Mare Nostrum
Carthago Delenda Est
The treaty of 435 seemed to give Geiseric what he wanted and maybe when he signed on the dotted line he felt happy with the settlement, or perhaps he just wanted to recoup his strength before going further. The Romans probably thought that they were merely buying a breathing space and as long as they still controlled Carthage and the surrounding countryside, there was still some revenue coming from Africa. They also had a bridgehead to use once other pressing matters had been dealt with, such as the barbarians and Baccaudae in Gaul and the Huns on the Danube. Africa was simply too valuable to be given up easily, but with Aeitus firmly focused on Gaul, it was Constantinople rather than Ravenna where plans to retake Africa were being formulated.
So the treaty of 435 to carve up Africa was probably not dissimilar to Hitler and Stalin’s agreement to partition Poland in 1940. Neither side trusted the other, the peace could not possibly last but it gave Geiseric time to build his strength and allowed the Romans (both East and West) to take care of other matters.
Beyond giving them the opportunity to persecute Catholic bishops and appropriate their wealth, this phoney peace also gave the Vandals the time and means to build a fleet. Their experiences in the latter years of their time in Spain and the crossing into Africa had shown them the value of sea power. Transporting supplies over land in ox-drawn wagons was slow, cumbersome and expensive, whereas by sea it could be done far more easily. From Hippo Regius, Roman merchantmen had regularly sailed with food and goods to supply Italy and Gaul. Now many of the ships, their builders and sailors were in Vandal hands. Quite probably, Geiseric had used some of the ships he had appropriated in Spain to support him on the long march to Hippo Regius, but now he had both the time and local expertise to expand on this.
Geiseric also needed to keep his followers constantly rewarded with wealth and prestige to maintain their loyalty. No doubt some were happy to settle down as gentlemen farmers lording it over the local population, but many, especially the younger ones who had known nothing but constant warfare all their lives, would have been looking for opportunities to carve a name for themselves with force of arms. Whatever Geiseric’s long-term plan had been when he signed the peace treaty in 435, it was the Vandals who broke it, using their new-found sea power to raid Sicily in 438.
One of the Roman stereotypes of barbarians was that they would not keep treaties, and the Vandals seemed to live up to this. Bishop Quodvultdeus of Carthage had this to say of them in the 430s: ‘While you void or cast off the struggles to lend assistance, you are neither brave in war, nor are you faithful in peace.’
The bishop’s words proved prophetic. Without warning, Geiseric suddenly struck east and took Carthage on 19 October 439. The ease at with which he did this is astounding. Hippo Regius had held out for fourteen months in 430/431, and after defeating Boniface and Aspar the Vandals were never able to breach Carthage’s walls. In both cases, however, the Romans had good troops within the walls and were fully expecting an attack. Perhaps they had been lulled into complacency after the treaty, but even if the bulk of Boniface and Aspar’s troops had been withdrawn in 432 and 435 respectively, it is inconceivable that the Romans would have left Carthage without an adequate garrison.
Quodvultdeus gives us plenty of gruesome details of what happened once the Vandals were inside the walls: ‘Horrible death has soiled all the streets… pregnant women slaughtered… babies taken from the arms of their nurse and thrown to die on the street…the cries of those that have lost in this assault a husband or a father.’ Unfortunately, neither he nor any other tell us how it happened, although Quodvultdeus’ lament does imply that there was an assault.
It could really only have been a surprise attack, prepared and executed without the Romans hearing of it and the Vandals inside the walls before the garrison knew what was happening. If the gates were barred, then the city would have been able to hold out for quite some time, even if the garrison was relatively small. This does not appear to have been the case. If a traitor or dissident Arian had opened the gates, or if a deal had been struck as was the case at Rome in 455, then surely the chroniclers would have had something to say about it. But they don’t.
However Carthage fell, the result was that it left the Vandals as the undisputed masters of Roman Africa – previously the most prosperous region of the West Roman Empire. In a reverse parallel to the fate of many poor migrants from Africa today, Quodvultdeus and other Catholic clergy were packed onto rickety boats and sent to Italy with the expectation that they would sink enroute, although in the end they made it. The Vandals availed themselves of the riches of the nobles and the Catholic Church, suddenly finding themselves elevated from a desperate band of migrants to one of the most powerful kingdoms in the Mediterranean world.
Pirates of the Mediterranean
The brief interlude at Hippo Regius had given the Vandals their first real opportunity to begin to build a fleet. The capture of Carthage, the second most important port in the Western Mediterranean after Rome’s Portus, catapulted them into becoming a first-rate sea power. With the great port – originally built by the Carthaginians and improved by the Romans – along with some of the best shipbuilders and sailors in the world now in their hands, the Vandals had all the capability they needed, even though they ‘were previously unaccustomed with the use of ships’ to re-use Prosper’s words.
There was now no pretence of federate status. The Vandals were a new and independent nation free to rule North Africa as they wished, impose their Arian version of Christianity and expand their power and wealth at Rome’s expense. From 440 onwards, they raided the coasts of Sicily. They captured Marsala, laid siege to Palermo and even plundered Bruttium in southern Italy. Now that they had a homeland to call their own, these raids were no longer an attempt to take new territory but rather to amass greater wealth and to give the young warriors a chance to make a name for themselves. According to Hydatius, Geiseric was also encouraged into Sicily by the Arian Maximinus, who incited the Vandals to persecute Catholics there.
