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Vandals - 406-524

After a long period of quiet, and aroused apparently by the fortune of their countryman Stilicho, the Vandals moved towards the Rhine. When the Rhine froze over during the cold winter of 406/407, the Siling and Hasding Vandals crossed intoGaul together with Alans and Suebi. In alliance with the Alanes they defeated the Franks on the Main and poured over Gaul, which almost without resistance fell a prey to their predatory hordes.

After plundering Gaul, the treachery of German frontier guards opened to them the passes of the Pyrenees; and now Spain, which, like Gaul, accepted her fate with dull resignation, learnt all the horrors of a war with barbarians and of a foreign supremacy (409). Gerontius stripped Hispania of all the regular troops in 410 AD. The bitter legacy of this episode was that some 50000 Siling Vandals had settled in Baetica, 30000 Alans in Lusitania and 80000 Suebi and 40,000 Asding Vandals in Gallaecia. After some years of unrest the victors divided the land among themselves, though a part of it still remained Roman. The imperial government had therefore lost control of most of the Iberian penninsula.

Fredbal was King of the Siling Vandals until the year AD 415. There was a succeeding Siling Vandal ruler, whose name is unknown. The remaining rulers were Asding successors. The Siling Vandals were dissipated by warfare against Roman allies (the Visigoths) and merged under Asding control. They controlled the former Roman provinces of Lusitania and Baetica (the latter of which includes the city of Gades).

Already better times seemed to be dawning for the vanquished, when the attack of the West Goths brought new disorders into Spain. A part of the Vandals were completely exterminated; the rest retreated towards the south and once more acquired considerable power there for a time. That they then began definitely to apply themselves to maritime matters and to build a fleet, is an important proof that they recognised their situation; and though one might not be inclined to form too high an opinion of their fleet, it permitted them not only to undertake predatory expeditions to the neighboring islands and coasts, but, in case of need, to flee with their families before the onset of enemies. The perfect development of the Vandal fleet was to take place in Africa.

The Asding Vandals, now allied with the Alans, were forced to migrate from Galicia and took the southern part of the Peninsula for their own in AD 422. At the time the Vandals pressed forward to the Straits of Gibraltar, Africa, rich and almost defenceless, had already attracted the attention of the princes of the Goths; and it was mainly an accident that the Vandals anticipated them and appropriated the enticing spoil. During the momentous feud of the Roman generals, Boniface and Aetius, the former in rage had recourse to the desperate expedient of appealing to Geiserich, King of the Vandals, for help. It was gladly granted. The Siling Vandals moved to North Africa.

After the easy conquest of Spain in 428, the Vandals were invited by the persecuted Donatist sectarians, to invade Africa and their enterprising king Genseric, crossing the straits, soon overran the whole of northern Africa, from the coast of the Atlantic Ocean eastward to the great Syrtis, and building a numerous fleet at Carthage, he subjected the islands of the Mediterranean, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and the Balearic isles. His roving Vandals became now as daring corsairs on the sea, as they formerly had been irresistible cavaliers on the main land.

In May 429, the army of the Vandals landed on the African coast; according to the most trustworthy account, there were, including women, children, and old men, some eighty thousand souls. Boniface, who, meantime, had become reconciled with the Roman court, hurled himself against the invaders without avail, although he held Hippo Regius, the seat of the bishopric of Augustine, against the barbarians. After the defeat of Aetius he returned to Rome, where he died of his wounds. Hippo fell, so that in 435 almost the whole of Africa, with the exception of Carthage, the capital, was abandoned to the Vandals. Since nothing was done to ensure the security of this last and most important Roman centre, Geiserich grasped a favourable opportunity and took the town by a sudden assault, the effeminate inhabitants offering no serious resistance (439).

