Working in a file is an experience that can give no little satisfaction, but also some point, "WTF?" The chilling tale that will hear below is based on real events.
elapses in any institution file (call it "Peich"), where among other things is preserved historical documentation (in Spain and for documents with sensitive information that is usually 50 years after the end of application processing or 25 after the death of the person if any):
- Archivist : and this documentation where it was before?
- Peich Worker: I do not know, when I arrived it was already here. But it was fatal, the windows were open and wet when it rained, like today. Last winter, it rained so much, it was wet.
- Archivist , but last winter it never stopped raining since November "no one came close windows?
- Peich Worker: no. Do you not see that before there was archivist?
- Archivist : an archivist is needed to close the windows if the papers are wet?
- Peich Worker: clear. Do not see why they do not know? They see that if it is open for nothing. And so he stays.
If I keep making bad jokes to label the entries will have to report me. But today was sooo obvious ... Turns out I made a Twitter account ... and that I have it, in the process of knowing what exactly does hell.
meantime has helped me to find shit. Because yes, I am follower of Charlemagne , because if not worth pursuing the emperor of the Franks, who the heck is going to deserve? Well, yes, King Arthur, but the Pendragon has always been a classic for these things and not Twitter.
The fact is that I discovered by Charlemagne THIS :
EPIC!
If we ignore what you put in your account description on Youtube (" historyteachers ") are just Therefore, teachers of American Institute of history of success playing versions of pop-rock of a lifetime with historical-themed lyrics. Because they have a lot: they dare to Beatles, The Knack , Lady Gaga , RadioHead Creep, and even the Hard Casio! , superb interpretation of Venus, by Bananarama:
Aquinas meets Stock, Aitken & Waterman, how could I not happen before?
What is your objective? Engaging "unsuspecting young Americans to history? Mero "freak? Do you mix the two? Possibly. But before you think something like "tiny frikazos" and make the easy joke, think of the work of these letters and in the effort to do the best they can be your voice (which is not much, but mine is not to go around criticizing ) to expose to shame others on Youtube, no, gentlemen, in every line of every version of those more willing to work and more love by history (with a capital) that throughout the entire work perpetrated by César Vidal .
Damn it, believe in what do, and do so with affection and respect that Camelot. That and they are catchy, so sorry for Blondie, but I can never avoid a loud Charlemagne!
By 420 the Huns had come to establish a kind of state centered on the great plain of the Danube, (I love that word) Puszta, reminding them of where they came from the steppes and from where they were dedicated tribute to Constantinople to ask while were getting settled.
In 425 Attila was king, and some texts of the time I have surrounded by courtiers, so the "nationalization" of the Huns went ahead.
In one of these, the Emperor Marcian (seriously) from the East, refused to pay tribute to Attila, and he, enraged, decides to put all his anger ... about the West. Because from Constantinople Theodosius II had walls that made it impregnable until the advent of gunpowder, and Attila would be the wrath of God, but he was no fool: plundering the Western Empire was much easier. By the way, the East had found a solution to the "Dark Ages": throwing the dead neighbor.
not be obvious, was to stop making the grace
Attila plundered towns of Gaul until the magister militum Aetius ask an Ostrogoths, Theodoric. Together they defeated Attila in the Campos Cataláunicos in 451, so no one can imagine the battle as "Roman" against "Huns", at this stage of the game, the Roman side fought more or less Romanized barbarians against troops of the Huns, which fought a confederation of many different peoples, including, of course, most Germans.
The world before the battle of the Fields Cataláunicos (or Chalons )
Attila had to retreat, but the following year came in Italy, where only confronted him and the bishop of Rome l Leo the Great to the full force of ... their bribes. Attila turned his satisfied Puzsta , married a Germanic princess (surprise!), And the spigot on their wedding night.
Hun Empire did not survive his death, but had a troubled role in the West, the existence of the Roman Empire as a political entity it is little more than twenty years down the hill.
