The Migration Period: How Europe was Born

2,000 years ago, the map of Europe was nothing like the one which we see today. The ancestors of the Englishmen lived in the territory of modern Denmark, the ancestors of the Serbs lived on the shores of the Vistula, and the ancestors of the Spaniards lived in Sweden. Tribes often traveled between territories without permanent residence. This continued until, between the 5th and 6th centuries of our age, most of the peoples finally settled, forming the first European states. In fact, exactly this long process got the title of the Migration Period. Everything goes back to the mighty Roman Empire, occupying half of Europe. The other territories were inhabited by what the Romans called Barbarians. The Romans looked at them haughtily, even the very name Barbarian stemmed from how the Romans exaggerated their language. But despite this, the Romans considered the Barbarians good warriors and recruited them to Roman service. They especially noted the militancy of the Germanic tribes. The Romans first met them when the Cimbri encroached on the territories of Rome. Lacking enough land at home, the Cimbri decided to move across the Alps to the fertile lands of Italy. Along the way, they robbed the Gauls, who fled to Roman protection. This invasion almost reversed the distribution of European forces and territories. For a while, a Germanic kingdom emerged on the shores of the Mediterranean, and Rome, for the first time in the last hundred years, received a worthy enemy, who was actively invading Italy. Only 12 years later, the Romans were able to defeat the Cimbri. But even then, they appreciated the bravery and belligerence of the ancient Germans. Later, Julius Caesar formed units of Germanic horsemen in his troops. Emperor Tiberius created the Germanic Guard Corps for his protection. The good climate contributed to the prosperity of the ancient Germans. The amount of the crop increased annually, and with it also increased the population. With the passage of time, the ancient Germans began to run out of land and decided to move. In the 70s of our age, Goths moved from Gotland to the coast of the Vistula, occupying the territories where the Slavic peoples lived. And in the 150s, they started a land war with Sarmatians, which they later successfully defeated. In these territories, the Goths created their own kingdom, Oium. Sarmatians began to flee to the Roman Empire to escape from Goths, while also taking several other Germanic tribes with them, the largest of which became the Marcomanni. The Romans were not very happy with the new inhabitants, so wars began, which intermittently lasted for 14 years. Emperor Marcus Aurelius even managed to defeat the invading barbarians, but his son Commodus, unwilling to continue the war, agreed to relocate the barbarians to Roman lands. This is how the first ancient Germans settled in the Roman Empire. The Goths often raided Roman lands. In 251, during another raid, they defeated the Roman army at the Battle of Abritus, killing Emperor Decius. In 267, their allies the Heruli plundered Greece and burned Athens. In 271, the Romans, lacking troops to defend Dacia, gave it to the Goths. But the peak of power for the kingdom of Oium was the rule of Ermenaric. He conquered the Carpi, the Heruli, the Alani, and the Slavs, and enriched the Goths through friendly and commercial relations with Rome. In Constantinople even appeared a mercenary unit of the Gothic Guard, guarding the imperial palace. But a year after his death, the Huns came to the land. They quickly lured the Slavs and Alani to their side, defeated the Goths, and brutally executed their king Vithamirus. The frightened Goths began to flee to the Roman Empire, but a part of them remained under the rule of the Huns, and they relocated these Goths to the Danube. Another part of the Goths fled to Crimea, where they converted to Christianity and lived alongside the Crimean Greeks. Emperor Valens allowed the Goths to settle in the Roman Empire in hopes of their help in the war against Persia. However, so many Goths arrived there that they had nowhere to settle. Conflicts with the local population immediately broke out. There was a famine among the Goths, and the emperor's salary, which he had promised for service in his army, never came. As the Goths later discovered, it was pilfered by local officials, and when the Roman soldiers beat some Goths at the market, the rebellion broke out. The Gothic army, instead of going to the aid of Valens, captured Mysia. The emperor had to return with an army to Europe. He met the Goths in 378 near Adrianople. His army was weary of the long march, and all the Germanic mercenaries had defected to the Goths on the eve of the battle. Therefore, the Romans have suffered crushing defeat, and Emperor Valens has died. For four years after this, the Goths pillaged the Balkans, and the Romans tried unsuccessfully to stop them. This was achieved only by Emperor Theodosius, who gave the Goths the right to reside in the lands of the Roman Empire in exchange for serving in his army. The Goths were renowned for their faithful service to Theodosius, especially in the suppression of civilians. They even carried out a massacre in Thessalonica with his permission when discontent broke out with the imperial officials. And when Eugenius proclaimed himself Emperor of Rome, the Goths sided with Theodosius. At that time, Alaric, who was destined to go down in history as the