The Germans and Huns

The wanderings of the Germanic peoples, which lasted until the early Middle Ages and destroyed the Western Roman Empire, were, together with the migrations of the Slavs, formative elements of the distribution of peoples in modern Europe. The Germanic peoples originated about 1800 bce from the superimposition, on a population of megalithic culture on the eastern North Sea coast, of Battle-Ax people from the Corded Ware Culture of middle Germany. During the Bronze Age the Germanic peoples spread over southern Scandinavia and penetrated more deeply into Germany between the Weser and Vistula rivers. Contact with the Mediterranean through the amber trade encouraged the development from a purely peasant culture, but during the Iron Age the Germanic peoples were at first cut off from the Mediterranean by the Celts and Illyrians. Their culture declined, and an increasing population, together with worsening climatic conditions, drove them to seek new lands farther south. Thus, the central European Celts and Illyrians found themselves under a growing pressure. Even before 200 bce the first Germanic tribes had reached the lower Danube, where their path was barred by the Macedonian kingdom. Driven by rising floodwaters, at the end of the 2nd century bce, migratory hordes of Cimbri, Teutoni, and Ambrones from Jutland broke through the Celtic-Illyrian zone and reached the edge of the Roman sphere of influence, appearing first in Carinthia (113 bce), then in southern France, and finally in upper Italy. With the violent attacks of the Cimbri, the Germans stepped onto the stage of history.

These migrations were in no way nomadic; they were the gradual expansions of a land-hungry peasantry. Tribes did not always migrate en masse. Usually, because of the loose political structure, groups remained in the original homelands or settled down at points along the migration route. In the course of time, many tribes were depleted and scattered. On the other hand, different tribal groups would sometimes unite before migrating or would take up other wanderers en route. The migrations required skilled leadership, and this promoted the social and political elevation of a noble and kingly class.

In 102 bce the Teutoni were totally defeated by the Romans, who in the following year destroyed the army of the Cimbri. The Swabian tribes, however, moved steadily through central and southern Germany, and the Celts were compelled to retreat to Gaul. When the Germans under Ariovistus crossed the upper Rhine, Julius Caesar arrested their advance and initiated the Roman countermovement with his victory in the Sundgau (58 bce). Under the emperor Augustus, Roman rule was carried as far as the Rhine and the Danube. On the far side of these rivers, the Germans were pushed back only in the small area contained within the Germano-Raetian limes (fortified frontier) from about 70 ce.

The pressure of population was soon evident once more among the German peoples. Tribes that had left Scandinavia earlier (Rugii, Goths, Gepidae, Vandals, Burgundians, and others) pressed on from the lower Vistula and Oder rivers (150 ce onward). The unrest spread to other tribes, and the resulting wars between the Romans and the Marcomanni (166–180) threatened Italy itself. The successful campaigns of Marcus Aurelius resulted in the acquisition by Rome of the provinces of Marcomannia and Sarmatia, but after his death these had to be abandoned and the movement of the Germanic peoples continued. Soon the Alemanni, pushing up the Main River, reached the upper German limes.

To the east the Goths had reached the Black Sea about 200 ce. Year after year Goths and others, either crossing the lower Danube or traveling by sea, penetrated into the Balkan Peninsula and Anatolia as far as Cyprus on plundering expeditions. Only with the Roman victory at Naissus (269) was their advance finally checked. Enriched with booty and constituted imperial mercenaries in return for the payment of a yearly tribute, they became a settled population. The Romans, however, surrendered Dacia beyond the Danube.

In 258 the Alemanni and the Franks broke through the lines and settled on the right bank of the Rhine, continuously infiltrating thereafter toward Gaul and Italy. Everywhere within the empire, towns were fortified, even Rome itself. Franks and Saxons ravaged the coasts of northern Gaul and Britain, and for the next three centuries incursions by Germanic peoples were the scourge of the Western Empire. Nevertheless, it was only with German help that the empire was able to survive as long as it did. The Roman army received an ever-growing number of recruits from the German tribes, which also provided settlers for the land. The Germans soon proved themselves capable of holding the highest ranks in the army. Tribute money to the tribes, pay to individual soldiers, and booty all brought wealth to the Germans, which in turn gave warrior lords the means with which to maintain large followings of retainers.

In the West, however, among the Alemanni and Franks, the beginnings of political union into larger groups did not go beyond loose associations. Only in the East did the Gothic kingdom gather many tribes under a single leadership. Above all, the development of the eastern Germans was stimulated by their undisturbed contact with the frontiers of the ancient world. Their economy, however, was still unable to support the needs of a steadily growing population, and pressure from overpopulation resulted in further incursions into the Roman Empire. The imperial reforms of Diocletian and Constantine the Great brought a period of improvement. The usurpation of the imperial title by a Frankish general in 356 let loose a storm along the length of the Rhine and subsequently on the Danube, but the frontiers were restored by the forces of the emperors Julian and Valentinian I, who repelled attacks by both the Franks and the Alemanni.

