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Vandals - 277-406

The Vandals and the Goths had the same origin. The Goths are divided into Ostrogoths and Visigoths; while the Lombards, Heruli, and Burgundians are divisions of the Vandals. The Vandals first emerge into the dim light of history dwelling along the mid-course of the Oder. The Vandals were actually two tribes, the Asding and the Siling Vandals. The two branches of the Vandal Confederacy were the Siling Vandals in the northwest and the Asding Vandals in the south.

Their relation to other Teutonic peoples is not quite clear; many historians of the period of the migration class them with the Goths; according to other surmises, they would belong to the great Suevian group. Pure Germans in the anthropological sense they could hardly have been. A striking resemblance of manners, complexion, religion, and language, seemed to indicate that the Vandals and the Goths were originally one great people. The Vandals were largely intermixed with that older population which must have settled in Germany before the inroad of closely federated Teutonic tribes. Indeed, it has been concluded from the name of the Vandals that Slavish (Wendish) tribes were merged with them. At any rate, the Vandals are considered the least important of the Teutonic peoples that marched southward, the least courageous and the most barbarous of them all.

In the great migratory movement, which had affected all the tribes of East Germany, the Vandals, who were settled in western Silesia, had not remained quiet. Like most of their brethren they joined various expeditions against the Romans. At the time of the wars with the Marcomanni the Vandals had already moved towards the Roman frontier in small hordes, until finally the whole people, moved by a spirit of unrest, began to look for new abodes. An unauthenticated account, however, would lead one to suppose that some remnants of the stock remained behind in the old home.

In 277 AD the Vandals and Burgundians who had crossed the Rhine to invade the Roman empire were defeated by Emperor Probus and were resettled. Partly as enemies, partly as allies of the Romans, the Vandals, a people whose armed strength principally lay in cavalry, appeared on the Danube frontier. Beaten and almost annihilated by the Goths, they at last placed themselves entirely under the protection of Rome and received settlements in Pannonia.

When the Rhine froze over during the cold winter of 406/407, the Siling and Hasding Vandals crossed intoGaul together with Alans and Suebi. After plundering Gaul, all three groups settled in Spain in 409.