The Historical Geography of Europe, Vol. I, Text

by Edward A. Freeman

♦Beginning of national kingdoms.♦

This last stage begins with the early years of the fifth century, and thus nearly coincides with the division of the Empire into East and West. Gothic and other Teutonic kings could now march at pleasure at the head of their armies through every corner of the Empire, sometimes bearing the titles of Roman officers, sometimes dictating the choice of Roman Emperors, sometimes sacking the Old Rome or threatening the New. It was when these armies under their kings settled down and formed national kingdoms within the limits of the Empire, that the change comes to have an effect on the map. In the course of the fifth century the Western provinces of Rome were rent away from her. In most cases the loss was cloaked by some Imperial commission, some empty title bestowed on the victorious invader; but the Empire was none the less practically dismembered. Out of these dismemberments the modern states of Europe gradually grew. It will now be our business to give some account of those nations, Teutonic and otherwise, who had an immediate share in this work, passing lightly by all questions, and indeed all nations, which cannot be said to have had such an immediate share in it.

♦Teutonic Settlements in the West.♦

The nations which in the fourth and fifth centuries made settlements in the Western provinces of Rome fall under two chief heads; those who made their settlements by land, and those who made them by sea. This last class is pretty well coextensive with the settlement of our own forefathers in Britain, which must be spoken of separately. ♦Settlements within the Empire.♦ Among the others, the nations who play an important part in the fourth and fifth centuries are the Goths, the Vandals, the Burgundians, the Suevi, and the Franks. And their settlements again fall into two classes, those which passed away within a century or two, and those which have had a lasting effect on European history. ♦Franks, Burgundians, Suevi,♦ Thus it is plain at the first glance that the Franks and the Burgundians have left their names on the modern map. The Suevi have left their name also: but it is now found only in their older German land; it has vanished for ages from their western settlement. ♦Goths,♦ The name of the Goths has passed away from the kingdoms which they founded, but their presence has affected the history of both the Spanish and the Italian peninsulas. ♦Vandals.♦ The Vandals alone, as a nation and kingdom, have left no traces whatever, though it may be that they have left their name to a part of one of the lands of their sojourn. ♦Their kingdoms.♦ All these nations founded kingdoms within the Western Empire, kingdoms which at first admitted a nominal superiority in the Empire, but which were practically independent from the beginning. ♦Various circumstances of their history.♦ But the history of the several kingdoms is very different. Some of them soon passed away altogether, while others became the beginnings of the great nations of modern Europe. Gaul and Spain fell off very gradually from the Empire. But, in the course of the fifth century, all the nations of which we have been speaking formed more or less lasting settlements within those provinces. Pre-eminent among them are the great settlements of the Goths and the Franks. Out of the settlement of the Franks arose the modern kingdoms of Germany and France, and out of the settlement of the Goths arose the various kingdoms of Spain. Those of the Burgundians, Vandals, and Suevi were either smaller or less lasting. All of them however must be mentioned in their order.

♦Migrations of the West-Goths.♦

First and greatest come the Goths. It is not needful for our purpose to examine all that history or legend has to tell us as to the origin of the Goths, or all the theories which ingenious men have formed on the subject. ♦Defeat of the Goths by Claudius. A.D. 269.♦ It is enough for our purpose that the Goths began to show themselves as dangerous enemies of the Empire in the second half of the third century; but their continuous history does not begin till the second half of the fourth. ♦Gothic kingdom on the Danube.♦ We then find them forming a great kingdom in the lands north of the Danube. ♦Goths driven onwards by the Huns.♦ Presently a large body of them were driven to seek shelter within the bounds of the Eastern Empire from the pressure of the invading Huns. These last were a Turanian people who had been driven from their own older settlements by movements in the further East which do not concern us, but who become an important element in the history of the fifth century. They affected the Empire, partly by actual invasions, partly by driving other nations before them but they made no lasting settlements within it. Nor did the Goths themselves make any lasting settlement in the Eastern Empire. ♦They cross the Danube. A.D. 377.♦ While one part of the Gothic nation became subject to the Huns, another part crossed the Danube; but they crossed it by Imperial licence, and if they took to arms, it was only to punish the treachery of the Roman officers. Presently we find Gothic chiefs marching at pleasure through the dominions of the Eastern Cæsar; but they simply march and ravage; it is not till they have got within the boundary of the West that they found any lasting kingdoms. In fact, the Goths, and the Teutonic tribes generally, had no real mission in the East; to them the East was a mere highway to the West. ♦Career of Alaric. A.D. 394-410.♦ The movements of Alaric in Greece, Illyricum, and Italy, his sieges and his capture of Rome, are of the highest historical importance, but they do not touch geography. The Goths first win for themselves a local habitation and a place on the map when they left Italy to establish themselves in the further West.