Procopius evocatively described the state of Vandal piracy that lasted for more than thirty years:
‘Every year, at the beginning of spring Geiseric made invasions into Sicily and Italy, enslaving some of the cities, razing others to the ground, and plundering everything. When the land had become destitute of men and of money, he invaded the domain of the Emperor of the East. And so he plundered Illyricum (modern Croatia), most of the Peloponnese and the rest of Greece, and all of the Islands which lie near it. And then he went off again to Sicily and Italy and kept plundering and pillaging all places in turn. One day when he had embarked on his ship in the harbour of Carthage, and the sails were ready to be spread, the pilot asked him against what men did he go? And in reply he said: “Plainly against those with whom God is angry.”’
In Italy the Imperial authorities were forced to implement special measures. Various edicts in Valentinian’s name show that taxes were increased, local peasants given permission to bear arms, city walls were improved and the Master of Soldiers, Sigisvult (the same man who had been sent to deal with Boniface in 427), was tasked with bolstering coastal defences.
Rome could not allow this situation to continue unchecked, but while Africa should have been the focus of the Western Empire it no longer had the strength or will to do anything other than try to defend the coast of Italy. Aetius was the last remaining West Roman warlord. He seems to have turned his back on Italy and Africa, employing an army of Huns to maintain control over Gaul. Therefore it fell to the East Romans to take action.
In 440, Constantinople prepared a huge invasion fleet with the intention of retaking Africa, ending the piracy and restoring the ‘universal church’. There are some indications that this may have been a joint operation between the two halves of the Empire with the rendezvous being Sicily, which the Romans from both halves of the Empire, would use as a staging point before moving onto Carthage. An edict issued in the name of Valentinian III from June 440 hints at this: ‘The army of the most invincible Emperor Theodosius our Father [the Eastern Emperor], will soon approach and…. We trust that the Most Excellent Patrician Aetius will soon be here with a large force.’ This may, however, have been wishful thinking on the part of Valentinian’s courtiers rather than a statement of fact.
In 441, a large fleet set sail from Constantinople for Sicily. It is said to have contained 1,100 ships, but as this is exactly the same number of ships given for the better documented 468 expedition, it seems slightly suspicious. However many ships there were, there were certainly a lot of them and we can probably expect that an invasion would not have been contemplated with much less than 15-20,000 soldiers. Fortunately for the Vandals, this army was led by five generals who apparently did not get along. Even more fortunately, Rome’s old opponents were stirring beyond the eastern frontiers.
As soon as the fleet set sail, the Eastern Empire’s enemies decided to take advantage of this sudden exodus of troops. The Persians invaded Roman Armenia and the Huns poured over the Danube frontier, devastating the Balkans and even threatening Constantinople. Having reached Sicily, but apparently accomplishing very little, the expeditionary force was recalled to deal with these new, more pressing dangers.
Abandoned by the East, with cash running out and Aetius busy in Gaul, the Emperor Valentinian III had no choice but to agree to another treaty which recognized the new Vandal conquests. The Western Empire formally ceded control of Carthage and all of Africa Proconsularis in exchange for the Vandals agreeing to continue the grain supply to Italy, no doubt at a handsome profit to themselves. The enlarged Vandal kingdom also included Byzacena, the province to the south of Carthage, and parts of western Tripolitania to the east. Apparently the long strip of the Mauretanias, through which the Vandals had marched in 429/30, was left under Roman control.
Geiseric was now elevated to the status of client king with the title Rex Socius et Amicus. It was probably at this time too that his son, Huneric, went as a hostage to Ravenna and there he was betrothed to Valentinian’s infant daughter, Eudocia. There was just one tiny problem, however, which was that Huneric was already married to the daughter of Theodoric, King of the Goths of Aquitaine. Not letting a previous royal alliance interfere with a better match, Geiseric had the unfortunate woman returned to her father. Relations between the Vandals and Goths, whom we should probably now call ‘Visigoths’ to distinguish them from their ‘Ostrogoth’ cousins who are about to show up on the scene, had never been good. This started a feud which would last decades. According to Jordanes, it was one of the underlying reasons the Visigoths stood alongside the Romans when Attila invaded Gaul in 451:
‘When Geiseric, King of the Vandals, learned that Attila’s mind was bent on the devastation of the world, he incited him by many gifts to make war on the Visigoths, for he was afraid that Theodoric, king of the Visigoths, would avenge the injury done to his daughter. She had been joined in wedlock with Huneric, Geiseric’s son, and at first was happy in this union. But afterwards he was cruel even to his own children, and because of the mere suspicion that she was attempting to poison him, he cut off her nose and mutilated her ears. He sent her back to her father in Gaul thus despoiled of her natural charms. So the wretched girl presented a pitiable aspect ever after, and the cruelty which would stir even strangers still more surely incited her father to vengeance.’