As this happened, the island of Britain was long (from 411) abandoned to their fate by the Roman legions, so the more Romanized Celts of the island had to go alone against the Picts and Scots North island. This took advantage of the Sea Peoples: Saxons, Angles and Jutes , who devoted themselves to occupy Britain. From the British resistance against the Anglo-Saxons would emerge the legend of King Arthur, a mythical figure who could bridge the Indians and defend the island against the invader. And yes, I say mythical not share the widespread enthusiasm for locating a real King Arthur, which have been sure it was a local leader with a victory. The character is more revealing as legend as reality: the longing for a single king traditionally fragmented compared to Britons, than if it was little above them also engaged in fighting each other. Certainly after the fall of the island in 500 many fled and settled in France, leaving his name to the region of Brittany.
The Northern Gaul was divided into several states Barbarian Alamanni in Alsace, with its capital in Strasbourg, francs Ripuarians around Cologne and Salian Franks at Tournai . Soissons around a small kingdom was organized under the command of Roman Siagrio and between Lyon and Geneva are organizing the Arian kingdom of the Burgundians , the rest of Gaul and part of Hispania was occupied by the Visigoth king Eurico , which occupies Auvergne and Provence.
back to Rome ... well no, the capital of the West now is Ravenna, from Attila, the imperial title was a toy in the hands of various Germanic warlords who haunted the Court granted various emperors, each more manageable as above, until Odoacer, the son of a secretary of Attila, deposed Romulus Augustus, last emperor ...
And here ends the post with the start of the Middle Ages and the end of the Roman Empire in 476 .
...
Vengaa, you almost have believed it. But after some post could not leave it at that.
... the last emperor of the West, because the East is one, and he sends Odoacer their badges and their respects. Neither made any new emperor and taken to If the title was named consul in the East, so honor, and ruled Italy as such, theoretically acting on behalf of the Emperor of Constantinople. That certainly
East hardly fazed by this, were given to reform its army to expel foreigners it and create a native, recruited mainly in the region of Isaura. In fact they were so good that the army leaves the new dynasty of Constantinople: the Isaurians. The first, Zeno, was found again with the problem of the Ostrogoths, who had been released from Attila went out there causing trouble. Therefore, Zeno sent Theodoric the Great Ostrogoths to Italy to get rid of Odoacer, would not accommodate a lot, and so the two were busy (divert the problems the West had proved why change?). The following map is relatively well. V century has just
and the Western Mediterranean is in the hands of Germans very Romanized and Christian religion Arian, Theodoric in Italy, Provence and part of the Balkans, Visigoths in Hispania, and the Vandals in northern Africa. The Gauls are a conglomerate of kingdoms: Alamanni, Thuringia, Burgundians, of Burgundian ... Arian religion.
But he was soon to change this: Clovis, the Franks brought together, the less Romanized of all, in 481, defeated the Alamanni, Thuringian and Burgundians, and converted to Catholicism directly from their pagan religion, winning the favor of the Catholic clergy . In 511 all Gaul is free except for Provence in the south and the kingdom of the Burgundians in the current Burgundy.
Keep in mind that sometimes the Germanic population was 5% of all the kingdoms they founded, over millions of Roman subjects, why they chose to settle regions or cities of strategic value. And we know that changed all that much.
Theodora, for example, traders continued nurturing eastern Italy, where there was no nostalgia for the previous period. In fact, Italy Ostrogothic of Theodoric was a very strange formation in which the games were still in the circus and the amphitheater and the ancient Roman families contended by the magistrates as ever. Who knows, maybe he could have revived the imperial title of the West centuries before Charlemagne.
So interesting and so well were doing fusion with an aggressive Roman emperor of Constantinople, Justinian, preferred to be cautious and decide it was time to regain what he considered his own in a time when Eastern Empire lived a golden age in the mid-sixth century. No more Ostrogothic kingdom. And later Justinian would imperil the restauratio and would end the Vandal kingdom in North Africa.
But for example, in the Frankish kingdom in the early 570 Chilperic record that we have built for chariot-racing circus in Soissons and Paris, openly emulating the Roman practice. Eurico And the Visigoths (466-484), for example, had very Roman gestures: Lampridio protected, Latin poet, and contributed to the restoration the great Roman bridge of Merida, noting the company in a Latin inscription in verse.
This brings us to the sixth century, must see! from the first post ... back in the third century. For a century the Germanic kingdoms experiment was declining while Arian Christianity was giving way to Catholicism, new powers appeared: Islam, the Pope of Rome and the Frankish Empire, whose fragmentation arises feudal system.
