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29-05-2015, 10:39

The Crossing

By the late 420s, the political map of the western Mediterranean was changing. In Spain, the Goths and Sueves consolidated their power, and increasingly came into conflict with the Vandals in Lusitania and the south.120 Further east, in the central Mediterranean, three Roman commanders competed for influence over the young western emperor Valentinian III and his mother and regent Galla Placidia. It was these political disputes between the senior western magister militum Constantius Felix, the count and junior magister militum Aetius and the African comes Boniface which provided the Vandals with an unexpected opportunity to move from Spain towards the city of Carthage.121



North Africa held two great attractions for the Vandals. It was tremendously wealthy, of course - a quality which Geiseric must have inferred from the African merchantmen in Spanish ports - but it was also relatively lightly militarized.122 While a number of different barbarian armies jostled for position within Spain, North Africa was unusually vulnerable by the later 420s. The origins of this lay in ad 422 or 423 with the arrival of Boniface from Spain and his appointment as comes Africae (Count of Africa). By all accounts, Boniface was a fabulously popular ruler. Stories of his good government circulated long after his death, and he remained on good terms with Augustine of Hippo, in spite of the general’s marriage to an Arian Christian and the baptism of his child in the rites of the same heresy.123 Boniface’s military reputation had been forged in struggles within Gaul against the usurper Jovinus, and he had further brightened his escutcheon with a series of successful campaigns against Moors on the African frontier.124 In 425, his successes earned him promotion to the rank of comes domesticorum et Africae (Count of the Households and of Africa), but ironically, this success proved fatal to imperial interests in North Africa. As Boniface flourished, Felix and Aetius grew wary of his popularity and sought to curb his power. Consequently, the energies of the imperial military were once more directed inwards, and the barbarian warbands within the empire found themselves with plenty of room to manoeuvre.



Procopius provides us with the fullest and most fanciful account of the deterioration in relations between the three rivals in power, and even claims that it was this conflict which led to the Vandal invasion of Africa.125 His account states that in an attempt to distance Boniface from the court in Ravenna, Aetius spread the rumour that his rival was plotting rebellion, and ensured that this news reached the ears of the regent Galla Placidia. Simultaneously, Aetius wrote to Boniface in the guise of friendship, and warned him that interested parties were attempting to entrap him upon his return to court. Just as Aetius intended, Galla Placidia summoned the suspected general to Ravenna, and Boniface duly ignored the summons, thus finding himself in a revolt which was not of his own making. Thereafter, a chronicle source tells us that an imperial force was sent to Africa in 427 under Mavortius, Gallio and Sanoeces, in order to suppress this revolt.126 Boniface defeated this expedition with little difficulty, but was more receptive to a diplomatic mission sent the following year under Comes Sigisvultus - himself an able military commander - and the Arian bishop Maximinus. Over the next 12 months Sigisvultus and Maximinus entered wholeheartedly into the complex military and episcopal politics of Northern Africa.127 In 429 a third imperial mission was sent to Africa under one Darius.128 This mission finally negotiated peace with Boniface, and may also have received a rather warmer welcome in Hippo. Nominally at least, the Romano-African house within North Africa was in order.



Yet by 429, this house also had some unwelcome visitors. The coincidence of the Vandal invasion with the revolt of Boniface is notable, Procopius was anxious to make the link explicit:



Boniface accordingly sent to Spain those who were his most intimate friends and gained the adherence of each of the sons of Godigisclus on terms of complete equality, it being agreed that each one of the three, holding a third part of Libya, should rule over his own subjects; but if a foe should come against any one of them to make war, they should in common ward off the aggressors. On the basis of this agreement, the Vandals crossed the strait of Gadira and came into Libya, and the Visigoths in later times settled in Spain.129



Several eastern historians recounted this tradition in the sixth century.130 In their eyes, the cataclysmic loss of North Africa to the empire could at least be rendered comprehensible if blame for the disaster was laid at the feet of a Roman general. It is certainly true that a limited alliance with the Vandals would have made sense for Boniface (or his rivals): after all Geiseric could either have secured the western reaches of North Africa from counter-attack, or have provided allied troops for an ambitious generalissimo. But there is no contemporary evidence to support this accusation, and the likelihood remains that the Vandals simply benefited from this internecine fighting and invaded North Africa when the attentions of the world were elsewhere.



Geiseric committed his full forces to the invasion of North Africa in ad 428 or (more probably) 429: the chronicle sources are uncertain on this point.131 The decision had momentous historical significance, but may not have seemed particularly portentous at the time. The transportation of the Vandals and their allies across the Straits of Gibraltar need not have been accomplished in a single operation, although generations of modern scholars have been fascinated by the imagined prospect of a vast barbarian flotilla heading into Africa.132 Given that Geiseric had foothold in Mauretania Tingitania for around five years at the time of his ‘invasion’, the decision to move east need not have been a major logistical issue, and the fact that his following was certainly far smaller than the throng of 80,000 claimed by Victor also argues against the popular image of a carefully planned armada. Several historians have argued that the invasion fleet probably landed around the modern city of Oran for military reasons, but the lack of any corroborative contemporary evidence urges caution.133 It seems perfectly feasible that Geiseric simply led his troops east from Mauretania Tingitania, with or without logistical support from the sea.134 Regardless of the route taken, the move into Africa was a political gamble; in marching towards Carthage, Geiseric effectively surrendered his holdings in Baetica. Diplomatic links were retained with both the Visigoths and the Sueves, but after 429 the history of the Vandals was to be to the south of the Mediterranean.135



 

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