After prolonged struggles a new treaty was concluded, which, strangely enough, conceded Mauretania and western Numidia to the Romans, while the rich east fell entirely to the Vandals (442). In all these wars there is no trace of any serious resistance offered by the inhabitants; Boniface had defended Hippo with Gothic mercenaries, while the native population lent no appreciable assistance, and the nomad tribes of the country either adopted a dubious attitude or availed themselves of the difficulties of the Roman governor to make attacks and engage in predatory expeditions. This demoralisation resulted from social conditions, which had, perhaps, developed more unfavourably in Africa than in other parts of the Roman empire. The free peasants had long ago become the serfs of the great landed proprietors, and were little superior in position to the masses of slaves who were everywhere to be found. But the great landowners became in their turn easy victims of the policy of extortion followed by unscrupulous governors to an increasingly unprecedented extent in proportion as the dignity of the imperial power sank lower.

No man who had anything to lose would now take a place in the senate of the large towns, which had once been the goal of the ambitious; for the senators were required to make up all deficiencies in the revenue, which, with increasing oppression, became more and more frequent. At last Jews, heretics, and criminals, were forced into posts of honor and stood at the head of the town government which in Roman times had been so powerful. Bloody insurrections repeatedly broke out, always traceable ultimately to the pressure of taxation. The people had long since lost all military efficiency; for while the greatest part of the inhabitants of North Africa had lost all energy of character under the unfavorable social and economic conditions, the citizens of the towns had sunk into extravagance and vice. "Just as all the filth collects in the bottom of a ship" says Salvian, " so the manners of the Africans contain, as it were, the vices of the whole world. All other nations have their particular vices, as they have their peculiar virtues; but among almost all Africans no single vice is missing."

Only one thing gave a certain stability to the African population and a power of resistance, though only passive resistance, against the Vandals in particular, and that was religion. The Vandals, during their sojourn in Spain, had developed into fanatical Arians. They cruelly persecuted in its African home the Catholic faith, which Augustine had firmly planted; but in doing so they planted in the vanquished the feeling of brotherhood, while they themselves remained like a strange body in the conquered land, without entering into permanent relations with the people or the soil of Africa. The fact that the Vandals came into Africa entirely as conquerors forced them immediately to organise their political system without special consideration for the conditions of the defeated. In particular, they did not attempt to draw over to their side or even to spare the two most powerful orders, the great landowners and the clergy, but actually proceeded to exterminate them, and when they had seized for themselves all their property, assumed the position of the former owners of the soil.

Genseric sacked Rome in 455, and the Vandals extended their piratical expeditions even to the Peloponnesus, where they were defeated by the Maniatae, the modern Spartans. He undertook no changes in the government of Africa, and Latin was the official language among the Vandals, but they treated the poor African Romans with cruelty and scorn ; they deprived them of the best lands, exacted immense taxes, and excited the bitterest feelings of revenge in the bosoms of their serfs.

Nor could the Vandals get a firm footing in that extensive country. The Moorish tribes from Mount Atlas drove them from the entire coast lands between Tingis and Caesarea. The four successors of Genseric did not inherit his talents. Thrasamund abandoned Sicily to the Ostrogoth Theodoric to secure his assistance; only the important port of Lilybaeum he received back as the dower of the Gothic princess whom he married. Sardinia was used as a place of banishment, and during the violent religious dissensions in the African church, Thrasamund sent two hundred and twenty bishops in exile to that island.

In the year 524 their King Gelimer was defeated by the Roman general Belisarius, and taken to Constantinople to grace his triumph, while the kingdom of the Vandals was made a part of the Eastern Empire.

The Vandals were the first among the northern barbarians who became corrupted by the luxuriance of a southern sky, and while they were reducing the industrious native Christians to thraldom, and themselves revelling in their fragrant gardens and shady villas, they were suddenly surprised, prostrated and annihilated by the sword of Belisarius ; and the Vandal nation left nothing behind them in the world except the hateful word Vandalism, denoting their wanton delight in destruction. Andalusia (Vandalos), in Spain, is said to have its name from the Vandals.