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A Lombard was a member of the Lombards (Langobardi), who were an ancient Germanic tribe and one of the later tribes that overran a part of the Roman Empire. Much of what we know about the Lombards comes by way of Paul the Deacon’s 8th century work “History of the Lombards”, which detailed much of the Lombard myth and history. The name, Lombard, is said to be a derivative of either the Lombard’s preferred weapon, the long halberd, or of the words long beards. The former of the two is most often considered to be the correct theory. The Lombards are considered to be one of the most violent of the Germanic tribes and their conquests of filled with tales of destruction, pillage and despair. Their invasion would almost single handedly throw northern Italy backwards hundreds of years in culture and advancement.

The Lombards were part of the Suebi tribe, an early Germanic tribe that had been settled primarily along the lower Elbe River in the 1st century AD. The first mention of their tribe comes from Tacitus, who wrote of them in “Germania”. Though the Lombards had some interactions with the Romans during the next few hundred years, they seemed to live a mostly peaceful existence. It would be the advance of the Huns that would change the Lombard role. When the Huns advanced into Western Europe, the Suebi were displaced and fled to Iberia. The Lombards seemed to detach from their original group about this time, for they did not settle with the Suebi in Iberia. They first show up again along the north side of the Danube River, in present day Austria. During this time some of the Lombards converted to Arianism, though the majority retained their previous beliefs.

In 546 a new king rose to throne, when King Audion began a new Lombard dynasty. The Lombards resurfaced to history in 547 AD, when Justinian I established them as federates in the Pannonia and Noricum region. It was during this time that the Lombards begin to develop an imperial structure, creating their own lines of counts and dukes. They also began to adapt the imperial military structure and used it to great effect when Audoin’s successor Alboin led them in destroying the Gepids, who lived to their east, in 567.

Following this period, with little to their north and the enemies to the east destroyed, the Lombards began to look towards the south for new lands to conquer. Albion led the Lombards south into Italy in 568 AD and they began to conquer the area with little effort. Within a year the majority of the large cities, north of the Po River, had fallen to the Lombards, the sole exception being Pavia, which fell in 572. Pavia would become the de jure Lombard capitol and the lands of northern Italy became the Lombard homeland. They used this base to spread their influence throughout Italy, conquering large parts of central and southern Italy. But Albion would be assassinated in 572 and only chaos would follow.

Following Albion’s death, the Lombards chose one Cleph to become their king, but his reign lasted less than three years. By 575 the Lombards were again leaderless and their power began to fracture. Those areas conquered over Albion and Cleph’s lives would fracture into more than 30 distinct duchies, each independent within their own small borders. But the power of the Lombard did not constantly decline during this period; they still spread their influence throughout Italy, albeit significantly slower than previously. The duchies of Spoleto and Beneveto were examples of Lombard expansion during this time, and though they were independent lands they were also a spreading of the Lombard grasp. After 9 years the period of turmoil would come to an end though.

In 584 a new leader would be chosen to revitalize the peoples, when Cleph’s son Authari became the king. Authari was partially chosen because of his line, but also partially because the Lombards had realized that they did indeed need a centralized ruler, especially after some of the independent Lombard duchies has managed to anger the powerful Franks to the west. Authari managed to stop the Lombard decline and to maintain order within their lands. And while some lands were lost to the Byzantine armies and to the Franks, he set the groundwork for his successor Agilulf to take most of those lands back.

It would be Authari who would establish the power of the Lombard king. Upon rising to the crown, the dukes his power rested upon were made to give up parts of their lands in order to sustain the king. Pavia itself became the true administrative center of the kingdom and the footing of the kingdom was overall centralized in a way as to force a continued monarchy.

During the 7th and 8th centuries AD, the Lombards reached the height of their power. As well as converting from Arianism and paganism, the Lombards finally began to see some Roman influence in their laws and in the civil and social culture. Among the larger achievements in this vein would be King Liutprand forming a code of law that linked the German and Roman laws and established a unified code for Lombard Italy. As well, Liutprand would accomplish the absorption of the previous independent Lombard duchies in Spoleto and Beneveto and the reduction of Byzantine strength on in southern Italy.

Under King Aistulf, Ravenna fell to the Lombards in 751 AD and the king then threatened an advance on the Pope, but his actions inspired a Frankish-Papal alliance. So it was that Pope Stephen II appealed to the Frankish King Pepin for help. When Pepin marched into the Lombard lands, all of what he seized was given to the Pope in the “Donation of Pepin”, these lands would go on to form the basis of the Papal States. Following Aistulf’s death, the next king, Desiderius, seemed determined to replicate his predecessor’s mistakes, when in 772 he renewed the advance on Rome.

The successor of Pepin, Charlemagne, intervened and by 774 the Lombards where smashed. Charlemagne took the title of “King of the Lombards” as his own, effectively ending any chance of the kingdom rebuilding and marking the first time one king took another’s “rank” following a conquest. The iron crown of the Lombards would itself be the crown of the Holy Roman Emperor in 951 AD, when it was used to crown Otto I. To the south, the sole remaining Lombard duchy of Beneveto would become a conquest of the Normans in the 11th century, completely ending any independent Lombard rule.

