The West

After the division of the empire, the weakest, Western part had few chances of survival. This is obvious from its previous history. When expansionist policies were replaced by a striving for consolidation, there was this long Western border zone where traffic had to be controlled and the unauthorized entry of large groups had to be prevented. Through military superiority and diplomacy (which often meant buying the loyalty of Germanic leaders), stability was maintained until the 3rd century, when the internal weakening of the empire opened the floodgates. Some attempts to turn the Germanic tide were temporarily successful, but in the course of the 4th century the frequency and intensity of the Germanic invasions increased, and it was ever harder to cope with the situation. In the late 4th century, a solution seemed to present itself: the Germanic intruders were given a place where they could live under their own leadership, as allies (foederati), and they were also given the opportunity to enter the Roman army to assist in keeping their Germanic brothers outside the empire. This solution offered few guarantees: the Germanic troops were unreliable. In the West (as in the East), Germans and Huns were regularly played off against other Germans and Huns, but the Germans were always well aware of their own interests. Over time, Germanic enclaves emerged that were de facto independent. Apart from outside pressure, there was continuing internal decline: recruitment and taxation were increasingly problematic, which resulted in ever more frenetic administrative measures. It was in this context that the elite turned away from the empire in a final attempt to secure its own wealth and power. In the 5th century, the Western senatorial elite was no longer inclined to comply with the central authorities’ wishes; its hostile attitude rendered effective civic administration and taxation impossible.

After 395, the West had little to expect from the East. The imperial throne was continuously contested, and behind that throne stood Germanic generals, for instance, the Vandal Stilicho, who at the beginning of the 5th century de facto controlled the West. Stilicho, for that matter, was extremely competent, both as a soldier and as a diplomat, and Emperor Honorius’ decision to remove him from power was disastrous. To begin with, the Visigoths and their king, Alaric, could no longer be controlled: in 410, the Visigoths captured and sacked Rome. The military significance of the raid was small, but its symbolic value was enormous. The fall of Rome came as an immense shock to all inhabitants of the empire. After Italy had been thoroughly plundered, and Alaric had died, the Visigoths moved to Gaul, which was at the time in a state of complete anarchy. Their kingdom in the southwest of France lasted until the beginning of the 6th century. In the meantime, Vandals, Alans, Suevi, and Burgundians had broken the Rhine frontier. They managed to

Reach central France and Spain. In 429, the Vandals crossed to North Africa, where they established a kingdom that lasted for more than a century. Their fleet controlled the western Mediterranean, and in 455 they even carried out an expedition against the city of Rome. The infiltration by the Franks, a conglomerate of Germanic tribes, was more gradual. From the 4th century, they had slowly penetrated the northern provinces, and during the 5th and early 6th centuries they, by degrees, conquered the whole of Gaul. The defense of Britannia had been given up at the beginning of the 5th century, and in the course of that century it was taken over by Saxons, Angles, and Jutes.

In the middle of the 5th century, both Romans and Germans were threatened by the Huns, who, under their king Attila, put pressure on the Balkans, Gaul, and Italy from the Hungarian plains. The danger was averted with military might and vast sums of money. Attila’s death and the subsequent collapse of his realm put an unexpected end to the threat; it had been a narrow escape. Nevertheless, at that time the Western part of the empire could actually no longer be saved: from Scotland to Carthage, it consisted of independent Germanic kingdoms and some, equally self-governing, Roman enclaves, all under the completely nominal authority of the emperor. But not for long: in 476 the German mercenary Odoacer deposed the child emperor Romulus Augustulus and proclaimed himself king of the Germans in Italy. Was this the fall of the Roman Empire? Yes, because the fall of its Western part meant the definitive end of the empire’s political unity. No, because nothing changed: the transition from what we call antiquity to the Middle Ages had been long under way and would continue for centuries. For those who lived through it, this was not a dramatic moment: Odoacer and his successors recognized the Eastern emperor; the Germanic kingdoms saw themselves as a continuation of the Roman Empire; the Christian, Latin culture of late antiquity did not disappear, but would form the basis of what was to come.