Alemanni

“ A barrier so respectable was seldom violated, and the barbarians often turned against each other their disappointed rage. The Goths, the Vandals, the Gepidæ, the Burgundians, the Alemanni, wasted each other’s strength by destructive hostilities: and whosoever vanquished, they vanquished the enemies of Rome. The subjects of Diocletian enjoyed the bloody spectacle, and congratulated each other, that the mischiefs of civil war were now experienced only by the barbarians. ”

“ CHAPTER XIV. We will join the drinking Germans above, rather than the Tribune raging in impotent wrath below the marble floor.
"Welcome in victory, ye brave Bajuvaren!"
"For that we thank you, ye clever Alemanni!"
"Did we not entice them out well?" said another comrade in arms. "First of all we--that is, Liuthari, our famous king's famous son, and two of his followers--surprised a post of five Moorish horsemen, whom the Tribune of the Capitol had sent out against us as spies. But we know the forests better than those brown Africans. Four were dead, or prisoners, before they were aware of it. ”

“ They had pushed their marauding excursions as far as the coasts of Greece and Ionia. In the middle of the fourth century they were united, with their allied tribes, under the sovereignty of the East Gothic chieftain, Hermanric. A second league of Germanic peoples was the Alemanni, which included the formidable tribes called by Cæsar the Suevi, and who, after various incursions, had established themselves on the Upper Rhine, in what is now Baden, Würtemberg, and north-east in Switzerland, and in the region southward to the summits of the Alps. ”

“ Besides it is very usual for one part of a nation to give the name to the whole: so all the Germani were called Alemanni by the French, and yet this, according to the old nomenclature, only applied to the Suabians and the Swiss. Although Tacitus did not actually know the origin of the name of the Germani, he said something which supports my opinion, when he observed that it was a name which inspired terror, taken or given ob metum. ”

“ After their subjection by Rome these races became Romanized and shared the fortunes of the empire. Their position on and about the roads by which the central Alps are most easily crossed laid them especially open to inroads, and before the end of the 3d century the Alemanni had traversed the country. ”

“ The early Christian centuries are full of the sound of conflict. In the fourth century the principal tribes in Western Germany were the Franks and the Alemanni, the former of whom maintained a constant strife with the Saxons, who pressed heavily upon their rear. ”

“ But Adalo continued: "Do it, do it half voluntarily; do it for the most valuable compensation; for I tell you, it must be done very soon. Then it will be exacted without compensation in return. Do it willingly; for there is a proud prediction current among our people: the Alemanni will some day pasture their horses from the snows of the Alps to the woods of the Vosges."
Ausonius rose indignantly. "Not another word! For our sole answer take to your people the old Roman war-cry, 'Woe to the Barbarians!'"
"Woe to the Barbarians!" repeated the army leaders, with loud shouts. ”

“ North of the Saxons were the Danes and other peoples of Scandinavia,—Teutons all, but a separate branch of the Teutonic household. To bold and warlike tribes, now banded together, such as were the Franks and the Alemanni, the Rhine, with its line of Roman cities and fortresses, could form no permanent barrier. When they crossed it, they might be driven back ”

“ In its widest sense it was used to denote all the countries incorporated into the Frankish Empire, or even held in subjection to it, in which the German language and population prevailed; in this acceptation it included therefore the territory of the Alemanni, Bavarians, Thuringians, and even that of the Saxons and Frises. In its more common and proper sense it meant that part of the territory of the Franks themselves which was not included in Neustria. It was subdivided into Upper Austrasia on the Moselle, and Lower Austrasia on the Rhine and Meuse. ”

“ They even furnished a body of auxiliary cavalry to the imperial army.
But while Aurelian was thus engaged, Italy and even Rome were endangered by the attack of another multitude of the same German race. The Alemanni, a people of which we know next to nothing except the stock to which they belonged, [Pg 359] [48] suddenly crossed the Roman frontier, and made their way as far as the north of Italy. The armies of the Empire were engaged elsewhere, and the invaders plundered the country without hindrance. They had even made their way back to the Danube when Aurelian encountered them. ”