Lombard Culture and Legacy

Unlike the previous Germanic tribes that invaded Italy, the Lombards would leave a distinct mark upon the peninsula even to this day. Their initial invasion, though brutal, was not the true reason for the decline in Roman culture throughout the Lombard controlled areas; instead much of that lies on the early Lombard social structure. The Lombards, though a distinct minority in Italy, basically required that to be part of the civil and social structure of the kingdom one must be a Lombard. Even later in the kingdom’s history when Romans were allowed to become part of the upper structure, the Roman had to have been thoroughly “Lombardized”.

Lombard influence still hangs heavy over the area that became their heartland, north of the Po River. Here one can find a massive concentration of Germanic or Lombard names, sites and influence. Even here though, the simple fact that the Lombards were still such a small minority, their own culture and language was almost completely absorbed into the preexisting Roman culture by the end of the 8th century. This fact is shown most especially in the area of Liutprand’s code of law, published in 731 AD. While some parts of the code maintain distinctly German ideas, the majority is Roman law. This is not a surprising fact though, as administratively the Lombards had been moving towards more and more Roman ideas since they first began to interact with the Roman Empire as federates.

Lombard influence still exists to this day. One must only look to the area of Lombardy for proof, or look closely around cities like Milan. Though their conquest was bloody, and their kingdom relatively short-lived the Lombards succeeded where many Germanic peoples didn’t, in building there own heritage.

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Sources:

Cantor, N. F. (1993) The civilization of the middle ages. Harper Perennial, New York, NY.

Italy Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved September 18, 2004, from Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service. (http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?tocId=27627)

Lombard Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved September 18, 2004, from Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service. (http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?tocId=9048804)

Lombard. Retrieved September 18, 2004, from Bartelby. (http://www.bartleby.com/65/lo/Lombards.html)

Lombard. Retrieved September 18, 2004, from Nation Master. (http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Lombards)

Successors of Rome: Germania. Retrieved September 13, 2004, from the Friesian School. (http://www.friesian.com/germania.htm)

Among the more important migrations of Germanic people’s during the Völkerwanderungen (meaning basically "the migration of the peoples") was that of the Goths. Though the historical evidence of early Germanic history is rather light on the ground, there are some few things that history does know and some sources that one may look to in order to understand their migrations, movements and cultures better.

Besides the Germanic laws developed by the tribes, which settled areas and established kingdoms, there are a few books and other sources from which to glean some small knowledge of these peoples. Our understanding of the Germanic people’s comes from a few written sources, both seemingly biased in their very base. Tacitus’ "Germania" is a prime source and generally accepted as the best, though it is skewed towards the Roman view of the uncivilized barbarian. On the other hand one has the historian Cassiodorus who, as an advisor to the Ostrogoth king Theodoric the Great, wrote another history that some may call the world’s first work of propaganda. But his is almost a lost work and survives to this day mostly because of its abridgement, called “On the Origin and Deeds of the Getae” or the "Getica", which was written by Jordanes in 551 AD.

Tacitus gives us some idea of the Goths, stating that they were identifiable by their round shields, short swords and extreme obedience to their kings. Contrary to the popular misconceptions, the Goth tribe did not ride to battle on horses. In fact the first Goth tribesmen to ride horses into battle were probably those Ostrogoths in serving in the Hun armies, in the 5th century AD. The Goths were not the feared destroyers and pillagers that many know from the historical stories or myths. Instead they were quite apt at developing their own culture and at integrating other cultures within their own. They were a feared tribe though, but mostly due to the fact that they would often sacrifice their captives to their God (who was very much like the Mars of Roman mythology) by hanging arms in trees as offerings.

Their culture, especially where they interacted with the Mediterranean was quite advanced, but the Goths did not lack for their own culture even from the beginning. Priests and kings were said to come from a separate and distinct class and kings typically achieved a god-like status after death. They had a well developed system of laws, which are said to have been first given to the Goths by one Dicineus and would eventually be brought into written form later in history. Many of these laws were replaced over time by the Latin codes of law, but some, like the swearing of oaths and the judging of the truth of accused crimes remained. Metalworking was one of the prime Gothic, and Germanic in general, arts. Their skill in metalworking, in fact, was well above what much of the Roman peoples could do, and was probably a very large reason for the effectiveness of the Goth forces in their later conquests.

One must mostly depend on archeological evidence for the migrations of the Germanic peoples. It is accepted that the Goths moved south from Scandinavia; some point to the island of Gotland as proof. The migrations were probably partially triggered by overpopulation of the Scandinavian region and partially that of expelled tribes; these being the same primary reason that would start the remarkably similar, if by water rather than land the second time, Viking migrations of later centuries. Whatever the fact that forced the Goths to move from their homeland, they did journey south and eventually made their way to the Black Sea area, centering on the northwest coast and the Crimea.

