The Handy Military History Answer Book. Samuel Willard Crompton

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      The Column of Constantine was erected in 330 C.E. when the name of the city was changed from Byzantium to Constantinople, the new heart of the Roman Empire.

      Constantine I (ruled 306–337) emerged from a four-way contest to become the new emperor. Born in Britain, he was the son of a pagan father and a Christian mother, and he carried that tension throughout life. We have no doubt that he won the Battle of the Milvan Bridge (in 306) and that his men carried some Christian symbols into that battle; whether he actually dreamed that “In this sign shall you conquer” is another matter. Constantine did become the new leader, however, and he declared that there had to be a second capital.

      How soon did Constantinople rival Rome?

      Constantine took a fishing village of 800 inhabitants and turned it into a city of 50,000 people. A century later, there may have been as many as a quarter million people in Constantinople, and the number just continued to rise. There were people, however, who insisted that Rome would always be the center of the Roman Empire, and the contest between the two cities lasted for many years. The single most important advantage enjoyed by Constantinople was that the emperors—almost to a man—preferred to live there or at Ravenna, a city on the northeast Italian coast, rather than Rome.

      Constantine was not—to the best of our knowledge—a likeable or admirable person, but few of the Roman emperors were. What matters is that he gave new life to an empire which had almost died and that his efforts prolonged its life for another 150 years in the western section and almost 1,000 years in the eastern.

BARBARIAN TRIBES AND THE FALL OF ROME

      Doesn’t everyone come from a distant place at some point in their development?

      Yes. It is only in retrospect that some people can call themselves “civilized” and others “barbarians.” If you trace the history of almost any people on earth far enough, you will eventually discover a time when they were the wild men, the outlanders, or the barbarians. For example, the French and Germans, who are considered among the most civilized of today’s peoples, were wandering tribal peoples at the time when the Roman Empire fell. Similarly, the proud Manchu rulers of China, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, had previously been among the far-farers on the outside of the Wall of China. There is something especially “wild” about the centuries that followed the fall of Rome, however, a time when the barbarians outnumbered civilized peoples by a large margin.

      Who were the first of the “wild people from far off”?

      Although the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals, and Burgundians can all lay a claim, the first truly wild folk to emerge were the Huns, who came to northeastern Europe in the first decades of the fifth century C.E. Very little is known about the early Huns, other than the fact that they were a Central Asian people who migrated westward, most likely in search of better pastures for their animals.

      As soon as they arrived in the Danube Basin, the Huns sowed panic among the other tribal peoples of that region. Whether it was actual warfare or just rumors of conflict, the Huns seemed so fierce that the Ostrogoths practically begged the Roman Empire for protection. Quite a few Ostrogoths even entered the empire, with some joining the faltering legions. But the Huns became truly terrifying following the rise of Attila.

      Who was Attila, and how did he become so powerful?

      He was one of the two primary sons of the chief of the Huns, and he fought a long, protracted conflict with his brother to become “King.” Once he did so, however, Attila truly lived up to that title. He led the Huns in increasingly ambitious and daring raids, even threatening the city of Constantinople. Attila did not really wish to conquer the Byzantine capital; it was far more profitable to extract tribute from the Byzantines.

      By 440 C.E., Attila had turned his attention to the Western Roman Empire. The farther he drove into its confines, the more weakness he detected. Attila was not as successful in extracting tribute from Rome, but he possessed excellent intelligence about the city and its people. He was even in contact with General Aeitius, who had been a hostage among the Huns during his youth.

      Could Attila have captured Rome, and if so, would that have been the summit of his ambition?

      Very likely, Attila would have been disappointed because Rome, in 450, was not what it had been a century or two before. Then, too, he had lost the chance of being the “first” man to sack Rome: that distinction went to Alaric, who led his Goths there in 410. But even when we put in these qualifiers, we know that Attila wished to conquer Rome. In 451, he led a large army of Huns due west, to central France, in what may be viewed as preparation for his assault on Rome. His plans were detected, however, and Aeitius brought a Roman-Germanic-Frankish army to challenge the Huns.

      The Battle of Charlons-sur-Marne, fought in the summer of 451, may be one of the most decisive of the entire Middle Ages. It was not a spectacular victory for the Romans and their allies, but they fought the Huns to a draw, and Attila withdrew from the area. Given that the entire Western Roman Empire could have collapsed, the battle is regarded as a decisive victory even though it was fought from a defensive position.

      Did Attila try again?

      Yes. He returned in 453 C.E., crossed the Alps, and marched across northern Italy with frightening ease. Not until he was within one hundred miles of Rome was there any significant resistance, and it came—in this instance—not from military men but the papacy. Pope Gregory the Great left Rome with a tiny bodyguard, and upon arriving at the Huns’ camp asked to see Attila. The two men spent several hours in Attila’s tent, and soon after the Pope departed, the Huns began to break camp. Clearly, the Pope had said something of great importance.

      No one knows what words were spoken, but we suspect that the Pope threatened Attila, saying that the Christian God was more powerful than the pagan ones and that the Huns would all contract a disease if they remained in Italy. There was a virulent pestilence at the time, and Attila may have feared it more than anything else, but according to Catholic tradition, the Pope saved Rome.

      What happened to Attila and the Huns?

      Attila died a year later, on the evening of his wedding to a Bulgarian princess. Soon after his death, the Huns began breaking up, evidence of the fact that their clannish and tribal ties were not as powerful as one thought. A generation later, it was hard to find anyone that called himself a Hun.

      Was that the end of the barbarian migrations?

      By no means. The Vandals had just gotten started on a remarkable odyssey that would take them to North Africa, and the Franks, Lombards, and Burgundians were still on the move. All of these tribes were headed toward settling down, but there was still some wildness within them.

      Each of these tribes, and quite a few others in Western Europe, were on СКАЧАТЬ