Whether or not this is true we cannot know. It is unlikely that a ruler as canny as Geiseric would have gone out of his way to provoke Theodoric unnecessarily. However, Geiseric did face a revolt amongst his nobles in 442, probably brought about by the amount of power and wealth he had been reserving for himself. In the Germanic tradition the king was a war leader and gift giver. As his wealth and personal prestige increased, Geiseric was taking on the trappings of Imperial power along with the lofty titles granted him by the Emperor. We do not have much detail of this revolt, but Prosper of Aquitaine tells us that it resulted in more dead Vandals than defeat in war. Possibly the unfortunate Visigoth princess became mixed up in this and paid a horrible price.
The treaty of 442 did not put an end to Vandal piracy, but it would appear that Geiseric was careful not to push the boundaries of his agreement with Valentinian III. Perhaps the West Romans tacitly gave the Vandals a free hand at sea so long as the grain shipments continued to reach Italy. Procopius tells us that relations between Carthage and Ravenna improved greatly while Hydatius reports that, in 445, a Vandal fleet raided Turonium on the Atlantic coast of Suevian-held Gallaecia. If the latter report is correct, then it was a most daring undertaking which involved sailing thousands of miles from modern Tunisia, through the Straits of Gibraltar and up the coast of modern Portugal. Such an expedition could not have been undertaken with rickety old commandeered boats, but rather with good ocean-going ships. Possibly Geiseric wanted to give his more adventurous young men an outlet for their warlike spirits without prejudicing his treaty with Valentinian. A kick at his old enemies in Gallaecia probably took care of both.
We should not, however, think of the Vandal fleet as an armada of warships in the mould of the great navies of classical Greece, Rome and Carthage. The Mediterranean had been a Roman lake for centuries and the need for powerful quinqueremes to engage enemy battle ships had long disappeared. For the most part the Vandal fleet would have been made up of troop-carrying transports which ferried warriors and supplies to their destination and dropped them off, much like the Viking raiders of later times. In 533, a Vandal fleet of 120 ships carried 5000 warriors to Sardinia, so each transport was probably capable of carrying on average fifty men, with some of that space taken up for supplies and equipment. Sometimes horses may also have been taken, but it is reasonable to assume that in most cases the Vandals would have not done so unless they intended more than a simple coastal raid, such as the attack on Rome in 455. When Belisarius sailed from Constantinople to Africa, his fleet was protected by a number of fast, light galleys called dromons. The Vandals probably also used such vessels, crewed by Romans with a small number of Vandal ‘marines’ onboard.
With neither the Romans nor Vandals possessing many true warships and the art of war at sea largely forgotten, there were virtually no sea battles. Actions at sea probably resembled the sort of pirate actions which go on off the coast of Somalia today rather than great naval engagements. There is one battle we do have details of – that is the defeat of the East Roman fleet by the Vandals in 468. Much like the English victory over the Spanish Armada in 1588, this was done by attacking the Roman fleet at anchor with fire ships. There was also a sea battle off Corsica in 456 in which the Romans were victorious, but unfortunately we do not have any information about what happened there.
No doubt the Vandal ships were built and crewed by Roman North Africans. It is impossible to say how many sailors this involved. A Roman dromon probably had 120 rowers. Many of the Vandal ships were more likely to have been transports, some of which operated under sail alone, therefore requiring a much smaller crew. For the most part, the Vandals’ piratical exploits in the Mediterranean probably involved less than 100 ships carrying a couple of thousand warriors at most, with larger expeditions being the exception. Probably the largest fleet gathered was for Geiseric’s attack on Rome in 455, when he had to have enough vessels to carry the best part of his army, along with horses and supplies, and then bring the captives and loot back home again. This probably required something close to 300 ships. In a sideways tribute to Vandal seamanship, Procopius says that only one ship was lost and this was on the way home as a result of it being overloaded with large statues and stolen loot.
So why didn’t the West Romans go to the archives, dust off the plans from Octavian’s and Mark Antony’s fleets at Actium half a millennia ago, then build themselves a navy to take on the Vandals?
They simple answer is that they could not afford to.
Modern estimates equate the annual financial loss to the treasury from the Vandal takeover of North Africa to be the same amount it would have cost to keep 40,000 soldiers in the field for a year. If we add in the losses from Britain, Spain and Gaul, then it is easy to see how the Empire could no longer maintain its standing army, let alone start to build a war fleet from scratch. It also helps to explain why barbarian federates became an increasingly attractive option. If you could not afford to pay soldiers, why not give them some land and let them maintain themselves on it in lieu of pay?
Constantinople did still have the resources to build a large fleet and they did do just that on several occasions. The first few attempts ended in disaster, creating both financial and military problems for the Eastern Empire as a consequence.
Geiseric’s Kingdom
Geiseric used the peace that followed the treaty of 442 to consolidate his power, keep his nobles in check and set up a system of government that allowed him to rule over a subject population that probably outnumbered the Vandals 40:1. Unlike the American-led coalition in Iraq in 2003, Geiseric did not dismantle the Roman apparatus of government. Roman officials continued to administer the bureaucracy and without their help he could not possibly have managed his far-flung domains, gather taxes and keep things running in a profitable manner. Many Romans held key positions in his government, the main requirement being loyalty to their new masters, which had to be demonstrated by adherence to the Arian version of Christianity. They were, however, excluded from the army, although Romans probably crewed the fleet.