The original migration of the Goths would have reached the Black Sea by the mid-2nd century AD. Here they consolidated their power and pushed the lesser Germanic tribes before them; as well as subjugating the small Slavic populations of the areas they moved into. This push on weaker tribes was probably the cause of the increased raiding of the Roman Empire during the period, as the tribes fled south from the Goths and into Roman controlled lands. The first major raids by Gothic peoples on the Roman Empire came in the late 3rd century when they raided the Balkans, sacked Athens and were finally defeated, in the battle of Battle of Naissus, in September, 269.

It was around this time that the main Goth tribe became two distinct tribes. Those dwelling between the Dniester and Danube rivers would become a separate tribe from those still living around the Black Sea and in the Ukraine. These would become the Visigoths and the first major invaders of the Roman Empire. Striking south in the late 4th century, though they would be beaten back at first by the Roman legions; though they would prompt the Romans to abandon the province of Dacia. Their leader Alaric would sack Rome on August 24, 410, but the tribe would remain homeless for a short while afterward. Eventually they would be granted the position of federate in Gaul, becoming an independent kingdom that stretched from southern Gaul throughout most of Spain. The Visigoths were smashed by the Islamic invasion into Spain in 711 AD, but their example though would go on to inspire the Spanish reconquest of Iberia in later centuries.

The tribe which became the Ostrogoths remained in the areas reaching from the Black Sea and north into the Ukraine and Belarus. They would remain the unchallenged masters of this vast stretch for more than a century. Eventually though their dominance would come to an end at the hands of the Huns. Forced to become vassals, they fought with the Huns, under Attila the Hun, at the Battle of Chalons in 451 AD. Following the death of Attila they reclaimed their independence and would eventually become federates of the Roman Empire themselves, eventually being settled in the Pannonia area of the east. It would be Theodoric I who would lead the Ostrogoth’s to their own kingdom, by taking Italy for the Byzantium and creating his own throne. They would survive but a short time though, eventually being conquered by the Byzantine forces. The Ostrogoths, unlike their cousins the Visigoths, created no real lasting legacy among the people of Italy.

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See:
Ostrogoth
Visigoth

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Sources:

Cantor, N. F. (1993) The civilization of the middle ages. Harper Perennial, New York, NY.

Goth Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved September 16, 2004, from Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service. (http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?tocId=9037486)

Goth. Retrieved September 16, 2004, from Wikipedia. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goths)

Successors of Rome: Germania. Retrieved September 13, 2004, from the Friesian School. (http://www.friesian.com/germania.htm)

Early History

In the early period of the first millennium AD, the tribes known as the Goths are said to have journeyed from southern Scandinavia (the island of Gotland is commonly considered to be partial proof) and settled on the southern shores of the Baltic Sea. Over the subsequent centuries these peoples migrated south and generally east, harrying the other tribes they met and forcing them to migrate before the southward moving Goths. By the fifth century AD the Goths had reached the Black Sea and settled an area reaching from the Ukraine to the areas north of Danube.

The Goth tribes who settled in the Ukraine and around the northwestern shores of the Black Sea would become known as the Ostrogoths, while their cousins who settled between the Danube and Dniester Rivers became the Visigoths. Unlike their southwestern cousins, the Visigoths, the Ostrogoths settled in an area that had been only sparsely settled by various tribes. So while the Visigoths spent many a year raiding their powerful, Roman neighbors to the south, the Ostrogoths quickly rose to supremacy in the Ukraine.

During the third century, the Ostrogoths spread their control of the area, subjugating other lesser tribes. Among those subjugated where the Gepids, another Germanic race, who had been late to establish a foothold in the area and thus vulnerable to the Ostrogoths. Until the latter half of the 4th century AD, the Ostrogoths continued to enjoy this supremacy of the area, but their name fades from the written annals of history.

Hunnish Vassals

It was in 370 AD that the Ostrogoths were first forced back into a central role of European history. It was at this time that the Huns are said to first have swept out of the deep steppe of Sibir and into Europe. The Ostrogoths made at least one major attack to defend their territory, in which they were soundly defeated by the Hunnish forces and within a few years, they had been made to swear fealty to their new overlords.

It is here that history gets a little foggy as to the events that swirled around the Goth tribes and the southern Roman Empire. One report, by one Ammianus, state that the Ostrogoth leader Ermanaric would commit suicide in 378 AD, thus placing the probable point of full subjugation of the Ostrogoths to their new Hunnish leaders at about that time. Other sources, one Getica of Jordanes, reports that Ermanaric would live to a ripe old age of 110. Whatever we do know, one fact is certain; by the end of the 4th century, the Ostrogoths and their vassals now served the Huns.

Again though the threads of history grow indistinct in this period, for south of the now Hunnish lands of the Ukraine and the Black Sea, the Visigoths suddenly requested the right, from the Roman Emperor Valens, to move into Roman lands and to settle there. History has long stated that it was the Huns and their Ostrogoth vassals raiding the Visigoths who forced the southern movement, but this has never been proved in fact and merely remains an accepted truth of history, proven or not. Whatever can be said, the Visigoths moved south and the Roman Empire would destroy their own hopes of peace, plunging the empire in years of strife.

