9
AN UNNECESSARY WAR
By Bill Fawcett
Turning potential allies into enemies has a long tradition.
The Battle of Adrianople doomed the Western Roman Empire (Rome) and crippled the Eastern Empire (Constantinople). The painful fact is that this was a battle that the Romans never needed to fight against an enemy that could well have become a valued ally.
The Goths were a people that lived north of the Eastern Empire. They were considered by the Romans to be barbarians and that image has come down through history so strongly that modern rebellious and black-clad youth identify themselves as “Goths.” The reality was quite different. Before being displaced by the Huns, the Goths were a productive and relatively civilized people. They were unlike the Romans culturally, but were nonetheless accomplished in the arts, language, and commerce. Prosperous, the Visigoths actually had a higher literacy rate than did the western Romans. Still, they were also a military-oriented culture, with the heavily armored, mounted warrior typifying its upper classes. The Goths were a powerful, proud, and generally successful people. More so at this point than a few generations later when they completed their conquest of the Western Roman Empire and sacked Rome itself.
Goth tribes first fought against the Romans, not as invaders, but while taking sides in a dynastic battle for control of Constantinople. The Tervingi Goths sided with Procopius, whose claim to the throne was good enough to persuade many of the soldiers of the current emperor, Flavius Julius Valens Augustus, to defect to him. Eventually Procopius was defeated. After a short delay in 369, during which he solidified his control, Valens sought out and decisively defeated the Tervingi and the Greuthungi Goths, who had allied with the usurper.
Valens then turned east, trying to recover lost territory from the resurgent Persians and dealing with a number of local revolts. While he did this, in 375, another “barbarian” tribe began to drive the Goths westward and off their land. These true barbarians were the same Huns who would wreak destruction across both parts of Rome a century later. Evicted from their lands, as many as 200 thousand Visigoths (western Goths) were forced against the Roman border. Their leader, Fritigern, knew they needed a home, but did not want to fight the Huns on one side and the Romans on the other. Even then, two-front wars were a bad idea. He offered an alliance with Valens in exchange for land in Dacia and enough food for his people to survive until new crops could be harvested. The Roman emperor saw in them a new source of military power and agreed.
If only the Roman officials had seen the benefits of the Goths becoming part of the empire. Instead they saw only opportunity for personal gain. With Valens distracted by his own eastern wars, rather than welcome the Visigoths, the local commanders, Lupinicus and Maximus, began to exploit them and, by doing so, took away the Roman Empire’s best chance of returning to glory and power. These corrupt Romans slowed the transfer of the lands, denied the promised food, and charged exorbitant rates for what food was available. They generally made life as miserable as possible for the Goths. It soon became apparent that the goal of the Romans was to weaken and (eventually) break the Visigoths—hammer at them until they were so desperate that the entire tribe would submit to slavery rather than allow their families to starve. The Romans would then sell them as slaves.
But the Visigoths soon realized what was happening. Since they had retained all of their weapons and warhorses, they reacted exactly as would be expected. First, there were small battles, as groups of Visigoths stole food. The Goths drove back the Romans, thrusting their way into the empire in search of food and other needs. Another tribe (the almost equally numerous eastern Goths, or Ostrogoths) was being harried by the Huns. They followed in the wake of the advancing Visigoths as they forced their way into Roman lands. The Roman army resisted, but in 377 was defeated by the Visigoths in a pitched battle. Valens finally had to take notice and march a large army to meet the threat his own generals had caused.
The final battle occurred near Adrianople in today’s Bulgaria. Valens, a normally astute commander, made a number of mistakes. Fritigern agreed again to discuss peace and proper treatment of his followers. He needed a home for his people more than a war with Rome. But once the two armies faced each other, Valens seems to have decided to attack. There was the mutual hate created by the raids and battles already fought that, perhaps, the two wiser leaders could not overcome. There are some stories about Valens’s ambassadors firing or being shot by arrows as they approached the wagon laager containing the Visigoths’ women and children (and many thousands of infantry). But something started the battle at a time that seemed to have surprised both sides. It was particularly bad timing for Valens. Twenty thousand more Roman troops were marching toward the battlefield, but were several days away. Yet Valens choose to attack.
It appears the Roman emperor thought, incorrectly, that half of the Visigoths’ army was away on a raid. This meant that he temporarily had the larger army and the only mounted forces. Valens ordered his cavalry to attack the laager. The Roman horsemen pressed it hard, but could not break through the circle of wagons. Then the Visigoth cavalry returned, having only been a few hours’ ride away grazing their horses in fresh pastures. Their anger at yet another Roman betrayal and an attack on their families had to be extreme. Suddenly outnumbered two to one by the more heavily armored Visigoth horsemen, the Roman riders fled. This left the Roman infantry to face the enemy alone. The legions of Caesar could have stood and even won such a battle, but the Roman legions of this era were poorly trained and less well armed. With the Visigoth horsemen attacking them from every side and an equal number of Visigoth foot soldiers slamming into their front and pinning them, the Roman infantry fell apart. The result was a slaughter, with all forty thousand infantry either slain or enslaved. Rome never recovered militarily.
Instead of being sheltered and incorporated into the defense of the Roman Empire, the Goths were turned into enemies. Enemies that went on to sweep through the Western Roman Empire—and eventually a Visigoth chief was able to declare himself the emperor of Rome.
Valens made the mistakes that lost the battle of Adrianople, but the mistake that doomed all of Rome was that of Lupinicus and Maximus, and the other greedy Romans who could see the Visigoths only as a source of personal wealth. They made the mistake of mistreating and betraying the Visigoths, and forcing them into a war and battle against Constantinople that the Goths did not want. This changed the course of history, and not for the better. If they had just been honorable men or used sense when they saw how powerful an enemy the Goths could be, it would today be a better world. The possibilities for Rome, had they honored their agreement and formed a firm alliance with the two Goth peoples, would have been immeasurable—it would have changed the face of history. The Visigoth army as an ally would have nearly doubled the number of defenders protecting the bisected Roman Empire. The dynamic and strong character of the Goths, educated and relatively wealthy, could have revived Roman values and provided a new source of wealth and taxes. When the real barbarians struck, and the Huns were barbarians in every way conceivable, Rome might have been capable of holding them off without being crippled. In reality, a joint Visigoth and western Roman army did finally defeat and drive away Attila and his Huns in 451 at the Battle of Châlons. But it was only a temporary alliance. After another century of war and distrust, what could have been a civilization-preserving alliance was no longer really possible.
As in all the scenarios where the stability and culture that ancient Rome offered is preserved, the dark age might have never occurred. Society, science, medicine, and trade could have continued to progress and the centuries of the dark ages might instead have been more like those of the Enlightenment. The march of civilization would not have become a retreat if the Roman generals had just kept their word and made allies, instead of enemies, of the Goths. If the Visigoths had helped preserve rather than destroy Rome, today calling someone a Goth would have a far different meaning.