Barbarian invasions

“ It was perhaps not within the power of Rome to break once and for all the advance of the Barbarians. Time has been upon our side. To-day if our courage and our endurance are strong enough, if we set our face like a flint, we may once for all rid Europe of this Barbarian peril, which, now as always intent on the destruction and the loot of civilisation, pleads necessity, invokes its gods, and knows neither justice nor mercy. ”

“ When one thinks of Gaul in the second half of the 5th century, after those great streams of invasion which swept it for fifty years, one easily fancies that the flood has carried everything away, that the Roman institutions have disappeared, that private fortunes are swallowed up in a frightful catastrophe, that the barbarians have enslaved the Gallo-Romans, that social life is suspended, manufactures ruined, commerce interrupted. This picture which responds to the idea we form of a barbarian conquest, is necessarily exaggerated, because the Germanic invasion was not a conquest. ”

“ Rome fell under an invasion by foreign barbarians; so an inundation of the barbarians of the world is pouring in on us, and threatens to swallow us up; it is like the flood the dragon poured out of his mouth. ”

“ We cannot do better than compare these successive invasions, with those of the barbarous races that quarreled over the parts of the dismembered Roman empire, or with that of the Aryans, who from the farther end of Asia fell in hordes first upon India and Persia and then upon the different countries of Europe, giving to the vanquished as the price of their defeat a culture undoubtedly superior to that they had formerly possessed. ”

“ There was every reason to fear that the barbarian, with his demoniac soldiery, marching beneath the blood-red banner of plunder and slaughter, would put the inhabitants to the sword, and commit the city to the flames. It was the customary vengeance for conquerors in those days to burn every dwelling of their foes, and to put every man, woman, and child to death, excepting a few of the young and beautiful, who were reserved to groom their horses, and to fill their harems.
The senate, in terror, made desperate efforts to meet the emergency. The populace of Rome were aware of their danger. ”

“ The art of war had attained its highest degree of perfection among the Romans, when the successive invasions of the barbarians began to burst like an overflowing river over the richest of the Roman colonies. These barbarians, most of whom were natives of the Caucasian mountains, were the Iberians, who never halted till they had reached Spain ”

“ And there was also the cogent reason that it was easier to attack than to defend, that the barbarians, if left to themselves, would sooner or later invade the Empire, and that the wisest plan would be to assume the offensive. ”

“ But it was barbarians, without defensive armor, without discipline, without prestige, attacking legions which had been a thousand years learning the art of war. Proh Pudor! The soldiers of the empire must have lost their ancient spirit. They must have represented a most worthless people. We lose our pity in the strength of our indignation and disgust. A civilized nation that will yield to barbarians must deserve their fate. Noble as were the elements of character among the Germanic tribes, they were yet barbarians in arts, in manners, in knowledge, in mechanisms. ”

“ Muscular arms that had thrust the galleys through the Mediterranean, dropped the sweeps and caught up weapons as the keels grounded. The sea curled about the legs of the invaders as they dropped over the prow and swarmed ashore. Fighters, every one, asking no quarter, giving none, seeking plunder with the sword, valuing other lives not at all and their own but little.
See the women shrinking into the corners of the palaces, eyes full of fear, sensing approaching doom; men shouting and gasping, the invaders sweeping forward and cutting them down. ”

“ When we read of the destruction of the Roman Empire we console and perhaps try to fool ourselves by saying that the immense network of civilization which the Romans and their Greek associates spread across Eurasia and Africa during the historical period that began about 700 B.C. was destroyed by hordes of migrating "barbarians." When we turn to our own civilization, however, there are no barbarian hordes to take the blame. ”

“ Yet in many places, now considered barbarous, we see the remains of previous empires—and when we are able to find some comparatively authentic history which tells of the overthrow of a powerful kingdom, it is clear that the civilized people have usually been destroyed by the barbarian. The wealth of Rome tempted the hordes from the inhospitable north, just as the gold of Mexico and Peru were the causes of their decadence under the Spaniards, whose people were in themselves scarcely superior to the troops led by Alaric, Genseric, and other so called barbarians. ”