♦Beginning of the West-Gothic kingdom under Athaulf. A.D. 412.♦

Under Alaric’s successor, Athaulf, the first foundations were laid of that great West-Gothic kingdom which we are apt to look on as specially Spanish, but which in truth had its first beginning in Gaul, and which kept some Gaulish territory as long as it lasted. But the Goths passed into those lands, not in the character of avowed conquerors, not as founders of an avowed Gothic state, but as soldiers of the Empire, sent to win back its lost provinces. ♦Condition of Gaul and Spain.♦ Those provinces were now occupied or torn in pieces by a crowd of invaders, Suevi, Vandals, and Alans. ♦The Alans.♦ These last are a puzzling race, our accounts of whom are somewhat contradictory, but who may perhaps be most safely set down as a non-Aryan, or, at any rate, a non-Teutonic people, who had been largely brought under Gothic influences. But early in the fifth century they possessed a dominion in central Spain which stretched from sea to sea. ♦The Suevi in Spain.♦ Their dominion passed for a few years into the hands of the Suevi, who had already formed a settlement in north-western Spain, and who still kept a dominion in that corner long after the greater part of the peninsula had become Gothic. ♦The Vandals in Africa. A.D. 425.♦ The Vandals occupied Bætica; but they presently passed into Africa, and there founded the one Teutonic kingdom in that continent, with Carthage to its capital, a kingdom which took in also the great islands of the western Mediterranean, including Sicily itself. ♦Independence of the Basques.♦ Through all these changes the unconquerable people of the Basque and Cantabrian mountains seem never to have fully submitted to any conquerors; but the rest of Spain and south-western Gaul was, before half of the fifth century had passed, formed into the great West-Gothic kingdom. ♦Gothic kingdom of Toulouse.♦ That kingdom stretched from the pillars of Hêraklês to the Loire and the Rhone, and its capital was placed, not on Spanish but on Gaulish ground, at the Gaulish Tolosa or Toulouse. The Gothic dominion in Gaul was doomed not to be lasting; the Gothic dominion in Spain lasted down to the Saracen conquest, and all the later Christian kingdoms of Spain may be looked on as fragments or revivals of it. Spain however never changed her name for that of her conquerors. ♦Gothia.♦ The only parts of the Gothic kingdom which ever bore the Gothic name were those small parts both of Spain and Gaul which kept the name of Gothia through later causes. ♦Andalusia.♦ The Vandals, on the other hand, though they passed altogether out of Spain, have left their name to this day in its southern part under the form of Andalusia, a name which, under the Saracen conquerors, spread itself over the whole peninsula.

♦The Franks.♦

The other great Teutonic nations or confederacies of which we have to speak have had a far more lasting effect on the nomenclature of Europe. We have now to trace the steps by which the Franks gradually became the ruling people both of Germany and of Gaul. They have stamped their name on both countries. ♦Uses of the word Francia.♦ The dominions of the Franks got the name of Francia, a name whose meaning has constantly varied according to the extent of the Frankish dominion at different times. In modern use it still cleaves to two parts of their dominions, to that part of Germany which is still called Franken or Franconia, and to that part of Gaul which is still called France. ♦The Alemanni.♦ And their history is closely mixed up with that of another nation or confederacy, that of the Alemanni, who again have, in the French tongue, given their name to the whole of Germany. ♦A.D. 275.♦ Franks and Alemanni alike begin to be heard of in the third century, and the Alemanni even attempted an actual invasion of Italy; but the geographical importance of both confederacies does not begin till the fifth. All through the fourth century it is the chief business of the Emperors who ruled in Gaul to defend the frontier of the Rhine against their incursions, against the Alemanni along the upper part of its course, and against the Franks along its lower part. ♦Thuringians.
The Low-Dutch tribes.♦ To the east of the Franks and Alemanni lay the Thuringians; to the north, along the coasts of the German Ocean, the Low-Dutch tribes, Saxons and Frisians. In the course of the fifth century their movements also began to affect the geography of the Empire.