Meanwhile an incalculable number of barbarian slaves, escaping from their Roman masters, entered the service of Alaric. As if in compensation, a Gothic leader, Sarus, deserted Alaric for Honorius, took with him a considerable force of Goths, and attacked the main barbarian army. Alaric, holding this to be a violation of the truce that had been signed, again besieged Rome. A slave opened the gates; the Goths poured in, and for the first time in 800 years the great city was taken by an enemy (410). For three days Rome was subjected to a discriminate pillage that left the churches of St. Peter and St. Paul untouched, and spared the refugees who sought sanctuary in them. But the Huns and slaves in the army of 40,000 men could not be controlled. Hundreds of rich men were slaughtered, their women were raped and killed; it was found almost impossible to bury all the corpses that littered the streets. Thousands of prisoners were taken, among them Honorius’ half sister Galla Placidia. Gold and silver were seized wherever found; works of art were melted down for the precious metals they contained; and many masterpieces of sculpture and pottery were joyously destroyed by former slaves who could not forgive the poverty and toil that had generated this beauty and wealth. Alaric restored discipline, and led his troops southward to conquer Sicily; but in that same year he was stricken with fever, and died at Cosenza. Slaves diverted the flow of the river Busento to bare a secure and spacious grave for him; the stream was then brought back to its course; and to conceal the spot the slaves who had performed these labors were slain.42
Ataulf (Adolf), Alaric’s brother-in-law, was chosen to succeed him as king. He agreed to withdraw his army from Italy on condition that he should be given Placidia in marriage, and that his Visigoths, as foederati of Rome, should receive southern Gaul, including Narbonne, Toulouse, and Bordeaux, for their self-governed realm. Honorius refused the marriage; Placidia consented. The Gothic chieftain proclaimed that his ambition was not to destroy the Roman Empire but to preserve and strengthen it. He marched his army out of Italy, and by a judicious mixture of diplomacy and force founded the Visigothic kingdom of Gaul, theoretically subject to the Empire and with its capital at Toulouse (414). A year later he was assassinated. Placidia, who loved him, wished to remain a perpetual widow, but was awarded by Honorius to the general Constantius. After the death of Constantius (421) and Honorius (423), Placidia became regent for her son Valentinian III, and for twenty-five years ruled the Empire of the West with no discredit to her sex.
Even in Tacitus’ days the Vandals were a numerous and powerful nation, possessing the central and eastern portions of modern Prussia. By the time of Constantine they had moved southward into Hungary. Their armies having suffered an overwhelming defeat at the hands of the Visigoths, the remaining Vandals asked permission to cross the Danube and enter the Empire. Constantine consented, and for seventy years they increased and multiplied in Pannonia. The successes of Alaric stirred their imagination; the withdrawal of legions from beyond the Alps to defend Italy left the rich West invitingly open; and in 406 great masses of Vandals, Alani, and Suevi poured over the Rhine and ravaged Gaul. They plundered Mainz, and massacred many of the inhabitants. They moved north into Belgica, and sacked and burned the imperial city of Trier. They bridged the Meuse and the Aisne, and pillaged Reims, Amiens, Arras, and Tournai, almost reaching the English Channel. Turning south, they crossed the Seine and the Loire into Aquitaine and wreaked their vandal fury upon almost all its cities except Toulouse, which was heroically defended by its Bishop Exuperius. They paused at the Pyrenees, then turned east and pillaged Narbonne. Gaul had seldom known so thorough a devastation.
In 409 they entered Spain, 100,000 strong. There, as in Gaul and the East, Roman rule had brought oppressive taxation and orderly administration, wealth concentrated in immense estates, a populace of slaves and serfs and impoverished freemen; and yet, by the mere grace of stability and law, Spain was now among the most prosperous of Roman provinces, and Merida, Cartagena, Cordova, Seville, and Tarragona were among the richest and most cultured cities of the Empire. Into this apparently secure peninsula the Vandals, Suevi, and Alani descended; for two years they plundered Spain from the Pyrenees to the Strait, and extended their conquest even to the African coast. Honorius, unable to defend Roman soil with Roman arms, bribed the Visigoths of southwestern Gaul to recapture Spain for the Empire; their able King Wallia accomplished the task in well-planned campaigns (420); the Suevi retreated into northwest Spain, the Vandals southward into the Andalusia that still bears their name; and Wallia shamed the faithlessness of Roman diplomats by restoring Spain to the imperial power.
Still hungry for conquest and bread, the Vandals crossed over into Africa (429). If we may believe Procopius43 and Jordanes,44 they came by the invitation of the Roman governor of Africa, Boniface, who wished their aid against his rival Aëtius, successor to Stilicho; the story is of uncertain authority. In any case the Vandal king was quite capable of originating the plan. Gaiseric was the proud bastard son of a slave, lame but strong, ascetic in regimen, undaunted in conflict, furious in anger, cruel in enmity, but with an unbeaten genius for both negotiation and war. Arrived in Africa, his 80,000 Vandal and Alani warriors, women, and children were joined by the savage Moors, long resentful of Roman domination, and the Donatist heretics, who had been persecuted by the orthodox Christians, and now welcomed a new rule. Out of a population of some 8,000,000 souls in Roman North Africa, Boniface could muster only a negligible number to help his small regular army; overwhelmingly defeated by Gaiseric’s horde, he retreated to Hippo, where the aged St. Augustine aroused the population to heroic resistance. For fourteen months the city stood siege (430–1); Gaiseric then withdrew to meet another Roman force, and so overwhelmed it that Valentinian’s ambassador signed a truce recognizing the Vandal conquest in Africa. Gaiseric observed the truce until the Romans were off their guard; then he pounced upon rich Carthage and took it without a blow (439). The nobles and the Catholic clergy were dispossessed of their property, and were banished or enserfed; lay and ecclesiastical property was seized wherever found, and torture was not spared to discover its hiding place.45
Gaiseric was still young. Though a capable administrator, who reorganized Africa into a lucrative state, he was happiest when engaged in war. Building a great fleet, he ravaged with it the coasts of Spain, Italy, and Greece. No one could tell where his cavalry-laden ships would land next; never in Roman history had such unhindered piracy prevailed in the western Mediterranean. At last the Emperor, as the price of the African corn on which Ravenna as well as Rome lived, made peace with the barbarian king, and even pledged him an imperial daughter in marriage. Rome, soon to be destroyed, continued to laugh and play.