[415-429 A.D.]
Hostilities were now vigorously commenced against the kindred barbarians. The Vandals were expelled from their habitations, and forced to seek an asylum among the Suevi of Galicia. The Alans of Lusitania were almost entirely cut off, with their king Atace: the remnant incorporated with the Vandals, and their name forever disappeared from the peninsula. The Suevi would doubtless have shared the fate of one or other of these people, had they not hastened to acknowledge themselves tributaries of Rome; they were left in undisputed possession of the country they inhabited. The pride of Honorius caused him to regard these signal successes as for his own benefit. The victor was rewarded with a portion of Languedoc and Gascony, from Toulouse to the ocean. That city he made the seat of his kingdom, where he died, two years after his glorious triumphs. From this time to the reign of Euric, the Goths remained chiefly in their new possessions, and were seldom in Spain. Though they considered themselves the rightful lords of the country, the real sovereignty rested with the Suevi and Vandals.
Under the reign of Theodoric I, Wallia’s successor, the Vandals made war on the Suevi. The latter retreated to the fastnesses of the Asturias. The Vandals forsook Galicia, and fought their way to their former settlements in Bætica, whence Wallia had expelled them. To that province they communicated their name—Vandalusia; which was subsequently changed into Andalusia.[5] There they maintained themselves, in opposition to the imperial generals. The ports of Andalusia and Granada presented them with facilities for pushing their successes on the deep. They constructed a fleet; infested the Balearic Isles; pillaged the coast of Valencia; sacked the city of Cartagena; laid waste the shores of Mauretania; and returned to Seville, where the last act of their king, Gunderic, was to despoil the opulent church of St. Vincent.[6] A new and higher career was now opened before them. The offer made them by Boniface, the African prefect, of two-thirds of that country, if they would assist him against his enemies, they joyfully accepted. Before embarking, however, they inflicted a terrible blow on their enemies, the Suevi, whom they overthrew near Merida—whom they precipitated, with their king, into the waters of the Guadiana. They then tranquilly returned to the sea coast; and, to the number of eighty thousand, passed over to Africa, in March, 429, eighteen years after their arrival in Spain.
PROGRESS OF THE GOTHIC CONQUEST
[429-469 A.D.]
The retreat of these restless barbarians did not insure tranquillity to Spain. The Suevi, under their new king, Hermeric, issued from their dark mountains, and bore down on the peaceable inhabitants of Galicia. But it was reserved for his son Richilan, to whom, in 438, he resigned his sceptre, to raise the fame of the nation to the highest pitch. He routed the Romans on the banks of the Venil, and seized on Merida and Seville.
In the meantime, Theodoric was no less occupied in humbling the Roman power in southern Gaul. While meditating hostilities against the triumphant Suevi, he was summoned to encounter the renowned Attila, king of the Huns. His well-known valour placed him at the head of the right wing of the Franks, Romans, and Goths, who combined to arrest the progress of the tremendous torrent. His death on the plains of Châlons (451) where the pride of the barbaric king was humbled, endeared him still more to his subjects, who gratefully elevated his son Torismond to the vacant throne. But the reign of the new king was brief, and his end tragic. In one year, by the hands of his two brothers, he was deprived of empire and of life, in his capital of Toulouse; and Theodoric II, the elder of the fratricides, was elected in his place.[7] The reign of this prince was diversified by alternate success and disaster. He first turned his arms against the Suevi, whom he vanquished, and made their king, Richiarius, prisoner; but being recalled to France, the army which he left in the peninsula was routed by the natives of Leon, who were indignant at the excess it committed. The whole country was now in the most miserable condition. Goths and Romans and Suevi traversed it in every direction, and everywhere left melancholy vestiges of their barbarous fury. Another fierce tribe, the Herulians, landed on the coast of Catalonia, and zealously prosecuted the same work of desolation. Then the Suevi split into two parties, which pursued each other with the most vindictive feelings, but which were always ready to combine when the natives were to be plundered, or when Goths and Romans were to be opposed.
The Spaniard was the prey of all: his labour was doomed to support the innumerable swarms which spread from the Pyrenees to the rock of Calpe, and which, like so many locusts, destroyed wherever they settled. The scourge was more than galling—it was intolerable. Native bands were at length formed in most parts of the peninsula, not merely to take vengeance on the rapacious invaders—for in that case they would have been a blessing to their country—but to plunder all who came in their way. Many of these horrors would have been averted, had Theodoric been at liberty to return in person to Spain, and finish its subjugation; but his wars with the Romans, the Burgundians, and the Franks found him for some years employment enough. At length he was assassinated, it is said, by his brother Euric, in his capital of Toulouse. One of the first acts of Euric was to despatch an army to humble the pride of the Suevi. His arms were eminently successful. The Suevi sued for and obtained peace, and were allowed to remain in undisturbed possession of Galicia, with a portion of modern Leon and Portugal, and to retain their kingly form of government. So completely were they become the vassals of the victors that during a whole century they remained in quiet subjection. We hear no more of them until the time of Leuvigild, who dealt the last blow to their national existence, and, as we shall hereafter see, incorporated them with his Gothic subjects.
[469-522 A.D.]