The Romans constantly had to defend themselves against raids
or more massive attacks by the Germans on their eastern frontier.
In AD 9 a Roman army of three legions (c.13,000) was caught in
ambush and destroyed when on a punitive expedition against raiders.
It had ventured beyond the Rhine into the German forests. After
that disaster the Romans fell back to the Rhine. This frontier
was then accepted as permanent and was strengthened. However,
Germans continued to infiltrate in small war bands, and many found
service with the Roman army. In the middle of the second century
the Romans, because of increasing shortages of manpower for agriculture,
for the trades, and for the army, began deliberately to recruit
Germans as soldiers. This led to a gradual Germanization of the
army and eventually even to a preponderance of the German element
in the officer ranks, including commanding generals. Whole colonies
of Germans were given land to settle on under ''guest rights''
in Roman law.
These peoples did not assimilate into the Romanized population
of Gaul or the outer provinces where they settled. In 376 occurred
the first mass invasion of Germans into Roman territory. Terror-stricken
by a sudden attack of the Huns, the Visigoths had petitioned the
emperor to let them cross the Danube and settle under Roman protection.
He granted them ''asylum.'' Inevitably conflicts arose between
these refugees and the local inhabitants and Roman imperial officials
who supervised their settlements. The Visigoths revolted, defeated
a hastily collected imperial army, and even killed the emperor.
The Germanic victory was a signal for a general movement of Germans
from east to west. They settled mainly in the western provinces
of the Empire. The routes of their incursions into western Europe
have been traced. The Visigoths moved on into Italy, then in the
century after the death of their leader Alaric (410), through
southern France into Spain, where they established a Visigothic
kingdom. The Franks, beginning in the fourth century, moved at
a slower pace across the Rhine and down into the area of modern
France. The Vandals, in less than two generations, fought their
way across France, then down through Spain and across the Strait
of Gibraltar, from west to east across northern Africa, and then
back across the Mediterranean to attack Rome from the south (409-
455) . Everywhere they left behind them the kind of destruction
that has immortalized their name.
Angles, Saxons, and Jutes settled in Britain, pushing the Celtic
inhabitants into the rugged mountainous areas of the west and
northwest (450 550) . The Roman legions had been withdrawn from
Britain early in the fifth century, and the Roman commander of
the imperial army in Gaul was deaf to the pleas of the Britons
for help against the invaders.
Burgundians descended from the upper Rhine valley into the area
east of the Rhone River in the latter half of the fifth century.
Ostrogoths established a strong kingdom in Italy after Odoacer,
an Ostrogothic chieftain, in 476 had deposed Romulus Augustulus,
a twelve-year-old boy and the last Roman emperor in the west,
who was living in retreat from Rome at Ravenna. Finally, the Lombards,
the most savage of the invaders, attacked and occupied northern
Italy in the latter part of the sixth century. This takeover of
the west by the Germans had been briefly interrupted in the middle
of the fifth century by a breakthrough of the Huns under their
ablest king, Attila. They burst across the Rhine into northern
Gaul and were only turned back with difficulty in a fierce battle
near Chalons (451) by an army that was made up largely of Visigoths
but commanded by a Roman general.
The German success in taking over the western Roman Empire would
have been impossible if Roman institutions had not been disintegrating
from within. The Germans by their onslaught completed the destruction
of the Empire, although their intent was not necessarily to destroy.
Some of their leaders appreciated the grandeur of Roman political
institutions and would have preferred to preserve rather than
destroy them. Ataulf, successor to Alaric as leader of the Visigoths,
put the problem in these terms:
I have found by experience that my Goths are too savage to pay
obedience to law', but I have also found that without laws a State
is never a State; and so I have chosen the glory of seeking to
restore and to increase by Gothic strength the name of Rome. Wherefore
I avoid war and strive for peace. In the same spirit, Theodoric
the Great, Ostrogothic king of Italy (496-526) , attempted to
enforce a policy of religious toleration and of civilitas, that
is, of the civic virtue of the citizen, on which Rome's political
strength had rested. But the Germans were not city dwellers and
understood little or nothing of Roman civil government. Roman
cities and the spirit behind the words ''citizen'' and ''civilization''
had already fallen into decay before the mass migrations of the
Germans began. The ''barbarians.' completed the destruction by
taking over the land and bypassing or destroying the cities. The
terror that they inspired as they overran the countryside was
expressed by a fifth-century poet as follows:
In village, villa, cross-roads, district, field down every roadway,
and at every turning, death, grief, destruction, arson are revealed.
In one great conflagration Gaul is burning. Why tell the deathroll
of a falling world which goes the accustomed way of endless fear?
Why count how many unto death are hurled when you may see your
own day hurrying near?
German society was tribal and rural rather than urban. It is difficult
to obtain an understanding of a people so important in the history
of the West, for there are relatively few sources about their
early history and culture. They '.originated'' in the area around
the Baltic Sea. Their home before they reached the Baltic area
is nor known. The main Roman sources for their culture are Julius
Caesar, writing about 55 BC, and Tacitus, writing about 100 AD.
To learn about their society one must turn to epic poems like
Boewolf, written down several centuries after its original composition,
the laws and customs gathered and written down by German rulers
after contact with Roman administrators and Roman Christian clergy,
and a few narrative histories written long years, even centuries,
after the events they relate-for example, Bede's history of the
victory of Christianity in Britain or Gregory of Tours: History
of the Franks. There was a wide diversity in German customs and
a wide range in the degree of Romanization depending on the proximity
to Rome and the extent of the exposure to the Roman world. Some
Germans were still nomadic or semi-nomadic and depended mainly
on bunting and war for their living. Others, such as the inhabitants
of the Rhine valley, bad a settled agriculture that was technically
not very different from that of their Roman neighbors.
