. Each of the tribes had their own leaders and their coordinated movements must have been decided in council rather than being dictated by an overlord. Probably it was necessity which held them together for so long and although some, such as Goar’s Alans, broke off to find their own way, the coalition held for several years, which is more than could be said for the Romans.
Picking up a coherent narrative from the tantalizing snippets various chroniclers have left us is not an easy task. This time the migration seems to have been planned rather than forced by necessity of starvation. Making their move in September/October would have given them time to gather in supplies from the southern Gallic countryside and then force the passes when the weather was still reasonable. Once across the mountains they would have needed to find somewhere suitable for winter quarters before spreading out over the countryside. Quite possibly they made towards Pompaelo and then may have rested there. Possibly some of them pushed on further towards Burgos, Leon and Zamora before stopping for the winter.
As soon as there was enough forage for their animals, in spring 410 the migrants apparently spread over the countryside. Hydatius is our primary source for the activities of the Vandals, Alans and Suevi at this time and he paints a pretty bleak picture. In a forewarning of the impending apocalypse he tells of the sack of Spain:
‘While the barbarians ran wild through the Spanish provinces, and evil pestilence raged, the tyrannical tax collector plundered and the soldier used up the supplies stored in the cities. Terrible famine prowled, so that human beings were compelled by hunger to devour human flesh and mothers fed on the murdered and cooked bodies of those they had borne. Beasts, accustomed to the bodies of those slain by the sword, famine and plague, and fed by the bodies of whatever men they had killed, ran wild bringing death to the human race. And thus, with the four plagues of sword, famine, pestilence and beasts raging through the entire world, those things proclaimed by the Lord through his prophets were fulfilled.’
If the defence of Gaul had been problematic for Rome, then holding Spain in early 410 was even more so. The Notitia Dignitatum lists the Comes Hispanias (Count of Spain) controlling eleven Auxilia Palatina and five Legiones Comitatenses. At full strength this would have given him just over 10,000 men—far less than the Gallic field army which had not yet been able to destroy the invaders. Interestingly, there are no cavalry listed, and the Comes Hispanias does not have his own section in the Notitia. This has led some to conclude that the position was created later – around 420 when Hydatius mentions a Comes Hispaniarum. If this army was raised later then Gothic foederati could perhaps have supplied the cavalry contingent. The Spanish Army, however, does not include any pseudocomitatenses nor any units named after the Emperor Honorius, both of which might be expected of new units raised in 420. This leads me to believe that the Spanish field army was already in existence in 409, but we cannot know this for certain. It may be that Spain was undefended apart from around 4,000 limitanei. According to the Notitia, these were:
Septimae Geminae, a legion at Legio (Léon)
Secundae Flaviae Pacatianae, a cohort at Paetaonio (Rosinos de Vidriales, Zamora)
Secundae Gallicae, a cohort at Cohortem Gallicam (unknown)
Lucensis, a cohort at Lucus (Lugo)
Celtiberae, a cohort at Brigantiae near Iuliobriga (Reinosa)
Primae Gallicae, a cohort at Veleia (Iruña)
There was little chance that Rome’s Spanish troops could do what their more numerous Gallic counterparts had so far failed to do. Furthermore, the Spanish Army had only just been won over to Constantine’s cause before his general Gerontius rose up in revolt. Meanwhile, with Stilicho out of the way, Alaric sacked Rome and his Goths moved more or less at will through Italy. So as the Vandals, Suevi and Alans were making their acquaintance with the Spanish countryside, Gerontius decided to head off to Arles to confront Constantine and the Italian Army had its hands full with far more pressing problems. This left Spain to the barbarians.
Taking up the Plough
A life of perpetual plundering cannot be sustained. Eventually the potential sources dry up, and with famine raging through Spain this was what faced the Vandal coalition. So it was in 411 that they ‘took up the plough’, as Orosius recounts. This does not mean that they suddenly became farmers but rather settled down to rule over the local Hispano-Roman population. Hydatius says that the tribes divided up Spain by lot, with the Asdings getting eastern Gallaecia and the Suevi the western part (Roman Gallaecia being larger than modern Spanish Galicia). The Silings took Baetica in the south while the Alans got Lusitania in the west and Carthaginiensis in the centre. The province of Tarraconensis in the north and north east remained under Gerontius’ control. While the towns and cities of the interior opened their gates to their new overlords, many of the important ports such as Cartagena (Carthago Spartaria) stayed under Roman control.
The Vandals in Spain AD 409-429. This map shows the administrative divisions of late Roman Spain along with the major towns and locations of those battles we know of which were fought by the Vandals. Unfortunately, we do not know the locations of the battles in which the Goths destroyed the Silings and decimated the Alans (416-418).
Many modern historians have concluded that this division of Spain must have been part of a treaty with the Roman authorities which granted the barbarians these lands with federate status. However, none of the original sources give any sense of this settlement being part of a formal treaty and even if it had been, with whom could it have been made? Gerontius was the only Roman with any power in Spain and this was pretty tenuous. He was a usurper in conflict with another usurper (Constantine), and even if he had come to some accommodation with the barbarians, at best this could have been to simply abandon southern and western Spain to their depredations. Furthermore, there was no other external threat which the Romans may have wished to use the Vandals, Alans and Suevi to deal with. Nor was there any later occasion where these tribes acted on behalf of Rome. Indeed the opposite was true and in the years that followed the Romans did their damnedest to dislodge the invaders from their new homes.
So the barbarians probably decided the division of Spain amongst themselves, possibly alongside an understanding with Gerontius that he would not oppose them as long as they left Tarraconensis alone. The territorial division has also puzzled some historians in light of the later Asding ascendancy. They got one of the smallest and least fertile parts of the country, while the Alans got the best bits. This probably reflected both the relative strengths of each tribe in 411 and the parts of Spain they happened to be in at the time. Later, the cracks would begin to show in the coalition but in the immediate aftermath of the division each tribe settled down as overlords while the local population went about their business as usual, probably far less worried about who their new rulers were than the opportunity for a respite from their depredations.
The peace did not hold, and once again this was more due to Roman politics than any actions taken by the barbarians. In 411, Gerontius and his general Maximus left Spain for Gaul. They defeated Constantine’s son Constans at Vienne and then moved down the Rhone to besiege the father at Arles. However, Gerontius’ Spanish troops mutinied and the leaders fled back to Spain. Gerontius was eventually killed and Maximus ended his days holed up in the mountains. The Emperor Honorius had meanwhile appointed Constantius as Stilicho’s successor. Alaric had died shortly after the Gothic sack of Rome and his successor was Ataulf. Again showing how the Romans saw usurpers as a greater threat than any group of barbarians, Constantius left Ataulf’s Goths in Italy to move against Constantine at Arles. He was successful. Constantine was executed and after four years of semi-independence Gaul was brought back under Honorius’ jurisdiction.
This just left the Imperial authorities with the knotty problem of Ataulf’s Goths. What better solution could there be than to set them against the Vandals, Suevi and Alans in Spain? Probably initially on their own initiative and later with Roman encouragement, the Goths moved into southern Gaul. Together with some Burgundians and Goar’s Alans, the Goths defeated yet another Roman usurper in 414 and then made their way via Narbonne into Tarraconensis to take Barcelona. None of this could have seriously worried Constantius nor the Emperor Honorius. Tarraconensis may have been free of barbarians before 414, but it had been Gerontius’ base. Far better that the Goths should be there than rampaging through Italy or Gaul while the Imperial authorities tried to re-establish control over those provinces.
At this stage, however, the Goths were probably not yet operating as Roman surrogates and indeed there is some evidence that Ataulf and Constantius were unable to come to any formal agreement. Roman fleets blockaded the coasts, bringing famine. This forced the Goths to agree to a new accommodation with Ravenna (the West Roman capital at this time). Ataulf was murdered in September 415 and after a brief, bloody family struggle Wallia became the new king. He made his peace with Rome in exchange for supplies of grain, which probably came from the prosperous provinces of North Africa.
The End of the Coalition
For nearly five years the Vandals, Alans and Suevi had been able to enjoy the fruits of their conquests, but in 416 this came to an end as the Romans loosed the now compliant Goths onto them. Wallia’s men captured a Vandal king (probably a Siling) by the name of Fredibal and sent him as a captive to Ravenna. From 416 to 418, with Roman encouragement, the Goths waged war against the new barbarian overlords of Spain with devastating success. As Hydatius reports:
‘The Siling Vandals in Baetica were wiped out by King Wallia. The Alans who were ruling over the Vandals and Suevi, suffered such heavy losses at the hands of the Goths that, after the death of their king, Addax [who had succeeded Respendial], the few survivors, with no thought to their won kingdom, placed themselves under the protection of Gunderic, the King of the Asding Vandals who had settled in Gallaecia.’
