THE VANDALS, GOTHS, AND HUNS

Cue (NZERS), Issue 6, 31 August 1944, Page 3

THE VANDALS, GOTHS, AND HUNS

(By

AN act of vandalism: few words in English convey so well that sense of useless, wanton, and unprovoked destruction of a beautiful — and by implication, unoffending, and historical —object, place or even a whole city. The destroyer or Vandal is usually either an enemy of the country or at least a social enemy.' /

Only a Hun. Only the Huns would do such'a thing: again a word whose .implications are fully understood and almost always applied to the people rather than to their distasteful 'or unfriendly acts." Gothic. —This word is almost invariably 'associated with one of the most inspiring and graceful architectural styles ' developed during the great age of cathedral building in northern t Europe — XII-XIV Centuries — and spreading southwards with the Angevin kings of Naples. We may call our enemies Huns or even Vandals, but never Ostrogoths, a people, nevertheless, with a fine past record of destruction to their discredit. The Vandals, Huns and Goths were three of the principal barbarian foes of the Roman Empire during its last two centuries in the west: enemies too of the infant Roman Catholic. Church when it was politically emerging from obscurity and beginning to assert its claims against the Orthodox Patriarchs of the east and "the Donatists in Africa. . It must be remembered that though the Goths and Vandals were ; nominally Christian they had become tainted with the heresy of Arius, whose opinions on the nature of, the Son had been condemned at Nicea. All three Confederations made great contributions to the decline and eclipse of the Western Roman Empire. Two, the Vandals and Goths, subsequently established kingdoms with a fair degree of culture and stability. One, the Goths, not only rescued late Vth Century Italy from anarchy, but safeguarded what remained of the culture in the old capital of Ravenna, where some

beautiful , mosaics which survive are attributable to the patronage of the Gothic kings. It is perhaps not out of place to give a few notes on these three tribes. & & A The Vandals were a Germanic tribe differing, according to Procopius, in customs and law from the Goths and Gepids. Pliny and

Tacitus both mention them and their earliest European home appears to have been in the Baltic ayea now occupied by Germany and southern Sweden. They are next heard of north, of. the Danube during , the reign of .Marcus Aurelius. *- ' After the defeat of the Germanic tribes by the Roman general Probus, the Vandals were compelled to yield their levy of conscripts to the Roman forces and many of these served with the .legions in Britain after 276 AD. ' About 326 AD, under pressure from the Goths, the Vandals joined the Sarmatians in the region of modern Hungary,' eventually giving a king to their new allies. The Gothic pressure becoming more severe, the Sarmatians and Vandals sought- the

aid of Rome under whose leadership they successfully . drove their enemies north of the Danube in 332 . The Vandals soon forgot their lesson, invaded the Roman provinces, and were again defeated. They next armed their slaves to increase their fighting power and, finally finding these new

auxiliaries beyond their control, once more sought the protection of Rome. The Emperor Constantine awarded them large tracts of land in the region of modern Thrace, Croatia and the North of Italy, hoping to use the traditional enmity of Vandal and Goth to his own advantage. In 405 AD the Vandals joined the forces of Radagasius, an Illyrian adventurer, and setting out n to plunder Italy, crossed the Po without opposition, sacking, all cities in their path before settling down to besiege Florence. * . The Roman armies which relieved Florence were insufficient to crush the remains of the Vandal and barbarian army, who were permitted together with the Suevi Alani and Burgundians, to enter Gaul and Spain, where they remained. The Vandals chose southern Spain where they settled until 429 AD, in which year Count Boniface, then commanding the Roman armies of Africa, invited them to his assistance in a rebellion into which he had been tricked. Under their king, Genseric, 50,000 effective Vandal troops landed in what is now Algeria and Tunisia, where they found considerable native unrest and great support by the Donatists, a sect whose protests against abuses and worldliness in the

church had taken a violent form and were then being actively persecuted by the Catholics. Genseric perceiving his opportunity soon seized the greater part of the province, excepting only Cathage and Hippo Regis, which latter city was promptly besieged. Hippo Regis held out until after the death of St Augustine, who was spared the triumph of the Vandals and their Donatist allies.' Eight years later with the fall of Carthage the Vandals were in possession not only of the granaries of Rome and the overseas estates of the senators, but were building up a naval force with which they attacked Sicily, sacked Palermo and raided the Lucanian coast. In 455, after the death of Valentian, the Vandals suddenly appeared off the Tiber, seized the port and warehouses of Ostia and marched on the almost undefended city of Rome where, after the intervention of the Patriarch Leo, the city was given over to 14 days of pillage by the -Vandals and Moors who carried off all the portable treasures v spared by the Goths in 410. They did not forget to rob the Empress of her jewels and her daughters of their liberty. The Vandals reigned in Africa essentially as a military aristocracy. They did not seriously affect the indigenous population and they rapidly succumbed to the enervating climate, so that ,in 530, after- only a century of occupation, they fell to the Byzantines under Belisarius, who conquered Africa in two battles. • y. # & The Huns came originally from the confines of China and appear to have migrated westward in two streams about 93 AD, one group passing towards the Volga and the other continuing along the steppes of the modern Ukraine, where they soon came into conflict with the Goths in the area between the Black Sea and the Danube. The pressure they exerted on the Goths caused the latter to cross the Danube and to seek refuge once again within the Empire, but the conditions of their entry having been broken