At that time, a new force appeared. In 375 the Huns from Central Asia first attacked the Ostrogoths—an event that provoked serious disturbances among the eastern Germans. The Huns remained in the background, gradually subjugating many Germanic and other tribes. The terrified Goths and related tribes burst through the Danube frontier into the Roman Empire, and the Balkans became once again a battlefield for German armies. After the crushing defeat of the Romans at Adrianople (378), the empire was no longer in a position to drive all its enemies from its territories. Tribes that could no longer be expelled were settled within the empire as “allies” ( foederati). They received subsidies and in return supplied troops. The Germanization of the empire progressed, that of the army being nearly completed. None of the tribes, however, that had broken into the Balkans settled there. After the division of the empire in 395, the emperors at Constantinople did all in their power to drive the Germanic tribes away from the vicinity of the capital toward the Western Empire.

From the beginning of the 5th century, the Western Empire was the scene of numerous further migrations. The Visigoths broke out of the Balkans into Italy and in 410 temporarily occupied Rome. In 406–407, Germanic and other tribes (Vandals, Alani, Suebi, and Burgundians) from Silesia and even farther east crossed the Rhine in their flight from the Huns and penetrated as far as Spain. The Vandals subsequently crossed to Africa and set up at Carthage the first independent German state on Roman soil. In the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains (451), the Roman commander Aëtius, with German support, defeated Attila, who had united his Huns with some other Germans in a vigorous westward push. The Balkans suffered a third period of terrible raids from the eastern Germans; and Jutes, Angles, and Saxons from the Jutland Peninsula crossed over to Britain. The Franks and the Alemanni finally established themselves on the far side of the Rhine, the Burgundians extended along the Rhône valley, and the Visigoths took possession of nearly all of Spain. In 476 the Germanic soldiery proclaimed Odoacer, a barbarian general, as king of Italy, and, when Odoacer deposed the emperor Romulus Augustulus at Ravenna, the empire in the West was at an end. In the East, imperial rule remained a reality, and Constantinople, also called “New Rome,” survived many sieges until its fall in 1453. In comparison, “Old Rome” declined into an episcopal centre, losing many of its imperial characteristics.

The reconfiguration of the empire

By the end of the 5th century, however, most of the non-Roman peoples settled in the West were adopting Roman customs and Christian belief. Intermarriage with established Roman families, the assumption of imperial titles, and, finally, conversion assisted a process of acculturation among their leaders, for instance, in the case of Clovis, the Frank. Theodoric the Ostrogoth established an impressive “sub-Roman” kingdom based on Ravenna, where public buildings and churches served by an Arian clergy competed with imperial monuments. Increased Roman influence can also be seen in the law codes promulgated by the Visigoths Euric (late 5th century) and Alaric II (the Breviary of 506) and the Burgundians, Bavarians, Ostrogoths, and Franks (Lex Salica, 507–511). Christianity often provided the medium for incorporation into old imperial structures. While the Goths were still in the Danube basin, they had embraced Arian Christianity (which denied that the Son was of the same substance as the Father), and their first bishop, Ulfilas, translated the Bible into Gothic. Given its heretical nature, this religious literature in a written vernacular could not survive, and, with conversion to orthodox (“catholic”) Christianity, the barbarian languages gradually gave way to Latin.

Nonetheless, the Germanic tribes brought into Europe their own tribal institutions, ethnic patterns, and oral and artistic traditions, including a highly developed epic poetry. Their influence was strongest in central Europe, where the Romans had had the least impact; less marked in the northern and western parts, where Romano-British and Gallo-Roman cultures were established; and weakest in the highly Romanized southern regions. Linguistically, Old High German developed in the first zone and Anglo-Saxon in Britain, while farther south medieval Romance languages developed from their common Latin inheritance.

In the southern zone, imperial traditions were reinforced by the reconquest, albeit brief, of North Africa, Italy, and parts of Spain by forces from Constantinople under Justinian’s general Belisarius. Despite the restoration of Roman administration between 533 and 554 (celebrated in the mosaics of Ravenna and the Pragmatic Sanction of 554), imperial forces could not prevent the Lombards from moving inexorably into northern Italy, which they occupied in 568. The reconquered parts of the Western Empire were thus reduced to a narrow strip of territory from the head of the Adriatic to Ravenna, the exarchate, Rome—now governed effectively by its bishop—plus small duchies. In addition, Sicily, Bruttium, and Calabria remained subject to Constantinople and were Greek-speaking for many centuries.

In contrast to previous invaders, from the 6th century onward, newly arrived barbarian forces clung to their pagan culture and resisted assimilation. The Saxons established themselves east of the Rhine in the north. The Avars and their Slav allies, who moved steadily westward from the Vistula and Dnepr river basins, disrupted weak imperial defenses at the Danube and pressed south and west into the Balkans and central Europe. By 567 the Avars established control over the Hungarian plain, where they remained until their defeat by Charlemagne in 796. After successfully besieging Sirmium and Singidunum in the 580s, the eastern Slavs infiltrated the Balkans, while others moved north and west to settle eventually along the Elbe beside the Saxons. The failure of the combined Avaro-Slav siege of Constantinople in 626 ended this pagan expansion. Although Slavs occupied the Balkan Peninsula for two centuries or more, disrupting east-west communication along the ancient Via Egnatia, they were eventually evangelized and absorbed into the Eastern Empire.