Vandals

The traditional reputation of the Vandals: An idealized view of the plunder of Rome in 455 by Heinrich Leutemann, around 1870.

Genserico King of the Vandals since 428-477

The Vandals were a Germanic people of central Europe who inhabited the coastal regions of the Baltic Sea, in present-day Germany and Poland. Their language belonged to the East Germanic branch (only a few fragments of the Vandal language survive). Its first appearance in ancient fonts dates back to the I century AD. C. in which they were cited by Pliny and Tacitus.

On December 31, 406, they crossed the Roman limes, crossed a frozen Rhine in the vicinity of Moguntiacum and invaded Gaul, later heading to the Iberian Peninsula where they entered in the autumn of 409 and settled for a few years in the Guadalquivir valley. In May 429, 80,000 Vandals crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and, led by Gaiseric, created a kingdom in North Africa, centered on present-day Tunis, from where they sacked Rome in 455. The Vandal kingdom of North Africa lasted over 100 years, until it was finally destroyed by the Byzantines in 534.

Origin of the vandals

Alanos on the Iberian peninsula.

The name of the Vandals has often been linked to Vendel, the name of a town in Uppland, Sweden, which is also eponymous for the Vendel era of prehistoric Sweden, also corresponding to the Age of Germanic iron leading to the Viking Age. The connection would be that Vendel was the place of origin of the Vandals before the Period of the great migrations and would retain its tribal name as a place name. Other possible homelands of the Vandals in Scandinavia would be Vendsyssel in Denmark and Hallingdal in Norway. The first Roman historian to mention them was Pliny the Elder who called them Vindili.

The lugions or Vandals held the territory west of the Vistula and along the Oder, as far north as Bohemia. The word vandal seems to have a double meaning and would mean "those who change" and "the skillful", while its other name, lugios or lugiones, also with a double meaning, would mean "liars" and "confederates".

It seems that at the beginning, the tribes of the Vandulians (or Vandalios) and the Lugios (or Lugiones), together with those of the Silingos, Omans, Buros, Varinos (probably also called Auarinos), Didunos, Helvecones, Aryans or Charinos, Manimios, Elisios and Najarvales corresponded to small groups of similar origin, integrating another branch of the Hermiones group, which later formed a large group generally identified as Lugiones, whose name predominated to designate all the component peoples, including the vandals. Later, in the second century AD. C., the name of vandals ended up prevailing for the group of towns.

The arrival of the Goths forced them to move south and settle on the shores of the Black Sea, thus being neighbors and sometimes allies of the Goths. During the first century AD. C., the tribes of the group of the Lugions or Lugios (including among them the tribes of the Vandals branch) were in frequent war with the Suevi and the Quadi, occasionally counting on the alliance of other tribes, especially the Hermunduros. In the middle of the century they overthrew a king of the Suevi, and in AD 84. C. temporarily submitted to the Quadi. During part of this century and the next, the various tribes of Lugions merged and gave rise to a larger group known as the Vandals.

Vandals on the Iberian peninsula, in the centuryVd. C.

At the time of the Marcomannic wars, the denomination of Vandals already predominated and they were divided into several groups: the silingos, the lacringos and the victovales, the latter ruled by the lineage of the asdingos (astingos or hasdingos), whose name evoked their long hair. Along with the Longobards, the Lacringos and the Victovales or Victophalians crossed the Danube around the year 167 and asked to settle in Pannonia.

The Asdingos or Victovales, led by Rao and Rapto, were not admitted to Pannonia (where Lombards and Lacringos had settled), so they advanced around 171 towards the middle part of the Carpathians during the Marcomannic wars, and in agreement with the Romans they settled on the northern border of Dacia. Later they took over Western Dacia. Apparently, the Vandals were only divided into Asdingos (or Victovales) and Silingos, disappearing, mixed between both groups and with the Longobards, the tribe of the Lacringos during the 3rd century AD. c.

Starting in 275, the Asdins clashed with the Goths for possession of the Banat (abandoned by Rome), while the Silings, probably under pressure from the Goths, abandoned their settlements in Silesia and emigrated with the Burgundians to end up settling in the Main area. His attacks on Recia were repulsed by Probus.

The Asdingo king Visumar fought against the Goths coming from the east under Geberic, who attacked his territories. Wisumarh died in the fight against the Goths, and the members of the Vandal tribes who did not want to submit to the Goths, had to pass into imperial territory, settling in Pannonia, where the Quadi also settled. At the beginning of the V century AD. C. had abandoned Pannonia (as well as the Quads) and joined the Suevi and Alans to invade Gaul. In the first fights of the year 406 the king Godegisel (Godegisilio) died. A few years later, the two vandal groups ended up merging.

