Prologue: Age of Fire and Blood
Part Two: The Reign of Gaiseric I
Into Africa
Clashes with the Visigoths continued to intensify in Iberia, and the situation was looking grim for the Vandals. The Visigoth King Wallia relentlessly made war on the behalf of Rome against the Suebi, Vandals, and Alans. The Visigoths, being more numerous, often achieved overwhelming victories over the Vandals and Alans. The situation only got worse when King Gunderic, who had led the Vandals across the Rhine twenty-two years earlier, died in 428 A.D.
His half-brother, Gaiseric was elected to become the new king, and so became King Gaiseric I of the Vandals and Alans. Gaiseric saw that his people were pressed against the world’s edge, and that if they stayed where they were, the Visigoths would surely destroy them. Gaiseric quickly resolved that Iberia needed to be abandoned and left to the Visigoths, and in 429 A.D. only a year after being crowned King, Gaiseric became the first Germanic King to launch a fleet, and took his people, all 80,000 of them, across the Pillars of Hercules to Africa.
Taking advantage of the dispute between the Consul Bonifacius and the Roman Empire, Gaiseric landed in Mauritania and quickly seized control of the region, marching eastward along the coast, defeating the confused and divided Romans at every turn. In only a year, the Vandals and Alans under Gaiseric reached the imperial city of Hippo Regius. The Vandals, being Arians, planned to force conversion upon the city, and to slay any who refused. King Gaiseric effectively turned a migration into a Holy War. Inside the besieged city, the Catholic Orthodox Bishop Augustine and his priests went knee-bound, praying to God that Gaiseric’s horde would not breach the city walls— which some relief would come and spare them. Three months into the siege, the bishop died, and slowly but surely, as the inhabitants of the city began to starve and watched their endless fields of wheat row un-harvested in the wind, they realized no relief would come to save them, regardless of how fervently they prayed. After eighteen months of siege, the Vandals breached the city, and made it their new capital.
In 435, a treaty was made between the Romans and the Vandals in which the Romans ceded control of Numidia to the Gaiseric. North Africa became the new homeland of the Vandals and Alans, but Gaiseric smelled fear on the Romans, and knew they were weak. In 439, he broke his treaty with the Romans, and marched on imperial Carthage.
When Gaiseric reached Carthage, you can only imagine his surprise when no one bothered to stop him. Literally, no one stood in his way. The streets were empty, almost everyone was at the hippodrome watching the races, and Gaiseric simply walked into Carthage with his army and laid claim. Gaiseric made Carthage the new capital of his Kingdom of the Vandals and Alans.
While contemporary historians loved to claim that the Vandals wreaked mass destruction on the region, evidence points to the contrary. In fact, minimal damage was done upon the cities of North Africa, and industry actually increased in the region. African Red Slip pottery was found all over the Mediterranean in this period, denoting the possibility that economically North Africa was actually doing better than before under the reign of Gaiseric.
In 440, the Vandal fleet took to the sail once again, this time not to settle a new homeland, but to raid. During this period, Vandal pirates became the scourge of the seas. The Vandals raided Sicily without so much as a retaliation from Rome, who was busy fighting wars in Gaul. The Vandals went out and conquered the islands of the Western Mediterranean, including Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, and the Balearic Islands. In many ways, Gaiseric had revived ancient Rome’s worst enemy in Carthage.
Seeing this, the Eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius II launched an assault against the Vandals in 441, but only made it as far as Sicily before defeat. In 442, the Western Roman Emperor Valentinian III made peace with the Vandals. This peace granted Tripolitania to the Vandals as well as what was left of the Western Roman Empire in Africa, and secured Vandal hegemony over North Africa. In this peace, hoping to appease the Vandals, Valentinian III betrothed his daughter Eudocia to Gaiseric’s son and heir Huneric. However, the marriage was put off to a later date due to Eudocia’s young age.
But in 455, Valentinian III was murdered. He was replaced by Emperor Petronius Maximus, who took Valentinian III’s widow. He then had his son, Palladius, marry Eudocia.
