CHAPTER VII

THE PASSING OF THE BARBARIAN

We left the Vandals in 450 established in possession of all the African shore that had belonged to the Western Empire. The place of chief importance that fell into their hands was Carthage, that city from which so much trouble had come to Rome several centuries before. And just as had happened before, so it happened again now. The Carthaginian, descendants of those famous sea-rovers, the Phœnicians, had made Carthage, with its fine harbour, the headquarters of a fleet which went raiding and marauding all over the Mediterranean Sea. So too, now, the king of the Vandals assembled a great fleet which acted in just the same piratical way. Its first act was to defeat, so completely as practically to destroy it, the fleet of the Western Empire, and thereafter it became the terror of the Mediterranean, and its act of final and most unbearable insolence was when it came into the Tiber and the Vandals attacked and sacked Rome itself. This was in 455.

It is only a few years before, that we heard of the Goths "sacking" Rome. We may begin to ask ourselves what exactly is meant by this "sacking"; for we may wonder that there was very much left, after a while, to sack.

We have to remember, however, just as we had to remember when we were learning about the dreadful suffering of the Britons at the hands of the Anglo-Saxons, that all we know of what happened is what is {44} told us by the sufferers of the "sacking." Probably the ferocity of it was a little exaggerated. You may have heard the phrase "an act of Vandalism," as describing some savage and senseless destruction of beautiful buildings and other works of art. And that description is taken from what the Vandals are supposed to have done when they sacked Rome. But the true story seems to be that they really did not destroy the most beautiful things in Rome, which were generally the temples to the old Greek gods. What they did destroy were the Christian churches. And they took away all the gold and silver they could lay their hands on, no doubt. But they destroyed the Christian churches just because they were pagans, and because Christianity was to them a false religion. It was a mistaken religious zeal which seems to have impelled them to do it. And since the men who have handed down the story were Christians, it is likely enough that the destruction would be described as somewhat worse than it really was.

Doubtless it was bad enough; and the Vandals were not at all pleasant pagans. They persecuted the Christians wherever they laid hands on them.

Now, we may follow the fortune of these Vandals until they disappear from the great story altogether. They continued their bad work as pirates and persecutors of the Christians for the best part of a hundred years; and then there came against them a very great general of the Eastern Empire, Belisarius. In a hard-fought battle, Belisarius at length gained the victory over the Vandal king. It was a victory so complete that he could impose what terms he pleased on the conquered people. The whole fighting force of the Vandals that still survived was taken captive to Constantinople, where it was formed into a mounted guard and sent to fight the Empire's battles against that still unconquered enemy, the Parthian, on the Eastern boundary.

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Thus the Vandals were destroyed, and their very name passes out of the story after contributing to it one of its most remarkable episodes. Let us briefly recapitulate their story. Starting from somewhere on the shores of the Baltic, they come across Gaul and down into and through Spain, westward and southward. Then, crossing into Africa, they turn eastward again and become a great and terrible force, and finally are vanquished and taken yet further eastward to Constantinople and to Parthia, disappearing out of history at a point far eastward of their original starting-place for their westward journey. They have gone from the Baltic to the Black Sea, after travelling to the farthest western confines of the world as then known in order to get there.

So vanish, then, the Vandals.

[Sidenote: The Visigoths]

Now as to those Visigoths, under whose pressure the Vandals were only too thankful to get out of Spain, we have seen them establishing their Kingdom of Toulouse, in the south of Gaul, and surging over the Pyrenees so that they made themselves masters of most of Spain. At first we find them making treaty with Rome under conditions which confess the superior sovereignty of the Roman Empire. But by the year 470 or so they have thrown off all pretence of regarding Rome as their mistress. They deal with her as an independent monarchy.

But though their kingdom is an independent kingdom, it is a kingdom based on the Roman model for its government. Its laws are the Roman laws. It has adopted Roman manners and Roman ways of thought. It does not, like the Anglo-Saxon government in Britain, impose German customs. It even gives to Roman habits and thought a vigour which they have lost in Rome itself. In Spain, at all events, their kingdom is to endure for the best part of three centuries, and it will then be ended by an actor who {46} has not yet appeared at all in the great story--the Saracen.

With that we may now dismiss the Visigoths from the story. The main scenes in which they took the chief role have been sketched, and they may go behind the scenes with the Vandals. Their influence, however, and their descendants remain: their effect on the story far greater and more lasting than that of the Vandals.

Very soon after the date 470, or so, of the Visigoths claiming independence, there happened in Rome itself an event which was full of interest and of meaning in the story. A barbarian, by name Odoacer, was appointed King of Italy. That in itself was a notable appointment. What made it more notable still is that, though calling himself King of Italy, he did not also call himself emperor.

It was an acknowledgment that the Western Empire had ceased to exist or had ceased to be governed from Rome. Odoacer recognised the emperor at Constantinople as the one and only emperor; and accepted from him an official title, that of "Patrician," showing clearly that he regarded himself as owing some sort of service and obedience to the emperor of the East. It made Rome and Italy seem of no greater importance than other provinces or kingdoms, such as the kingdom of the Visigoths with its capital at Toulouse, or that of the Vandals in Africa.