they attacked the Roman forces and, on the 9th August, 378, coming unexpectedly upon the isolated bodyguard and baggage train of the Emperor Valens, they attacked and overthrew its defenders, killing the Emperor. Simultaneously, the Huns themselves, indirect authors' of the Roman disaster, became preoccupied with internal dissensions which lasted until the turn of the Vth Century. By 440, King Attila, having assassinated his brother, ruled the whole area from the Ukraine to the Baltic, the Gepids .and Ostrogoths acknowledging his leadership. He set out in 441 to ravage the Eastern Roman Empire from the Black Sea to the Adriatic, and so unskilful was the defence that the legions who could have held the narrow passes in Macedonia and Thrace were wasted in small actions on the confines, of the empire. - The Western Empire could offer no assistance as it was fully occupied with the Vandals in Sicily: the Eastern Empire was compelled to yield to an ignominious > treaty ceding all territory north of the Danube and paying an indemnity of 96,000 ounces of gold and \ an annual tribute of a further 33,600 ounces. Between the frontiers and the walls of Constantinople no fewer than 70 cities were sacked and erased by the Huns, only such women as were desired in the camps being spared. Attila established a •. large camp on the Danube, near modern Belgrade, and for some months conducted negotiations with the emperor through the intermediary of a series of embassies, whose double■dealing and treachery are a model of their kind. Luckily for the Eastern Emperor Theodosius, who had plotted the death of Attila, the Huns decided upon an invasion of the west. Attila himself, delighting in the title if indeed it was used in those days of « The Scourge of God,» moved rapidly across the Rhine and the Seine. When 800 miles from his base he besieged Orleans, only to be interrupted when on the point of entering the city by the approach of a large Roman

army under Aetius, who had cunningly persuaded the Visigoths to assist him against their hereditary foes. J Attila retreated rapidly towards the good cavalry country in the Marne Plains, near Chalons. In the battle which followed the Visigothic king was killed and the Huns • retired within their laager, 160,000 dead being left on both sides and the Roman army of Aetius in possession of the field. The plausible Aetius persuaded the Goths do retire and Attila to decide upon a retreat across the Rhine, only to return in the following year to northern Italy, where he erased the city of Aquileia, whose inhabitants, together with those of Parvia and Milan, sought refuge in ' the lagoons at the mouth 7 of the Po, thus founding the city of Venice. In 453, to the delight of the Romans, Attila on the night of the last of his many marriages died suddenly of a ruptured aneurism and the many children of his numerous wives successfully occupied the Huns in internal dissension for many years. . Reading the old authorities and allowing for e the exaggerations of both state and church, one is compelled to accept the view that the Vandals and the Huns accom-

plished as much with fire and pick as the modern Hun with explosives and the Luftwaffe. * V « In relating this brief outline of the Vandals "and the Huns, much of the story of the Goths has been told. One branch, the Ostrogoths, were for a long time submerged by the Hun.

The Visigoths, assisted by their other tribes, after -first ravaging the Eastern Empire and sacking Rome in 410 —their comparatively disciplined' army was only allowed six days of pillage at a time when Rome was richer than in 455 — gradually settled in Spain and southern France, where a capital was established at Toulouse. Their Burgundian associates • retained the territory east of the Rhone valley. The Goths assisted the Romans against the Hun and at the close of the century after Odoacor had deposed the last emperor Romulus Augustulus in 476, -the Ostrogoths under Theodoric usurped the powers but not the title of Emperor and reigned with success and moderation over a recovering Italy from the capital at Ravenna. The Gothic court of Ravenna did much to stimulate the moribund arts and some of their work survives to this day. The mausoleum is intact and the mosaics are especially fine in their colour-

ing. ■ In southern France the Gothic kingdom became more stable and much of the better elements of the Gallo-Roman culture survived. It is indeed recorded by Sidonius Appolinaris that some of the Germanic chieftains even paid for estates they had seized fifteen and twenty years earlier, no doubt paying with looted Roman gold. The Goths alone appear to have contributed a permanent element to the populations of the former Western Roman Empire and even they rapidly lost their language. As with the Norman conquerors of England, they were gradually absorbed by the original population. _ . ■ From these brief notes it can be seen that there is some basis, for the way in which the names Vandal, Huns and Goth have come to be applied at the present time and their usage is, neither 7so inaccurate nor so unjust as might be supposed.