They arrived in Hispania in 409, crossing the Pyrenees, in the company of Swabians and Alans, where they established themselves as federates. Around 425 they devastated and sacked the city of Carthago Nova, present-day Cartagena, and in 426 they took the city of Hispalis (Seville) with Gunderico in command.

Since 411, the Asdingos, together with the Suevi, settled in Galicia, and the Silingos in Baetica. Apparently, the Vandals Silingos soon disappeared, wiped out by the Visigoths, although it could also be that they mixed with the Asdingos on their march to Africa.

The Formation and Rise of the Vandal Kingdom: the Reign of Gaiseric

The kingdom vandalizes in 455.

In the spring of 429, the 80,000 Vandals, led by their king Gaiseric, decided to cross into Africa in order to seize the best agricultural areas of the Empire. For this they used the fleet created by Genserico's father, with which they crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and reached Tingi and Septem between fifteen and twenty thousand warriors.

Then they moved to the east, taking control of Roman Africa and the city of Carthage in 439, after a few years of fighting, which became the capital of their kingdom, therefore, the sources of production of the largest grain-growing region of the old empire, which henceforth had to buy grain from the Vandals, in addition to enduring their pirate razzias in the western Mediterranean.

For this they had the great port of Carthage and the imperial fleet captured there. On the basis of the latter, Genserico managed to seize maritime bases of great strategic value to control maritime trade in the western Mediterranean: the Balearic Islands, Corsica, Sardinia and Sicily.

As in other parts of the Roman Empire, Germanic contingents of a few thousand cleverly moved to control much larger populations.

In 461, the western Roman emperor Majorian assembled a fleet of 45 ships in the city of Carthago Nova with the intention of invading and recovering the Vandal kingdom for the Roman Empire, since its loss meant cutting off the flow of grain to Italy. The battle of Cartagena resulted in a great defeat for the Roman army, which was totally destroyed and with it the hopes of recovering North Africa for the Empire.

However, the Vandal rule of North Africa would last only a little over a century and was characterized by a progressive military weakening of the Vandal army, a great inability of their kings and court aristocracy to find a modus vivendi acceptable with the Roman ruling groups and by the gradual life apart from vast territories of the interior, more peripheral and mountainous, where embryonic states were consolidating under the leadership of more or less Romanized and Christianized Berber tribal chiefs.

The Vandal monarchy's policy was fundamentally defensive and intimidating against all its most immediate enemies: the barbarian nobility itself and the Roman provincial aristocracy. A work of social neglect and political beheading that would forcefully affect the same administrative structures inherited from the Empire, which would cause its final ruin. The root cause of said ruin would be none other than the very base of the power of the Vandal kings, the army and its demands.

Generic (428-477), the true founder of the Vandal kingdom, laid the foundations for its heyday, but also for its future decline. The zenith of his reign and of the Vandal power in Africa and the Mediterranean was the perpetual peace achieved with Constantinople in the summer of 474, by virtue of which their sovereignty over the North African provinces, the Balearic Islands, Sicily, Corsica and Sardinia were recognized.. However, from the first moments of the invasion (429-430) Genseric hit the important North African senatorial nobility and urban aristocracy, as well as their highest representatives at the moment, the Catholic episcopate, proceeding to numerous confiscations of property and handing over some of ecclesiastical property to the rival Donatist Church and to the new official Arian Church. He, too, could not destroy the social bases of the Catholic Church, which thus became a nucleus of permanent political and ideological opposition to the Vandal power.

Regarding his own people, Genseric carried out a bloody purge in the ranks of the Vandal-Alana nobility in 442. As a consequence of this, said nobility practically ceased to exist, thus destroying its strengthening, a consequence of the settlement and distribution of land. In his place, Genserico tried to establish a service nobility devoted to his person and his family. An important element of said service nobility would be the Arian clergy, favored with large donations and recruited from barbarians and Romans.

In order to eliminate possible dissensions within his family and lineage over the royal succession, thus also suppressing any role of the nobility in it, Genseric created a strange succession system, perhaps in imitation of the that could exist in the Berber principalities, called seniority or "Tanistry", by virtue of which the kingship was first transmitted between brothers in order of age and only after the death of the last of these was it passed to a second generation. The reigns of Genserico's successors only accentuated the internal contradictions of the Monarchy, in the midst of a constant weakening of central power and its lack of replacement by another alternative.

The decline of the Vandal kingdom

Migration of the people Vandal between the years 400 and 430.

