THE HUNDRED-YEAR KINGDOM
The establishment and success of the Vandal kingdom is inseparably tied to the internal dissensions and external threats plaguing the Roman Empire. Uprooted by Roman civil war and by pressure from the Goths, the Vandals left their Danubian lands to invade Gaul in the early fifth century, before crossing the Pyrenees circa October AD 409. The greater portion of the Iberian Peninsula was soon divided among the invaders. It also gave them control over the Strait of Gibraltar. The Vandals soon coveted the land across the strait, Mauretania Tingitana, an equally rich landscape with close cultural and economic ties to southern Spain. What eventually became a full-scale migration unfolded over several years as a series of amphibious landings to establish footholds in Tingitana. These moves were simplified by the fact that North Africa was comparatively lightly garrisoned and was suffering its own political discord.
By the time Geiseric became the Vandal ruler in 428, their lands in the Iberian Peninsula were under threat from the Visigoths and Suebians. A year later, Geiseric decided to abandon Spain in favour of a full-scale migration to Africa. The actual transfer was uneventful. Staging from Tarifa — the southernmost point of continental Europe — the Vandals landed in their prepared beachheads in Tingitana. Contemporary sources cite a figure of 80,000 persons, which included women and children, leaving a fighting force of perhaps 20,000 men — mostly Vandals,