Until this point, Gunderic’s Asdings had been one of the smaller partners in the coalition. Now, with the Silings wiped out and the Alans decimated, he absorbed the survivors to create a much more powerful group which had so far managed to avoid the Gothic attacks. Quite probably it had been a blessing in disguise when the Asdings ended up with the poorer territories of Spain when the coalition divided up the country. Much later the Asding King Huneric is recorded as styling himself as Rex Vandalorum et Alanorum but such a title may well have been assumed shortly after the defeat of the Alans at the hands of the Goths and their absorption by the Asdings. From 418 there was only one group of Vandals and the term ‘Asding’ came to be used to describe the royal line rather than a single Vandal clan.
Finally, after more than a decade of holding together against all odds, the coalition broke apart in the aftermath of the disastrous war with Wallia’s Goths. Conflict broke out between the Vandals and Suevi, and although we do not know the cause it was most likely due to pressure on the Vandals. Whether due to fate or design, the Asdings had drawn the short straw in the divvying up of lots for territory in 411. Wallia had destroyed the Silings and driven the Alans out of their choice holdings. No doubt once the Goths had been withdrawn to Gaul and were given Aquitaine as a reward for their efforts, Baetica, Lusitania and Carthaginiensis reverted back to Roman control. The Asdings were bottled up in eastern Gallaecia and if this may have been just enough for them on their own, they now had to absorb the Alan and Siling refugees who had been displaced by the Goths.
Despite their modern reputation as fearsome warriors, the Vandals did not have a very good military track record when it came to pitched battle. In 401 the first Vandal raiders had been defeated by Stilicho. Then in 405 they were on the brink of defeat at the hands of the Franks, only to be rescued by the Alans in the nick of time. When Constantine took to the field against them he too won his battle, even if he failed to destroy them. Then, finally, the Silings were destroyed by Wallia’s Goths. With a near perfect string of military defeats, how was it that they had survived so far and how was it that they had managed to cut a swathe through Gaul and Spain? The answer to this probably lies in the long history of the trouble organized military forces have always had in bringing even small bands of determined guerrillas to heel. There were very few technological differences between the Romans, Goths or Vandals. What the Romans excelled in, when they were not fighting amongst themselves, was organization and structure.
A number of contemporary historians are fairly scathing about the Vandals’ military abilities. The Spanish chronicler Orosius describes them as ‘unwarlike, avaricious, perfidious and crafty’. The Gallo-Roman writer Salvian says: ‘God, by handing over the Spanish nation to the Vandals for punishment, showed in a double degree his hatred of the sins of the flesh, since the Spaniards were conspicuous for their immorality and the Vandals for their chastity, while the latter were the weakest of all the barbarian tribes.’
The Goths had time to learn and develop more cohesive military structures in the many years they had been a pseudo-Roman Army in the aftermath of their victory at Adrianople in 378, but the Vandals had not. They may have been tough – indeed they must have been to survive all they had been through. However, they never had time to develop the command and control structures needed for success in pitched battle. They had been more or less constantly on the move since 400 and were more used to operating in small dispersed bands than they were marshalling the large coherent force needed for victory in formal battle.
The Suevi were in a similar situation and therefore Gunderic’s Vandals finally won success on the field against their former allies. They defeated King Hermanric’s Suevi, driving them into the mountains of Asturias. Success was short-lived. Castinus, the new Roman governor of Spain, moved against the Vandals in 419 and seemed to get the better of an encounter with a group of them near Hydatius’ home town of Braga in western Gallaecia. This won Castinus the high office of Comes Domesticorum (Count of the Imperial Guard), although the victory seems to have been more symbolic rather than one which greatly diminished Vandal strength. Indeed, the outcome seems to have been to cause the Vandals to leave Gallaecia and push south to occupy the former Siling territories of Baetica in southern Spain.