Geiseric made no attempt to integrate Romans and Vandals into a single nation. The Vandals were the masters and the Romans were the subjects. They were kept apart not only by religion but also by law. The Vandals adopted Roman-style clothing such as highly decorated, light linen tunics suitable for the African climate. Mosaics from North Africa show Vandals looking very similar to Romans of that time, but they reserved certain aspects of dress and appearance for themselves only. Victor of Vita tells us that the Vandals wore their hair long in contrast to the short hair styles of the Romans. This seems to have been common with other Germanic peoples as several monuments show long-haired German troops alongside short-haired Romans. If a Roman adopted Vandal long hair styles and was seen in a Catholic church, his hair would be pulled out as a punishment.
The estates of the large Roman landowners were confiscated. Catholic churches were closed and their property was also used to fill Geiseric’s coffers and reward his followers. It was these actions which resulted in our sources speaking so vehemently about the horrors of the Vandal occupation, as it was the clergy and nobility who suffered greatly. The writers of our original sources came from these groups. Probably, for the vast mass of lower class Roman citizens and slaves, their condition did not change greatly with the new masters at the top. If anything their tax burdens may have decreased and, so long as they were not committed Catholics, the peace of 442 would have been vastly better than the years of violent conflict that had preceded it.
Procopius gives us a detailed account of how Geiseric went about land redistribution:
‘Among the Libyans all who happened to be men of note and conspicuous for their wealth he [Geiseric] handed over as slaves, together with their estates and all their money to his sons…. And he robbed the rest of the Libyans of their estates which were both very numerous and excellent, and distributed them among the nation of the Vandals. As a result of this, these lands have been called ‘Vandal Estates’ up to the present time. And it fell to the lot of those who had formerly possessed these lands to be in extreme poverty and to be at the same time free men.
‘Geiseric commanded that all the lands which he had given over to his sons and the other Vandals should not be subject to any kind of taxation. But as much of the lands did not seem as good to him he allowed to remain in the hands of their former owners but assessed so large a sum to be paid on this land in taxes that nothing whatsoever remained to those who retained their farms. And many of them were sent into exile or killed…. Thus the Libyans were visited with every form of misfortune.’
He also says that Geiseric dismantled the walls protecting the African towns and cities:
‘Geiseric devised the following scheme: he tore down the walls of all the cities in Libya except Carthage so that neither the Libyans themselves, espousing the cause of the Romans, might have a strong base from which to begin a rebellion, nor those sent by the Emperor have any ground for hoping to capture a city and by establishing a new garrison in it, to make trouble for the Vandals.’
This seems to have been a rather odd thing to do, especially as he was no doubt fully expecting another Roman counterattack before too long. However, Geiseric and his Vandals concentrated their settlement in and around Carthage. There were simply not enough of them to spread themselves thinly throughout all of North Africa. They were not just the new ruling class; they were also the army and Geiseric had to be able to muster them to defend Carthage – the jewel in his crown. It made sense for him to concentrate his men on the most profitable estates of Proconsularis and leave the poorer lands to his Roman subjects, as Procopius describes. Had he left fortified towns in these regions then he could have reasonably expected rebels at some time or another to occupy them and use them as a stronghold against him. As ever, each action has a consequence, as Procopius explains: ‘In later times, these cities being without walls, were captured all the more easily by Belisarius and with less exertion.’
Romans were not the only inhabitants of Vandal North Africa. The Moors, the original inhabitants, still roamed the far-flung districts, paying no more heed to the Vandal borders than they had to the previous Roman ones. With the disappearance of the Roman limitanei along the frontiers they were more or less able to come and go as they pleased, with some bands raiding the less defended regions and others joining up with the Vandals as auxiliaries. Geiseric’s policy of removing city walls made his successors’ defence against the Moors that much more difficult.
The Sack of Rome
While Geiseric was consolidating his kingdom, the Western Empire was torn apart by the Huns. In 451, Attila invaded Gaul and was checked at the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields by Aeitus and Theodoric’s Visigoths, near Troyes in modern France. The Vandals were not involved, but if we are to believe Jordanes there was some sort of agreement between Geiseric and Attila. The following year, Attila invaded Italy, but was forced back through a combination of plague, the intervention of Pope Leo and, more importantly, the arrival of an East Roman Army. In 453, Attila died and his empire fell apart. The following year Aetius was murdered by Valentinian III, and the year after that Valentinian himself was murdered by two of Aetius’s former bodyguards. Theodoric the Visigothic King died on the Catalaunian Fields and his son, Thorismund, was busy trying to establish his authority while his two younger brothers hovered around the throne waiting for their chance.
There was now only one strong man and one stable state left within what had been the West Roman Empire. That was Geiseric and the Vandal Kingdom of Africa. Britain had been lost to the Angles and Saxons; much of Spain was in the hands of the Suevi; Gaul was being contested by the Visigoths, Franks, Alamanni, Burgundians and Baccaudae; while in Italy, the potential successors to Valentinian’s empty throne made their plays for power.