Ostrogoths and the Empire

The Ostrogoths too would come into contact with the Romans. Still as allies to the Huns, they fought in the Battle of Chalons in 451 AD under Attila. Following the death of Attila, the Ostrogoths broke ranks with the Hunnish forces. Led by their chieftain Theodimir the Ostrogoths allied with their former vassal, the Gepids, and defeated Attila’s sons at the Battle of Nedao in 454 AD. The Ostrogoths then, like their Visigoth cousins before them, entered a semblance of friendly relations with the Roman Empire and were settled in the Pannonia area of the East. For the next few decades they roamed the area, alternatively reeking havoc and making peace within these new borders.

The next great period in Ostrogoth history would begin with the reign of Theodoric the Great. Raised as a hostage in Constantinople, Theodoric came into his reign as both the leader of a mighty barbarian nation and as a consul for the Emperor of all Rome. In 488 Theodoric was sent to Italy to recover the eastern throne from the Hun leader Odoacer. By 493, Ravenna, the capitol of Italia had fallen and Theodoric was the new leader of Italy. Myth states that Theodoric actually killed Odoacer in a banquet, killing the rival king with his own sword. With this victory, the Ostrogoths established their power over all of Italy, as well as Dalmatia and Sicily. They also began to draw close to their long estranged cousins, the Visigoths, and politically Theodoric was much the protector of the Visigoth kingdom.

When the leader of the Visigoths, Alaric II, died at the Battle of Vouille, to King Clovis of the Franks, Theodoric assumed the regency of the young Amalaric. It was under Theodoric’s guiding hand that the Franks were stayed from advancing further south and that the Visigoth kingdom was preserved. As in many other cases, when tribes settled and ruled once Roman lands, the kingdom that Theodoric now ruled, though large, was a dual kingdom in fact. The Ostrogoths were settled among the Romans and Theodoric ruled both as the leader of this tribe and as the leader of the Western Roman Empire; two completely distinct titles, and even kings, within one man.

Byzantine Reconquest of Italy

Theodoric proved to be the only Ostrogoth capable of holding a stable Italy under his grasp. When his grandson Athalaric, through Theodoric’s only daughter Amalasuntha, rose to the throne, he was but a young man. His early rule degenerated into a power struggle between his mother and the Ostrogoth nobles. When the nobles took Amalasuntha’s ability to rear her own child in the Roman way from her, she fled to Constantinople to seek help from the emperor Justinian I. Athalaric did not live long enough for the plot to come to fruition though and is said to have died in his wine, and his brother Theodahad rose to the throne.

The new situation forced Justinian to call his hand and he sent in the Byzantium’s most famed general, Belisarius, to retake Italy or restore order, whichever created stability in a Roman ruled west. Belisarius quickly took Sicily in 535 and then Naples and Rome in 536, whereupon Theodahad died and one Vitiges took up the throne. By the year 540 AD, Milan had fallen and the Italian capitol of Ravenna was surrounded by the Byzantine forces. The Ostrogoths had lost the strength to resist it seemed and the war was drawing to a close. But Justinian I did not have in mind the total destruction of the Ostrogoths, he simply wished stability and was well willing to allow other peoples to rule Italy in his stead, especially while they offered some form of fealty. And now that the Persians to the east had again reared up to threaten the Byzantium, Justinian especially wanted peace.

So a treaty proposition was sent from Justinian, though he did not specifically approve it himself, to the Vitiges. The Ostrogoths would be allowed to keep their own kingdom, dependent upon the Byzantium, in northwestern Italy. They would also be required to submit half their wealth to the Byzantium court. This message was conveyed to the Ostrogoths by Belisarius, but was little trusted by the leaders of the kingdom. They deliberated what to do before deciding to support one Eraric’s plan, that the only man who could lead them to safety and prosperity would be, Belisarius. So it was that Belisarius was offered the crown of the Western Empire in return for sparing the wealthy in Ravenna. Accepting, Belisarius rode into Ravenna, but instead sacked the city and turned the whole of the Ostrogoth kingdom over to Justinian.

Normally one would expect a king to rejoice in gaining control over the entirety of an opposing kingdom, especially one so large, rich in history and important to the Roman people. But in fact Justinian had lost the stable west he had craved. Belisarius was recalled from Italy, given no parades and promptly shipped off to fight the Persians, and the area was left governed by minor generals.

But while Belisarius was away in the east, the Byzantium generals left in Italy managed to anger the majority of the Roman subjects and the Ostrogoths regrouped under a new leader named Totila. By 545, when Belisarius was returned to Italy by Justinian I, Totila had managed to reclaim most all northern Italy and had managed to retake Rome. Belisarius landed and quickly managed to retake Rome with a tiny force and trickery, but Justinian who had long since stopped trusting Belisarius, refused to give the general much in the way of supplies of manpower and the Byzantine general was forced into a defensive posture. Finally in 548 Justinian recalled Belisarius, convinced the war was all but lost.

