Background The rise of the barbarian kingdoms in the territory previously governed by the
Western Roman Empire was a gradual, complex, and largely unintentional process. Their origin can ultimately be traced to the migrations of large numbers of barbarian (i.e.
non-Roman) peoples into the territory of the Roman Empire. Although the
Migration Period ( 300–600) is often referred to as the "Barbarian Invasions", migrations were spurred not only by invasions but also by invitations. Inviting peoples from beyond the imperial frontier to settle Roman territory was not a new policy, and something that had been done several times by emperors in the past, mostly for economic, agricultural or military purposes. Because of the size and power of the Roman Empire, its capacity for immigration was nearly infinite. Several events through the fourth and fifth centuries complicated the situation.
Roman perspectives Roman writers conceptualized these groups within long-standing ethnographic traditions that emphasized their cultural alterity. Descriptions of “barbarians” often owed more to literary convention than to direct observation, portraying them as uncivilized, warlike, and fundamentally distinct from Roman society. Such accounts functioned as tools of imperial ideology, justifying conquest and explaining Roman decline in moralizing terms. As historian Michael Maas observes, Roman ethnography at the end of antiquity was less concerned with the accuracy of description than with integrating these groups into narratives of Rome's fate and destiny. While ethnographic stereotypes remained powerful, the formation of the kingdoms reflected pragmatic realities: federate armies carved out territories, imperial recognition was sometimes granted for political expediency, and Roman elites themselves often cooperated with new rulers. Scholars have debated whether the transition from tribal
gentes to territorial
regna marked the collapse of Rome or its transformation into a new political order.
The Visigoths (376–410) , leader of the
Visigoths 395–410, entering
Athens after capturing the city in 395|leftIn 376, the
Visigoths were allowed to cross the
Danube river and settle in the
Balkans by the government of the
Eastern Roman Empire. The Visigoths, numbering perhaps 50,000 (out of which 10,000 were warriors), were refugees, fleeing from the
Ostrogoths, who in turn were fleeing from the
Huns. The Eastern emperor,
Valens (364–378), was pleased at the arrival of the Visigoths as it meant that he could recruit their warriors at low cost, bolstering his armies. Barbarian tribes seeking to settle in the empire were typically broken up into smaller groups and resettled across imperial territory. The Visigoths were however allowed to remain united and to themselves choose
Thrace as their place of settlement. Although the Roman state was to provide the Visigoths with food, imperial logistics could not handle the large number of refugees and Roman officials under the command of
Lupicinus worsened the crisis by selling off much of the food before it reached the Visigoths. Amid rampant starvation, some Visigoth families were forced to sell their children into Roman slavery for food. After Lupicinus had a group of high-ranking Visigoths killed, the situation erupted into a full-scale rebellion, later known as the
Gothic War (376–382). In 378, the Visigoths inflicted a crippling defeat on the Eastern Roman field army in the
Battle of Adrianople, in which Emperor Valens was also killed. The defeat at Adrianople was a shock for the Romans, and forced them to negotiate with, and settle, the Visigoths within the imperial borders. The treaties at the conclusion of the Gothic war made the Visigoths semi-independent
foederati under their own leaders, able to be called upon and drafted into the Roman army. Unlike previous settlements, the Visigoths were not dispersed and instead given cohesive lands in the provinces of
Scythia,
Moesia, and perhaps
Macedonia. Although the defeat at Adrianople was disastrous, several modern historians have criticized the idea that it was a decisive step in the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Other than the Visigoths remaining a cohesive group, their eventual settlement was not much different from previous groups and they had been effectively pacified and contained by the early 380s. Roman civil wars in the late 4th century, as well as periods of cold war between the imperial courts of the Western and Eastern Roman empires, allowed the Visigoths under their leader
Alaric I (395–410) to become an active force in imperial politics, only tenuously linked to the imperial government itself. Both Visigoths and Romans were aware that Gothic autonomy had only been accepted because there were few alternatives and repeated Gothic casualties in Roman wars likely made the Visigoths increasingly suspicious of Roman motives. In this context, the Visigoths revolted several times under Alaric, who sought to attain a formal position in the imperial framework as a Roman general, as well as pay for his followers as Roman soldiers. Alaric was repeatedly caught in the rivalry and court intrigue between the Eastern and Western empires and his failure to obtain formal recognition eventually led to his forces
sacking Rome in 410.
Breakdown in Gaul and Britannia (388–411) (383–388) the last Roman emperor to be significantly active in Britannia and northern Gaul Roman civil wars in the late fourth century were disastrous for the defense of the Western Roman Empire. In 388, the eastern emperor
Theodosius I (379–395) defeated the western usurper-emperor
Magnus Maximus (383–388). In 394, Theodosius's troops again defeated a western rival,
Eugenius (392–394). Both conflicts meant large slaughters of Western Roman regiments. After Magnus Maximus, no significant western emperor ever traveled north of
Lyon and there appears to have been very little real imperial activity in Britannia or northern Gaul. In many ways, the Roman Empire ceased to make itself felt in the region; local offices were withdrawn to southern Gaul, aristocrats fled south, and the local capital was moved in 395 from
Trier to
Arles. Archaeological evidence from Britannia and northern Gaul showcase a rapid collapse of Roman industries, villa life, and Roman civilization as a whole. The effective border of imperial control moved from the
Rhine frontier to the
Loire. Between 405 and 407, a large number of barbarians invaded Gaul in what is called the
crossing of the Rhine, including the
Alans,
Vandals, and
Suebi. These groups were not from the kingdoms immediately adjacent to Roman Gaul; instead they had likely been heavily dependent on Roman gifts and were provoked to journey west as such gifts stopped and the Huns arrived in the east. The barbarians quickly overwhelmed what remained of the Roman defensive works in the region and led Roman forces in Britain to acclaim the usurper-emperor
Constantine III (407–411). Constantine III managed to keep the barbarians on the Rhine somewhat in check. The end of his reign due to further internal Roman conflict left the armies in Gaul in tatters and led to the tribes being able to penetrate deep into Gaul and Hispania. Without sufficient military force and with administration impossible, the imperial government effectively abandoned Britannia and northern Gaul around 410. In Britannia, this led to fragmentation into numerous local kingdoms. In northern Gaul, dominion was taken over by peoples such as the
Franks and
Burgundians, who had formerly lived beyond the imperial frontier.
