The Cambridge Medieval History - Book III: The Barbarian Invasions of the Western Roman Empire

By Norman Baynes, Martin Bang, M. Manitius and 3 more

THE race which played the leading part in history after the break-up of the Roman Empire was the race known as the Teutons. Their early history is shrouded in obscurity, an obscurity which only begins to be lightened about the end of the second century of our era. Such information as we have we owe to Greeks and Romans; and what they give us is almost exclusively contemporary history, and the few fragmentary statements referring to earlier conditions, invaluable as they are to us, do not go far behind their own time. Archaeology alone enables us to penetrate further back. Without its aid it would be vain to think of attempting to answer the question of the origin and original distribution of the Germanic race.
The earliest home of the Teutons was in the countries surrounding the western extremity of the Baltic Sea, comprising what is now the south of Sweden, Jutland with Schleswig-Holstein, the German Baltic coast to about the Oder, and the islands with which the sea is studded as far as Gothland. This, not Asia, is the region which, with a certain extension south, as far, say, as the great mountain chain of central Germany, may be described as the cradle of the Indo-Germanic race. According to all appearance, this was the centre from which it impelled its successive waves of population towards the west, south, and south-east, to take possession, in the end, of all Europe and even of a part of Asia. A portion of the Indo-Germanic race, however, remained behind in the north, to emerge after the lapse of two thousand years into the light of history as a new people of wonderful homogeneity and remarkable uniformity of physical type, the people which we know as the Teutons. The expansion of the Indo-Germanic race and its division into various nations and groups of nations had in the main been completed during the Neolithic Period, so that in the Bronze Age—roughly, for the northern races, 1500-500 BC—the territories which we have indicated above belonged exclusively to the Teutons who formed a distinct race with its own special characteristics and language...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Perennial Press
• Release date: Feb 24, 2016
• ISBN: 9781531230425

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THE CAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY - BOOK III

The Barbarian Invasions of the Western Roman Empire

Martin Bang, Norman Baynes, M. Manitius, Ludwig Schmidt, Christian Pfister, and T. Peisker

PERENNIAL PRESS

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Copyright © 2016 by Martin Bang, Norman Baynes, M. Manitius, Ludwig Schmidt, Christian Pfister, and T. Peisker

Published by Perennial Press

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ISBN: 9781531230425

TABLE OF CONTENTS

EXPANSION OF THE TEUTONS, by Martin Bang

THE DYNASTY OF VALENTINIAN AND THEODOSIUS THE GREAT, by Norman Baynes

THE TEUTONIC MIGRATIONS, AD 378-412, by M. Manitius

THE TEUTONIC KINGDOMS, by Ludwig Schmidt & Christian Pfister

THE SUEVES, ALANS, AND VANDALS IN SPAIN, 409-429, by Ludwig Schmidt

THE HUNS, by T. Peisker & Ludwig Schmidt

EXPANSION OF THE TEUTONS, BY MARTIN BANG

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THE RACE WHICH PLAYED THE leading part in history after the break-up of the Roman Empire was the race known as the Teutons. Their early history is shrouded in obscurity, an obscurity which only begins to be lightened about the end of the second century of our era. Such information as we have we owe to Greeks and Romans; and what they give us is almost exclusively contemporary history, and the few fragmentary statements referring to earlier conditions, invaluable as they are to us, do not go far behind their own time. Archaeology alone enables us to penetrate further back. Without its aid it would be vain to think of attempting to answer the question of the origin and original distribution of the Germanic race.