“Vandalizing” Rome
As one can imagine, Gaiseric and Huneric were rightfully pissed off by this. Gaiseric claimed with the marriage that was to bind the treaty being voided, so was the treaty, and the Vandal armada sent out with a vengeance. Gaiseric set sail for the city of Rome itself. Upon his arrival, however, Pope Leo I managed to convince the Vandal king not to massacre the cities inhabitants or destroy the city. Gaiseric agreed, and the city was opened to his men for the looting. The Vandal sack of Rome in 445 was the third barbarian sacking of the immortal city (the other two being by the Gaulish Senones in 387 B.C. and the Visigoths in 410 A.D.) The Vandals seized and defaced a much of the riches within the city, but to add insult to injury, Gaiseric killed the Emperor, took the Emperor’s wife for his own, and took her daughters as hostages. Eudocia then married Huneric, as she was promised to do three years earlier.
While the sacking of Rome was relatively less violent than the previous, the Vandals burned at least one Catholic Church in the name of Arianism, spent two weeks looting the city (compared to the three days spent in the city by the Visigoths), and brought back shiploads of Romans to Africa as slaves.
The Struggle for Carthage
Growing tired of the Vandals’ meddling in Roman affairs, the Eastern Roman Emperor launched a massive assault with the help of the Western Roman general Ricimer against the Vandals in 468. The navy, led by the future Eastern Roman Emperor Basiliscus, consisted of more than ten thousand ships making their way to Carthage. While Basiliscus was ordered to sail straight for Carthage, another Roman general named Marcellinus was ordered to retake Sardinia, and a third army landed in Libya led by Heraclius of Edessa which was ordered to march up the coast and take Carthage by land.
Roman justice upon the treacherous and barbarian Vandals seemed inevitable, but the Romans were much deceived.
Things seemed to be going swimmingly for the Romans. Marcellinus and Heraclius had retaken over Sardinia and Libya respectively by the time Basiliscus reached Carthage and blockaded the city. This seemed to be the end of the line for Gaiseric and the Kingdom of Vandals and Alans. Gaiseric asked for five days to draw up the conditions of peace.
But then there was Ricimer, the Western Roman general. Ricimer and Gaiseric had quite the history together already. Ricimer was the son of the Suebi king who had helped to oust the Vandals from Iberia to begin with, and had close ties with the many Germanic kings who had proceeded to carve up the Roman Empire. In 461, Ricimer had helped Gaiseric in defeating the Western Roman Emperor Majorian at Valencia. After Ricimer poisoned the Roman Emperor Libius Severus, he and Gaiseric had both lobbied together to force their own candidate on the Eastern Roman Emperor Leo I. However, Leo I did not give into them, and placed his own candidate onto the Roman throne, Anthemius.
So, given this history, it seems no coincidence when the portion of the great Roman fleet besieging Carthage in 468 suddenly is taken by the Vandals. Then, these same ships seized by the Romans were doused in combustible material, and in the dead of night, were set ablaze and launched into the Roman blockade. The Romans attempted to out maneuver these fire ships, but were promptly cut off by the Vandal fleet, mobilized and readied during the five days that were supposed to have been used to ready the terms of peace.
In the fray, Basiliscus fled the battle. Half of the Roman fleet was utterly destroyed, and the other half fled with their commander to Sicily. Heraclius retreated to Tripolitania, where he stayed for two years until he was officially recalled by the Emperor. The assault on Carthage was a total catastrophe. Marcellinus met Basiliscus in Sicily, but was assassinated at the instigation of (you guessed it) Ricimer. Basiliscus, upon returning to Constantinople, then hid within the Hagia Sophia to escape the wrath of the Romans. He was let off rather easily, though, and was sent into exile… that is, until he became Emperor himself.
Following the failed Roman expedition, the Vandals launched an attack on the Peloponnese, which failed. But in retaliation, the Vandals seized five hundred hostages, took them aboard their ships, and proceeded to butcher them, hacking all five hundred into pieces, and throwing them into the ocean on the way back to Carthage.
In the dying days of the Western Empire, Ricimer made an official treaty with the Vandals, and in 474 the Roman Emperor in Constantinople signed a treaty as well.
On January 25, 477 A.D. King Gaiseric I of the Vandals and Alans died at the grand age of eighty eight years old.
