• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Suevi / Saxons

The ancient people that inhabited Brandenburg, were according to Tacitus, the Lombards, (Longobardi,) the Burgundians, (Burgundiones) the Semnons (Semnones), who styled themselves the bravest and most noble of the Suevi, and lastly the Guttons or Guttones, who formed a part of the Vandals. These people, who were probably defeated by the Venedi or Vendes about the end of the fourth, or beginning of the fifth century, invaded different provinces of the Roman empire, and the Vendes occupied the country which later formed Brandenburg.

The general opinion is that the Suevi, with whom the Angles were connected by Tacitus, belonged to the High-German or Maeso-Gothic, division, rather than to the Low. Their original locality either reached or lay beyond the Elbe ; a locality, which, in the tenth century, was Slavonic, and which, there is no reason to consider to have been other than Slavonic during the nine preceding ones. In other words, what applies to the Langobardi applies to the Suevi also.

The Suevi extended from the banks of the Elbe to those of the Oder; they had therefore more than a third of the kingdom of Saxony, but it is difficult to determine the limits of their territory, both because they were a wandering people, and because the ancients designated by the name of Suevi different nations of a common origin.

Velleius states that there were Suevi on the west of the Middle Elbe, Ptolemy, that there were Suevi to the east of it, i.e., as far as the River Suebus (Oder?). In that part of Upper Saxony beyond the Elbe, which was later the Marquisate of Lusace, there existed, in ancient times, a sacred wood, the awful seat of the superstition of the Suevi. None were permitted to enter the holy precincts, without confessing, by their servile bonds and suppliant posture, the immediate presence of the sovereign Deity.

Patriotism contributed as well as devotion to consecrate the Sonnenwald, or wood of the Semnones. It was universally believed, that the nation had received its first existence on that sacred spot. At stated periods, the numerous tribes who gloried in the Suevic blood, resorted thither by their ambassadors ; and the memory of their common extraction was perpetuated by barbaric rites and human sacrifices. The wide extended name of Suevi filled the interior countries of Germany, from the banks of the Oder to those of the Danube. They were distinguished from the other Germans by their peculiar mode of dressing their long hair, which they gathered into a rude knot on the crown of the head ; and they delighted in an ornament that showed their ranks more lofty and terrible in the eyes of the enemy.

Jealous, as the Germans were, of military renown, they all confessed the superior valor of the Suevi ; and the tribes of the Usipetes and Tencteri, who, with a vast army, encountered the dictator Csesar, declared that they esteemed it not a disgrace to have fled before a people, to whose arms the immortal gods themselves were unequal.

In the reign of the emperor Caracalla, an innumerable swarm of Suevi appeared on the banks of the Mein, and in the neighborhood of the Roman provinces, in quest either of food, of plunder, or of glory. The hasty army of volunteers gradually coalesced into a great and permanent nation, and as it was composed from so many different tribes, assumed the name of Alemanni, or All-men; to denote at once their various lineage, and their common bravery. The latter was soon felt by the Romans in many a hostile inroad. The Alemanni fought chiefly on horseback ; but their cavalry was rendered still more formidable by a mixture of light infantry, selected from the bravest and most active of the youth, whom frequent exercise had enured to accompany the horseman in the longest march, the most rapid charge, or the most precipitate retreat.

When the intercourse betweon the Romans and the Suevi became more frequent, it was found that they were not Book So numerous as had been supposed, for those who were formerly confounded under that general denomination were better known, and made themselves at last formidable to the Roman power. The Suevi extended their territory on the Rhine in the fifth century; and the lands in Saxony, on the right bank of the Elbe, were about the same time occupied by the Venedi or Wendes.

By the end of the fourth century the whole, or nearly the whole, of the Spanish Peninsula had become nominally Christian, but of the missionaries to whom this result was due nothing is known. There is, indeed, no other country in Europe which from the point of view of the missionary historian shows so complete a invasion blank. The Romans possessed the rich and extensive Iberian peninsula about six hundred years; but at length a swarm of barbarians fell upon the fine provinces of the empire ; the Vandals, Alans, and Suevi invaded Spain after having passed through Gaul, conquered a part of it, and divided their conquest among them.

In AD 409 a swarm of barbarians - Vandals, Suevi and Aiani, and Alani, the first two of Germanic and the last of Scythian origin - burst through the passes of the Pyrenees and speedily overran the whole peninsula. The Vandals occupied Andalusia and Granada; the Suevi Galicia, Leon and Castile ; and the Alani Portugal and Estremadura. The Vandals inhabited Andalusia and gave it their name. The Alans had Portugal, and the Suevi Galicia. They were not, however, left long in the enjoyment of their conquests. These barbarians, war becoming one of the number of their wants, turned their arms against themselves.

The Suevi having subjugated the Alans, would have striven to conquer the rest of Spain, had not the Visigoths, who had established their throne in Narbonne, and held the sovereignty of Rouffillon, Catalonia and Arragon, opposed their attempt. In 414 the Goths under Atawulf followed them into Spain, and though, after defeating the Vandals and Alani, they retired for a time to the district of Toulouse, in 466 they completed their conquest of the peninsula. The kingdom founded in the western parts of the peninsula by the Suevi was entirely subverted by Theodoric, king of the Goths; and the Suevi pent up in a small district of Lusitania and Galicia. In process of time they again erected themselves into an independent state, which was a second time destroyed by the Goths in AD 584, who now subjected all Spain, except a small part that paid obedience to Constantinople.

It was the descendants of the Catti and Suevi who, under the name of Saxons, acquired in the middle ages so much reputation in war. They resisted during several centuries the kings of France, who during the reign of Clovis, and a long time afterwards, were the most powerful princes in Europe. Hcngis, a Saxon king that flourished in the fifth century, having collected some hordes from the banks of the Weser, sailed into England, and took possession of the Island. They invaded Spain in the year 409, under the command of their prince Hermeric. Having made themselves masters of part of Belgium, in the sixth century, they carried on a long and tedious war against Thierry, Clotaire I, and Clotaire II, and continued in possession of that country. Charles Martel made war against them during twenty years, Pepin during ten, and Charlemagne was unable to subdue them until after a struggle that lasted thirty-two years.