The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History's 100 Worst Atrocities by Matthew White Page B
Authors: Matthew White
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overstretched his resources, to a simple payoff.
Back in Barbarianland in 453, Attila died drunk in bed on his wedding night after a great effusion of blood from his nose. Within a year, all of the Germanic vassals had thrown off the yoke of the Huns, who quickly retreated to the Ukrainian steppe. 9
By this time, General Aetius had become too powerful and a threat to Valentinian. One day in 454, when Aetius was delivering a financial report to the emperor, Valentinian leapt off the throne, sword in hand, and cut his general down then and there. Aetius was avenged six months later when soldiers loyal to him assassinated Valentinian.
Soon afterward, King Gaiseric of the Vandals landed an army at Ostia and attacked up the Tiber River, capturing Rome. The Vandals gave it a much more thorough shakedown than the Visigoths had, attaching their name to the whole concept of aimless destruction. When they sailed back to Carthage after a fourteen-day pillage, they carried off centuries’ worth of collected treasures, such as the gold candlestick looted from Jerusalem, and thousands of prisoners, including Valentinian’s widow and daughters. The lesser prisoners went straight into the slave markets, while the imperial family remained hostages. 10
Closing Time
For all practical purposes, that was the end of the Western Roman Empire. The name would linger for another generation, but the nation ceased being a viable entity in 455 with the extinction of the Theodosian dynasty and the Vandal sack of Rome. There was no kernel of safe, productive territory from which to recruit and finance a new army. Over the next few decades, the German conquerors assembled small kingdoms out of the pieces of the empire. There would be many more battles, assassinations, betrayals, sieges, and massacres before the process was complete, but you don’t have to know them. All that matters is that Rome was gone, and armies were looting places that hadn’t been looted for hundreds of years.
With the death of Attila, a couple of German tribes that had been vassals of the Huns—the Ostrogoths and the Heruli—now had the chance to act as independent players in the ruins of the empire. Having been subordinate for so long, they almost misse d the chance to get a piece of the carcass, but with all of the other tribes pushed westward by the Romans and Huns into Gaul and Spain, the Heruli and Ostrogoths had free rein to move in and take Italy itself.
The Roman Empire had been so important for so long that no one could imagine a world without it. For the next twenty-one years, the conquerors kept up the pretense of a Roman Empire, when, in fact, quarreling generals ran the show behind a string of puppet front men known as the Phantom Emperors. Eventually the rising German strongman in Italy, a Herul named Odovacer, consolidated his hold over the peninsula. In 476, Odovacer retired the current emperor, a thirteen-year-old nonentity named Romulus Augustus, * to his country estates, leaving the office of Caesar empty.
And that was that.
Why Did Rome Fall?
The best way to understand the fall of Rome is to skip the first half of any book on the subject. Yes, background and long-term trends are important, but some historians go so far back looking for the cause that they make it sound like Rome was tumbling toward its inevitable fall right from the start. When I first started researching this chapter, I read the literature and dutifully took notes about Valerian, Marcus Aurelius, and Diocletian before I realized that these people predate the fall by as much as two centuries. That’s like finding the cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union in something that Catherine the Great did.
Let’s start by setting so me commonsense rules:
A proper explanation should apply to the fifth century rather than the first, so paganism, gladiators, and Nero’s fiddling are clearly out of the question. Because the empire had long ago stopped being run from its eponymous
Back in Barbarianland in 453, Attila died drunk in bed on his wedding night after a great effusion of blood from his nose. Within a year, all of the Germanic vassals had thrown off the yoke of the Huns, who quickly retreated to the Ukrainian steppe. 9
By this time, General Aetius had become too powerful and a threat to Valentinian. One day in 454, when Aetius was delivering a financial report to the emperor, Valentinian leapt off the throne, sword in hand, and cut his general down then and there. Aetius was avenged six months later when soldiers loyal to him assassinated Valentinian.
Soon afterward, King Gaiseric of the Vandals landed an army at Ostia and attacked up the Tiber River, capturing Rome. The Vandals gave it a much more thorough shakedown than the Visigoths had, attaching their name to the whole concept of aimless destruction. When they sailed back to Carthage after a fourteen-day pillage, they carried off centuries’ worth of collected treasures, such as the gold candlestick looted from Jerusalem, and thousands of prisoners, including Valentinian’s widow and daughters. The lesser prisoners went straight into the slave markets, while the imperial family remained hostages. 10
Closing Time
For all practical purposes, that was the end of the Western Roman Empire. The name would linger for another generation, but the nation ceased being a viable entity in 455 with the extinction of the Theodosian dynasty and the Vandal sack of Rome. There was no kernel of safe, productive territory from which to recruit and finance a new army. Over the next few decades, the German conquerors assembled small kingdoms out of the pieces of the empire. There would be many more battles, assassinations, betrayals, sieges, and massacres before the process was complete, but you don’t have to know them. All that matters is that Rome was gone, and armies were looting places that hadn’t been looted for hundreds of years.
With the death of Attila, a couple of German tribes that had been vassals of the Huns—the Ostrogoths and the Heruli—now had the chance to act as independent players in the ruins of the empire. Having been subordinate for so long, they almost misse d the chance to get a piece of the carcass, but with all of the other tribes pushed westward by the Romans and Huns into Gaul and Spain, the Heruli and Ostrogoths had free rein to move in and take Italy itself.
The Roman Empire had been so important for so long that no one could imagine a world without it. For the next twenty-one years, the conquerors kept up the pretense of a Roman Empire, when, in fact, quarreling generals ran the show behind a string of puppet front men known as the Phantom Emperors. Eventually the rising German strongman in Italy, a Herul named Odovacer, consolidated his hold over the peninsula. In 476, Odovacer retired the current emperor, a thirteen-year-old nonentity named Romulus Augustus, * to his country estates, leaving the office of Caesar empty.
And that was that.
Why Did Rome Fall?
The best way to understand the fall of Rome is to skip the first half of any book on the subject. Yes, background and long-term trends are important, but some historians go so far back looking for the cause that they make it sound like Rome was tumbling toward its inevitable fall right from the start. When I first started researching this chapter, I read the literature and dutifully took notes about Valerian, Marcus Aurelius, and Diocletian before I realized that these people predate the fall by as much as two centuries. That’s like finding the cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union in something that Catherine the Great did.
Let’s start by setting so me commonsense rules:
A proper explanation should apply to the fifth century rather than the first, so paganism, gladiators, and Nero’s fiddling are clearly out of the question. Because the empire had long ago stopped being run from its eponymous
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