In Rome, Petronius Maximus seized the throne and one of the first things he did was to marry Eudoxia, Valentinian’s widow, and marry off Eudocia to his son Palladius. Eudocia was the daughter of Valentinian III who had been promised to Geiseric’s son Huneric. And Geiseric was not best pleased.
Although the Vandals and other barbarians had a reputation amongst the Romans for not keeping treaties, much of this may have stemmed from different views on the nature of such agreements. For the Germans, oaths of loyalty were very personal matters and were sworn between individuals. They had no concept of the enduring state. Geiseric may have pushed the boundaries of his treaty with Valentinian, but he did not blatantly break it. It does appear as though he did break the treaty of 435, but then, although we do not know the details, he may have made it with Aspar. Once Aspar had left, perhaps Geiseric considered the agreement at an end.
Be that as it may, Valentinian was now dead. Petronius had seized power and had taken Huneric’s fiancée. This made him Geiseric’s personal enemy and, ever ready to seize the opportunity of the moment, the Vandal king moved quickly. He assembled his army and fleet, set sail for Rome and captured Sardinia for good measure along the way. In late May or early June 455, just three months after Valentinian’s murder, the Vandal fleet arrived at Portus, the port of Rome. Petronius and many of the Roman nobility panicked and prepared to flee, but the Roman mob took matters into their own hands. Petronius was deserted by his bodyguard and was torn apart by the mob, with bits of him being thrown into the Tiber.
Rome was well protected by walls and its potential to resist a siege is well attested by the long drawn-out affairs of the Gothic wars of the mid-sixth century. Here we now get a glimpse of the sort of thing that may well have happened when the Vandals took so many other walled cities in the past with relative ease. With few, if any, regular soldiers in Rome and no experienced military leader, the terrified citizens feared that resistance was futile. Above all they wanted to avoid the horror of a sack, which would inevitably follow a failed defence of the walls.
Prosper of Aquitaine tells us what happened:
‘Holy Pope Leo ran out to meet [Geiseric] outside the gates and, with God’s help, by his supplication so softened him that he abstained from fire, slaughter and torture, on the condition that all power was given to him. Therefore, during fourteen days of free and secure searching, Rome was emptied of her wealth and many thousands of captives. … Geiseric took Eudoxia captive, together with Eudocia and Placidia the children of herself and Valentinian, and placing an exceedingly great treasure in his ships sailed for Carthage, having spared neither bronze not anything else whatsoever in the palace.’
On their triumphant return to Carthage, the Vandals celebrated the marriage of Huneric and Eudocia, an event which linked the Asding line with the Imperial house of Theodosius, of which Valentinian’s two daughters were the last survivors. Although Huneric could never hope to become Emperor, if he and Eudocia had a male child, he would have as good a claim as any to the Imperial throne and a better one than most. Geiseric held onto Valentinian’s widow, Eudoxia, and the younger daughter, Placidia, for seven years. He treated them well but knew their value as hostages. Eventually he released them to Constantinople. What he got in exchange we do not know, but the West Romans did appeal to the Eastern Emperor Marcian for support against the Vandals and none was forthcoming. Amongst the other notable captives from Rome was Gaudentius, Aetius’s son. Unfortunately, we do not know what became of him. When Boniface’s son, Sebastian, showed up in Vandal territory a few years earlier, he was executed when he refused to convert to Arianism. No doubt a similar fate also befell Gaudentius, whether or not a conversion option was offered.
The West’s Last Gasp
The Vandals did not have everything their own way. In the year following the sack of Rome, Ricimer came to take Aetius’ vacant place as the Western Empire’s warlord. He was the grandson of Wallia, the Gothic king who attacked the Vandals in 416, and his mother was Suevi. So there was no love lost between his family and the Vandals. He pursued war against them with new vigour, defeating a fleet of sixty Vandal ships off Corsica in 456. In the following year, his troops had some success in a skirmish against Vandal raiders in Campania.
Becoming the new power behind the western throne, Ricimer deposed the new Emperor Avitus and installed Majorian in his place. Majorian and Ricimer had plenty of other problems to deal with apart from the Vandals but the reconquest of Africa was vital for the Western Empire’s survival and became the focus of their policies. If they could retake Africa, then food and money would become available once more. If they failed… well, we know what happened in the end.
Majorian made preparations for an invasion, which he intended to launch from Spain, possibly because the more obvious crossing via Sicily had become too hot. After all, if the Vandals had managed it why could the Romans not do the same while they still held on to the western African provinces? The Gallic aristocrat and prolific writer, Sidonius Apollinaris, describes in his flowery anachronistic style how Majorian ‘felled the forests of the Apennines and filled the harbours with Roman triremes.’ By the spring of 460, the West Romans had gathered a large army and fleet of 300 ships at Cartagena.
Typically, Geiseric did not passively sit by and wait for the invasion to happen. He led his own fleet along the coast of the Mauretanias, poisoning wells and denying provisions along the potential enemy line of march – the same route he had led his people along as a young man. Then somehow – we have no details of what actually happened – he destroyed Majorian’s fleet before the West Roman invasion got off the ground. It was a stunning victory and it is a shame that we have no idea how Geiseric was able to pull it off. The result spelt the end for Majorian and any chance of future offensive action by the West Romans. The Western Empire was finished unless the East Romans came to their aid.
