The Romans were less fortunate; their domination in the country was ended forever by the fall of Tarragona. They continued, indeed, to hold a few unimportant places on the coast; not because they had valour to defend them, but because Euric had no naval force to assail them from the sea. The conqueror, though master of all Spain, disdained to be confined within limits which his ambition deemed much too narrow. Rome was now tottering to her fall; and he resolved to pluck some of the most fertile provinces of Gaul from her feeble grasp. Odoacer the Mercenary, king of Italy, renounced in his favour all the Roman provinces beyond the Alps, as far as the Rhine and the ocean: and thenceforward the Goths regarded Gaul and Spain as their lawful inheritance. The victor established the seat of his empire at Arles, where he passed in tranquillity the remainder of his days. He died in that capital, (484 A.D.) after engaging his subjects to elect for their king his son Alaric. Euric was the founder of the Gothic kingdom of Spain. The extinction of the Roman sway, and the subjection of the Suevi, rendered him absolute lord of the country. The six kings, his predecessors, were rulers in Gaul, not of Spain; however they might regard its provinces as rightfully their own, they could obtain possession only by force of arms. Their conquests, however, had been partial and temporary; before Euric, the peninsula was overrun, not subdued. He was also the first legislator of his nation. The laws which he collected and committed to writing served as the foundation of the famous Gothic code, known by the name of the Forum Judicum, or Fuero Juzgo. He was a great prince; but the fratricide which is believed to have opened him the way to the crown, and the cruelty with which he persecuted the orthodox (like his predecessors, he was an Arian), are dreadful stains on his memory.
But Alaric was unable to tread in the steps of so great a prince as his father. In vain did his father-in-law Theodoric, who had just founded the kingdom of the Ostrogoths in Italy, interpose in his behalf: the fierce Clovis marched towards Poitiers, where Alaric then lay, resolved, as he said, to expel the heretical Arians from the soil of Gaul.[8] The Visigoths, after a sharp conflict, were routed with great loss, and their king was left dead on the field. Clovis pursued his successes, and soon reduced the greater part of their possessions in the south of France, and entered victorious into their capital of Toulouse.[9] Alaric left a son; but as he was too young to be intrusted with the government, his bastard brother, Gesalric (Gensaleic) had the address to procure the elective crown. But the king of the Ostrogoths invested Gaul, overthrew the Franks, who were pressing the siege of Carcassonne, and forced Gesalric to seek for safety in Barcelona. The humbled Clovis was glad to sue for peace from the formidable Theodoric, who united the two kingdoms of the Ostrogoths and Visigoths under his own sceptre. To Theudes, one of his ablest generals, he intrusted the administration of the country and the guardianship of his grandson. Theodoric resigned the sceptre of Spain to his grandson, on that prince’s arriving at a suitable age. Theudes now retired into private life.
[522-554 A.D.]
Amalaric was the first Gothic king who established his court in Spain, in the city of Seville. To Athalaric, the successor of Theodoric, he ceded that portion of France which lies between the Rhone and the Alps, and received in return his father’s treasures, which Theodoric had removed from Carcassonne to Ravenna: in the rest of Gothic Gaul, with all Spain, he was solemnly confirmed by Athalaric. To secure his possessions in Gaul against the formidable Franks, Amalaric demanded and obtained the hand of Clotilda, the sister of the royal sons of Clovis. But the union was unfortunate. The king was a violent partisan of Arius; the queen as obstinate a professor of orthodoxy: at first each attempted to convert the other; but finding their efforts ineffectual, the one was filled with rage, the other with contempt. Childebert marched against his brother-in-law; the result was fatal to Amalaric, who fell by the swords of the Franks, whether on the field of battle, as Procopius[o] asserts, or afterwards as he was seeking sanctuary in a church, must forever remain undecided. The battle in question appears to have been fought, not in Gothic Gaul, but in Catalonia. Childebert returned to France with his sister and the immense treasures which he had seized in the Arian churches.
With Amalaric ended the royal line of the mighty Alaric. Theudes was unanimously elected to the vacant throne (531). He appears to have been engaged in hostilities for some years with the vindictive or ambitious sons of Clovis. Gothic Gaul he was compelled to abandon to its fate, but he vigorously defended his peninsular dominions, which were invaded and laid waste by Childebert and Clotaire. Elated with his successes, the victorious Theudes passed the straits of Gibraltar, and laid siege to Ceuta, then in possession of the imperial troops. The place was invested with vigour; and this recent conquest of Belisarius would soon have passed to the Visigoths or the Vandals, but for the pious scruples of the king. Though an Arian, he revered the Sabbath; on which he not only refrained from hostile operations, but with his soldiers was occupied in public worship. Less strict than their foe, the besieged issued from the walls, fell on the Goths at the hour of prayer, and committed on them a carnage so horrible that the king had some difficulty to escape. He did not long survive this disaster. An assassin contrived to penetrate into the recesses of his palace, and with a poniard to deprive him of life. Before he expired, he is said to have ordered that the murderer should not be punished, as in his death he recognised the hand of heaven, which thus chastised him for a similar crime he had himself committed many years before. He left behind him the character of a just, a valiant, and an able ruler, who secured to his kingdom the blessings of internal peace by avoiding all invidious preference of his own religious sect, and treating the orthodox with as much favour as his Arian brethren.
Of the next two princes who successively swayed the Gothic sceptre, very little is known. The former, Theudisela, who had been the general of Theudes, and had acquired considerable fame in the war with the Franks, was a monster of licentiousness. This second Sardanapalus had scarcely reigned eighteen months before his destruction was effected by his enraged nobles. He was supping with them one evening in his palace at Seville, when the lights were suddenly extinguished, and a dozen swords entered his body. He was succeeded by Agila, whose reign was one continued series of commotions. Many cities refused to recognise his election. He marched to chastise them, but was vanquished and ultimately slain by his own soldiers after being defeated by Atanagild, a Gothic noble (554).
Toledo