Then, in the eighth century, with a Mediterranean split into three, and Islam, secular rival to force the West to reinvent itself when opened can be considered the Middle Ages.
And the story ends ... special post will be from where you can access this EPIC saga! to the right of the blog, and incidentally include a special bonus track of the most interesting. Then I will focus on cortitos things for a while, but very nice all of them.
Noooo! What are you saying man? We have been hearing about since September invasions! Yes friends, and I have put rennet a one to this post. Now that ... the epic saga about the Fall of the Roman Empire ends. The one answer I started with what was a single post into two, which is actually where most action. Come on, it is about the invasions themselves. And the truth is better in action films, the input I've been a bit rollazo. Yet I have set, because intenna and English, apart from wikipedia there is little information on the subject (as sources I have consulted my beloved Western Civilization Medieval of Jacques le Goff, and current and for university moliente: The History of the Middle Ages Salvador Claramunt and others) and because after following the troubles of Pirenne, listening to the controversial Ward-Perkins and run into all the historical dilemma chicken and egg I wanted close this epic saga with something a little more to use. Who knows, as someone gets the bug at this time.
That enjoy the spirits and calm delicate found a useful leisure, they put it at the dangers and war. For them the supreme bliss is losing life in a battlefield, die of old age or an accident is a shame and cowardice to what you do not feel nothing but contempt; kill a man is a heroism to which no are enough praise. The trophy is the most beautiful hair scalping an enemy, it serves decoration to the saddle of his horse war. For them there are no temples or shrines, even a hole covered with straw. A naked sword stuck in the ground as barbaric ritual, becomes the sign of Mars. The devoutly honored as the sovereign of the regions that run
or Ammianus Marcellinus on the Germans
If things had been otherwise, to best the Germans had entered the Empire, had settled and been Romanized, who knows. Because neither were many: the tribe largest Germanic could not have put on a war footing over 25,000 men ... against an empire of 25 million. But at the agreed time many tribes in many parts of the border, and the Empire (for me), it was no longer the era (although Ward-Perkins said yes). Why put in motion? Some say that this period coincided with climate change, global cooling reduced arable land, Scandinavia and Siberia and learned well. And began a migration from north to south in which some people pushed others.
The great migrations, 378-439 (source: History in Maps)
any event, the Germans sought asylum in principle peacefully, granting them sometimes in the form of foedus : whole tribes were settled on Roman soil to defend status. Although a priori sounds good, coexistence was difficult. Roman landowning elites viewed with suspicion (if not apparent anger) as part of their land of all life ceased to be yours to hold to some foreigners, not always acted as peaceful neighbors.
On the other hand, as Ward-Perkins said, do not forget the negative bias ("barbarians") which the Romans showed towards these foreigners, the Germans realized, and who were in the position of defending a land where they were greeted with suspicion at best. With hatred and hostility at worst.
There are no good or bad here. Of course, the imperial reaction was the worst that could occur: usually opted for a policy of fait accompli ratifying these Germans as federated the Empire, and then, once inside, harass them and treat them with scorn. The conclusion was happen to have pissed barbarians within the borders to be VERY pissed barbarians within the borders. When these barbarians took advantage of the situation and become increasingly demanding, had the support of the poorer classes of Roman society, bacaudae in Gaul and Hispania, Circumcelliones in North Africa ... and finally, disinherited bands outside the State, engaged in looting. And in a Empire where the economic situation was becoming more chunga, many people had no other to "take the mountain." When the time had joined the invaders, because as Salviano :
"The poor are dispossessed, widows wail, tramples on the orphans to the extent that many of them, even people of good family who has received higher education, takes refuge in the enemy. In order not to succumb to the public prosecution, they seek among the barbarians humanity of the Romans, because they no longer can support among the Romans from the barbarians inhumanity. are different from the people among those who seek refuge [...] however prefer to bow to this lack of resemblance before the Romans to suffer injustice and cruelty. migrate it to the Goths or bagaudas, or to other barbarians dominate everywhere and have nothing to reproach in this exile. Because prefer to live free under the appearance slave to live slaves under the guise of freedom . Roman citizen's name, until recently, very dear, but come at a high price, is now repudiated and avoided, and is not considered only as of little value but it is an abomination ... Hence comes that even those who do not flee into the barbarians, yet are forced to become barbarians, as today happens to most of the English, to a considerable amount of Gauls and all which, in the full breadth of the Roman world, Roman pushes iniquity while remaining Romans. Let , for example, the bagaudas that judges dispossessed bad and bloody, beaten, killed, having lost the right to freedom of Rome, have also lost the honor of the Roman name. And we call them rebels, missing men, when we are whom we have forced to become criminals "
A couple of the left post last emperor of a united Empire, Theodosius, by enacting the Edict of Thessaloniki in 380 to make Catholicism the official religion of the Empire. Let's go back a couple of years before that ...