[Sidenote: Attila the Hun]

Under Odoacer, as king, Italy suffered invasion from yet another tribe of barbarians, from those Ostrogoths, related to the Visigoths, whom we saw under Attila fighting against their cousins at Chalons. The power of the Hun was so broken by the defeat of Chalons that these Ostrogoths were then able to free themselves from their dependence. Likely enough, however, the Hun still pressed hard on them from the {47} east, for although Attila's strength was shattered it was not wholly destroyed. Two years after the Chalons battle the "Scourge of God," as he was named, was at length killed, and most of the horde that he led was either exterminated or lost among the people of the land in which they made their last stand as fighters; but even this great host of Attila's we have to look on as only a "swarm," so to call it, from the main "hive" which still lived and multiplied somewhere in that immense territory which we now call Russia. Even three or four hundred years later we hear of Rome and Italy being menaced by Huns from the north at the same time as the Saracens are threatening from the south. For the moment, however, their defeats on the northern border of Italy, following on their disaster at, or near, Chalons, have sent them behind the scenes of our story. The Eastern Empire was threatened with an attack by them on Byzantium itself about ninety years later than the date of Attila's death; but this menace was dealt with successfully by that Belisarius whom we have already seen victorious over the Vandals. As he thrust the Vandals, so also it was he who thrust the Huns, out of the story.

But now, in Odoacer's reign, the Ostrogoths, free of the Huns, but still perhaps pushed westward by them, appear in North Italy. This happened in the year 488. Odoacer marched against them, but was heavily defeated, and was killed by the very hand of Theodoric, the famous king of these Eastern Goths. It was with the full knowledge and approval of the Eastern Emperor that these Goths thus invaded Italy, although the King of Italy had owed his kingdom in the first place to the Emperor at Constantinople. After their victory the Goths established themselves in North Italy, and this kingdom of the Ostrogoths in Italy lasted for about fifty years. By that time {48} there was certainly no force at the disposal of Rome that could drive them out; but the Eastern Empire then moved against them. Once more it was that great Byzantine general Belisarius who had command of the Empire's forces. Once more he was completely victorious. The Ostrogoths were compelled to relinquish their hold of the Italian territory; and so they too, having played their part, pass behind the scenes.

While they were in Italy they had stretched hands across the Alps, and had come into touch again with their kinsmen, those Western Goths that had their Kingdom of Toulouse in Southern Gaul. But even before the Eastern Goths were pushed out of the Italian kingdom that they had conquered, the hold of the Western Goths on their kingdom in Gaul had been loosened, the extent of that kingdom had been diminished, and they were left with little on the northern side of the Pyrenees--that is, with little outside of what we now call Spain.

This loss was inflicted on them by that tribe or nation of Germanic barbarians of which I have several times made mention already, the Franks.

As of the Goths, so too of these Franks, there were more than one tribe or nation, but the tribe which is most important in the story is that of the Salian Franks. It was so called either because it came from the River Saal, or, more likely, because it came from the "salt," the "saline" sea. You may have heard of the "Salic Law," which provides that the right of succession to the throne shall not be given to a son by relationship through the mother with the previous occupant of the throne. It must come through the father--"in the male line," as is said. That was one of the ancient laws of these Salic, or Salian Franks.

About the middle of the fourth century, that is to say about, or a little after, 350, they were invading Gaul, in the north, but were checked and defeated, {49} and after their defeat were allowed to settle north of the Rhine, under treaty with the Romans. Fifty years later, the Roman Empire had so much need of its legions to protect itself from the south, that the legions of the Rhine, like those of Britain, were withdrawn.

[Sidenote: Clovis, King of the Franks]

Upon that the Franks claimed, and took, their independence. Within another fifty years we find them established as far south as the River Somme. They had fought, as we have seen, with Romans and Visigoths against the Huns, the common enemy of them all, at Chalons, in 451. Only a few years later they were fighting with the Romans and against the Visigoths further south; but by 480 they asserted their independence, and the next year the famous Frankish King Clovis came to the throne, and under him the Franks took possession of nearly the whole of Gaul. He united all the tribes of the Franks under his sovereignty.

The only parts of Gaul which were not now under his rule were the kingdom of Burgundy, as it was called, after a German tribe, the Burgundi, coming from the east, like all the rest of them, and a piece of Provence, in the south, which is all that the Visigoths were able to retain on the north of the Pyrenees of their Kingdom of Toulouse.

Terrific and most picturesque warriors were these Franks, according to the accounts that we have of them, very tall men and strong, with long red or fair hair. For defence they had a wicker shield, light so that they could move it quickly. One of their chief weapons was the throwing axe, with which they were very accurate and expert. They had bows and arrows and a long spear. They wore breeches, close fitting, as far down as the knee, and a tunic that was belted about the waist with a broad leather girdle adorned with metalwork of iron and silver. Brooches kept it fastened.