But the sack of Rome by Totila forced the abduction of the Pope by Justinian and the need to dispatch a new force. So Justinian sent the eunuch general Narses with 35,000 soldiers to oversee the campaign. Narses would lead the Byzantine forces to victory, killing Totila at the Battle of Taginae in July, 552. One Teias would take up control of the Ostrogoth forces, but he too was killed in the Battle of Mons Lactarius in October of 553. The age of the Ostrogoths would finally expire near the end of the 550s AD, when the, Frank supplied, uprising of a general named Widin was crushed. The Ostrogoth nation had devolved to the tribe during the long war, with the Italian citizenry becoming independent bystanders. So it was that with the lost war, the leadership, as well as the majority of the Ostrogoths, had ceased to exist and the kingdom faded away.

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Ostrogoth Leaders:

Theodoric/Thiudareiks the Great (493-526)
Athalaric (526-534)
Theodatus/Theodahad (534-536)
Vitiges (536-540)
Theodebald (540)
Eraric (540-541)
Totila/Baduila (541-552)
Teias (552-553)

Early History of the Goths

In the early period of the first millennium AD, the tribes known as the Goths are said to have journeyed from southern Scandinavia (the island of Gotland is commonly considered to be partial proof) and settled on the southern shores of the Baltic Sea. Over the subsequent centuries these peoples migrated south and generally east, harrying the other tribes they met and forcing them before the Goths. By the fifth century AD the Goths had reached the Black Sea and settled from the Ukraine to the areas north of the Danube River.

Those settling near the Danube and Dniester Rivers would become the Visigoths, while their brothers to the east became the Ostrogoths. The Visigoths first are mentioned when they began sweeping raids into the Balkans in 251 AD, resulting in the deaths of the Emperor Decius and the Emperor Herennius. In 267, the Visigoths sailed to Athens and sacked the city. It was at this time that they invaded the Roman provinces of Pannonia and Illyricum in a large-scale conquest of the Balkans, which resulted in a threatened invasion of northern Italy.

This first wave was defeated at on the northeastern border of Italia in the summer of 268 and forced backwards. They were again driven back at the Battle of Naissus in September of 269. Though they were driven back over the next few years, the Visigoths managed to maintain hold on the province of Dacia and in 271 AD Emperor Aurelian was forced to remove the Roman holdings from the area.

The Visigoths and the Empire

While they remained in Dacia, the Visigoths converted to the Christian sect of Aryanism and slowly became a more settled populace. Within the next few years, the Visigoths would be set upon both by the Ostrogoths, who were forced south and west by the invading Huns, and then by the Huns themselves. Fitigern, one of the leaders of the Visigoths, was now forced to ask for passage south of the Danube, in hopes that the river would block the Huns from attacking the Visigoths yet more. In return the Visigoths would provide soldiers for the Roman armies. The agreement was implemented and the Visigoths moved south, crossing into Roman lands, but it would prove to be a short lived agreement and Rome would be made to pay vastly for their breaking of it.

Within the year, famine broke out in the lands now occupied by the Visigoths, and the newest Roman subjects appealed for help. Treated cruelly by the Roman governors in the area, they next appealed to Emperor Valens, hoping for some form of succor. When help did not arrive the Visigoths considered their agreement broken and a new age of warfare sprung up between themselves and Rome. The Visigoths would meet the Roman armies at the Battle of Adrianople on August 9, 378, where Fitigern led his people to victory against the might of Rome and Emperor Valens fell to the sword.

The next emperor of Rome, Theodosius I, would make peace with the Visigoths in 379, but this also would last no more than a few years. Theodosius would settle the Visigoths in Moesia in the Balkans and made them protectors of the area. In 395 both the Romans and Visigoths would crown new leaders. The Visigoths were now led by Alaric and the Roman Empire was now led by the, less than capable, emperors Arcadius, in the east, and Honorius, in the west.

The next 15 years would bring intermittent conflict separated by years of uneasy peace. The final binding between the Roman Empire and the Visigoths were broken in 408 AD though, when Honorius murdered the general Stilicho and the legions massacred the families of 30,000 barbarian soldiers who had been serving in the Roman army. This was the final straw for Alaric, who now marched for Rome.

With his armies before the gates of Rome, Alaric requested terms and was refused. So it was that on August 24, 410 that the Visigoth armies sacked the eternal city of Rome. Peace would be but a few years from the sack of Rome and with it would bring a change in homelands for the Visigoths. Alaric would not long outlive his great victory, and died the same year. He was succeeded by one Ataulf, who led the Visigoths to new lands in Gaul where he was unable to form the necessary alliances with the Roman Empire, was forced to flee to Spain, and finally was assassinated.

It would be under the next Visigoth leader, Wallia, that Rome would finally accept the Visigoths as allies and federates. A scant three years after settling in Spain though, the Visigoths were called to become the protectors of Aquitania Secunda, in southern Gaul, between the Garonne and Loire Rivers by the Emperor Honorius. Wallia died shortly after the tribe had settled in their new home and was succeeded by one Theodoric I, who would in turn fall to Attila in the Battle of Chalons in 451 AD. Though Theodoric’s life was cut short, he is remembered as the first Visigoth leader who could truly be considered a king.

