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Crossing of the Rhine
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Crossing of the Rhine
The crossing of the Rhine by a mixed group of barbarians which included Vandals, Alans and Suebi is traditionally considered to have occurred on 31 December 406. The crossing transgressed one of the Late Roman Empire's most secure limes or boundaries; as such, it has been considered a climactic moment in the decline of the empire. It initiated a wave of destruction of Roman cities and the collapse of Roman civic order in northern Gaul. That, in turn, occasioned the rise of three usurpers in succession in the province of Britannia. Therefore, the crossing of the Rhine is a marker date in the Migration Period during which various Germanic tribes moved westward and southward from southern Scandinavia and northern Germania.
Several written accounts document the crossing, supplemented by the timeline of Prosper of Aquitaine, which gives a firm date of 31 December 406 in his year-by-year chronicle: "In the sixth consulship of Arcadius and Probus, Vandals and Alans came into the Gauls, having crossed the Rhine, on the day before the kalends of January."
A letter by Saint Jerome, written from Bethlehem and dated 409, gives a long list of the barbarian tribes who had overrun all of Gaul at that time, including those who had crossed the Rhine: Quadi, Vandals, Sarmatians, Alans, Gepids, Herules, Saxons, Burgundians, Alemanni and, to the shame of the empire, Pannonians from within the empire. Jerome lists the cities now known as Mainz, Worms, Rheims, Amiens, Arras, Thérouanne, Tournai, Speyer and Strasbourg as having been pillaged. Jerome's account is highly stylised, and neither his list of peoples nor his list of cities can be taken at face value as they have sources in previous texts.
In his History of the Franks, the 6th-century historian Gregory of Tours embeds some short passages of a lost account by the 5th-century historian Renatus Profuturus Frigeridus of a war between the Vandals, Alans and Franks that took place in the Rhine region around the time of the crossing of the Rhine. This text, known as the "Frigeridus fragment", may provide some clues about the circumstances preceding the crossing.
Olympiodorus of Thebes, a generally reliable contemporary historian, wrote an account of the crossing, of which only fragments have survived in quotations by Sozomen, Zosimus and Photius. 5th century Roman historian Orosius mentions the crossing in passing.
The initial gathering of barbarians on the east bank of the Rhine has been interpreted as a banding of refugees from the Huns or the remnants of Radagaisus's defeated Goths, without direct evidence. Scholars such as Walter Goffart and Guy Halsall have argued instead that the barbarian groups crossed the Rhine not (so much) because they were fleeing the Huns, but seized the opportunity to plunder and settle in Gaul when the Roman garrisons on the Rhine frontier were weakened or withdrawn in order to protect Italy. British historian Peter Heather argues that this hypothesis does not explain all the evidence, such as the fact that "the vast majority of the invaders who emerged from the middle Danubian region between 405 and 408 had not been living there in the fourth century", and that the evidence for any Roman military withdrawal from the northwest at this time was weak; escaping "the Hun-generated chaos and predation" was still a better explanation.
According to the "Frigeridus fragment," there was a war between the Franks and the Vandals, in which the latter were losing. Frigeridus states that the Vandals lost around 20,000 warriors, including their king Godigisel, in these military engagements. When the Vandals' war situation was becoming desperate, the Alans (who he mistakenly labels Alamanni) came to the rescue of the Vandals, and the joint forces seem to have defeated the Franks in a decisive battle. Frigeridus does not mention a date nor a precise location for this battle; he only indicates that the Alan army "turned away from the Rhine" in order to intervene in the Vandal–Frankish war, so it must have taken place some distance away from the river.
Despite this, and against contemporary military logic of staying in the winter quarters to await more favourable weather for their next campaign, Prosper claims the Vandals and Alans crossed the Rhine in the middle of the winter, which MacDowall argues that would only make sense if they were starving and desperate, and if the lands they had just conquered from the Franks were insufficient to provide them with enough food for everyone.