German political organization was simple compared to the state
organization of the Roman Empire. The folk, or group of related
tribes, was led by a king chosen from a royal family. His ''election''
depended on his ability to lead in war and to command loyalty
from the nobility. He ruled people rather than land, and it was
only gradually, as the Germans settled down, that government became
at all territorialized. The Germans did not understand taxation
in the Roman sense. Their kings supported their households and
armies from plunder and from lands won from their enemies. They
kept for their own use ''gifts'' contributed by their followers.
As kings, they reciprocated with ''rings,'' feasts, and other
gifts exemplifying their generosity and wealth. Their followers
owed them nothing. In fact the freeborn German owed nothing to
anyone except what he chose to give.
Kings were assisted in their task of leadership by tribal leaders
from noble families, probably also chosen for leadership and lordship.
According to Tacitus, German folk groups, or ''nations,.' held
periodic assemblies to consider such matters as peace and war.
Evidently these assemblies, like the assemblies of the Greeks
encamped before Troy, consisted of the fighting men only, and
the men of noble rank dominated the proceedings.
Tacitus speaks of magistrates ''who administer law in the cantons
and the towns.'. This probably applies only to those Germans who
had established fairly permanent settlements. Justice among the
Germans consisted in enforcing through popular courts the law
and custom of the tribe. Until contact with the Romans, the law
and custom was carried in the minds of the freemen participating
in the courts, and its application to individual cases was decided
by them under the presidency of the magistrate. From a study of
Germanic codes written down after German settlement within the
Empire, certain principles emerge. No distinction was made between
criminal and civil matters. The law was mainly concerned with
the enforcement of the individual's ''peace,'' from the king down
to the lowest freeman.
Individuals, of whatever rank (except for slaves) , were entitled
to compensation for attacks on themselves, their families, their
guests, or their slaves within their houses and environs. The
amount to be paid for the breach of a man's peace depended on
his rank in society. The master of a slave must be compensated
for an attack on his slave. Injuries, including murder, could
be paid for under an elaborate tariff of compensations: so much
for a nose, so much for an eye, for a right thumb, for a big toe,
and so forth; so much for a free Frank, for a Frank ''in the service
of the king,'' for a Roman '.who eats in the king's palace,''
for a tribute-paying Roman. Money compensation for murder was
called wergeld, the money worth of a man, and it obviously varied
according to the man's rank in society.
Despite efforts of kings and chieftains to enforce the principle
of compensation, the older blood feud and lex talionis (eye for
eye, tooth for tooth) persisted. Theft and robbery, as well as
personal injury, were subject to compensation-so much for a stud
boar, so much for a breed sow, so much for a suckling pig. Cattle,
sheep, and pigs were important in Germanic society; values were
expressed in terms of them, and elaborate arrangements were provided
for recovery of stolen cattle.
The law was personal, territorial. That is, a man accused had
to prove his innocence according to the law of his particular
folk, not, like the Roman citizen, according to a law of the land
applying equally to all ''citizens.'' Bishop Agobard of Lyons,
writing about 850, stated that very often when five people met
in a case for judgment, each followed a different law'
The first stage in Germanic legal proceedings was accusation by
a plaintiff. Defendants were expected to deny the accusation under
oath and to support their oaths with a specified number of oath-helpers,
depending on their rank. An ordinary freeman needed twelve; a
king or a bishop needed none. Those who could not produce oath-helpers,
either because they were untrustworthy or were strangers among
the people where the injury occurred, had to submit to trial.
The popular, or volk, court decided whether there should be a
trial and, if trial was to be held, what method of trial was to
used. The commonest methods were ordeals: the hot-water, the hot-rod,
and the cold-water ordeals.
In the first, the accused was expected to plunge his arm to a
specified depth into boiling water to pick up an object at the
bottom. Afterward, his hand and arm were sealed in a bandage.
If, after three days, his would showed signs of suppuration, he
was guilty; otherwise he was not guilty. The ordeal of the hot
iron was a variation. In trial by the cold-water ordeal, the accused
was trussed up with a rope, knees to chest, and thrown into a
pond. If he sank, he was innocent and was pulled out and revived
(one hopes) . If he floated, he was thought to be in league with
the devil and, therefore, guilty. In these methods of trial. resort
was to divine judgment. God, it was assumed, would save the innocent
and let the guilty perish' The Christian priesthood, who presided
over these trials until they were forbidden to do so by the Fourth
Lateran Council of 1215 probably exercised some degree of personal
judgment that mitigated the rigor of the ordeals for the innocent.
A common method of trial among northern people (although for unknown
reasons, not among the Anglo-Saxons) was trial by battle. Here
an elaborate set of rules prevailed. Combat was with wooden cudgels,
and that party won who first drew blood from his opponent.s head.
Priests, children, and women were permitted to choose champions
to represent them. The most popular trials for women in medieval
Europe were trial by cold water for commoners and trial by battle
of champions for aristocratic women. This may have been a little
hard on women of the lower orders. Women float better than men,
and men often think that women are permanently in league with
the devil!!!
The virtues most valued among the Germans were evidently courage,
loyalty, and leadership, and the vices most severely punished
were cowardice and treachery. A man's honor, that is, his reputation
for bravery and loyalty, were his most important possessions.
Unwarranted attacks on his honor, such as calling him a .'fox''
or his wife a ''harlot,'' entailed heavy penalties. The free fighting
man among the Germans was an only partially tamed savage, and
he was very much an individual. He had no civic virtues.