The Germanic Migrations

Introduction

The Germanic migrations, sometimes called the Barbarian Invasions or the Völkerwanderung (“wandering of the peoples”), are the movements of Germanic, Iranian, Turkic, and other non-Roman peoples that transformed the Western Roman Empire between the late fourth and the late sixth centuries. These migrations produced the Visigothic, Vandal, Ostrogothic, Frankish, Anglo-Saxon, Lombard, Burgundian, and Suebic kingdoms that succeeded Roman rule in the West.

The migrations were caused by a combination of factors: pressure from the Huns in the East, climate change, the breakdown of the Roman frontier system, and the political dynamics of the western Empire itself. They were not a single event but a long, uneven, regionally varied process, and they produced very different outcomes in different parts of the West. For an overview of the fall of the Western Empire, see the The Fall of the Western Roman Empire. For the underlying causes, see the Causes of the Fall of Rome.

Who Were the Germanic Peoples?

The term “Germanic” refers to a group of peoples who spoke related languages, often called Germanic languages, and who inhabited central and northern Europe in the centuries before and during the Roman period. They were not a single people but a collection of tribes, confederations, and kingdoms, often rivals with one another, sometimes united, often divided. The most important groups for the history of the migrations include the Goths, the Vandals, the Burgundians, the Franks, the Anglo-Saxons, the Lombards, the Alemanni, the Suebi, and many others.

The Romans used the term barbarian for these peoples, but the term was a cultural and linguistic label, not a racial one. The Germanic peoples were a mix of Indo-European groups, and they were as diverse as the peoples of the Roman Empire. Some had lived in contact with Rome for centuries; others had only recently entered the Roman world. Some were Christian, often of the Arian confession; others were still pagan. The topic is taken further in the Who Were the Barbarians?.

The Hunnic Catalyst

The migrations cannot be understood without reference to the Huns. The Huns were a nomadic people from the Eurasian steppe who entered Europe in the late fourth century. Their arrival on the fringes of the Roman world set off a chain reaction: the Goths, who lived north of the Black Sea, were pushed westward; the Goths, in turn, pushed into Roman territory, beginning with the crossing of the Danube in 376; the Alans, Vandals, and Suebi, displaced by the Huns, crossed the Rhine in 406; and so on.

The Hunnic empire reached its height under Attila (r. 434–453), who built a realm stretching from the Rhine to the Volga. Attila invaded the western Empire in 451, reaching as far as Orléans before being defeated at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains by a combined Roman-Visigothic force. He invaded Italy in 452, devastating the north, but withdrew before reaching Rome. His death in 453 led to the rapid collapse of the Hunnic empire, and the Germanic peoples who had been subject to the Huns reasserted their independence.

The Goths: Visigoths and Ostrogoths

The Goths were divided into two main branches: the Visigoths (West Goths) and the Ostrogoths (East Goths). The Visigoths were the first to enter the Roman Empire, crossing the Danube in 376 after being displaced by the Huns. They defeated and killed the emperor Valens at the Battle of Adrianople in 378, and they lived as foederati within the Empire for the next several decades. Under their king Alaric, they rose in revolt in 395 and spent the next fifteen years wandering through the Balkans and Greece, eventually invading Italy in 401. They sacked Rome in 410, an event that shook the entire Roman world. They then moved into Gaul and Spain, eventually establishing a kingdom that would last until the Muslim conquest of 711.

The Ostrogoths lived north of the Black Sea until the Hunnic invasions, after which they served under the Huns. After Attila’s death, they moved into the Balkans and then, under Theodoric, into Italy. Theodoric invaded in 488, defeated Odoacer in 493, and established the Ostrogothic kingdom in Italy. Theodoric’s kingdom, which lasted until the Gothic War of the 530s and 540s, was the most successful of the post-Roman successor states in Italy, ruling a largely Roman population through a Roman administrative system. Theodoric died in 526, and his successors were eventually defeated by the eastern emperor Justinian’s generals Belisarius and Narses.

The Vandals and the Vandal Kingdom in Africa

The Vandals were originally from the region around the Oder river, north of the Carpathians. They moved westward in the early fifth century, crossing the Rhine in 406, moving through Gaul, into Spain in 409, and into Africa in 429. Under their king Geiseric, they captured Carthage in 439, and they established a kingdom that would last until 534.

The Vandal kingdom in Africa was one of the richest of the post-Roman kingdoms. The African provinces had been the breadbasket of Rome, supplying much of the city’s grain. The Vandals maintained Roman administration, kept Latin as the official language, and continued to issue coinage in the Roman style. But they were Arian Christians, and they persecuted the Catholic Church, seizing church property and at times killing or exiling Catholic clergy.

The Vandal kingdom was also a major naval power. Geiseric built a strong fleet and used it to raid the coasts of the Mediterranean, including the famous sack of Rome in 455. The Vandals remained a threat to Roman shipping and Roman cities throughout the fifth century, until Justinian’s general Belisarius destroyed the Vandal kingdom in two campaigns in 533–534. The African provinces were then reincorporated into the Roman (Byzantine) Empire, where they would remain for the next century.