“ High Germans of the Roman period.—Alemanni, Suevi (?) , Burgundians (?) .
The spread of the Teutonic populations, as contrasted with the Keltic, Slavonic, and Roman, in general, combined with the numerous displacements of particular portions of the German tribes themselves, makes the question of descent excessively complicated. Perhaps the best present representatives of the High-Germanic division are the modern—
HESSIANS.
Locality.—Hesse, conterminous with the Franks, Saxons, and Thuringians. ”

“ The senators, however, succeeded in confronting the audacious invaders with a force which checked their advance, and they "retired into Germany laden with spoil."
E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 10. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25717
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ALEMANNI: A. D. 270.
Invasion of Italy.
Italy was invaded by the Alemanni, for the second time, in the reign of Anrelian, A. D. 270. They ravaged the provinces from the Danube to the Po, and were retreating, laden with spoils, when the vigorous Emperor intercepted them, on the banks of the former river. ”

“ They neglect their duty or fail to perform it; the Alemanni take the opportunity, break through the cordon of troops which had been formed round them, and make their way back [Pg 360] to Italy. We next hear of them as ravaging the territory of Milan. Aurelian orders the legions to follow them with all the speed that they could manage, and hastens himself to defend Italy with a quickly moving force, partly composed, it is interesting to observe, of auxiliary cavalry levied from the new settlers in Dacia. ”

“ The early members of the Nordic race in order to reach the Mediterranean world had to pass through the Alpine populations and must have absorbed a certain amount of Alpine blood. Therefore the Umbrians in Italy and the Gauls of western Europe, while predominantly Nordic, were more mixed especially in the lower classes with Alpine blood than were the Belgæ or Cymry or their successors, the Goths, Vandals, Burgundians, Alemanni, Saxons, Franks, Lombards, Danes and 146Northmen, all of whom appear in history as Nordics of the so-called Teutonic group. ”

“ Franks, the Anglo Saxons, the Scandinavians, and the chief tribes of
Germany,—embraced at the outset the Catholic faith.
CONVERSION OF THE FRANKS.—The Franks, when they entered the empire, like the Angles and Saxons when they landed in Britain, were still pagans. Christianity gained way very slowly among them until a supposed interposition by the Christian God in their behalf led the king and nation to adopt the new religion in place of their old faith. The circumstances were these. In the year 496 of our era, the Alemanni crossed the Rhine and fell upon the Franks. A desperate battle ensued. ”

“ Mainz, Worms, Speyer, Strasburg, Basel, Constanz, Bregenz, lay within their territory. ... The Vosegen range was a bulwark on the side of Gaul, waste lands separated them from the Burgundians, who were settled about the Jura and in the south-west part of Helvetia, and the Moselle divided them from the Ripuarian Franks. It is unknown whether they formed a state distinct from their brethren on the right of the Rhine; probably such was the case, for the Alemanni, at all times, were divided into separate tribes, between which, however, was generally a common union ”

“ The village of Haute Allemagne is situated at the distance of about a league to the south of Caen. Mention of it is to be found in the latin charters of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, under the appellation of Alamannia, or Alemannia; and the older historians contend that it derived this name from having been the site of a colony of the Alani, a Scythian tribe, who ravaged a portion of Gaul in the early years of the fifth century, and afterwards, with the consent of the Roman emperors, established themselves in various parts of the country. ”

“ There is direct evidence in favour of their having been German tribes in England anterior to A.D. 447.—a. At the close of the Marcomannic war, [7] Marcus Antoninus transplanted a number of Germans into Britain.
b. Alemannic auxiliaries served along with Roman legions under Valentinian. [8]
c. The Notitia utriusque Imperii, [9] of which the latest date is half a century earlier than the epoch of Hengist, mentions, as an officer of state, the Comes littoris Saxonici per Britannias; his government extending along the coast from Portsmouth to the Wash. ”