Imperial acceptance (411–476) The second stage in the formation of the barbarian kingdoms was the imperial acceptance of the
status quo. The Roman government at no point saw the existence of semi-autonomous barbarian-controlled territories as desirable, but began to tolerate them through the 420s and 430s. Neither the Romans nor the various barbarian groups sought to establish new and lasting territorial kingdoms that replaced the imperial government. The rise of the barbarian kingdoms derived not from barbarian interest in creating them but from failures in Roman governance and a failure to integrate the barbarian rulers into the existing Roman imperial systems. Early barbarian rulers were tolerated only on the terms of the Roman Empire. Early 'kingdoms', such as those of the Suebi and Vandals in Hispania, were consequently relegated to the edges of less important provinces. In 418, the Visigothic groups formerly under Alaric were settled by Emperor
Honorius (393–423) in
Aquitania in southern
Gaul, establishing the
Visigothic Kingdom. The Romans envisioned this as a provisional settlement of loyal clients of the imperial government, whose support could be relied on in internal struggles. The settlement was not seen as an actual ceding of imperial territory, given that the Roman administration was also envisioned as continuing in the granted lands, albeit overseen by the Visigoths as vassals. Though some Roman generals in the time of Honorius had worked to curb the influence and power of the barbarian rulers, the number of civil wars that followed Honorius's death made the status of the barbarians a secondary concern. Instead of suppressing the barbarian kings, emperors and usurpers in the fifth century viewed them as useful internal players. The third stage of the formation of the barbarian kingdoms was the recognition by the imperial government of the increasingly unstable Western Roman Empire that it was no longer able to effectively administer its own territories. This led the empire to cede effective control of more lands to the barbarian rulers, whose realms now formed a permanent part of the landscape. These territorial changes did not mean that lands within the former imperial borders ceased to be part of the Roman Empire on a conceptual level. Treaties made with the Visigoths in 439 and the Vandals, who had conquered North Africa, in 442 effectively recognized the rulers of those peoples as territorial governors of parts of imperial territory, ceasing the pretension of active imperial administration. These treaties, though not seen as irrevocable, laid the foundations of true territorial kingdoms. Barbarian rulers took various steps to present themselves as legitimate rulers within the Roman imperial framework, nominally subservient to the Western Roman emperor. This practice continued even after the deposition of the final western emperor,
Romulus Augustulus, in 476. Barbarian rulers after 476 typically presented themselves as subservient to the remaining Eastern Roman emperor, and were in turn at times granted various honors by the imperial government.
Emergence as territorial kingdoms (476–600) , king of the
Visigoths, minted in 580–583. Liuvigild was the earliest Visigothic king to mint coins in his own name.|left Almost nowhere in Western Europe were barbarian rulers firmly linked to territorial kingdoms until the very late fifth century or even later. The final stage in the formation of the barbarian kingdoms occurred as the barbarian rulers slowly lost the habit of waiting for the Western Roman Empire to again function properly. Left to their own devices, barbarian rulers instead began to take on the roles formerly held by the emperors, transitioning into proper territorial kings. This process was only possible through the acceptance of barbarian rulers by local Roman aristocrats, who in many cases saw the possibility of restored Western Roman central control as an increasingly futile prospect. Many barbarian rulers enjoyed considerable support from Roman aristocrats, who raised armies from their own lands both against and for them. The populace of the barbarian-controlled territories in Western Europe continued to view themselves as part of the Roman Empire well into the sixth century. When
Theodoric the Great (493–526), the Ostrogothic king of Italy, also became ruler of the Visigoths of Hispania in 511, this was celebrated in
Ravenna as a liberation of Hispania and a re-integration of the Visigothic territories into the Roman Empire. This is despite the Visigoths also having been
de jure part of the empire before this point. The exact process in which the barbarian kings took on certain functions and prerogatives previously ascribed to the Roman emperors is not entirely clear. It is believed to have been a highly drawn-out process. History generally recognizes Alaric I as the first 'king of the Visigoths', though this title is applied to him only retroactively. Contemporary sources refer to Alaric only as
dux or at times
hegemon, and he did not rule a kingdom, instead spending his career unsuccessfully trying to integrate himself and his people into the Roman imperial system. The earliest Visigothic ruler known to have called himself a king and to issue documents from something resembling an imperial chancery was
Alaric II (484–507), though contemporary writings allude to widespread acceptance and recognition of a Visigothic kingdom in Gaul by the 450s. The Visigoths did not establish a secure power-base as a consciously post-imperial kingdom until the 560s under
Liuvigild, after slow and often brutal conquests in Hispania. The practice of the barbarian kingdoms being subservient to the Eastern Roman emperor came to an end as a result of the wars of reconquest of Emperor
Justinian I (527–565). Justinian sought to restore direct imperial control to the former western empire, though his reconquest was incomplete and established the idea that any lands outside of the eastern empire's direct control were no longer part of the Roman Empire, also causing
Roman identity to decline dramatically in Western Europe. The coinage of the Visigothic Kingdom continued to depict the eastern emperors until the 580s, when the Visigothic kings began to mint coins in their own name. == Roman heritage and continuity ==