General History for Colleges and High Schools

by P. V. N. Myers

The Arabians were hidden in their deserts; but in the seventh century we shall see them, animated by a wonderful religious fanaticism, issue from their peninsula and begin a contest with the Christian nations of the East and the West which, in its varying phases, was destined to fill a large part of the mediæval period.

The Tartar tribes were buried in Central Asia. They will appear late in the eleventh century, proselytes for the most part of Mohammedanism; and, as the religious ardor of the Semitic Arabians grows cool, we shall see the Crescent upheld by these zealous converts of another race, and finally, in the fifteenth century, placed by the Turks upon the dome of St. Sophia in Constantinople.

As the Middle Ages draw to a close, the remote nations of Eastern Asia will gradually come within our circle of vision; and, as the Modern Age dawns, we shall catch a glimpse of new continents and strange races of men beyond the Atlantic.

SECTION I.—MEDIÆVAL HISTORY.

FIRST PERIOD.—THE DARK AGES. (FROM THE FALL OF ROME, A.D. 476, TO THE ELEVENTH CENTURY.)

CHAPTER XXXII.

THE TEUTONIC KINGDOMS.

INTRODUCTORY.—In connection with the history of the break-up of the Roman empire in the West, we have already given some account of the migrations and settlements of the German tribes. In the present chapter we shall relate briefly the political fortunes, for the two centuries following the fall of Rome, of the principal kingdoms set up by the German chieftains in the different provinces of the old empire.

KINGDOM OF THE OSTROGOTHS (A.D. 493-554).—Odoacer will be recalled as the barbarian chief who dethroned the last of the Western Roman emperors (see p. 348). His feeble government in Italy lasted only seventeen years, when it was brought to a close by the invasion of the Ostrogoths (Eastern Goths) under Theodoric, the greatest of their chiefs, who set up in Italy a new dominion, known as the Kingdom of the Ostrogoths.

The reign of Theodoric covered thirty-three years—years of such quiet and prosperity as Italy had not known since the happy era of the Antonines. The king made good his promise that his reign should be such that "the only regret of the people should be that the Goths had not come at an earlier period."