The Visigoth Kingdom

Under Theodoric’s successor, Euric, the Visigoths continued to expand their realm. It would be Euric, who would unify the Visigoth nation and its quarrelsome factions. By 475 AD, he had forced the Roman’s to grant the Visigoths full independence. It was during this time that the Vandals, long a tribe that had controlled much of Roman Spain, were locked out of Spain for good and forced to remain in their new home of North Africa. Euric also beat the Suavi back into Galicia. The Gallic kingdom would reach its height by 507; encompassing Aquitaine and almost all of Iberia, except the north of Spain, which was ruled by the Basque kingdom, and the northwest of Spain, which was ruled by the Suavi.

Imperial rule would not last much longer though and eventually the “fall of the Western Roman Empire” became a fact. Even so, the majority of the populace considered themselves Roman and was ruled by the Theodosian Code. Though Euric compiled his own code of laws, it saw little use and is little remembered; most suspect it was used solely among the 200,000 or so Visigoths, while the five to six million Hispano-Romans adhered to the old laws. Under Euric’s son, Alaric II, the Breviary of Alaric was published, which updated the Theodosian Code.

It was Euric’s son, Alaric II, who would oversee the decline of the Gallic kingdom. In 507 the Franks seized Aquitaine, excepting the small strip of land known as Septimania, and Alaric was killed by King Clovis at the Battle of Vouille. Toledo eventually became the new capital and the Visigoths lost much of their strength. They still had not managed to win a hold of the people of Spain and the kingdom in most respects consisted of only the Visigoth peoples, while the Hispano-Romans still pledged fealty to the Imperial Throne, however weak its power might by now have been. In 554 both Granada and Andalusia were seized by the Byzantine armies, for the emperor Justinian I, leading to much rejoicing by the Roman population of the area.

It would be Leovigild, who ruled from 568-586, who would regain some of the former power of the Visigoths. He conquered Suavi in 584 and subdued the Basques afterwards. Following the victorious campaigns, Leovigild would strengthen his claim from Toledo and adopt the Roman symbols of monarchy. His demand that the Romans under his rule convert to Aryanism would cause many problems though and the area of Baetica rose in revolt under the leadership of Leovigild’s own son, Hermenegild. When the Byzantium failed to aid the rebels though, Leovigild managed to win victory and maintain his throne, but would not long outlive his victory.

Leovigild’s son Reccared rose to the throne in 586 and immediately would try to salve the kingdom's wounds. Recognizing that the majority of the population was strictly Catholic, the new king reversed his father’s policy and announced his own conversion to Catholicism. From this point onward, the population of Spain was willing to grow closer to their monarchs and the Gallic kingdom flourished again.

As a direct result of the new peace, within the kingdom itself, the King Suinthila was able to retake the Byzantium controlled lands by 624. The following century was a time of prosperity for the reborn kingdom. The converted Visigoths held great prestige and were able to appoint Bishops within their lands and to summon them to councils. The bishops, which in many ways were the direct leaders of the Roman peoples of Spain would enact laws and guide the people in the ways espoused in these councils, thus leading to a harmonious balance of power within the kingdom.

Further, the Bishops tried to lend a veneer of divine monarchy to the kings, anointing them with oils that placed the king under God’s blessing. The basic Roman system remained the form of government for the kingdom in most places, with the established provinces being ruled by dukes, counts and judges in their turn. Still over time the Visigoths became less German and more Roman, blending with their subject’s culture rather than forcing their own culture upon their subjects. The Liber Iudiciorum, a set of laws codified by the King Recceswinth showed very little German influence and rather adhered much to the old Roman laws.

The End of the Visigoths

When King Wamba was deposed in 680 AD, after attempting needed reforms within the military structure of the kingdom, sudden rifts showed deep. Persecution of the Jews provided the needed scapegoat for a few more years of stability, but after the death of King Witizia in 710, the situation worsened terribly. Witizia’s rightful son was unable to gain his succession and instead one Roderick, Duke of Baetica, was made king.

Witizia’s family retaliated by asking the Muslim governors in North Africa to aid, but instead of leading to their own victory, they had let the wolves in the doors. Turiq Ibn Ziyad, the governor of Tangier landed in Calpe (Gibraltar), in the year 711 AD, and proceeded to defeat the army of King Roderick, on July 19, 711, near the Guadalete River. The Muslim armies quickly overran Spain and the Visigoth Kingdom would fail to last the ages, pushed completely out of existence within months.