Thus they came conquering; and the parent stock {50} remarked above all the rest of the conquering and invading barbarians, because they came to stay. Doubtless many of the others stayed also, but not as conquerors.

There is one other tribe of barbarian invaders for us to notice--the Lombards.

But I fear that you will be rather tired of all these different nations to whom I am introducing you. Their comings seem very confusing. It is difficult to remember which came before another and where they went and what they did. The biggest things done were, I suppose, first--though not first of all in point of time--that wonderful pilgrimage of the Vandals. That is perhaps the strangest story of all. Secondly, the invasion of the Visigoths, establishing their kingdom temporarily in South Gaul and more permanently in Spain, was really more important, because it was more lasting in the form that it gave to the great story. And then, thirdly, this Frankish dominion in Gaul is of great interest to us. It is the beginning of modern France.

But they are very puzzling--the comings and the vanishings. A friend of mine gave me what we call a _memoria technica_, to help me, and you, in remembering the order in which the different nations of the barbarians came in from the east. You know what a _memoria technica_ is: some words easy to remember which recall to our minds something that we find difficult to remember. These words, as he gave them to me, are: "Visiting friends' houses very often frankly laborious."

Do you see what that means? I am afraid he must have found himself rather bored, at times, when his friends were doing their best to entertain him. He does not seem to have been as grateful as he should have been. But the suggestion of the words is as follows: "Visiting" is for Visigoths, who were the {51} first to come west, in any force; then "friends" is for Franks--they came very early in the story of the barbarian invasions, but they came in much greater number later, as is indicated by the later "frankly." "Houses" is for those Huns, defeated at Chalons, "very," for the Vandals, "often" for the Ostrogoths, and "laborious" for the Lombards.

[Illustration: THE IRON CROWN OF THE LOMBARDS. The iron part of this crown, supposed to have been forged from one of the nails of the Cross, is the narrow circlet embedded in its interior.]

It is not quite perfect, because some of them came and came again at different times. I believe that the Franks were really the first of all to break through the Roman wall of Empire; but on the whole it roughly represents the order of their coming. It is easily remembered and is a great help.

Let us see now what it was that these latest comers, the Lombards, did, and who they were.

They were a tribe that lived up north of the {52} Visigoths and east of the Saxons and they were called Longo-bardi, long beards. They came last of all the Germanic tribes, for it is not till 568 that we hear of them in Italy, though they had drifted southward and had settled along the North of the Danube long before. But though the latest, they seem also to have been the rudest and least advanced of these tribes. They never became Romanised, as the others did, never learned any civilisation from the civilised people whom they conquered. But they came in great force and made their conquering way right down to the Tiber. They settled then and formed a kingdom in the North of Italy, more or less where Lombardy now is. They were still so powerful some two centuries later that we find them taking Ravenna, which was within the boundaries of the Eastern Empire and was a place of great importance with a fine harbour.

It was the increasing power and savage rapacity of the Lombards which led to an incident that was of the very greatest importance in the story. The Pope--and notice this particularly, for it is the very first time that we have had occasion to name him in our story--the Pope begged for help, against the Lombards, of the King of the Franks. And this assistance was given him, at first by Pepin and afterwards by Charlemagne--the greatest of all the Frankish kings--and the result of that assistance was that Charlemagne was triumphantly victorious and in 774 took to himself the title of King of the Lombards. The real result was that the Kingdom of Lombardy, in any independent sense, was at an end.

So now we may sum up these invasions of the various barbarian tribes and see what they amounted to and what effect they had on our story.

The Visigoths continued on in Spain until the Saracens and the Moors came to overthrow their Spanish kingdom in 710.

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The Huns ceased, for some centuries, to be a danger to the West about 450, though at least a hundred years later they were a menace to Constantinople and the East, and even as late as 900 they were again threatening Northern Italy. The Vandals went out of the story, in the curious way that we have seen, in 533.

About 550 the Ostrogothic kingdom in North Italy was likewise ended.

[Sidenote: Belisarius]

Incidentally, we note that it was by the great Byzantine general Belisarius, that these last three were defeated and sent out of the story. None of the three left a very lasting impression on it, but that cannot be said of the Visigoths, who altered the way in which people lived both in Gaul and Spain very considerably. The Lombards' kingdom was swallowed up, as we saw, by Charlemagne, in 744. They, too, left little mark on the story.

There remain, however (and their kingdom does not, like that of the others, come to an end), the Franks. The others go, but the Franks stay. Charlemagne absorbs into his own domains many others besides those Lombards. He absorbs the Burgundians, the Saxons (this name had by now been transferred from those Northern Saxons who were sea-pirates and came to Britain, to a people occupying part of that territory in south-west Germany which is still called Saxony) and many besides.

With Charlemagne we come to the beginnings of Europe such as we know Europe now. But in order to see how Europe began at that time to seem something like the Europe that we know we must go back again to "the Eternal City," as it has been called--to Rome--and see what has been happening there, and especially what it is that has happened which has brought into being and into his great importance in the story that personage of whom we made our first mention only a page or two back--the Pope.

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