The earliest home of the Teutons was in the countries surrounding the western extremity of the Baltic Sea, comprising what is now the south of Sweden, Jutland with Schleswig-Holstein, the German Baltic coast to about the Oder, and the islands with which the sea is studded as far as Gothland. This, not Asia, is the region which, with a certain extension south, as far, say, as the great mountain chain of central Germany, may be described as the cradle of the Indo-Germanic race. According to all appearance, this was the centre from which it impelled its successive waves of population towards the west, south, and south-east, to take possession, in the end, of all Europe and even of a part of Asia. A portion of the Indo-Germanic race, however, remained behind in the north, to emerge after the lapse of two thousand years into the light of history as a new people of wonderful homogeneity and remarkable uniformity of physical type, the people which we know as the Teutons. The expansion of the Indo-Germanic race and its division into various nations and groups of nations had in the main been completed during the Neolithic Period, so that in the Bronze Age—roughly, for the northern races, 1500-500 BC—the territories which we have indicated above belonged exclusively to the Teutons who formed a distinct race with its own special characteristics and language.

The Teutons 600-500 BC

The distinctive feature of the civilization of these prehistoric Teutons is the working of bronze. It is well known that in the North a region where the Bronze Age was of long duration—a remarkable degree of skill was attained in this art. The Northern Teutonic Bronze Age forms therefore in every respect a striking phenomenon in the general history of human progress. On the other hand, the advance in culture which followed the introduction of the use of iron was not at first shared by the Northern peoples. It was only about 500 BC, that is to say quite five hundred years later than in Greece and Italy, in the South of France and the upper part of the Danube basin, that the use of iron was introduced among the Teutons. The period of civilization usually known as the Hallstatt period, of which the latter portion (from about 600 BConwards) was not less brilliant than the Later Bronze Age, remained practically unknown to the Teutons.

The nearest neighbors of the Teutons in this earliest period were, to the south the Celts, to the east the Baltic peoples (Letts, Lithuanians, Prussians) and the Slavs, in the extreme north the Finns. How far the Teutonic territories extended northward, it is difficult to say. The southern extremity of Scandinavia, that is to say the present Sweden up to about the lakes, certainly always belonged to them. This is put beyond doubt by archaeological discoveries. The Teutons therefore have as good a claim to be considered the original inhabitants of Scandinavia as their northern neighbors the great Finnish people. It is certain that even in the earliest times they were expanding in a northerly direction, and that they settled in the Swedish lake district, as far north as the Dal Elf, and the southern part of Norway, long before we have any historical information about these countries. Whether they found them unoccupied, or whether they drove the Finns steadily backward, cannot be certainly decided, although the latter is the more probable. The Sitones whom Tacitus mentions along with the Suionesas the nations dwelling furthest to the north were certainly Finns.

On the east, the Teutonic territory, which as we saw did not originally extend beyond the Oder, touched on that of the Baltic peoples who were later known collectively, by a name which is doubtless of Teutonic derivation, as Aists (Aestii in Tacitus, Germ. 45). To the south and east of these lay the numerous Slavonic tribes (called Venedi or Veneti by ancient writers). The land between the Oder and the Vistula was therefore in the earliest times inhabited, in the north by peoples of the Letto-Lithuanian linguistic group, and southward by Slavs. On this side also the Teutons in quite early times forced their way beyond the boundaries of their original territory. In the sixth century B.C., as can be determined with considerable certainty from archaeological discoveries, the settlement of these territories by the Teutons was to a large extent accomplished, the Baltic peoples being forced to retire eastward, beyond the Vistula, and the Slavs towards the south-east. It is likely that the conquerors came from the north, from Scandinavia; that they sought a new home on the south coast of the Baltic and towards the east and south-east. To this points also the fact (otherwise hard to explain) that the tribes which in historic times are settled in these districts, Goths, Gepidae, Rugii, Lemovii, Burgundii, Charini, Varini and Vandals, form a separate group, substantially distinguished in customs and speech from the Western Teutons, but showing numerous points of affinity, especially in language and legal usage, to the Northern Teutons. When, further, a series of Eastern Teutonic names of peoples appear again in Scandinavia, those for instance of the Goths: Gauthigoth (Gautar, Gothland);Greutungi: Greotingi; Rugians: Rugi (Rygir, Rogaland); Burgundiones: Borgundarholmr; and when we find in Jordanes the legend of the Gothic migration asserting that this people came from Scandinavia (Scandza insula) as the officina gentium aut certe velutvagina nationum the evidence in favor of a gradual settlement of eastern Germany by immigrants from the north seems irresistible.