first great king of the Visigoths, was ready to lead. His Gothic army played a key role in the defeat of the usurper Eugenius at the Battle of Frigidus, but at the same time suffered huge losses. Theodosius promised the Goths payment, and Alaric was promised a promotion to the position of Magister Militum, but he never kept his promises. When the emperor died, the Goths split. Part went to the Danube to the Huns, and the other part, under Alaric, invaded and robbed Greece. The military commander Stilicho began to defend the Roman Empire from the Goths, himself half Roman, half Vandal. He expelled Alaric from Greece and twice defeated Alaric during his march to Italy. He suppressed revolts against the Romans in Africa and fought with other Germanic tribes. At his initiative, the capital was moved from Rome to Ravenna. He later invaded the lands where the Goths settled. However, the Romans could not forgive Stilicho that his father was a barbarian. Senators plotted against him, and ordinary Romans accused him of invading the barbarians, as if he himself invited them to attack Rome. Emperor Honorius, under pressure from the senators, eventually ordered the soldiers to kill Stilicho. In 406, when Stilicho fought Alaric in Illyria, the Huns drove the Vandals from their lands. The Vandals allied themselves with the Alani and the Suebi, crossed the Rhine, and began to pillage Gaul. From Rome, the troops did not come to defend Gaul. Then, the commander of the Roman troops in Britain, Flavius Constantius, with his army left the island to defeat the barbarians on the continent. Thus, Rome retained Gaul, but forever lost Britain. The Vandals, Alani, and Suebi fled to Spain, where they were granted residency in exchange for service in the Roman army. And to Gaul, the Romans themselves invited the Franks on the condition that they would guard the Roman border. In 411, the Burgundians, fleeing the Huns, also fled to Gaul, where they established their kingdom. When Alaric learned of the death of his rival Stilicho, he gathered troops, invaded Italy, defeated the Romans, and besieged Rome. The long negotiations, which lasted almost a year, were unsuccessful, and the Goths then began to storm the city. After many attempts, the Romans opened the gates of the city with their own hands, in the hopes of being spared. But the Goths captured and robbed the city. There hadn't been such a desecration in the history of Rome for 800 years. However, this was the end of Alaric's long journey, and he died of malaria shortly after taking the city. After his death, the Goths lost their unity again. Some of them went to Pannonia, which was under the rule of the Huns. Another part of the Goths was recapturing southern Gaul from the Romans for eight years. Thus arose the Kingdom of Toulouse, and the Goths were finally divided into Visigoths and Ostrogoths. The Visigoths soon began the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula. The Vandals could not resist the more numerous Goths. Vandal king Gaiseric even decided to leave Spain. The Vandals built a fleet and sailed to Africa, where they captured Carthage and established their kingdom. In these years began significant temperature drop, crop failure and famine greatly affected the ancient Germans. Fleeing from starvation, the Jutes and Angles began to swim to England and seize lands from local British tribes. Some Britons fled the island to a nearby peninsula named after them. Another part of the Britons decided to fight against the conquerors, realizing they lacked strength, they invited the Saxons to their alliance. However, when the Saxons arrived in Britain, they attacked the Britons and drove them to the outskirts of the island. Thus, the Saxons, Angles and Jutes conquered new lands and laid the foundation for the future unification of the English people. The Huns became the most powerful tribe in Europe thanks to their numerous cavalry. They settled in Pannonia and went from there to pillage the Balkans. When Attila came to power, he conquered neighboring peoples and created a powerful army. Attila made several expeditions to the Balkans and even forced Emperor Theodosius II to pay money to the Huns in exchange for a promise not to plunder the Roman Empire again. But Attila still sought an excuse for a new war. He found it in an arrangement with Emperor Valentinian III. The Hun chief asked the emperor to marry Valentinian's sister with him and also asked to give him her half of the empire as dowry. The emperor refused and the Huns invaded Gaul. Roman general Flavius Aetius began to gather an alliance of Roman legions and barbarian kingdoms to stop the raid of Attila. In 451, his army met the Huns in the Catalonian plains. The battle lasted four days and was the greatest battle of those times. Practically all barbarian tribes took part in this battle. Sometimes one tribe stood on both sides of the battle. The Ostrogoths fought for the Huns and the Visigoths fought for the Romans. According to the chronicle, there were so many dead that the bodies of the soldiers formed hills. Alaric's son, the Visigoth king Theodoric, was killed in the battle. For this reason, the Goths withdrew from the battlefield. The Huns left the battle the same night. The following year, the Huns once again invaded the Roman Empire and even besieged Rome. It was only thanks to Pope Leo I and the price of a large ransom that Attila was persuaded not to seize the city. But the Huns still plundered small