“ Here, too, dismounted from their horses, and stripping the yet warm dead of their rich arms and vestments, were thousands of bloodstained groups of the conquerors: and here, penned up, and dying man by man, was the last determined cohort which resisted the barbarian force. ”

“ The fighting men were cut down in thousands, women and children involved in the hideous massacre. The Druids were slaughtered at their rites, or tossed upon their own flaming pyres. The sanctuaries were destroyed, the sacred groves cut down, and Paulinus might hope that he had dealt a decisive blow, when jaded messengers dashed into camp with the stunning tidings that all Roman Britain was in a flame of revolt. ”

“ The Barbarians Swarming in. The Empire was now like a dying quarry, pulled down by fierce hunting packs and torn on every side. The Goths were at its throat; the tribes of Germany--Sueves, Vandals, Burgundians, Alans--had leaped the Rhine (A. D. 406) and swarmed upon its flanks, throughout Gaul and Spain. The inrush began after Stilicho, to defend Italy against Alaric and Radagaisus, had stripped the frontiers of troops. Sueves, Vandals, and Alans passed slowly through the provinces, devouring their wealth and making havoc of their civilization as they went. ”

“ The invasions of the Roman Empire by the Northern barbarians are instances of the pressure of one population upon another, not attributable, perhaps, to the will and leadership of any one individual, but produced by the united force of a great horde of individuals determined to enjoy the plunder which a superior civilization spread before them. ”

“ But the readiness with which the Germans appear to have adopted the language and customs of the Romans would tend to prove that the invaders formed but a small minority of the population. Since hundreds of thousands of barbarians had been assimilated during the previous five centuries, the great invasions of the fifth century can hardly have made an abrupt change in the character of the population. ”

“ The native races who inhabited eastern Europe were unequal to repel the savage invasions of these formidable marauders, who inundated Europe with their fierce and unsettled bands. If we may credit the account given of these tribes by the Roman writers of the period, their manners were savage, their habits of life simple, but of a roving and predatory character. By the Roman historians they are invariably styled—the Barbarians. They cultivated not commerce, they built not cities, they dwelt not in luxurious towns. ”

“ F. Guizot, History of Civilization, volume 2, lecture 8. "The invasion of the barbarians was not like the torrent which overwhelms, but rather like a slow, persistent force which undermines, disintegrates, and crumbles. The Germans were not strangers to the Roman Empire when they began their conquests. ”

“ The great invasion of the Vandals with the Alani and Suevi, which took place in 108the year 406, and was the first of those fatal inroads of the Barbarians into the very heart of the Empire which led to its final ruin, alarmed the troops which remained of the army in Britain, who, on the irruption of the Barbarians into Gaul, found that they would be cut off from the other forces of the Empire and exposed alone in their insular position to the attacks of the enemy, and led them to resort to the step which had now become the habitual tendency of a Roman army so placed—to proclaim an Emperor. ”

“ It was now that the Roman soldiers began their barbarous, not to say cowardly, assault upon them. With heavy maces, with the pike, with iron gauntlets, with stones and bricks, with clubs, with scourge, with the sword, with the helmet, with whatever came to hand, they commenced the massacre of that large concourse of human beings, who did not offer one blow in return. ”

“ The field presented a dreadful spectacle of carnage and destruction. The Britons fled; the Romans pursued; they wounded, gashed, and mangled the runaways; they seized their [9] prisoners, and, to be ready for others, butchered them on the spot. Despair and horror appeared in various shapes; in one part of the field the Caledonians, sword in hand, fled in crowds from a handful of Romans; in other places, without a weapon left, they faced every danger, and rushed on certain death. Swords and bucklers, mangled limbs and dead bodies, covered the plain. ”