By the year 400 BC, at latest, the Teutons must have reached the northern base of the Sudetes. It was only a step further to the settlement of the upper Vistula; and if the Bastarnae, the first Germanic tribe which comes into the light of history, had their seat here about 300 BC, the settlement of the whole basin of the upper Vistula, right up to the Carpathians, must have been carried out by the Teutons in the course of the fourth century BC.

It was with Celts that the Teutons came in contact towards the sources of the Oder in the mountains which form the boundary of Bohemia. Now there is no race to which the Teutons owe so much as to the Celts. The whole development of their civilization was most strongly influenced by the latter—so much so that in the centuries next before the Christian era the whole Teutonic race shared a common civilization with the Celts, to whom they stood in a relation of intellectual dependence; in every aspect of public and private life Celtic influence was reflected. How came it then that a people whose civilization shows such marked characteristics as that of the Teutons of the Later Bronze Age could lose these with such surprising rapidity—perhaps in the course of a single century?

The earliest habitat of the Teutons extended, as we have seen, on the south as far as the Elbe. This river also marks the northern boundary of the Celts. All Germany west of the Elbe from the North Sea to the Alps was in the possession of the Celts, at the time when the Teutons occupied the western shores of the Baltic basin. The vigorous power of expansion which this race displayed in the last thousand years of the prehistoric age has left its traces throughout Europe, and even in Asia; and that is what gives it such importance in the history of the world. The whole of Western Europe—France with Belgium and Holland, the British Isles and the greater part of the Pyrenean peninsula, in the south the region of the Alps and the plains of the Po—has been at one time or another subject to their rule. Eastward, migratory swarms of Celts pushed their way down the Danube to the Black Sea and even into Asia Minor.

Migrations of the Celts. 1000 BC

The starting-point of this movement was probably in what is now north-western Germany and the Netherlands, and this region is therefore to be regarded as the original home of the Celtic race. Place-names and river-names, the study of which is a most valuable means of elucidating prehistoric conditions, enable us to prove the existence in many districts of this original Celtic population. They are scattered over the whole of western Germany and as far as Brabant and Flanders, but occur with especial frequency between the Rhine and the Weser. In the north the Wörpe-Bach (north-east of Bremen) marks the limits of their distribution, in the east the course of the Leine, down to Rosoppe; in the south they extend as far as the Main where theAschaff (anciently Ascapha) at Aschaffenburg forms the last outpost of their territory. They are not found on the strip of coast along the North Sea, occupied later by theChauci and Frisians, nor on the western side of the Elbe. From this we may safely conclude that these districts were abandoned by their original Celtic population earlier, indeed considerably earlier, than those to the west of the Weser, and also that the expansion of the Teutons westwards proceeded along two distinct lines, though doubtless almost contemporaneously one westward along the North Sea and one in a more southerly direction up the Elbe along both its banks.

With this view the results of prehistoric archaeology are in complete agreement. We have determined the area of distribution of the Northern Bronze Age—which we saw to be specifically Teutonic—as consisting, in the earlier period (up to c. 1000 BC), of Scandinavia and the Danish islands, and also Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg andWestPomerania, and therefore bounded on the south-west by the Elbe. But in the Later Bronze Age (c. 1000-600 BC) this territory is enlarged in all directions. On the south and west especially, to judge from the evidence of excavations, it extends from the point at which the Wartha flows into the Oder, in a south-westerly direction through the Spreewald and Fläming districts to the Elbe; then further west to the Harz, and from there northwards along the Oker and Aller to about the estuary of the Weser, and finally along the coast-line as far as Holland. In Thuringia the Celtic peoples maintained their hold somewhat longer. The northern part of it—above the Unstrut—may have received a Teutonic population in the course of the fifth century BC; the southern in the course of the fourth. On the other hand, the whole region westward from the Weser and the Thuringian Forest as far as the Rhine was still in the possession of the Celts about the year 300 BC, and was only conquered by the Teutons in the course of the following century. It may be taken as the assured result of all the linguistic and archaeological data, that only about the year 200 BC the whole of north-western Germany was held by the Teutons, who had now reached the frontier-lines formed by the Rhine and the Main.

About the close of the fifth century BC, a new civilization appears in the Celtic domain, a civilization which, from the fine taste and technical perfection of its productions, deserves in more than one respect to rank with that of the classical nations. This is the so-called La Tène Civilization, which takes its name from a place on the north side of the Lake of Neuchatel where especially numerous and varied remains of it have come to light. Where its centre is to be located we do not know—somewhere, we may conjecture, in the South of France or in Switzerland. Starting from this point it spread through all the parts of Europe, which were not under the sway of the Greek and Roman civilization. Following the course of the Rhone, of the Rhine, and of the Danube, it rapidly conquered all the countries in which Gallic tongues were spoken and maintained its supremacy until the Graeco-Roman civilization deposed it from its primacy.

It was with this highly developed civilization—so far superior, especially in its highly advanced knowledge of the working of iron, to the Northern, which still only made use of bronze—that the Teutons came in contact in their advance towards the south-west. It is quite intelligible that the Teutons in the course of their two hundred years of struggle with the Celts for the possession of north-western Germany, should have eagerly adopted the higher civilization of the Celts.

Vague reminiscences of the former supremacy of the Keltic race survived into historic times. Ac fuit antea tempus cum Germanos Galli virtute superarent, ultro bellainferrent, propter hominum multitudinem agrigue inopiam trans Rhenum coloniasmitterent, writes Caesar—a piece of information which he must have derived from Gaulish sources. Here belongs also the Gallic tradition reported by Timagenesaccording to which a part of the nation was said ab insulis extimis confluxisse ettractibus Transrhenanis crebritate bellorum et adluvione fervidi maris sedibus suisexpulsos. Caesar himself mentions a Celtic tribe, the Menapii, on the right bank of the lower Rhine.

It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the Celtic Teuriscans of northern Hungary were originally settled in south-central Germany between the Erzgebirge and the Harz, but later (about 400 BC) were forced out of this district by the pressure of the advancing Germans, and retired in two sections towards the south and south-east.

About the year 200 BC the Teuton occupation of north-west Germany was, as we have seen, completed, having reached the Rhine on the west and the Main on the south. But the great forward movement towards the south-west was not to be stayed by these rivers. Vast waves of population kept pressing downward from the north, and giving fresh impetus to the movement. The whole Germanic world must at that time have been in constant ferment and unrest. Nations were born and perished. Everywhere there was pressure and counter-pressure. Any people that had not the strength to maintain itself against its neighbors, or to strike out a new path for itself, was swept away. The tension thus set up first found relief on the Rhenish frontier. About the middle of the second century BC. Teutonic hordes swept across the river and occupied the whole country westward of the lower Rhine as far as the Ardennes and the Eifel. These hordes were the ancestors of the later tribes and clans which meet us here in the first dawn of history, the Eburones, Condrusi, Caeroesi, Paemani, Segni, Nervii, Grudii, and also of the Texuandri, Sunuci, Baetusii, Caraces, who appear later, as well as of theTungri, who after the annihilation of the Eburones by Caesar succeeded to their territory and position of influence. The Treveri, on the other hand, who had their seat further to the south beyond the Eifel, were doubtless Celts.

Teutonic Invasion of Gaul. 58-9 BC

The Teutonic invasion of Gaul must have taken place mainly in the second half of the second century BC, but it was still in progress in Caesar’s time. It may suffice briefly to recall in this connection the successful campaign of Ariovistus; the incursion immediately before Caesar entered upon his province, of 24,000 Harudi into the country of the Sequani; the invasion of the Suebi under Nasua and Cimberius in the year 58; and of the Usipetes and Tencteri at the beginning of the year BC 55. That there were even later immigrations of Teutonic hosts into north-eastern Gaul may be conjectured from the absence of any mention by Caesar of several of the tribes which were settled here in the time by the Empire, and this conjecture is raised almost to a certainty by the known instance of the Tungri.

It was only later, in the time of the migrations of the Cimbri, and doubtless in connection therewith, that the frontier formed by the Main was crossed. It was—to the best of our information—a portion of the Suebi, previously settled on the northern bank of this river, who were the first to push across it, and after driving out the Helveti, established themselves firmly to the south of the river, and were here known under the name of Marcomanni (Men of the Marches)—the name first meets us in Caesar, in the enumeration of the peoples led by Ariovistus. Their country, the Marca, extended south to the Danube. That the Tulingi (mentioned by Caesar as finetini of the Helveti) were of Germanic origin is put beyond doubt by their name, which is good German and forms a pendant to that of the Thuringi. But it will doubtless be near the truth to see in them not the whole nation of the Marcomanni, but only a tribe or local division of it, and doubtless its advance guard towards the south. In any case it is evident from Caesar’s account that numbering as they did a round 36,000, of whom about 8000 were warriors, they formed a united whole with a definite territory and were not merely a migratory body of Marcomanni gathered together ad hoc.

A remnant of the old Marcomanni of South Germany, who in the year 9 BCmigrated to Bohemia, is doubtless to be found in the Suebi Nicretes whom we meet with in the time of the Empire on the lower Neckar. Further to the north, on the southern bank of the Main, near Mittenberg, we find the name of the Toutoni in an inscription which came to light in the year 1878. Hereupon certain scholars have arrived at the conviction that this locality was the original home of the Teutones whom we hear of in association with the Cimbri, and so that they were not of Germanic but of Celtic origin, being of Helvetic race and identified with the Helvetic local clan of theTouyev of Strabo. This hypothesis must be absolutely rejected. There must have been some connection between those Toutoni and the Teutoni of history. But to conclude without more ado that the Teutoni were Helveti, South-German Celts, is to do direct violence to the whole body of ancient tradition, which consistently represents theTeutoni as a people whose original home was in the North. The simplest solution of the difficulty is that the Mittenberg Teutoni were a fragment which split off from the Teutonic peoples during their migration southward, and settled in this district, just as in north-eastern Gaul a portion of the Cimbri and Teutones maintained itself as the tribe of the Aduatuci.

The whole process of the expulsion of the Celts from South Germany must have been accomplished between 100 BC and 70 BC, for Caesar knows of no Gauls on the right bank of the upper Rhine, and the Helveti had been living for a considerable time to the south of the head-waters of the river which, as Caesar tells us, divides Helvetic from German territory.

The Bastarnae. 182 BC

The first collision between the Teutons and the Graeco-Roman world took place far to the east of Gaul. It resulted from a great migration of the eastern Teutonic tribes in the neighborhood of the Vistula, which had carried some of them as far as the shore of the Black Sea. The chief of these tribes was that of the Bastarnae. Settled, it would seem, before their exodus near the head-waters of the Vistula they appear, as early as the beginning of the second century BC, near the estuary of the Danube. The whole region north of the Pruth, from the Black Sea to the northern slope of the Carpathians, was in their possession and remained so during all the time that they are known to history. Another Germanic tribe, doubtless dependent upon them, meets us in the same district, namely the Sciri from the lower Vistula. The well-known and much discussed ‘psephisma’ of the town of Olbia in honor of Protogenes mentions them as allied with the Galatai, and there has been much debate as to what nation is to be understood by these Galatai, and they have sometimes been conjectured to be Illyrian Kelts(Scordisci), sometimes Thracian, sometimes the—also Celtic—Britolages, or the Teutonic Bastarnae, or even the Goths. The majority of scholars has however decided that these Galatians are the Bastarnae, whose presence in the neighborhood of Olbiain the year 182 BC is attested by Polybius. There is, indeed, much in favor of this hypothesis and nothing against it. The inscription then, which is proved by the character of the writing to be one of the oldest found in this locality, would have been written about the time of the arrival of the Bastarnae at the estuary of the Danube, that is to say, about 200–180 BC, and would therefore be the earliest documentary evidence for the entrance of the Germanic tribes on the field of general history.