Map of the Byzantine Empire under the reign of Justinian.

The reign of his son and successor Huneric, who ruled between 477 and 484, marked a further step in the attempt to strengthen royal power, destroying any alternative sociopolitical hierarchy.

His attempt to establish a system of patrilineal succession ran into opposition from much of the service nobility and his own family, resulting in bloody purges.

The fact that said opposition sought support from the Catholic Church meant that Huneric began in 483 an active policy of repression and persecution of the same, which culminated in the meeting in February 484 of a conference of Arian and Catholic bishops in Carthage, in which the king ordered the forced conversion to Arianism. The death of Hunerico in the middle of a great famine testified to the beginning of a crisis in the fiscal system of the Vandal kingdom, which would be fatal.

Guntamundo, whose reign began in 484 and ended in 496, tried in vain to seek good relations with the formerly persecuted Catholic Church to prevent the extension of the power of the Berber principalities, and as legitimization of the Vandal kingdom against a Constantinopolitan empire that with the religious policy of Emperor Zeno he had broken with Western Catholicism.

However, the reign of his brother and successor Trasamundo, who reigned between 496 and 523, would be a synthesis of the two preceding ones, a clear symptom of the failure of both. In the absence of internal support, Trasamundo would seek above all external alliances with Byzantium and the powerful Teodorico, married to his sister, Amalafrida.

The political crisis at the end of the Ostrogoth's reign prompted his successor and nephew Hilderic, whose reign began in 523 and ended in 530, to seek the support of Emperor Justinian I at all costs, for which he attempted to make peace with the African Catholic Church, to which he restored his possessions. This policy did not stop creating discontent among the service nobility.

Taking advantage of a military defeat against Berber groups, this opposition managed to dethrone him, assassinate him and appoint in his place one of their own, Gelimer, who ruled between 530 and 534. However, an attempt to create a second Vandal monarchy was lacking. Of future. Lacking support and weakened militarily, the Vandal kingdom succumbed to the Byzantine expeditionary force, of only 15,000 men, commanded by Belisarius.

Population

In 405 Radagaiso crossed the Rhine with 80,000 Asdingi, 50,000 Silingi, 30,000 to 40,000 Alans, and 30,000 to 35,000 Suevi according to chronicles. Others lower the figure to 40,000 Vandals and 19,000 Alans. In 429, according to Procopius of Caesarea, more than 50,000 Vandals and Alans and 30,000 slaves and smaller groups of other peoples enter Africa, but modern historians hold that figure to be an exaggeration, proposing around 50,000. The number of warriors was probably 10,000 to 15,000.

Timeline

• 406. On December 31, they cross the Rhine in the vicinity of Moguntiacum and invade the Gaul.
• 409. They cross the Pyrenees and enter Hispania.
• 428. Die in Hispalis (Sevilla) Gunderico and is succeeded by Genserico.
• 429. Directed by Genserico cross the Strait of Gibraltar and settled in North Africa.
• 430. They conquer Hipona who turn into their capital.
• 435. Treaty of Peace with the Roman Empire by which it yields to the provinces of Mauritania Cesariense, Numidia and part of the Proconsular.
• 439. They conquer Carthage that becomes the new capital of the vandal kingdom.
• 455. Starting from the present Tunisia a vandal fleet arrives in Rome and plunders it.
• 460. A Vandal expedition destroys the Roman fleet in the Battle of Cartagena (460).
• 468. They defeat an important fleet of the Byzantine Empire in the Battle of Cabo Bon.
• 477. He dies Genserico and is succeeded by his son Hunerico.
• 484. He died Hunerico and was succeeded by Guntamundo, the son of Genserico.
• 496. Muere Guntamundo and is succeeded by Trasamundo son of Gento, fourth son of Genserico.
• 523. Die Trasamundo and it is succeeded by his cousin Hilderico.
• 530. Gelimer usurps the throne to his cousin Hilderico.
• 533. A Byzantine expedition led by Belisario beats the vandals in the Battle of Tricameron.

List of Vandal (Asding) Kings

1. Visumar, centuryIVd. C. d. C. Coetanus of the Visigoth King Geberico
2. Godegisilio (?-406)
3. Gunderico (Gunderico)Gundaric/Gundioc(407-428), Union of Silingos in 417
4. Genserico (428-477)
5. Hunerico (477-484)
6. Guntamundo (484-496)
7. Trasamundo (496-523)
8. Hilderico (523-530)
9. Gelimer (530-534)

List of Vandal Kings (Silingos)

• Fridibaldo (?-418)