The Goth people were divided. After a long journey across the steppes, the Ostrogoths had founded a kingdom in present-day Ukraine, while their relatives, the Visigoths, had crossed the Dniester river settled at the mouth of the Danube. Then a new threat looming from the east: the Huns. That actually was not but a confederation of Eurasian peoples from different backgrounds. When converted to the Ostrogoths in Ukraine in tax, the old king, Ermanarico committed suicide. The Visigoth king Fritigern to see the fate of their cousins \u200b\u200bin the east, and by that of "when you see the neighbor's beard cut ..." sought asylum in the land of the Romans in 376, some 10,000 Visigoths settle in northern Thrace. To find that the lands ceded were of poor quality, and when asked annona or material resources to grow them were found with the corrupt imperial government of the time. What I was saying before: Visigoths pissed in a hostile environment. began to carry out incursions into the south and the Eastern Emperor, Valens, decided to tackle them solo, without the western emperor in the Battle of Adrianople in 378 . It was a failure, and the emperor himself was killed. Has begun the era of invasions.
So the world was 378 (I know, is not the first time using this map) taking into account that such Ostrogoths you see when this actually would be under Hun domination.
Soon, the new emperor Theodosius, the Visigoths decided to issue a new land, this time in the fertile Mesia. While he, all right, but his death, the Empire again divided between Arcadius in the East and Honorius in the West. Siglo V
A Honorius I had to deal with a new claim goda land in Pannonia, when he refused to accept it, the Visigoths crossed the Alps and entered Italy in 410 , under the leadership their king Allareiks (Castilianized Alaric), sacked the city of Rome .
Earlier, other people had heard of the arrival of the Huns, in 406 Swabians, Vandals and Alans crossed the Rhine and spilled throughout Gaul. In 411 Hispania was divided, a situation that the Empire has to accept federal avowals. After they entered Burgundians and Alemanni, who settled in the present Burgundy, which takes its name precisely the Burgundians.
The Mediterranean in the year 410 (source: Universidad Autonoma de Madrid)
Meanwhile, emerging from the Goths sack Rome turned to the north and settled in southern Gaul, where 413 are from in Toulouse the center of power. From there, are asked to honor the covenant of hospitality now linked to the emperor and march to Spain, to expel it to the Swabians, Vandals and Alans, with uneven success. The Swabian kingdom withstand even a time, but the Vandals and Alans joined to flee and settle in the Iberian Peninsula in northern Africa, one of the longest courses I find interesting from this period Vandal North African kingdom Founded by King Genserico, who conquered Carthage in 439.
From 417 and up 423 the situation begins to stabilize, Valentinian III, succeeded Honorius, found a weak rule, but not out. Aetius , magister militum , lieutenant in Gaul, might contain the desire for expansion of Goths and newcomers, the Franks, and install the Burgundians, but could not intervene in Africa, where Genserico had become owner of the western Mediterranean, reaching sack Rome (again) at 445. This time, sine ferro et igne. Of course anyway imperial headquarters had long since been moved to Ravenna. But before that, early V century, it appeared that the Empire had a break ... but would not last long: the Huns , long absent reappeared on the horizon, this time led by the man who was going to get through the front door in history: Attila. Bonus track
no apparent relation to the rest of the post : an exercise in historical recreation (of which are being barbarian invasions), this Friday I'll be at the Town and Court attending a concert Blind Guardian , I say up Why ... well because always a good excuse to put this:
