- Germany from 1250 to 1493
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After Rome had established its frontiers, commercial and cultural contacts between Germanic peoples and the Roman Empire were as important as direct conflict. Although it was heavily fortified, the frontier was never a barrier to trade or travel. About ad 50, tribes settled along the Rhine learned to use Roman money. Germanic graves—at least the richer ones—began to include Roman luxury imports such as fine pottery, glass, and metalwork. In return, raw materials, such as amber and leather, and many slaves went back across the frontier. Germanic tribesmen also served in Roman armies.
Border raiding was endemic, and periodically there were much larger disturbances. About ad 150 the Marcomanni, a Germanic tribe, moved south into the middle Danube region, and they even invaded Italy in 167. The emperor Marcus Aurelius and his son spent the next 20 years curbing their inroads, and archaeology shows that the wars were highly destructive. This migration was one manifestation of a broader problem, for between about 150 and 200 a whole series of Germanic groups moved south along the river valleys of central and eastern Europe. These migrations resulted in great violence along the entire frontier during the 3rd century. Parts of Gaul suffered greatly, and Goths, a Germanic people that originated in southern Scandinavia, ravaged the Danube region, even killing the emperor Decius in 251. Yet intensive campaigns brought the Germanic tribes back under control, so that by about 280 stability had returned to the Rhine and Danube. The Roman army and an alliance system involving, among others, Franks, Alemanni, and Goths maintained the frontier until about 370.
In the meantime the Germanic world was being transformed. For the balance of power in Europe, the most important development was the rise of larger and more cohesive Germanic political units, at least among the Germanic peoples living on the borders of the empire. This was largely a response to the military threat from Rome. Despite their occasional successes, more Germanic tribesmen than Romans had been killed in 3rd-century conflicts, and the Germanic peoples had learned that larger groups were more likely to survive. In the 4th century there were two powerful Germanic confederations: the Alemanni on the Rhine and the Goths on the Danube, both controlled by the military elite whose power over their fellow tribesmen continued to increase. Other contacts with the empire resulted in cultural borrowings. In the 3rd century Germanic peoples began to master the potter’s wheel, and there is evidence of improved farming techniques; both were adopted from Rome. The empire was also partly responsible for Germanic groups’ first steps toward literary culture. A written form of Gothic, the oldest literary Germanic language, was created about ad 350 by Ulfilas, a Roman-sponsored Arian Christian missionary, in order to translate the Bible.
The migration period
The situation was transformed by nomadic, non-Germanic Hunnish horsemen from the east who pushed Germanic peoples into the Roman Empire in several waves. First, in 376, Visigoths were admitted by the emperor Valens as foederati (“allies”) to farm and defend the frontier. This procedure was not without precedent and was unusual only in the enormity of the group involved (traditionally estimated at about 80,000). The Romans were unprepared for such a large group, and their failure to accommodate the group and outright hostility toward the Visigoths led to confrontation. Two years later the Visigoths killed Valens, winning a famous victory at Adrianople (now Edirne, Turkey), though by 382 they had been subdued. Yet, as the Huns moved west, Rome’s frontiers came under increasing pressure, and further large incursions (by Germanic as well as other peoples) occurred in 386, 395, 405, and 406. Some of the invaders were defeated, but Germanic Vandals and Suebi established themselves in Spain and later in North Africa, and the Visigoths exploited the disorder to rebel, especially after the election of Alaric as king. Marching to Italy, they demanded better terms, and, when these were not forthcoming, they sacked Rome on August 24, 410. Even though Rome was no longer capital of the empire, the sack was a profound shock for the people of the empire.
The Roman Empire nevertheless remained an important power in Europe, both militarily and economically. Hence Germanic groups on the run from the Huns were anxious to make peace; even the Visigoths accepted a settlement in Gaul in 418. Since Germanic peoples had no sense of either common interests or common identity, they could be played off against one another; thus the Vandals were savaged by the Visigoths between 416 and 418. Until about 450 fear of the Huns meant that the empire could, in moments of crisis, mobilize at least Visigoths, Burgundians (received into Gaul after being defeated by the Huns in 439), and Franks for its defense. Soon after Attila’s death in 453, however, the Hun empire collapsed, and Rome lost this diplomatic weapon. It also suffered a progressive loss of revenue as territories were either occupied or—like Britain—abandoned by the imperial government. The balance thus swung further in the Germanic peoples’ favour, and they eventually declared themselves independent. In the 470s a Visigothic kingdom emerged in southwestern Gaul and later gained control of most of the Iberian Peninsula. Meanwhile, a Burgundian kingdom arose in southeastern Gaul, and Clovis created a Frankish kingdom in the north. The Vandals already controlled North Africa and the Suebi part of Spain, and Gepid and Lombard kingdoms dominated the Danube. A band of Germans, led by Odoacer, deposed the last Roman emperor, Romulus Augustulus, in 476 and set up a kingdom in Italy. Ostrogoths freed by the collapse of the Hun empire struggled for a generation to find a new homeland. Their struggles sometimes brought them into conflict with the Eastern Empire, whose ruler, Zeno, sought to mitigate the situation by elevating the Ostrogothic king, Theodoric, to the office of patrician. When this solution failed, Zeno sent Theodoric against Odoacer. Theodoric ultimately defeated Odoacer and established a successful Ostrogothic kingdom in Italy that lasted from 493 to 555.
These Germanic successor states brought the Roman Empire in western Europe to an end. The empire could have resisted any of them singly, but the Hun invasions had pushed too many Germanic groups across the frontier too quickly. Battles, however, were the exception. More often the empire unwillingly, but peacefully, granted areas for settlement, and, as Rome became increasingly weaker, the local Roman provincial population looked to the newly settled Germanic peoples for protection. This period thus continued the transformation of the Germanic world. Because of the danger from Rome and the Huns, Germanic political units again increased in size. The new Germanic groups also fell under the influence of the Roman populations they came to rule. Literate, educated Romans enabled German kings systematically to raise taxation and expand their legal powers. The successor states to the Roman Empire were thus a fusion of Germanic military power and the administrative know-how of Roman provincial aristocrats. Transformation was complete in these regions when Germanic warrior and Roman provincial elites quickly intermarried, bringing into being a new aristocracy that was to shape medieval Europe.
Within the boundaries of present-day Germany, the Hunnish conquest drove Germanic peoples out of the region to the east of the Elbe and Saale rivers during the early 5th century. This area was subsequently settled by peoples speaking Slavic languages, and present-day eastern Germany remained Slavic for some seven centuries. To the west and south, Germanic peoples such as the eastern Franks, Frisians, Saxons, Thuringians, Alemanni, and Bavarians—all speaking West Germanic dialects—had merged Germanic and borrowed Roman cultural features. It was among these groups that a German language and ethnic identity would gradually develop during the Middle Ages.
Peter John Heather