The Romans, however, did not let up the pressure. In 422 they launched a seaborne invasion against Baetica, together with Gothic allies. Once again the Vandals were saved by internal Roman politics, as Hydatius tells us:
‘At this time an army was sent to Spain against the Vandals with Castinus as commander. By an unsuitable and unjust order he excluded Boniface, a man quite well known for military skill, from partnership in his expedition. As a result Boniface judged Castinus as dangerous to himself and unworthy to be followed since he [Boniface] found him [Castinus] to be quarrelsome and proud. So Boniface rushed quickly to Portus and thence to Africa. And this was the beginning of many troubles for the state.’
We shall hear more of Boniface and the ‘troubles for the state’ in the following chapter.
Despite Boniface’s defection, Castinus had some initial success, bottling up the Vandals in an unnamed city. His Gothic allies deserted when he attempted an assault, and when Castinus unwisely risked open battle he was defeated. According to Salvian, the Vandals carried a bible as a standard in front of them and, whether or not they benefitted from divine intervention, they won the second battle in their history and their first against Romans. They drove the surviving Romans and Goths back to Tarraconensis.
At this point it is worth a brief pause from the narrative to again look at the question of religion. As mentioned in Chapter 1, some early chroniclers say that the Vandals were still heathens when they crossed the Rhine and only converted later. Hydatius says that Geiseric, who succeeded Gunderic as king in 428, was originally Catholic and only later became an Arian. The Vandal Arian faith had a large impact on their history in Africa and it is pretty clear that the Vandals were Arian Christians by the time they got there. It may be that the Suevi and Alans were later converts, but if the Vandals had only converted on arrival in Spain then they would almost certainly have become Catholics, as the only other Arians around at that time were their bitter enemies, the Goths. Far more likely, therefore, that they had come under the influence of Ulfilas when they were still living in Germania in the fourth century. Any religious fervour they showed at the battle with Castinus’ Romans was probably of the Arian sort and had already become part of their distinct identity which set them apart from the Catholic Romans. If it is indeed true that the Vandals carried a bible or some other religious icon as a standard against the Romans, then it is far more likely to have been something that marked them in opposition to their enemies rather than demonstrating a shared faith.
After the failed Roman invasion of Baetica, the Vandals were given another interlude as the Western Empire was thrown into upheaval. The Emperor Honorius died on 27 August 423 and once again Romans fell out amongst themselves. In the chaos that followed, Spain was left alone and the Vandals used the time to expand their territory. In 425 they raided the Balearic Isles and Mauretania on the African coast. This is the first time the people who originated from the centre of Europe, about as far away from the sea as is possible, are recorded using ships. It would not be the last time. No doubt, following the abortive Roman campaign of 422, the Vandals had been able to seize the port cities, such as Cartagena, that had previously been closed to them. It is impossible that the Vandals had suddenly become master seafarers but it would have been no great difficulty to commandeer boats or commission others to be built. These would not have been warships, but rather vessels that could transport Vandal warriors to the undefended coastal regions which previously would have been difficult or impossible to reach.
At this point one might think that the Vandals would have been reasonably content with their place in the sun. However, Spain was no longer the unplundered land that had beckoned them in 409. With only very brief interludes of peace, it had been fought over almost continually for the last two decades. If Hydatius’ account is anything to go on – and he should know as he lived through those times – it had become a place of devastation, famine and pestilence. Furthermore, despite Rome’s new internal troubles, there was no indication than the Imperial authorities would leave the Vandals alone in Spain once they had settled their own internal disputes.
Having gained access to the sea and by raiding the North African coast, the Vandals would have become aware that there were new, fruitful and unplundered lands apparently ripe for the taking. As Victor of Vita recounted in 484:
‘Finding a province [Africa] which was at peace and enjoying quiet, the whole land beautiful and flowering on all sides, they [the Vandals] set to work on it with their wicked forces, laying it waste by devastation and bringing everything to ruin with fire and murders.’
Once again, Roman politics provided the opportunity and the impetus to set the Vandal wanderers on the move. This time the changes in the Roman regime were also mirrored by political changes amongst the Vandals.
Roman North Africa AD 429. This map shows the administrative divisions of Roman North Africa at the time of the Vandal invasion. The Vandals probably crossed from Mellaria to Septem and then made their way along the coast to reach Hippo Regius in 430. They took Carthage in October 439. In later years, the Moors used the Aurès Mountains as a base from which they raided Vandal territory.