The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History's 100 Worst Atrocities by Matthew White
Authors: Matthew White
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Buenos Aires (1806), Cairo (1799, 1882), Copenhagen (1807, 1940), Delhi (1761, 1783, 1803, 1857), Havana (1762, 1898), Kabul (1738, 1839, 1879, 1979, 2001), London (1688), Madrid (1706, 1710, 1808), Manila (1762, 1898, 1942), Mexico City (1845, 1863), Moscow (1605, 1610, 1812), Nanjing (1937), Paris (1814, 1871, 1940), Philadelphia (1777), Pretoria (1900), Rome (1798, 1808, 1849, 1943, 1944), Seoul (1910, 1945, 1950, 1951), Tehran (1941), Tokyo (1945), Vienna (1805, 1809, 1938, 1945), Washington (1814)
Unraveling
By now, trouble was so thick that individual problems had to wait in line for the chance to come crashing down on the empire. Compared to the other choices hanging over Rome, the Visigoths didn’t look so bad after all. Sure, they looted Rome and killed Emperor Valens, but at least they weren’t the Huns or the Vandals. From this point on, the Visigoths played the role of Rome’s friendly barbarians.
Among the booty carried off from Rome was Emperor Honorius’s twenty-year-old sister, Galla Placidia, and to solidify the growing alliance between the empire and the Visigoths, they were allowed to keep her. She married Athaulf, the new king who had succeeded Alaric, and the tribe was resettled in southern Gaul and given generous rights to tax local Roman citizens.
Eventually Athaulf was murdered by a servant in a coup, and the widow Placidia was bound and parad ed through town in humiliation. 3 When a new Visigothic king put down the uprising, Placidia made her way back to Ravenna, where Honorius married her to his co-emperor Constantius, who didn’t live very long either.
After Honorius died in 423, a usurper, Johannes, took over until the Eastern emperor’s army arrived to place Valentinian, the six-year-old nephew of Honorius and son of Constantius, on the throne in 425. Valentinian III would be the last Roman emperor to spend any length of time on the Western throne, although he never quite became the actual master of the empire. His mother, Galla Placidia, ruled as regent, and she was eminently qualified. After all, she was the daughter, wife, mother, sister, granddaughter, aunt, and niece of emperors, so at least she knew her way around the palace. As the years progressed, however, the general Flavius Aetius came to exercise more and more power.
By now, the barbarians had divided Spain among themselves and broken the local Roman army, so the empire called in a favor from the Visigoths, who rode to Spain and wiped out the Asding tribe of Vandals, leaving only the Siling tribe to carry on the proud Vandal name.
Meanwhile, the Roman commander in North Africa, Boniface, was up to something. Galla Placidia wasn’t sure what he was planning, but he seemed to be consolidating more power than a provinc ial could be allowed, so she summoned him back to Italy to explain. When Boniface stayed put, she sent a Roman army to insist, so Boniface offered half of North Africa to the Siling Vandals in exchange for their help. Still under pressure from the Visigoths, the Vandals gladly abandoned Spain and crossed the Strait of Gibraltar in 429. Suddenly faced with two enemies in Africa, Placidia reconciled with Boniface, who promptly turned against the Vandals.
The Vandals, however, easily routed every Roman army sent against them and began the systematic conquest of North Africa, city by city. One Vandal siege trapped Saint Augustine in the city of Hippo, where he died in 430 still besieged. In 439, the Vandals finally took the provincial capital, Carthage. This gave them control of the grain supply that fed Rome at this point in history. By now, they had built a fleet with which to raid up and down the Mediterranean coast, attacking peaceful seaside communities that hadn’t seen a pirate fleet in five hundred years. 4
Attila
By this time, the Huns had arrived at the river frontiers of the Roman Empire and began to strike into the Balkans. An ecclesiastical chronicler described it: “There were so many
Unraveling
By now, trouble was so thick that individual problems had to wait in line for the chance to come crashing down on the empire. Compared to the other choices hanging over Rome, the Visigoths didn’t look so bad after all. Sure, they looted Rome and killed Emperor Valens, but at least they weren’t the Huns or the Vandals. From this point on, the Visigoths played the role of Rome’s friendly barbarians.
Among the booty carried off from Rome was Emperor Honorius’s twenty-year-old sister, Galla Placidia, and to solidify the growing alliance between the empire and the Visigoths, they were allowed to keep her. She married Athaulf, the new king who had succeeded Alaric, and the tribe was resettled in southern Gaul and given generous rights to tax local Roman citizens.
Eventually Athaulf was murdered by a servant in a coup, and the widow Placidia was bound and parad ed through town in humiliation. 3 When a new Visigothic king put down the uprising, Placidia made her way back to Ravenna, where Honorius married her to his co-emperor Constantius, who didn’t live very long either.
After Honorius died in 423, a usurper, Johannes, took over until the Eastern emperor’s army arrived to place Valentinian, the six-year-old nephew of Honorius and son of Constantius, on the throne in 425. Valentinian III would be the last Roman emperor to spend any length of time on the Western throne, although he never quite became the actual master of the empire. His mother, Galla Placidia, ruled as regent, and she was eminently qualified. After all, she was the daughter, wife, mother, sister, granddaughter, aunt, and niece of emperors, so at least she knew her way around the palace. As the years progressed, however, the general Flavius Aetius came to exercise more and more power.
By now, the barbarians had divided Spain among themselves and broken the local Roman army, so the empire called in a favor from the Visigoths, who rode to Spain and wiped out the Asding tribe of Vandals, leaving only the Siling tribe to carry on the proud Vandal name.
Meanwhile, the Roman commander in North Africa, Boniface, was up to something. Galla Placidia wasn’t sure what he was planning, but he seemed to be consolidating more power than a provinc ial could be allowed, so she summoned him back to Italy to explain. When Boniface stayed put, she sent a Roman army to insist, so Boniface offered half of North Africa to the Siling Vandals in exchange for their help. Still under pressure from the Visigoths, the Vandals gladly abandoned Spain and crossed the Strait of Gibraltar in 429. Suddenly faced with two enemies in Africa, Placidia reconciled with Boniface, who promptly turned against the Vandals.
The Vandals, however, easily routed every Roman army sent against them and began the systematic conquest of North Africa, city by city. One Vandal siege trapped Saint Augustine in the city of Hippo, where he died in 430 still besieged. In 439, the Vandals finally took the provincial capital, Carthage. This gave them control of the grain supply that fed Rome at this point in history. By now, they had built a fleet with which to raid up and down the Mediterranean coast, attacking peaceful seaside communities that hadn’t seen a pirate fleet in five hundred years. 4
Attila
By this time, the Huns had arrived at the river frontiers of the Roman Empire and began to strike into the Balkans. An ecclesiastical chronicler described it: “There were so many
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