Part Two: The Reign of Gaiseric I
Into Africa
Clashes with the Visigoths continued to intensify in Iberia, and the situation was looking grim for the Vandals. The Visigoth King Wallia relentlessly made war on the behalf of Rome against the Suebi, Vandals, and Alans. The Visigoths, being more numerous, often achieved overwhelming victories over the Vandals and Alans. The situation only got worse when King Gunderic, who had led the Vandals across the Rhine twenty-two years earlier, died in 428 A.D.
His half-brother, Gaiseric was elected to become the new king, and so became King Gaiseric I of the Vandals and Alans. Gaiseric saw that his people were pressed against the world’s edge, and that if they stayed where they were, the Visigoths would surely destroy them. Gaiseric quickly resolved that Iberia needed to be abandoned and left to the Visigoths, and in 429 A.D. only a year after being crowned King, Gaiseric became the first Germanic King to launch a fleet, and took his people, all 80,000 of them, across the Pillars of Hercules to Africa.
Taking advantage of the dispute between the Consul Bonifacius and the Roman Empire, Gaiseric landed in Mauritania and quickly seized control of the region, marching eastward along the coast, defeating the confused and divided Romans at every turn. In only a year, the Vandals and Alans under Gaiseric reached the imperial city of Hippo Regius. The Vandals, being Arians, planned to force conversion upon the city, and to slay any who refused. King Gaiseric effectively turned a migration into a Holy War. Inside the besieged city, the Catholic Orthodox Bishop Augustine and his priests went knee-bound, praying to God that Gaiseric’s horde would not breach the city walls— which some relief would come and spare them. Three months into the siege, the bishop died, and slowly but surely, as the inhabitants of the city began to starve and watched their endless fields of wheat row un-harvested in the wind, they realized no relief would come to save them, regardless of how fervently they prayed. After eighteen months of siege, the Vandals breached the city, and made it their new capital.
In 435, a treaty was made between the Romans and the Vandals in which the Romans ceded control of Numidia to the Gaiseric. North Africa became the new homeland of the Vandals and Alans, but Gaiseric smelled fear on the Romans, and knew they were weak. In 439, he broke his treaty with the Romans, and marched on imperial Carthage.
When Gaiseric reached Carthage, you can only imagine his surprise when no one bothered to stop him. Literally, no one stood in his way. The streets were empty, almost everyone was at the hippodrome watching the races, and Gaiseric simply walked into Carthage with his army and laid claim. Gaiseric made Carthage the new capital of his Kingdom of the Vandals and Alans.
While contemporary historians loved to claim that the Vandals wreaked mass destruction on the region, evidence points to the contrary. In fact, minimal damage was done upon the cities of North Africa, and industry actually increased in the region. African Red Slip pottery was found all over the Mediterranean in this period, denoting the possibility that economically North Africa was actually doing better than before under the reign of Gaiseric.
In 440, the Vandal fleet took to the sail once again, this time not to settle a new homeland, but to raid. During this period, Vandal pirates became the scourge of the seas. The Vandals raided Sicily without so much as a retaliation from Rome, who was busy fighting wars in Gaul. The Vandals went out and conquered the islands of the Western Mediterranean, including Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, and the Balearic Islands. In many ways, Gaiseric had revived ancient Rome’s worst enemy in Carthage.
Seeing this, the Eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius II launched an assault against the Vandals in 441, but only made it as far as Sicily before defeat. In 442, the Western Roman Emperor Valentinian III made peace with the Vandals. This peace granted Tripolitania to the Vandals as well as what was left of the Western Roman Empire in Africa, and secured Vandal hegemony over North Africa. In this peace, hoping to appease the Vandals, Valentinian III betrothed his daughter Eudocia to Gaiseric’s son and heir Huneric. However, the marriage was put off to a later date due to Eudocia’s young age.
But in 455, Valentinian III was murdered. He was replaced by Emperor Petronius Maximus, who took Valentinian III’s widow. He then had his son, Palladius, marry Eudocia.