In 468 they did just that.
The Battle of Mercurium and the End of Empire
By this time the political landscape had changed considerably. Ricimer executed Majorian but the elderly senator, Libius Severus, whom Ricimer put up in his place, proved unacceptable to Constantinople. In 465, Severus conveniently died and negotiations began between the Eastern Emperor Leo and Ricimer for a mutually acceptable replacement. Geiseric also had a view. When he sent Valentinian’s widow and youngest daughter to Constantinople three years earlier, Placidia was married off to the senator Anicus Olybrius. With his son, Huneric, now married to the other daughter, Geiseric wanted Olybrius on the Western throne to cement his family alliance to the seat of West Roman power.
The last thing either Ricimer or Leo wanted at this time was to further strengthen the Vandal position. Quite probably, tied up in their negotiations was some sort of deal in which Constantinople got their man in Ravenna in return for once again helping the West against the Vandals. So it was that Anthemius, ‘man of the eastern senate of great wealth and high birth’ as Procopius says, became Western Emperor in 467. Anthemius had a good military record and brought Eastern troops with him when he arrived at Ravenna.
Geiseric was not happy with this and so, as Procopius again recounts: ‘kept on plundering the whole land of the (Eastern) Emperor.’
‘The Emperor Leo, wishing to punish the Vandals because of these things, was gathering an army against them; and they say that this army numbered 100,000 men. And he collected a fleet from the whole of the Mediterranean showing great generosity to both soldiers and sailors, for he feared lest from a parsimonious policy some obstacle might arise to hinder him in his desire to carry out his punishment of the barbarians.’ (Procopius)
100,000 troops seems unlikely, unless this included ships’ crews. When Belisarius sailed to Africa in 533, he had 500 ships carrying 10,000 foot soldiers and 5,000 cavalrymen with their horses. Crewing these 500 ships were 30,000 sailors (including rowers who, contrary to popular wisdom, were not slaves) and 2,000 marines. Leo’s armada was no doubt larger. The number of 1,100 ships pops up again and even if this is not entirely reliable, the army it transported would have contained around 20,000 men, so something close to 1,000 ships is quite possible.
The cost of raising such a large amphibious invasion force was enormous, amounting to 130,000lb of gold according to several contemporary sources. To put this amount into perspective, Justinian’s magnificent Saint Sophia basilica – the Hagia Sophia which still stands proudly over the Istanbul skyline today – cost 15-20,000lb of gold. Fortunately for the Vandals, the legacy of this much larger military expenditure was far shorter-lived.
The campaign started off badly for the Vandals. Marcellinus, commander of the Illyrian field army who had come west with Anthemius, drove the Vandals out of Sardinia. Meanwhile, another general, Heracleius, landed troops in Tripolitania to the east of Carthage where, according to Procopius, he easily defeated the Vandals in battle, ‘Captured the cities and leaving his ships there, led his army on foot toward Carthage.’
Geiseric, however, was probably not overly perturbed by these defeats on the peripheries. He knew that the crunch would come at Carthage and, once again, he had no intention of conducting a passive defence. He had plenty of forewarning of the impending attack, so he gathered all the ships and the best seamen he could muster at Carthage, together with the cream of his army. Although the Roman fleet probably outnumbered his, Geiseric no doubt felt that if he could destroy the enemy at sea, the odds would be more in his favour than if he waited for an engagement on land.
The main Roman fleet, commanded by Basiliscus, probably first sailed to Sicily and, after re-provisioning, then set sail for Africa sometime in the summer of 468. Carthage was well protected and had a chain over the harbour so, rather than heading directly for the city, Basiliscus put in at a place called Mercurium, which Procopius says was ‘no less than 280 stades’ (60km) from Carthage. This was probably in the shelter of the western coast of the tip of Cap Bon, in modern Tunisia. At that time of year the prevailing winds are easterly, and that would have given the Roman fleet shelter as well as keeping the wind to their backs. No doubt the plan was to offload troops and then strike overland for Carthage, as the last thing the Romans wanted was a sea battle.
However, that is exactly what Geiseric gave them. Procopius writes: ‘Arming all his subjects in the best way he [Geiseric] could, he filled his ships, but not all, for some he kept in readiness empty, and they were the ships which sailed most swiftly.’
Procopius tells us that Geiseric entered into negotiations with Basiliscus and, with a fair amount of gold, arranged a five-day truce in order to buy time to allow the wind to change, which did indeed happen. Now I am not sure how reliable the Vandal five-day weather forecast was back then, but if today’s reports are anything to go on then betting everything on a certain wind change seems unlikely. What is more probable is that as the Romans were re-provisioning in Sicily, Geiseric did everything in his power to delay them in order to complete his own preparations. Then, with the Romans anchored off Mercurium, Geiseric seized the opportunity of the wind changing to a westerly in order to strike first.