As early as the year 182 BC we find the Bastarnae in negotiations with Philip of Macedon. Philip’s plan was to get rid of the Dardanians, and after settling his allies on the territory thus vacated to use it as a base for an expedition against Italy. After long negotiations, the Bastarnae in 179 abandoned their lately-won territory, crossed the Danube and advanced into Thrace. At this point King Philip died, and after an unsuccessful battle with the Thracians the Bastarnae began a retreat to the settlement which they had abandoned; but a detachment of some 30,000 men under Clondicuspressed on into Dardania. With the aid of the Thracians and Scordiscans and with the connivance of Philip’s successor, Perseus, he pressed the Dardanians hard for a time, but at last in the winter of 175 he also decided to retire. In Rome the intrigues of the Macedonian kings had been watched with growing mistrust and displeasure, which found expression in the dispatch of a commission to investigate the situation in Macedonia and especially on the Dardanian border. This, therefore, is the first occasion on which the Roman State had to concern itself with Teutonic affairs. At that time, it is true, the racial difference between Celts and Teutons was not yet recognized and the Bastarnae were therefore supposed to be Gauls. Before very long (168), we find the Bastarnae again in relations with the King of Macedon. Twenty thousand men, again under the command of Clondicus, were to join him in his struggle with the Romans inPaeonia. But Perseus was blinded by avarice, and failed to keep his promises. Clondicustherefore, who had already reached the country of the Maedi, promptly turned to the right-about and marched home through Thrace. From this point they disappear from history for a time, only to reappear in the Mithradatic wars as allies of that King, and they consequently appear also in the list of the nations over whom Pompey triumphed in the year 61.

Cimbri and Teutons. 182-100 BC

In the East, on the frontiers of Europe and Asia, the Germanic race attracted little notice; but in the West, about the close of the second century BC, it shook the edifice of the Roman State to its foundations and spread the terror of its name over the whole of Western Europe. It was the Cimbri, along with their allies the Teutones and Ambrones, who for half a score of years kept the world in suspense. All three peoples were doubtless of Germanic stock. We may take it as established that the original home of the Cimbri was on the Jutish peninsula, that of the Teutones somewhere between the Ems and the Weser, and that of the Ambrones in the same neighborhood, also on the North Sea coast. The cause of their migration was the constant encroachment of the sea upon their coasts, the occasion being an inundation which devastated their territory, great stretches of it being engulfed by the sea. This is the account given by ancient writers and we have no reason to doubt its truth. The exodus of all three peoples took place about the same time, and obviously in such a way that from the first they went forward in close touch with one another. First they turned southwards, probably following the line of the Elbe, crossed the Erzgebirge and pressed on into Bohemia, the land of the Boii. Driven back by the latter, they seem to have made their way along the valley of the March, southwards to the Danube, and then through Pannonia into the country of the Scordisci. Here, too, they encountered (in the year 114) such vigorous opposition that they preferred to turn westwards. That brought them into contact with the Taurisci who had just (115 BC) formed a close alliance with the Romans. In the Carnic Alps was stationed a Roman army under the command of the Consul Cn.Papirius Carbo, which immediately advanced into Noricum. Carbo’s attempt by means of a treacherous attack to annihilate the Teutons ended in a