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Crossing of the Rhine
The crossing of the Rhine by a mixed group of barbarians which included Vandals, Alans and Suebi is traditionally considered to have occurred on 31 December 406. The crossing transgressed one of the Late Roman Empire's most secure limes or boundaries; as such, it has been considered a climactic moment in the decline of the empire. It initiated a wave of destruction of Roman cities and the collapse of Roman civic order in northern Gaul. That, in turn, occasioned the rise of three usurpers in succession in the province of Britannia. Therefore, the crossing of the Rhine is a marker date in the Migration Period during which various Germanic tribes moved westward and southward from southern Scandinavia and northern Germania.
Several written accounts document the crossing, supplemented by the timeline of Prosper of Aquitaine, which gives a firm date of 31 December 406 in his year-by-year chronicle: "In the sixth consulship of Arcadius and Probus, Vandals and Alans came into the Gauls, having crossed the Rhine, on the day before the kalends of January."
A letter by Saint Jerome, written from Bethlehem and dated 409, gives a long list of the barbarian tribes who had overrun all of Gaul at that time, including those who had crossed the Rhine: Quadi, Vandals, Sarmatians, Alans, Gepids, Herules, Saxons, Burgundians, Alemanni and, to the shame of the empire, Pannonians from within the empire. Jerome lists the cities now known as Mainz, Worms, Rheims, Amiens, Arras, Thérouanne, Tournai, Speyer and Strasbourg as having been pillaged. Jerome's account is highly stylised, and neither his list of peoples nor his list of cities can be taken at face value as they have sources in previous texts.
In his History of the Franks, the 6th-century historian Gregory of Tours embeds some short passages of a lost account by the 5th-century historian Renatus Profuturus Frigeridus of a war between the Vandals, Alans and Franks that took place in the Rhine region around the time of the crossing of the Rhine. This text, known as the "Frigeridus fragment", may provide some clues about the circumstances preceding the crossing.
Olympiodorus of Thebes, a generally reliable contemporary historian, wrote an account of the crossing, of which only fragments have survived in quotations by Sozomen, Zosimus and Photius. 5th century Roman historian Orosius mentions the crossing in passing.
The initial gathering of barbarians on the east bank of the Rhine has been interpreted as a banding of refugees from the Huns or the remnants of Radagaisus's defeated Goths, without direct evidence. Scholars such as Walter Goffart and Guy Halsall have argued instead that the barbarian groups crossed the Rhine not (so much) because they were fleeing the Huns, but seized the opportunity to plunder and settle in Gaul when the Roman garrisons on the Rhine frontier were weakened or withdrawn in order to protect Italy. British historian Peter Heather argues that this hypothesis does not explain all the evidence, such as the fact that "the vast majority of the invaders who emerged from the middle Danubian region between 405 and 408 had not been living there in the fourth century", and that the evidence for any Roman military withdrawal from the northwest at this time was weak; escaping "the Hun-generated chaos and predation" was still a better explanation.
According to the "Frigeridus fragment," there was a war between the Franks and the Vandals, in which the latter were losing. Frigeridus states that the Vandals lost around 20,000 warriors, including their king Godigisel, in these military engagements. When the Vandals' war situation was becoming desperate, the Alans (who he mistakenly labels Alamanni) came to the rescue of the Vandals, and the joint forces seem to have defeated the Franks in a decisive battle. Frigeridus does not mention a date nor a precise location for this battle; he only indicates that the Alan army "turned away from the Rhine" in order to intervene in the Vandal–Frankish war, so it must have taken place some distance away from the river.
Despite this, and against contemporary military logic of staying in the winter quarters to await more favourable weather for their next campaign, Prosper claims the Vandals and Alans crossed the Rhine in the middle of the winter, which MacDowall argues that would only make sense if they were starving and desperate, and if the lands they had just conquered from the Franks were insufficient to provide them with enough food for everyone.