THE BARBARIAN BREAKING THROUGH
You will see now what the story told in the first few chapters of
this volume is, for the most part, about. It is about the efforts of
the Empire--on the whole, the successful efforts of the Empire--to
keep itself intact within its walls and to keep the barbarians out.
The pressure of those barbarians without, together with the weakened
state of the Empire itself, has led to the division of the Eastern
from the Western Empire. And that is the story up to close on the
year 400.
After that year 400, or a few years before, the story changes. It is
no longer about the efforts of the Empire to keep the barbarian out.
The barbarian is triumphantly breaking through; and it is with that
break through, and with all that happened to the Empire, as a
consequence, that the story has now to deal.
We shall think it curious, as we follow it, to note how the different
tribes of the barbarians seem as if they acted together, in concert
with each other, from the northern extremity of the Empire's boundary
right down to where we saw those Visigoths permitted to settle south
of the Danube. They seem to have pressed in from the east, within
the space of very few years, along the whole of that boundary.
Probably it was by no pre-concerted arrangement, that is to say not
following any already arranged {31} plan, that they pressed in along
that boundary nearly all at the same time. Probably what happened
was that all of them were feeling a pressure from the Huns, their
neighbours on the east: so that they were all ready to move. Then,
when one tribe heard of the success of another in moving west, the
tribe that heard this news would be encouraged to attempt a westward
push on its own account. That push would be all the more likely to
succeed because the Roman legions were busy trying to stop those that
had moved westward already.
[Sidenote: British legions re-called]
To what extent they acted together in order to help each other we do
not know--probably with very little idea of giving each other this
help, for often when they encountered each other in the course of the
westward move, they actually fought amongst themselves. What we do
know--and it is a fact that made a great difference to the story of
our own islands--is that within a very short time the Empire found
its legions so hard beset on the Continent of Europe that it recalled
the three legions that had been holding Britain. This happened in
407.
I have already, I think, mentioned the names of all those
Indo-European or Germanic tribes that occupy chief place in the story
with the exception of the Vandals. These Vandals had their home
somewhere between the Oder and the Vistula, in modern Prussia, and
they travelled further than any of the rest, actually going down
through Spain, across into Africa, turning eastward again and working
their way along the north coast of Africa, establishing themselves at
Carthage, equipping a great fleet there and crossing over and taking
Rome itself by assault from the sea--a very wonderful story indeed.
But the first people to move in this great irruption, or break in, of
the barbarians into the Empire were those most southern, the
Visigoths. They pressed {32} along, not southward this time but
westward, into Gaul.
We always have to bear in mind that these movements of the tribes
westward were not like the marches of an army only, but rather like
the migrations of a whole people. It was land, land to settle on and
to live in without vexation from Huns and other enemies, that they
came to seek; and they brought with them their wives and children and
live stock, to settle them down on the newly won land. It seems to
have been the custom of all these tribes to take to themselves
one-third of the land that they conquered, leaving the conquered
people two-thirds--a far more generous proceeding than we should have
expected from them. But we have seen something of their institutions
and courts of law. Although called "barbarians," they were far from
being what we should term savages. They had, however, very little
idea of learning or arts or science. The Greek thought had not
penetrated among them, although many of them had by this time become
Christian. They were not nearly so advanced in civilisation as the
Romans, and their conquest of all Western Europe checked the progress
of civilisation and threw all mankind backward into ways of life and
of thought that probably the Romans and Greeks never expected man to
return to.
It was under pressure of their own kinsmen, the Ostrogoths, acting
with their superior lords, the Huns, that the Visigoths at this time
invaded Gaul and pushed into the north of Italy and down into Greece.
They had become Christians. A large number of monks came with the
armies and, in their religious zeal, destroyed many beautiful temples
of the pagan gods in Greece and elsewhere.
The westward advance of the Goths was not continuous. It met with
checks from the legions, but {33} again and again they came on, like
waves of the sea, returning after retreating. In 402 they were
driven back, but in a later invasion they came three times, in three
successive years, up to the walls of Rome itself: that is, in 408,
409, and 410; and some time in these years it seems that a large
force of the Ostrogoths joined their kinsmen of the Western Goths in
this Italian invasion. These Eastern Goths were still pagans. In
410 the Goths actually entered and sacked Rome. The effect of this
was that the Empire was compelled, if it was to survive at all, to
make some terms of peace with the invaders, even if the terms meant
that it had to give up a large territory to them. This is precisely
what happened. Within a few years after the sack of Rome the Goths
had established themselves in the south of Gaul and pushed down over
the Pyrenees into Spain. Their Spanish conquests at this time were
given back to the Roman Empire, though some of the Goths remained in
Spain, but by way of compensation Rome recognised what was known as
the Visigothic Kingdom of Toulouse. This Visigothic territory
reached right across to the Atlantic Ocean and as far north as the
River Loire.
[Sidenote: The Vandals]
But now we ought to take a look at what was happening a little
further north again, for this pressing through of the Germanic
barbarians went on, as I have said, all along the eastern boundary.
Just as the Goths had come flooding in from across the Danube, so too
came the Vandals from across the Rhine. This happened in 406 or 407;
and it was in 407 that the Empire, harassed by all these incursions
from the east, was obliged to withdraw its legions from Britain.
We have seen something already of a tribe or nation called Franks,
that had passed into Northern Gaul some years before this and had
been repelled by the Romans. But some of them stayed within the
Empire's bounds on terms of friendship with the {34} Romans, and when
the Vandals appeared in Gaul these Franks met them in a great battle
wherein the Vandals are said to have lost two thousand killed--a very
large number, considering the comparatively small armies of the time.