The Franks

The Franks were a confederation of Germanic peoples who lived in the lower Rhine region in the late Roman period. Unlike the Goths, they did not move very far in the migration period. They established a kingdom in northern Gaul in the late fifth century, and they expanded south and east over the next several centuries, eventually becoming the most successful of the post-Roman Germanic peoples. The Merovingian dynasty, founded by Clovis (r. 481–511), would rule a kingdom that, in various forms, lasted until 751. The Frankish kingdom is the direct ancestor of France, Germany, and the Low Countries.

The Franks converted to Catholic Christianity under Clovis, traditionally dated to his baptism around 496, and this conversion gave them an important advantage over the Arian Germanic kingdoms to the south. The Catholic bishops of Gaul were willing to cooperate with the Frankish kings, and the Frankish kingdom preserved more of the Roman administrative and ecclesiastical structure than any of the other post-Roman kingdoms. The story of the Franks is taken up in detail in the The Merovingian Franks.

The Anglo-Saxons

The Anglo-Saxons were a group of Germanic peoples from the coast of what is now northern Germany and Denmark. They began raiding and settling in Britain in the late fourth century, and after the final withdrawal of Roman forces around 410, they established a series of kingdoms in the east and south of the island. Over the next century and a half, they displaced or assimilated the Romano-British population, establishing the Anglo-Saxon heptarchy, the seven kingdoms of Kent, Sussex, Wessex, Essex, East Anglia, Mercia, and Northumbria.

The end of Roman Britain is one of the most striking examples of the migrations. The Latin language disappeared as a spoken tongue, the cities decayed, and the Roman way of life was replaced by an Anglo-Saxon one. Christianity, however, survived in the British church, and it would eventually be reintroduced to the Anglo-Saxons in the late sixth and seventh centuries by the mission of St. Augustine of Canterbury. The story of this transformation is told in the Anglo-Saxon England.

The Lombards

The Lombards were a small Germanic people who lived in the region of the lower Elbe in the early migration period. They moved south and east over several centuries, eventually reaching Pannonia (modern Hungary) in the fifth century. In 568, under their king Alboin, they invaded Italy, which had been devastated by the Gothic War of the 530s and 540s and was now weakly defended by a small Byzantine force. The Lombards quickly established a kingdom in northern Italy, in the Po Valley, and they expanded south and east over the next several decades.

The Lombard kingdom was less Romanized than the Ostrogothic kingdom it replaced. The Lombards did not try to preserve Roman administration in the same way, and they did not adopt Catholicism until the early seventh century. The kingdom would last, in various forms, until the eighth century, when it was conquered by the Franks under Charlemagne. The story of the Lombards is taken up in the The Lombards in Italy.

Other Migratory Peoples

Several other Germanic and non-Germanic peoples played significant roles in the migrations. The Burgundians settled in the region of Savoy and the Rhône valley, eventually establishing a kingdom that was destroyed by the Franks in 534. The Suebi crossed the Rhine in 406, moved into Spain, and established a kingdom in Galicia that lasted until the sixth century. The Alans, an Iranian-speaking people, were dispersed across Gaul, Spain, and North Africa, and many eventually joined the Vandals. The Gepids, an East Germanic people, established a kingdom in the Carpathian Basin that was destroyed by the Lombards and Avars in 567. The Huns themselves, although not Germanic, played a critical role as the catalyst of the whole migration process.

Patterns and Outcomes

The Germanic migrations had very different outcomes in different parts of the West. In Italy, a Roman-Germano-Christian culture survived under Ostrogothic, Byzantine, and Lombard rule. In Gaul, the Frankish kingdom gradually absorbed the Gallo-Roman population and produced the medieval kingdom of the Franks. In Spain, the Visigothic kingdom ruled a large and at times sophisticated state until the Muslim conquest of 711. In Britain, the Roman inheritance was largely destroyed. In Africa, Roman life was disrupted by the Vandal conquest and then revived under Byzantine rule.

In every case, however, the post-Roman world was a hybrid world, neither fully Roman nor fully Germanic. Roman law, Roman Christianity, Roman cities, Roman roads, and Roman administrative vocabulary all survived in some form, but they were combined with Germanic kingship, Germanic custom law, Germanic warrior culture, and the political structures of the new kingdoms. The result was the medieval civilization of western Europe, the world of the Merovingians, the Visigoths, the Lombards, the Anglo-Saxons, and the early Carolingians.

Conclusion

The Germanic migrations were the central event of the fall of the Western Roman Empire. They transformed the political, cultural, and linguistic map of Europe in ways that are still visible today. The Romance languages of southern Europe are the descendants of the Latin spoken under Roman and post-Roman rule; the Germanic languages of northern Europe are the descendants of the languages of the migrants; and the Christian Church, which was universal under Rome, remained the principal cultural institution of post-Roman Europe.