“ Now, since matters stand as they do, send out an army with all possible expedition; for, as we conjecture, the barbarian will in no long time be here again to invade our territories as soon as he shall hear our message that we will do none of the things he required of us. ”

“ War, in its fairest form, implies a perpetual violation of humanity and justice; and the hostilities of Barbarians are inflamed by the fierce and lawless spirit which incessantly disturbs their peaceful and domestic society. The Vandals, where they found resistance, seldom gave quarter; and the deaths of their valiant countrymen were expiated by the ruin of the cities under whose walls they had fallen. ”

“ Bravely they fought—aye, desperately—heaping the marble floors with mangled carcasses, and dying, each man where he stood, where the sword smote or javelin pierced him, dauntless and undismayed. Long they fought, for each Roman slain cutting down ten barbarians—but by degrees they were borne back—back at the sword’s point, foot by foot—and marking every step by their own streaming gore. At the hour’s end but five were left—five, and all wounded, and one old: the father of the wretched Julia, Aurelius and his brother, and two young nobles of the province. ”

“ But in the fifth century, the southern parts of Europe began to be alarmed by the invasion of the Goths, Vandals, Huns and other fierce barbarians from the North. For three centuries, all the fertile provinces of the Roman empire were ravaged by these hardy invaders, the most of whom settled in the countries which they conquered. ”

“ The danger of employing foreign barbarians, who remained isolated amidst an innumerable population, and surrounded by hundreds of walled towns, manned [Pg 608] by their own municipal guards, was evidently less than that of entrusting legions of slaves with arms, and teaching them habits of combination and discipline. The servile wars, which inflicted a mortal wound on the Republic, would have been renewed, and would probably have soon destroyed the Empire. [12]
It is customary with historians to discourse on the impolicy of the Roman emperors in employing barbarian mercenaries ”

“ The barbarians, roused from their sleep by this unexpected assault, finding their fort broken at a point where, from the steepness of the hill, they thought themselves secure, and exaggerating in their fear the number of their assailants, who raised the most fearful shouts and yells as they rushed in, retreated from their high camp, after a faint resistance, and rushed, wherever they could find a way of escape, pell-mell down the hill. ”

“ And thus the barbarians threw away their lives in their struggles for victory, while toiling to break the compact array of our battalions. But still, in spite of the ceaseless slaughter made among them by the Romans, whose courage rose with their success, fresh barbarians succeeded those who fell; and as the frequent groans of the dying were heard, many became panic-stricken, and lost all strength. ”

“ The peaceful invasion of the Empire by barbarians, whether as slaves, traders, soldiers, or colonists, was a continuous movement from early imperial days. There is no doubt that, as it increased, it weakened the Roman power of resistance to the actually hostile raids along the frontiers that began in the second and third centuries and culminated in the collapse of the imperial government in the West in the fifth. ”

“ The Barbarians stood silent and amazed, till they were exasperated by the insulting clamors, and missile weapons, of the populace: but when patience or contempt was fatigued, they crushed the undisciplined multitude, inflicted many a shameful wound on the backs of their flying enemies, and despoiled them of the splendid armor, which they were unworthy to bear. ”

“ Every valley and ravine was defended, invisible foes rolled down masses of rock among them and a hail of arrows, and it was only when very strong bodies of archers, supported by spearmen, climbed the heights on both sides that the resistance ceased. The Romans halted for the night where they stood, but there was little sleep for them, for the woods rang with war cries in many languages. The sentries were shot or stabbed by men who crawled up close to them. ”

“ Nor were there seen among the barbaric chieftains the virtues of ancient Pagan Rome and Greece, for Christianity was nominal. War was universal; for the barbarians, having no longer the Romans to fight, fought among themselves. There were incessant irruptions of different tribes passing from one country to another, in search of plunder and pillage. There was no security of life or property, and therefore no ambition for acquisition. Men hid themselves in morasses, in forests, on the tops of inaccessible hills, and amid the recesses of valleys, for violence was the rule and not the exception. ”