“ Before Charlemagne, Almayne was still Germany—that is to say, a shapeless chaos of pagan or Christian tribes, but all barbarian, enemies of one another, united by no single tie. There were Franks, Saxons, Thuringians, and Bavarians. After him there was a German people, and there will be a kingdom of Germany. It was great glory for him to have created a people—a glory which few conquerors have acquired; for they destroy much more than they found. ”

“ The Alleman'ni were another confederation of German tribes, which took its name from including a great variety of nations. It is scarcely necessary to remark, that the name is compounded of the words all and man which still continue unchanged in our language. Their territories extended between the Danube, the Rhine, and the Maine, and they rendered themselves formidable to the Romans by their frequent inroads into Gaul and Italy during the third and fourth centuries. ”

“ Counting an average of 100,000 for any single nation, the total population of Germania Magna would have amounted to five millions. This is a rather high figure for a barbarian group of nations, although 10 inhabitants to the square kilometer or 550 to the geographical square mile is very little when compared to present conditions. But this does not include the whole number of Germans then living. We know that German nations of the Gothic race, Bastamians, Peukinians and others, lived all along the Carpathian mountains away down to the mouth of the Danube. ”

“ The majority of the great Italians who, during the Renaissance, made northern Italy the most enlightened country in the world, were the descendants of the northern conquerors, who during the great migration settled in that part of Europe. [7] Likewise a close inquiry would probably show that the great thinkers and writers of middle and southern Germany, where the brachycephalic Alpine race forms the bulk of the population, are the descendants of the long-headed Teutons who settled among them. These northern peoples surpass all others in vigor, energy and self-control ”

“ The tribe was continually engaged in conflicts with the Romans, the most famous encounter being that at Strassburg, in which they were defeated by Julian, afterwards emperor, in the year 357, when their king Chonodomarius was taken prisoner. Early in the 5th century the Alamanni appear to have crossed the Rhine and conquered and settled Alsace and a large part of Switzerland. ”

“ In 1440 Aleman obtained the support of the emperor Sigismund and of the duke of Milan to his views, and proclaiming the deposition of Pope Eugenius IV., placed the tiara upon the head of Amadeus VIII., duke of Savoy (henceforward known as antipope Felix V.) . Eugenius retorted by.excommunicating the antipope and depriving Aleman of all his ecclesiastical dignities. In order to make an end of the schism, Felix V. finally abdicated on Aleman's advice, and Nicholas V., who had succeeded in 1447, restored the cardinal to all his honours and employed him as legate to Germany in 1449. ”

“ Here we lived amid a population of about four or five hundred Germans, principally from Pomerania, on the shores of the Baltic, a peaceful, thrifty, quiet set of beings, who, content with the little interests revolving around themselves, never troubled their heads about the great events of war or politics. And here in all likelihood should I have been content to pass my days, when an accidental journey I made to Albany, to receive some letters for the Pfarrer, once more turned the fortune of my life. ”

“ Being surrounded by most of the leading nations of the Continent, the Germans have been involved, more than any other people, in the general history of Europe. Of all their neighbors, the Scandinavians are most nearly allied to the Germans. Both are branches of the Teutonic race. But the Germans are also connected, although not so closely, with the other surrounding peoples. All, if we except the Magyars or Hungarians, who are Turanians, belong to the great Aryan family.”—Sime.
“Ancient authors mention several German tribes, as well as their dwelling places, with greater or less precision. ”

“ You learn to submit to this fate in Northern Italy, however ungracefully, for it is the one that constantly befalls you outside of the greatest cities. The people know about two varieties of foreigners—the Englishman and the German. If, therefore, you have not rosbif expressed in every lineament of your countenance; if the soles of your boots are less than an inch thick, and your clothes are not reduced in color to the invariable and maddening tone of the English tweed,—you must resign yourself to be a German. ”