towns in Italy. When the Huns approached Aquileia, the locals fled to the islands in the Sea Lagoon, where they established Venice. After returning to the Danube, Attila arranged a wedding with Gothic girl Ildico to get support from the Goths, but died the same day. Even at that time, among chroniclers, there were different versions of the death of Attila. Some called the cause of death poison, some wine, and some Ildico herself, who could thus avenge the Huns' murder of her family. After Attila's death, his children began to fight each other for power, and the Hun state collapsed. The Huns lost their power and soon disappeared from the pages of history. In 455, Emperor Valentinian III was assassinated by usurper Petronius Maximus. The emperor's wife wrote a letter to the Vandals, asking them to avenge the death of her husband. While the Vandals reached Rome, Petronius Maximus was also killed. Then the Vandals simply seized Rome and began to plunder it. This lasted for 14 days. As a result, the Romans were so weakened that real power in the empire was seized by the Visigothic warlord Rissimer, known for gaining the political control through placing puppet emperors on the throne. The Ostrogoth tribe was the largest of the Hun tribes. After Attila's death, they quickly defeated the Huns and gained independence by proclaiming the Ostrogothic kingdom. In the following years, the Ostrogoths conquered their neighbors, and the Roman emperor granted them the right to settle in Italy. Relations between the Romans and the Ostrogoths were friendly. Some settled in Mesia, where they served in defense of the Roman border. When the Alamanni invaded Italy, the Ostrogoths were recruited into the army, which fought under the lead of Odoacer to defend Rome. After a while, the new Roman emperor again appealed to Odoacer to defeat Julius Nepos, who had proclaimed himself emperor. But Odoacer, realizing that the real power in Rome is held by the father of the emperor, immediately after his death, took prisoner child emperor Romulus Augustulus. Odoacer forced the infant emperor to renounce the throne, give up the imperial regalia to Constantinople, and proclaim himself king of Italy. This is how the Roman Empire formally fell. However, the great migration of peoples did not end. The Ostrogothic king Theodoric the Great led his army into Italy, as he didn't consider Odoacer being worthy of the crown because of his insignificant lineage. He defeated Odoacer, killed him during negotiations, and himself became king of Italy, resettling all the Ostrogoths there. In the late 5th century from Ireland, where land was scarce, Scotty began to move to Pictish lands in the UK. It was because of Scotty that the land was named Scotland. In 507, the Franks defeated the Visigoths at the Battle of Vouillée. The Franks acquired South Gaul, and the Visigoths moved the capital to the city of Toledo. Thus appeared the future Franco-Spanish border. The Visigothic kingdom became the birthplace of the Spaniards, and the kingdom of Franks would become the cradle of the French. In 533, the Byzantines invaded Africa, where they defeated the Vandals. In memory of the plunder of Rome made by the Vandals, the Byzantines were ordered to kill all the locals. A small part managed to escape to the desert, where they served the Berber kings. After this, the Byzantines began a series of wars with the Ostrogoths, which they could not defeat. Then they invited the Lombard tribe to Italy to destroy the Ostrogoths. The Lombards, having successfully fulfilled their request, remained in Italy and founded their kingdom. In the same years, the Slavs, which the Byzantines called Sklavini, came from the Danube and invaded Byzantium for the first time. Soon, among the Slavic tribes, a powerful Antis union emerged, constantly attacking the Byzantine lands. In 541 in Byzantium, an epidemic of the plague began, from which the Balkans were very badly affected. The population of some lands has simply become extinct. Slavs who fled the attacks of the Avars began to settle in empty territories. So, the Slavs settled the Balkans and even part of the Peloponnese. There settled the Slavic tribes of Melengoi and Azeritai. And in 558, Turkic tribes of the Bulgars encroached on Byzantium, having come to Constantinople. Only a ransom of gold saved the city from a siege. In 610, the new Byzantine emperor Heraclius hired Croats, which lived in the Carpathians for military service. The Croats liked Dalmatia so much that they stayed and founded the Croatian kingdom. In 665, the Bulgars, fleeing from the Khazars, settled on the Danube, where they formed their Bulgarian Khanate, and assimilated among the Slavs. At the same time, the Slavs settled to the west, bordering with the ancient Germans, who called them Wends. Here, many small Slavic states emerged, among which the Principality of Great Moravia gained power over time. The last great people to come to Europe were the Magyars. They settled in the Black Sea steppes, from where they began to raid neighbors. In 895, Prince Svatopluk I of Moravia invited Magyars to serve in his army. Instead, during the Danube settlement, the Magyars captured Great Moravia and made it their state, which they named Hungary. The borders between the peoples of Europe would change, but not so much. It can be said that this is where and how the map of Europe was formed, where barbaric kingdoms would become the foundation of the new European countries known to us.