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Visigoth Kings

Balthi Dynasty

Alaric (395 - 410)
Ataulf (410 - 415)
Sigeric (415)
Wallia (415 - 419)
Theodorid I (419 - 451)
Thorismund (451 - 453)
Theodorid II (453 - 466)
Euric (466 - 484)
Alaric II (484 - 507)
Gesalec (507 - 511)
Theodoric the Great (511 - 526)
Amalaric (526 - 531)

Later Kings

Theudis (531 - 548)
Theudigisclus (548 - 549)
Agil (549 - 554)
Athanagild (554 - 567)
Liuva I (567 - 568)
Leovigild (568 - 586)
Reccared (586 - 601)
Liuva II (601 - 603)
Witteric (603 - 610)
Gundemar (610 - 612)
Sisebut (612 - 621)
Suinthila (621 - 640)
Tulga (640 - 641)
Chindaswinth (641 - 649)
Reccaswinth (649 - 672)
Wamba (672 - 680)
Erwig (680 - 687)
Egica (687 - 701)
Witizia (701 - 710)
Roderic (710 - 711)

The battle for Stalingrad was one of the most influential ones of the second World War. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers were killed due to incompetence on the top of the chain of command and ideological resolve. The annihilation of the German forces holding the city were a pivotal point in the course of war - the forces keeping the pocket could then assist the Soviet counteroffensive which was already taking back lost territories rapidly, while the German military machine suffered large losses. After this, the battles started to go the Russians' way until finally in May 1945 the Third Reich fell.

Fall Blau - Operation Blue

After Operation Barbarossa in 1941 had been cut off a few miles short of Moscow due to the infamous Russian winter, in summer 1942 it was time for the Wehrmacht to have another go at the vast expanses of land that remained. This time the advance, called Operation Blue (Fall Blau in German) was in the south - the northern and central armies were much too weakened by the last winter to carry out a new assault on Moscow, and Stalin had transfered the best troops to protect the city.

Replacing the sacked commander in chief, Hitler was now leading the effort - as a politician. A soldier would strive to destroy the enemy army, but Hitler's goal was to break the spine of Russian resistance by taking away their sources of grain, oil and other commodities. Three quarters of the Soviet Union's oil was produced at the Caucasus and Stalingrad, overlooking the river Volga, was an important nexus of transportation. Never mind the ideological value - the industrial city was Stalin's crown jewel, hence the name. To get to them Hitler devised a plan to advance with two army groups. Lack of troops meant that the forces had to be dispersed - a soldier would have used a single strong punch, but again, Hitler was a politician.

Group A was to advance to the oilfields in the southeast, while Group B led by general Friedrich von Paulus and his Sixth Army would march to and take Stalingrad. The Stalingrad offensive was intended to secure the flank of Group A and to cut off the Caucasus area entirely from the rest of Russia.

The initial offensive had echoes of the beginning of Operation Barbarossa - it was started mid-summer, June 28th, instead of late spring, meaning the winter lurked far closer than was necessary. Group B rolled across the strip of land between the rivers Don and Volga without much effort, with the Red Army retreating from their path and eluding any German attacks.

Meanwhile, with the direction of Group B obvious, in Stalingrad every building was being turned into a stronghold, and the citizens were readying themselves for a bloody battle for every inch, fueled by patriotism, communist passion, fear and a good bit of coercion. Everyone took part - half of the anti-aircraft guns were crewed by women. The Soviet industrial and military machine was finally building up momentum and spirits were higher on the home front.

Convinced after meagre resistance that taking Stalingrad would be an easy exercise, Hitler ordered several units of the Stalingrad advance to head south to assist the invasion of the Caucasus. The remaining troops of the Sixth Army and the Fourth Panzer Army were to continue and take the city.

Enemy at the Gates

On August 21st Group B finally arrived and one of the fiercest battles in human history began. The Luftwaffe was called in to give a hand and the bombing turned the city to hell on earth. Massive firestorms raged on, the buildings were reduced to rubble and stray dogs would try to swim across the river to escape the unbearable heat. What drove the dogs out couldn't drive the Russians defending their rodina out, however. The fighting was reminiscent of the horrors of trench warfare in the Great War, with massive daily casualties and bloody battles for every single piece of land.

This was the the first large engagement with urban warfare tactics, which the Germans jokingly called Rattenkrieg, Rat War. The Russian soldiers were able to adapt to the cramped battle field, while the German soldiers were trained for sweeping quickly across open terrain. For instance, the battle for a structure called Grain Elevator took weeks, and the German soldiers were stunned to find, after it was finally over, only forty Russian corpses inside. Another famous point of resistance was Pavlov's House.

The Red Army had to ship its reinforcements and supplies across the Volga, braving artillery and aerial bombardment. This made for a striking scene in the PC game Call of Duty: the player is first ferried across the river with Stuka dive bombers screaming above, then given a few rounds of ammo and instructions to grab a rifle from a dead comrade, and is executed by an officer should the player take a few too many steps backwards. All of this is based on historical fact - 13 000 Red Army soldiers were imprisoned or executed for deserting during the battle.

The Red Army tried to solve the stalemate with small guns, the Wehrmacht with big guns. The latter wheeled in heavier and heavier artillery, ravaging the city even further, the former brought in the infamous snipers who could score hundreds of kills in a single day. Armour was useless in the narrow streets and piles of debris, with the smouldering ruins offering perfect firing positions for anti-tank weapons.

After three months of intense bloodshed, in November Group B held 90% of the city. Icy slush started to form on the river and the remaining pockets of resistance were left without supplies or reinforcements. Hitler held a speech at a ball and belittled the remaining one tenth of the city, declaring that the battle of Stalingrad had gone his way. And in his way it had indeed went - with thousands of soldiers dead and the entire army group caught in a very precarious situation.

Operation Uranus

The German army fighting in Stalingrad had originally had its flanks guarded by German soldiers. With the losses piling up every day, the flanks had to be moved in to assist the main assault and large stretches of the eastern front were given for the other Axis powers to guard. The German Stalingrad flanks were now covered by Romanians, who were not too keen on the whole World War thing and had very inferior equipment.

While the battles raged on in the city, Georgi Zhukov, a general and marshal of the Red Army, started to assemble two forces south and north of Stalingrad instead of reinforcing the defenders of the city. He was using an old and familiar tactic employed, for instance, by the Carthagenian commander Hannibal in the Battle of Cannae - encirclement. The groups had a total of close to one million soldiers, and such a force can't be just snuck in, but the intel was not enough to convince Hitler to order a withdrawal. Stalingrad would not fall. The southern and northern Soviet army groups started to surround Stalingrad - Operation Uranus - with other groups attacking westward to take back Rostov and to cut off the Germans in the Caucasus.

The Romanian forces could offer no resistance and withdrew to Stalingrad themselves. The 300 000 to 400 000** soldiers from Germany and several other Axis countries suddenly found themselves trapped in a decimated city, with the actual front lines moving more and more west every day. What's worse, it was late November, and winter had set in - just the way the Russians liked it. The cold, the lack of food and illness were now the worst enemy of the German soldier.

The Bitter End

Hitler had stated before that Stalingrad would never be given back, and because of personal pride and political value, he ordered von Paulus to stay put and wait until the Soviet advance could be halted and countered. The soldiers surrounding the pocket were also tied down and couldn't help the actual Soviet counterattack. Von Paulus suggested a quick breakthrough from the pocket and leaving the city, but instead Hermann Göring promised that the needed amount of supplies could be transported through air*. When the convoy finally took off, the Red Army had already set up its AAA batteries, and the amount that could be transported daily was nowhere near sufficient. And when the planes did get through, the cargo holds had everything but food, fuel and ammunition, like grounded pepper and condoms.

An operation called Winter Storm was undertaken by the Germans to break through to the Caucasus pocket in the south in December, but the offensive was repulsed. In January the Soviets started Operation Neptune, and the frontier advanced even further away from Stalingrad. The hapless forces stuck in the city were not informed - they were still faithfully waiting for their rescue to arrive.

As January progressed, the noose around Stalingrad was tightened. The German forces retreated to the city, losing control of important airfields. The fighting wasn't quite as fierce as months ago now, though - the Axis soldiers were starved, cold and far away from home. Scores of them were taken prisoner and sent to labour camps, but only a scant few of them saw home ever again.

On January 30th 1942 the Führer promoted von Paulus to the rank of Field Marshal, reasoning that no German or Prussian of that rank had been taken alive before. Von Paulus had no aspirations of martyrdom, and instead became the first to break the tradition. The Soviet officers were startled to see such a high-ranking German officer alive as he surrendered to them on February 2nd. The von Paulus they met was a disheveled, broken man, and the glorious Sixth Army they had imprisoned and destroyed was but a shadow of the force that had so succeeded in France.

After 200 days, after over 600 000 casualties on the Axis side and over a million casualties on the Soviet side**, the battle was over. Stalingrad's status as the crown jewel of the Soviet Union was reinforced, the city rebuilt, and since the 1960's it's been known as Volgograd. While a symbol of the Russian resistance, the battle was World War 2 in a miniature scale: it was total war, where no civilian or structure was safe, and it was ideological war, where the celebrated leaders of two juggernauts duked it out on a grand scale.

After the battle, Hermann Göring, in a radio speech on the 10th birthday of the National Socialist regime, compared the disaster to the battle of Thermopylae, painting a picture of German soldiers keeping the enemy at bay bravely to the last man, helping the war effort as a whole. The contrary can be argued - if pulled back to the main front, rearmed, and resupplied, the hundreds of thousands of men might have been able to force a stalemate on the eastern front. The German advantage was, after all, quality, not quantity, while the Soviet advantage was the opposite.

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Sources:
"Stalingradin taistelu", a documentary aired Nov 7th 2002 on YLE Radio Aurora. http://www.klak.com/opi/aurora/jutut/stalingrad.php
The documentary film series The World at War, episode 10, "Stalingrad June 1942 - February 1943"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Stalingrad
http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/wwii/stalingrad/default.aspx
http://campus.northpark.edu/history/WebChron/EastEurope/Stalingrad.html
* Different sources disagree on whether or not Göring knew the transport capability was (in)sufficient and whether or not it was Hitler's or Göring's idea to use an air bridge.
** Different sources also disagree on the numbers, but the scale is close to what's presented here.