The Dark Ages Collection. David Hume

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СКАЧАТЬ Scots, and Saxons. For a while the Vicar of the Diocese and the two military commanders of the frontier forces, the Count of the Saxon Shore in the south-east, and the Duke of the Britains in the north, were doubtless in communication with Constantine and taking their orders from him. When a great Saxon invasion devastated the country in A.D. 408,75 the Emperor in Gaul was in no position to send troops to the rescue, and the inhabitants of Britain renounced his authority, armed themselves, and defended their towns against the invaders.76 The news reached Italy, and Honorius seized the opportunity of writing, apparently to the local magistrates, authorising them to take all necessary measures for self-defence.77 We have no information as to the attitude of the Imperial garrisons and their commanders to the revolution. It is possible that they sympathised with the provincials and shared in it; most of these troops had the tradition of association with Britain for centuries. In any case, when Constantine fell, and the tyrant Jovinus had been crushed and Honorius was again master in Gaul, there can be little doubt that he and Constantius took measures to re-establish his power in Britain.78 In the first place, it is not probable that the provincials would have been able to hold out against the Saxon foe for fifteen or sixteen years without regular military forces, and we know that the Saxon did not begin to get any permanent foothold in the island before A.D. 428.79 And, in the second place, we have definite evidence that in or not long after that year there was a field army there under the Count of the Britains.80 At this time the Empire was hard set to maintain its authority in Gaul and Spain and Africa, and it could not attempt to reinforce or keep up to strength the regiments in Britain. But there is no reason to suppose that during the last ten years of the reign of Honorius, and for some time after, Roman government in Britain was not carried on as usual. Its gradual collapse and final disappearance belong to the reign of Valentinian III.

      In these years of agony many British provincials fled from the terror-stricken provinces and sought a refuge across the sea in the north-western peninsula of Gaul. Maritime Armorica received a new Celtic population and a new name, Brittany, the lesser Britain.81

      § 4. Settlement of the Visigoths in Gaul, and of the Vandals and Sueves in Spain (A.D. 415-423)

      The Visigoths were far from sharing in the philo-Roman proclivities of Athaulf. Their new king Wallia was animated by a national Gothic spirit and was not disposed at first to assume a pacific attitude towards Rome. A Spaniard two years later82 informs us that “he was elected by the Goths just for the purpose of breaking the peace, while God ordained him for the purpose of confirming it.” Circumstances forced him into becoming a Federate of Rome, for he found his position in Spain untenable. The other barbarians had occupied most of the peninsula except Tarraconensis, and the Visigoths were unable to settle there because Roman ships blockaded the ports and hindered them from obtaining supplies. They were threatened by famine. To Wallia now, as to Alaric before, Africa seemed the solution of the difficulty, and he marched to the south of Spain (early in A.D. 416). But it was not destined that the Goths should set foot on African soil. As the fleet of Alaric had been wrecked in the straits of Sicily, even so some of the ships which Wallia had procured were shattered in the straits of Gades, and whether from want of troops or from superstitious fear he abandoned the idea. He decided that the best course was to make peace, and he entered into negotiations with Constantius.

      Placidia, though still retained as a hostage, had been well treated, and her brother and lover were willing to treat with Wallia as they would not have treated with Athaulf. An agreement was concluded by which the Emperor undertook to supply the Goths with 600,000 measures of corn, and Wallia engaged to restore Placidia and to make war in the name of the Empire against the barbarians in Spain (before June, A.D. 416).

      These engagements were carried out. After five years spent among the Goths, as captive and queen, Placidia returned to Italy,83 and she was persuaded, against her own wishes, to give her hand to the Patrician Constantius. They were married on January 1, A.D. 417, the day on which he entered on his second consulship.84

      Wallia set about the congenial task of making war on the four barbarian peoples who had crossed the Pyrenees seven years before and entered the fair land of Spain, rich in corn and crops, rich in mines of gold and precious stones. For two years they seem to have devastated it far and wide. Then they settled down with the intention of occupying permanently the various provinces. The Siling Vandals, under their king Fredbal, took Baetica in the south; the Alans, under their king Addac, made their abode in Lusitania, which corresponds roughly to Portugal;85 the Suevians, and the Asding Vandals, whose king was Gunderic, occupied the north-western province of Gallaecia north of the Douro. The eastern provinces of Tarraconensis and Carthaginiensis, though the western districts may have been seized, and though they were doubtless constantly harried by raids, did not pass under the power of the invaders.

      Wallia began operations by attacking the Silings in Baetica. Before the end of the year he had captured their king by a ruse and sent him to the Emperor. The intruders in Spain were alarmed, and their one thought was to make peace with Honorius, and obtain by formal grant the lands which they had taken by violence. They all sent embassies to Ravenna. The obvious policy of the Imperial Government was to sow jealousy and hostility among them by receiving favourably the proposals of some and rejecting those of others.86 The Asdings and the Suevians appear to have been successful in obtaining the recognition of Honorius as Federates, while the Silings and Alans were told that their presence on Roman soil would not be tolerated. Their subjugation by Wallia was a task of about two years.87 The Silings would not yield, and they were virtually exterminated. The king of the Alans was slain, and the remnant of the people who escaped the sword of the Goths fled to Gallaecia and attached themselves to the fortunes of the Asding Vandals. Gunderic thus became “King of the Vandals and Alans,” and the title was always retained by his successors.

      After these successful campaigns, the Visigoths were recompensed by receiving a permanent home. The Imperial government decided that they should be settled in a Gallic not a Spanish province, and Constantius recalled Wallia from Spain to Gaul. A compact was made by which the whole rich province of Aquitania Secunda, extending from the Garonne to the Loire, with parts of the adjoining provinces (Narbonensis and Novempopulana), were granted to the Goths. The two great cities on the banks of the Garonne, Bordeaux and Toulouse, were handed over to Wallia. But Narbonne and the Mediterranean coast were reserved for the Empire. As Federates the Goths had no authority over the Roman provincials, who remained under the control of the Imperial administration. And the Roman proprietors retained one-third of their lands; two-thirds were resigned to the Goths. Thus, from the point of view of the Empire, south-western Gaul remained an integral part of the realm; part of the land had passed into the possession of Federates who acknowledged the authority of Honorius; the provincials obeyed, as before, the Emperor’s laws and were governed by the Emperor’s officials. From the Gothic point of view, a Gothic kingdom had been established in Aquitaine, for the moment confined by restraints which it would be the task of the Goths to break through, and limited territorially by boundaries which it would be their policy to overpass. Not that at this time, or for long after, they thought of renouncing their relation to the Empire as Federates, but they were soon to show that they would seize any favourable opportunity to increase their power and extend their borders.

      This final settlement of the Visigoths, who had moved about for twenty years, in the three peninsulas of the Mediterranean, to find at last a home on the shores of the Atlantic, was a momentous stage in that process of compromise between the Roman Empire and the Germans which had been going on for many years and was ultimately to change the whole face of western Europe. Constantius was doing in Gaul what Theodosius the Great had done in the Balkans. There were now two orderly Teutonic kingdoms on Gallic soil under Roman lordship, the Burgundian on the Rhine, the Visigothic on the Atlantic.

      Wallia did not live to see the arrangements which he had made for his people carried into effect. He died a few months after the conclusion of the compact, and a grandson of Alaric88 was elected to the throne, СКАЧАТЬ