The Fall of the Roman Empire Read Online Free

be murdered.
    Two years later, Stilicho appeared in the Balkans with another army, and surrounded the Visigoths in Greece. But once again, to the indignation of the Eastern government, he did not compel them to capitulate.
    In 401 Alaric, in spite of Stilicho's forbearance towards him, turned against the Western Empire, and launched an invasion of Italy. Stilicho, whose daughter Maria was married to the Emperor Honorius, summoned troops from the Rhine and Britain, and defeated the invaders in north Italy in the successive years 402 and 403. Yet once again Alaric got away, and was allowed to leave the country.
    But meanwhile a different group of German tribes, the Ostrogoths, had been eroding Imperial territories on the middle Danube; and a large part of the Roman population had fled from the Hungarian plain, thus depriving the Western Empire of one of its finest recruiting grounds. Now, in 405, these Ostrogoths and others, led by a certain Radagaisus, poured southwards into Italy. Stilicho overwhelmed and massacred them at Faesulae (Fiesole) near Florence. He then made overtures to Alaric with a view to a coordinated military offensive - not against an external foe, but against the Eastern Empire. But his plans were interrupted by the gravest and most decisive of all the German invasions of the West.
    This took place on the last day of 406, when a mixed host of various German tribesmen - Vandals, Suevi, Alans, Burgundians - crossed the ice of the frozen Rhine, and in the face of only a feeble resistance fanned out into the adjacent territories and into Gaul beyond, spreading devastation everywhere they went. Moguntiacum (Mainz), near their crossing point, was plundered, and so was Treveri (Trier), and many other cities in what are now Belgium and northern France suffered a similar fate.
    On marched the raiders and infiltrators until some of them had crossed the entire country and reached the Pyrenees. On the way, only a very few towns, notably Tolosa (Toulouse), put up a fight. 'Innumerable and most ferocious people', declared St Jerome, 'now occupy the whole of Gaul. . . . All but a few cities have been ravaged either from without by the sword or from within by starvation.' This was rather too gloomy a picture, but in discerning that the breakthrough was a landmark, Jerome was perfectly right....the memorable passage across the Rhine [observed Gibbon with hindsight] may be considered as the fall of the Roman Empire in the countries beyond the Alps; and the barriers, which had so long separated the savage and the civilized nations of the earth, were from that fatal moment levelled with the ground.
    Stilicho did nothing effective to help, because he was so preoccupied with his plans for invading the East. But meanwhile the shock-waves of these German onslaughts stimulated several attempted usurpations of the Western throne by ambitious Roman generals. One of these usurpers, Constantine in, was declared Emperor by the troops in Britain, whereupon he crossed the English Channel, leaving the country wide open to subsequent Saxon incursions, against which the Britons were told to organize their own defences as best they could. Then, fighting the Germans in Gaul and extorting temporary recognition from the Imperial government, Constantine moved on into Spain; but he could not prevent many of the German invaders from following him, and reaching that country in their turn.
    Meanwhile Alaric had demanded four thousand pounds of gold from the Roman authorities, and Stilicho compelled a highly reluctant Senate to give him what he asked. However, Stilicho's influence was on the wane, and soon afterwards he found himself accused of conspiring with Alaric to place his own son on the Imperial throne. In consequence, a mutiny against Stilicho was fomented among the garrison at Ticinum (Pavia), which then proceeded to massacre his supporters, including many of the highest military and civil officials. He himself went to Ravenna, which was now