VANDAL KINGDOM IN NORTH AFRICA, 429-534 A.D.
The Vandals settled first in Spain. The territory now called Andalusia still preserves the memory of these barbarians. After the Visigothic invasion of Spain the Vandals passed over to North Africa. They made themselves masters of Carthage and soon conquered all the Roman province of Africa. Their kingdom here lasted about one hundred years. [12]
THE FRANKS IN NORTHERN GAUL
While the Visigoths were finding a home in the districts north and south of the Pyrenees, the Burgundians in the Rhone valley, and the Vandals in Africa, still another Germanic people began to spread over northern Gaul. They were the Franks, who had long held lands on both sides of the lower Rhine. The Franks, unlike the other Germans, were not of a roving disposition. They contented themselves with a gradual advance into Roman territory. It was not until near the close of the fifth century that they overthrew the Roman power in northern Gaul and began to form the Frankish kingdom, out of which modern France has grown.
THE ANGLES AND SAXONS IN BRITAIN, FROM 449 A.D.
The troubled years of the fifth century saw also the beginning of the Germanic conquest of Britain. The withdrawal of the legions from that island left it defenseless, for the Celtic inhabitants were too weak to defend themselves. Bands of savage Picts from Scotland swarmed over Hadrian's Wall, attacking the Britons in the rear. Ireland sent forth the no less savage Scots. The eastern coasts, at the same time, were constantly exposed to raids by German pirates. The Britons, in their extremity, adopted the old Roman practice of getting the barbarians to fight for them. Bands of Jutes were invited over from Denmark in 449 A.D. The Jutes forced back the Picts and then settled in Britain as conquerors. Fresh swarms of invaders followed them, chiefly Angles from what is now Schleswig-Holstein and Saxons from the neighborhood of the rivers Elbe and Weser in northern Germany. The invaders subdued nearly all that part of Britain that Rome had previously conquered. In this way the Angles and Saxons became ancestors of the English people, and Engleland became England. [13]
POLITICAL SITUATION IN 451 A.D.
By the middle of the fifth century the larger part of the Roman Empire in the West had come under barbarian control. The Germans ruled in Africa, Spain, Britain, and parts of Gaul. But now the new Germanic kingdoms, together with what remained of the old empire, were threatened by a common foe—the terrible Huns.