The effect of this beating seems, curiously enough, to have been, not
to send them back, as we should expect, to the north-east, whence
they came. Instead of that we find them going onward, south-west,
and two years later crossing the Pyrenees into Spain. They fought
there with the Visigoths and other German tribes that had found their
way there before them, and in the end--that is to say, after twenty
or more years--had taken possession of that southern part of Spain,
which is called Andalusia.
And then a very strange thing happened, and they undertook an
extraordinary adventure, which we have already just glanced at.
[Sidenote: Vandals in Africa]
A stretch of the northern coast of Africa, along the south of the
Mediterranean Sea, belonged to the Western Roman Empire. It ran from
the Straits of Gibraltar eastward to the boundary of the province of
Egypt which was part of the Eastern Empire. All this strip was put
under the command of a Roman official who had the title of Count of
Africa.
Just at this time the Count of Africa had given offence to the
Imperial authority, and, in his fear of what the offended majesty of
Rome might do to him, he invited the Vandals to come across the
straits to his assistance. They came--probably in larger numbers
than he had reckoned on. Eighty thousand of them, in all, including
the women and children, are said to have come. The Count of Africa
quickly repented of what he had done. He patched up his quarrel with
the Emperor, and then set to work to turn out these guests and
helpers that he had invited. But they were by no means so ready to
go as they had {35} been to come. They fought to remain, and so
successfully that within two years of their landing in Africa they
had possession of all the Roman territory along that shore with the
exception of three cities, of which Carthage was the chief. At this
time Carthage was estimated as the most important city, after Rome
and Constantinople, in the Empire. And a few years later again, the
Vandal king, breaking a treaty which he had made with Rome, attacked
and took Carthage itself; and so, once again, this city, which had
been the source of such deadly peril to the Empire in the days of
Hannibal, fell into an enemy's hands; and it was for nearly a hundred
years held in those hands.
Thus, to the year 440 or so, we may trace the extraordinary fortunes
of this people to their zenith--their highest point. There, for the
moment, we leave them.
Now a great part of the reason why the Vandals in Spain were so very
ready to respond to the invitation of the Count of Africa was that
the Visigoths with some allied tribes were pressing upon them there
very much more severely than was pleasant. Spain is a country, as
you should know, very much cut up and divided by mountain ranges, so
that it was difficult for any conqueror to conquer the whole of the
country, because those who were defeated could retreat into the
mountainous places from which it was hard to hunt them out. You will
find this happening again and again in the story of what we now call
Spain. It is not certain, but it seems likely, that the people
called Basques, living along the Pyrenees, are descendants of those
Celts whom we saw moving westward and settling as Brythons in Britain
and in Brittany. If that is so, they have maintained their language
and their national character to this day, in spite of the many
conquerors that have, at one time {36} or other in the great story,
had possession of the greater part of Spain.
I write sometimes of "Spain" and sometimes of "Italy," and so forth,
because it seems the natural and easy way of indicating the lands
which we now speak of by those names; but they were not so known at
the time of which I am telling you. And I would warn you against a
mistake into which we are only too ready to fall--the mistake of
supposing that this Spain and this Italy, for example, have certain
natural boundaries--that there is any particular reason, apart from
the arrangements, the treaties and so on, which nations, in the
course of the story, have made with each other, why they should have
the bounds which are set to them to-day. It is true that these
arrangements about the territory allotted to each are determined in
some measure by the natural features, as we call them--by mountain
ranges and by big rivers--but if it were not for these arrangements
there is no reason in nature why the countries should be divided out
among mankind as they are, and the divisions are continually being
changed all through the story.
Now the Visigoths, as soon as they were free of the Vandals, extended
their Kingdom of Toulouse, as it was called, towards the west until
they were masters of nearly all Spain; but that was not until, in
conjunction with the Romans, they had attended to another business
further north--that is to the invasion of Gaul by Attila, King of the
Huns. That Hunnish invasion was checked and pushed back by a great
battle fought near Chalons in 451; and, curiously enough, it was
almost exactly at the same place that the advance of the Eastern
power, the Germans, was checked and repelled in the Great War of a
few years ago. In this battle against the Huns, which was one of the
battles that has made a great difference in the {37} story of the
world, there were fighting together, Romans, Visigoths and also
Franks.
[Sidenote: The Franks]
The Franks, as we saw before, were perhaps the first of the Germanic
tribes to break through the Roman wall. But on that first incursion
they were repulsed and made a treaty with the Empire. Then they came
again in the year 429 and, though defeated once, gradually fought
their way south beyond the Somme River, and eventually right down to
the Loire. South of that region they fought as allies of the Romans
as late as 460.
The battle at, or near, Chalons counted for a great deal in our
story. The Huns were a far more savage and uncultured people than
any of the former invading tribes, and it really was a battle fought
on behalf of civilisation, as civilisation was then understood,
between the Romans, Goths, and Franks on the one side and the Huns
and savagery on the other. And with these Huns were some of the
Ostrogoths, whom we thus find fighting against their own kinsmen.
One of the results of the battle was that the Ostrogoths now shook
off the yoke of the Huns and became again an independent people.
And not only was the battle of Chalons a battle on behalf of
civilisation; it was a battle on behalf of Christianity too, for the
Huns--probably one and all--and the Ostrogoths, for the most part,
were pagans, and the Goths and Franks and Romans nearly all
Christians.
Therefore you see that Romans and barbarians had come together and
made common cause, as we say, by the middle of the fifth century.
Let us see what was happening in Britain in the meantime, now that
the Roman soldiers had been withdrawn from it.
{38}