“Vandalizing” Rome
As one can imagine, Gaiseric and Huneric were rightfully pissed off by this. Gaiseric claimed with the marriage that was to bind the treaty being voided, so was the treaty, and the Vandal armada sent out with a vengeance. Gaiseric set sail for the city of Rome itself. Upon his arrival, however, Pope Leo I managed to convince the Vandal king not to massacre the cities inhabitants or destroy the city. Gaiseric agreed, and the city was opened to his men for the looting. The Vandal sack of Rome in 445 was the third barbarian sacking of the immortal city (the other two being by the Gaulish Senones in 387 B.C. and the Visigoths in 410 A.D.) The Vandals seized and defaced a much of the riches within the city, but to add insult to injury, Gaiseric killed the Emperor, took the Emperor’s wife for his own, and took her daughters as hostages. Eudocia then married Huneric, as she was promised to do three years earlier.
While the sacking of Rome was relatively less violent than the previous, the Vandals burned at least one Catholic Church in the name of Arianism, spent two weeks looting the city (compared to the three days spent in the city by the Visigoths), and brought back shiploads of Romans to Africa as slaves.
The Struggle for Carthage
Growing tired of the Vandals’ meddling in Roman affairs, the Eastern Roman Emperor launched a massive assault with the help of the Western Roman general Ricimer against the Vandals in 468. The navy, led by the future Eastern Roman Emperor Basiliscus, consisted of more than ten thousand ships making their way to Carthage. While Basiliscus was ordered to sail straight for Carthage, another Roman general named Marcellinus was ordered to retake Sardinia, and a third army landed in Libya led by Heraclius of Edessa which was ordered to march up the coast and take Carthage by land.
Roman justice upon the treacherous and barbarian Vandals seemed inevitable, but the Romans were much deceived.
Things seemed to be going swimmingly for the Romans. Marcellinus and Heraclius had retaken over Sardinia and Libya respectively by the time Basiliscus reached Carthage and blockaded the city. This seemed to be the end of the line for Gaiseric and the Kingdom of Vandals and Alans. Gaiseric asked for five days to draw up the conditions of peace.
But then there was Ricimer, the Western Roman general. Ricimer and Gaiseric had quite the history together already. Ricimer was the son of the Suebi king who had helped to oust the Vandals from Iberia to begin with, and had close ties with the many Germanic kings who had proceeded to carve up the Roman Empire. In 461, Ricimer had helped Gaiseric in defeating the Western Roman Emperor Majorian at Valencia. After Ricimer poisoned the Roman Emperor Libius Severus, he and Gaiseric had both lobbied together to force their own candidate on the Eastern Roman Emperor Leo I. However, Leo I did not give into them, and placed his own candidate onto the Roman throne, Anthemius.
So, given this history, it seems no coincidence when the portion of the great Roman fleet besieging Carthage in 468 suddenly is taken by the Vandals. Then, these same ships seized by the Romans were doused in combustible material, and in the dead of night, were set ablaze and launched into the Roman blockade. The Romans attempted to out maneuver these fire ships, but were promptly cut off by the Vandal fleet, mobilized and readied during the five days that were supposed to have been used to ready the terms of peace.
In the fray, Basiliscus fled the battle. Half of the Roman fleet was utterly destroyed, and the other half fled with their commander to Sicily. Heraclius retreated to Tripolitania, where he stayed for two years until he was officially recalled by the Emperor. The assault on Carthage was a total catastrophe. Marcellinus met Basiliscus in Sicily, but was assassinated at the instigation of (you guessed it) Ricimer. Basiliscus, upon returning to Constantinople, then hid within the Hagia Sophia to escape the wrath of the Romans. He was let off rather easily, though, and was sent into exile… that is, until he became Emperor himself.
Following the failed Roman expedition, the Vandals launched an attack on the Peloponnese, which failed. But in retaliation, the Vandals seized five hundred hostages, took them aboard their ships, and proceeded to butcher them, hacking all five hundred into pieces, and throwing them into the ocean on the way back to Carthage.
In the dying days of the Western Empire, Ricimer made an official treaty with the Vandals, and in 474 the Roman Emperor in Constantinople signed a treaty as well.
On January 25, 477 A.D. King Gaiseric I of the Vandals and Alans died at the grand age of eighty eight years old.