‘The Vandals, as soon as the wind had arisen for them which they had been expecting during the time they lay at rest, raised their sails and, taking in tow the boats which, as has been stated above, they had made ready with no men in them, they sailed against the enemy. And when they came near and their sails were bellied by the wind, they set fire to the boats which they were towing and let them go against the Roman fleet. And since there were a great number of ships there, these boats easily spread fire wherever they struck, and were themselves readily destroyed together with those with which they came into contact. And as the fire advanced in this way the Roman fleet was filled with tumult, as was natural. With a great din that rivalled the noise caused by the wind and the roaring of the flames, the soldiers and sailors shouted orders to one another and pushed the fire-boats off with their poles. They did the same with their own ships which were being destroyed by one another in complete disorder. Already the Vandals too were at hand ramming and sinking the ships and capturing those soldiers, together with their arms, who tried to escape.’ (Procopius)
This is the first detailed description we have of any Vandal battle. Procopius, like the soldier-historian Ammianus Marcellinus in the fourth century, is a reliable source. Although he is recounting an event which took place half a century before his time, he had first hand experience of war against the Vandals and the sea voyage from Constantinople to Africa on board a Roman fleet. The Vandal tactics he describes are perfectly believable and echo those used by the English to break up the Spanish Armada in the sixteenth century. Geiseric’s use of fire ships, taking advantage of a wind change and then swiftly followed up by a shock attack, show his genius as a military commander. Fire ships were not unknown in the ancient world, but there are no recorded instances of them being used during Geiseric’s lifetime. He must have consulted Carthage’s best sea captains for advice, and either he or his African-Roman advisors must have also delved into the archives. He could not have counted on a wind change so probably he had other plans up his sleeve as well. When the wind did change, he seized the opportunity without hesitation and dealt Rome a devastating blow.
It is worth continuing Procopius’ account to the end as we rarely get such a close, near first hand account of a fifth century battle:
‘There were also some attempts of the Romans who proved themselves brave men in the struggle. Most of all was John, who was one of Basiliscus’ generals and who had no share in his treason. For a great throng having surrounded his ship, he stood on deck, and turning from side to side kept killing very great numbers of the enemy from there. When he perceived that the ship was being captured, he leapt with his whole equipment of arms from the deck into the sea. And though Genzon, son of Geiseric, entreated him earnestly not to do this, offering him pledges and holding out promises of safety, he nevertheless threw himself into the sea, uttering this one word, that John would never come under the hands of the dogs.’
This passage follows a long classical tradition of focusing on the heroic actions of one named man and blaming defeat on the treachery of the commanding general. What it does tell us is that after the fire-ships and the ramming there was vicious hand-to-hand fighting as the Vandals boarded some of the Roman ships. The story of John’s heroic death is a personification of the actions of many unnamed Romans who probably bravely fought back and ended up in a watery grave. Procopius assigns treasonous motives to Basiliscus for not striking directly at Carthage and taking Vandal gold to give Geiseric time to act. He also suggests that the Aspar was behind the treason. Again this follows a well-trodden path. The defeat of a well-formed Roman force could not be put down to better intelligence, strategy and tactics by a mere barbarian. For Roman readers, a defeat of such enormous proportions could only be down to some treachery by disloyal Romans.
Procopius’ account leaves a couple of unanswered questions. He implies that the Roman Army was onboard ship at the time the Vandals struck. If the fleet had indeed been at anchor, and maybe for a day or more, then it seems unlikely that all troops would have remained on board. Even in today’s navies, the quality and spaciousness of onboard accommodation for foot soldiers leaves something to be desired and is never likely to get a good recommendation on TripAdvisor. Ancient transports and galleys were many times worse, with very little deck space and not even a place to sling a hammock. If Basiliscus’ fleet had anchored off Mercurium for any length of time, then it is reasonable to assume that he would have begun to offload men, horses and supplies; especially if he had been intending to proceed overland from there, as indeed Belisarius did several years later. Perhaps the off-loading had begun and as the Vandal fleet hove into view, or possibly with advance warning of their approach, the soldiers were recalled to the ships to fight off the enemy.
Irritatingly, Procopius does not tell us what happened to the surviving ships and men. Some ships must have been able to break their way out, especially the dromons which were not dependent on wind alone. There must also have still been a substantial cadre of the army left on land. Procopius only says: ‘So this war came to an end. Heracleius departed for home; for Marcellinus (in Sardinia) had been destroyed by one of his fellow officers.’ We can only imagine the scattered ships limping back to Sicily and then Constantinople, leaving any men onshore to their fate. Basiliscus did make it back, seeking sanctuary in the Haiga Sophia from the Emperor’s wrath. After Leo’s death, he briefly became Emperor of the East.
The Battle of Mercurium, if we may call it that, was surely Geiseric’s greatest single victory in open battle against Rome. It was also one of the most decisive battles of late antiquity. Yet, like so many of the Vandal achievements, it has gone virtually unremembered. Ask anyone, who knows something of the time, to name the most important battles of the late Roman Empire, and you will probably get Adrianople and Catalaunian Fields in response. The former was the victory of the Goths over the Romans in 378. It rewrote the script for Roman/barbarian interactions ever after and so it was indeed decisive. The second was Aeitus’ defeat of Attila near Troyes in 451 and it was included in Sir Edward Creasy’s Fifteen Decisive Battles of the Western World. It is true that Aetius checked the Huns and had the result been the other way around then the course of history may well have been changed. The result of Geiseric’s victory over Basiliscus in 468 did in fact change history. It ended the West Roman Empire.
