The 1st Trumpet: Alaric 1

The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth, and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up. The first trumpet, the Visigoths under Alaric I. The Visigoths, otherwise known as the Goths, in what is modern day Spain, were the western branch of the Germanic people. The first trumpet refers to the Visigoths and one of its most noted kings, Alaric I. Alaric I was born in Hungary in 370 AD, he died in Calabria, southern Italy, in 410 AD. In 394 AD, Alaric I partnered with Eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius I to defeat the Franks, the French, in the Battle of the Frigid River. Theodosius died in 395 AD, after which, the Goths declared war against the Roman Empire. In the first invasion, Alaric destroyed Macedonia and Thrace, Thrace is now Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey. In the second invasion, Alaric invaded Rome in 402 AD and imposed huge amounts of taxes on the people. 408, Emperor Honorius incited the local populace to kill thousands of the wives and children of the occupying Gothic soldiers. 409-410 AD, Alaric responded by increasing his army to 30,000 men and made a second siege of Rome. Western Roman Emperor Flavius Honorius, Theodosius' younger son, mounts an offensive against Alaric and is soundly defeated. He was counting on support from the Huns, but they never showed up to fight. Alaric killed multiplied thousands of Romans, some sold into slavery, and the women were raped and killed. They also burned down most of the city of Rome, including its countryside, its farms, and slaughtered the animals. The terrible effects of this Gothic invasion are represented as hail, from the fact of the northern origin of the invaders, fire, from the destruction by flame of both city and country, and blood, from the terrible slaughter of the citizens of the empire by the bold and fearless Gothic warriors. The prominent historian Edward Gibbon, who was not a Christian, wrote, The Gothic nation was in arms at the first sound of the trumpet. The fertile fields of Phocis, and Boeotia, which are now regions in central Greece, were crowded with a deluge of barbarians, the males were massacred, the females and cattle of the flaming villages were driven away. In 410, on his way to invade Africa, his ship sunk and many of his soldiers drowned. Alaric survived the shipwreck but died of fever soon after.