The combined forces of East and West Rome had staked all they had on a single throw of the dice, and the Vandals had won. The West, without Africa, was already bankrupt and now the East no longer had the means to come to their aid. Had the Romans won, then there is every chance the West Roman Empire could have recovered enough to hang on to part of western Europe in the same way as the Eastern Empire did over the near east for another millennium.
In the aftermath of the Vandal victory at Mercurium, the Visigoths, Franks and Burgundians flexed their muscles in Gaul, expanding their territories confident in the knowledge that there would be no new army coming from Italy to oppose them. The Visigoth King Euric even sent ambassadors to the Vandals seeking to bury the hatchet after years of enmity, realising that they were now a more important power than the rump of the Western Empire. Meanwhile, the Baccaudae in Gaul and Spain took matters into their own hands while the Britons had long ago been left to their own devices.
In Italy, Ricimer turned against Anthemius and had him killed in 472. Geiseric’s son-in-law, Olybrius, was the next to be elevated to the increasingly crumbling throne, but by now its significance meant little. Olybrius and Ricimer both died shortly afterwards and the flurry of puppet emperors and new warlords that followed belong to another story. The reality was that after 468 the Western Empire no longer had the means to continue as a functioning state. For several more years she limped along on the prestige of her name, having no ability to pay the troops that claimed to serve her. In 476, Odovacar, the Scirian leader of the barbarian troops of the Italian army, decided that he had no need to rule in the name of an emperor any more and so did away with the fiction and ended the West Roman Empire forever. Had the Battle of Mercurium gone the other way, then the outcome would have been very different.
Geiseric lived on one more year after bringing about the collapse of the greatest empire the world has ever known. On his death bed, he made his family swear to a rather odd succession plan. Instead of the kingship passing to the eldest son, he insisted that it go to the oldest male of the family.
This seems a rather strange rule of succession and it caused his descendants more than a few family squabbles in later years. In all probability, Geiseric’s motivation was based on his own experience. When his half-brother Gunderic died, Geiseric became king in preference to Gunderic’s young sons, whom he later quietly did away with. This prevented leadership of the nascent Vandal-Alan coalition passing to a minor at a time when strong leadership was needed. Geiseric would also have been influenced by the problems caused when infant emperors ascended the Imperial throne, such as Valentinian II, Honorius and Valentinian III. Geiseric’s will, therefore, ensured that this would not happen to the Vandals. It also legitimized his own ascension if he had been having any twinges of death-bed guilt. As Geiseric was in his late seventies or early eighties when he died, his son Huneric was already in his fifties when he became king. While ruling out child rulers in the future, the unintended consequence of Geiseric’s will was that his successors were old men rather than young vigorous warriors. Over the next few generations of Vandal kings, this succession rule created as many problems as it solved.
Geiseric the Great?
Although very few people today would recognize his name, Geiseric deserves to be remembered as one of the greatest leaders of late antiquity. He managed to meld together several diverse groups of people into a single cohesive entity. Before he took the kingship, the Vandals had a pretty poor military record, yet Geiseric never lost a battle, even if he failed initially to take Hippo Regius and some of his forces were beaten when he was not personally present. He fought and defeated Suevi, Moors, West and East Romans by land. He led his people over thousands of miles of hostile territory; captured Carthage and Rome; and, having built up a navy from scratch, Geiseric took control of the Mediterranean and destroyed the huge East Roman invasion fleet at Mercurium, which sealed the fate of the Western Empire.
Geiseric came to power before either Aetius or Attila but he survived them both. He outlived and outwitted fourteen West Roman Emperors and five Eastern Emperors, as well as countless usurpers and powerful warlords. Above all, he held onto his conquests, while the West Roman Empire and the Empire of Attila both fell before Geiseric’s death. Whenever a threat developed, Geiseric always struck first. He took Carthage by surprise in 439. He gathered his forces and sailed for Rome immediately after Valentinian III’s murder, reaching the city long before the Romans could sort themselves out. When Majorian built a fleet in Spain, Geiseric sailed there and destroyed it before the Roman expedition got off the ground. Faced with a huge East Roman armada in 468, he used innovative tactics and exploited the weather to defeat it.
The fact that the Vandal Kingdom collapsed less than a century after he died does not in any way diminish his achievements. Although the creation of Vandal North Africa was no doubt largely down to Geiseric’s personal leadership, the fact that it survived several generations of far less worthy kings shows that Geiseric had managed to create something more than a kingdom based on force of personality alone. By way of comparison, Attila’s Hun Empire fell apart within a year of his death.
With hindsight, Geiseric’s enthusiastic support of Arian Christianity, which kept Vandals and Romans apart, probably doomed the kingdom to eventual collapse. Only by integrating with their many more numerous subjects could Vandal North Africa hope to survive in the long term. Perhaps had he been more successful in converting his subjects to the Arian faith, just as the Arabs were with Islam in the seventh century, the Vandal Kingdom may have endured. However, adherence to the Catholic Nicene Creed was simply too strong and, as we shall see, the East Roman Empire was not yet a spent force.