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On October 19, 439, the Vandals, led by King Gaiseric, took Carthage in North Africa. From the article:
"Gaiseric
Gaiseric (r. 428-478 CE, also known as Genseric and Geiseric) was the greatest king of the Vandals who remained undefeated from the time he took the throne until his death. He was probably born in 389 CE near Lake Balaton (present day Hungary), though this is uncertain. Ancient sources report that he was the illegitimate son of the Vandal king Godigisel who raised him as the equal of his legitimate sons. He was known for his cunning and brilliant military tactics that defeated the armies of Rome in every engagement.
He became king of the Vandals in Spain upon the death of his half-brother Gunderic and led his people to North Africa, where he established a Vandal kingdom -- so powerful it effectively controlled the Mediterranean Sea from 439-534 CE, seizing ships and plundering coastal towns and villages. After his death, the kingdom passed to his son who ruled poorly, as did his other successors, until Gelimer (r. 530-534 CE), the last of the Vandal kings, was defeated by the Roman general Belisarius (l. 505-565 CE) in 533 CE, and the Vandals ceased to exist as a cohesive political and cultural entity by 534 CE.
The Vandals in Spain & Gaiseric's Rise to Power
The Vandals migrated from Scandinavia to the region now known as Poland sometime around 130 BCE and then migrated further south, coming into contact with the Roman Empire. By c. 166 CE they were alternately allied to, or antagonists of, Rome and by 270 CE were actively hostile to the empire. The Hunnic invasions of the late 4th and early 5th centuries CE forced many so-called "barbarian tribes" from their traditional homelands across the borders into Roman territory, seeking safety.
The Vandals were denied entrance but, in the winter of 406 CE, they crossed the frozen Rhine River and invaded Gaul. From Gaul they spread to Hispania (modern day Spain), where they came into conflict with the Visigoths already living there. Further complicating the Vandals' situation was the presence of Romans in Hispania, and so they found themselves fighting against two enemies on separate fronts. Under the leadership of Gunderic (l. 379-428 CE), the Vandals were able to keep both enemies at bay and took control of the coastal cities with many of the most important ports.
Still, the Vandals were constantly threatened with attacks either by the Romans or the Visigoths. While Gunderic was a capable leader, claiming kingship over the Vandals and the Alans (and so possessed of a fairly large army), there was nothing he could do to conquer and hold Hispania as a whole. Gunderic died in 428 CE and was succeeded by the 39-year-old Gaiseric who recognized he needed to find a solution to his people's problem by leaving Spain and establishing a Vandal kingdom elsewhere.
Gaiseric seemed to be able to guess at what the Romans would do before they knew themselves. and consistently thwarted their plans to drive him from his kingdom.
The Invasion of North Africa
The problem, of course, was where to go, but this was resolved for him by his Roman enemies. While the Vandals were fighting off the Visigoths, the Roman Empire was suffering its usual problems with court intrigue. The emperor in the west was Valentinian III (r. 425-455 CE), who was only a child, and actual power lay with his mother, Galla Placidia (l. 392-450 CE), and the general Flavius Aetius (l. 391-454 CE). Romans generally favored either Aetius or Galla, and the two were almost constantly at work trying to devise plans to thwart the hopes of the other.
In c. 428 CE, Aetius devised a scheme whereby a rival of his, Boniface (who ruled in North Africa, d. 432 CE), was charged with treason against Valentinian III and Galla Placidia. Aetius requested that Galla send for Boniface to come from North Africa and answer the charges while, at the same time, sending word to Boniface that Galla was planning to execute him when he arrived. When Boniface sent word to Galla that he would not come, Aetius declared this was proof of his treason.
At this point, the historian Procopius claims, Boniface invited the Vandals of Spain to North Africa as allies against a Roman invasion. Boniface, as Galla would soon recognize, was innocent of the charges and, as he controlled six provinces in North Africa and the military might to defend them, would have had no need for an agreement with the Vandals. Still, as Aetius and Galla were formidable enemies, Boniface could have sent the invitation to Gaiseric in order to muster as many men as he could. Another account of the Vandals' invasion of North Africa suggests that Gaiseric had been injured in a fall from a horse and was lame and so decided to henceforth wage war by sea which led him to invade in order to establish a naval base at Carthage.
Historians have argued for and against both of these claims and continue to do so. Most likely, Gaiseric simply wanted a homeland for his people that was rich in resources and free of Visigoths and so took advantage of the confused situation of the Romans and invaded when he felt Boniface could do nothing about it (or he simply accepted Boniface's invitation with a plan in mind to take the province). North Africa was the major grain supplier for the Roman Empire and, if Gaiseric controlled it, he would be able to effectively negotiate with the Romans to his advantage.
Whatever his reasons, Gaiseric led 80,000 of his people from Spain to North Africa in 429 CE. Historians continue to debate whether the number was 80,000 or 20,000, but the historian Walter A. Goffart (citing others) writes:
That Geiseric led 80,000 Vandals and associated peoples from Spain to Africa in 429 has been called the one piece of certain information we have about the size of barbarian groups in the age of the invasions. The certainty arises from its being vouched for by apparently independent informants, one Latin, the other Greek. (231)
Once in Africa, if the claim that Boniface invited him is accepted, he turned on his host and led his forces against the imperial army. He took the city of Hippo (where St. Augustine, who died at this time, was bishop) after a siege of fourteen months and overran the territories of present day Morocco and Algeria.
Gaiseric took hundreds of Roman prisoners captive, many of them high-profile citizens, but treated them well and offered them freedom if they would swear never to take up arms against the Vandals again. Many of them accepted his offer and, among them, was a Roman officer named Marcian who would later become emperor (r. 450-457 CE) and would honor his oath.
Valentinian III, meanwhile, had no choice but to recognize Gaiseric's victories and abandon the North African provinces except for Carthage. Gaiseric steadily built up his power base, conquering other cities and, in 439 CE, he took Carthage. He then continued on with a string of victories, conquering cities until he was master of North Africa and the Vandals had their own homeland, much to the dismay of Rome. Historian Roger Collins writes, "The determination to regain Africa dominated western imperial policy for the next fifteen years" (90). The Romans would be unsuccessful in this, however, until after Gaiseric's death.
Persecutions of the Catholics
With the Romans defeated, Gaiseric went about the business of ruling his kingdom. The Vandals were Arian Christians, while the Romans were Trinitarians (later known as Catholics). The historian Victor of Vita described the persecutions of Catholics under Gaiseric's reign in his History of the Persecution of the African Province (c. 484 CE). The Arian Vandals rejected the concept of the Trinity as polytheistic heresy, while the Roman Catholics condemned Arianism as a threat to the true faith. The Cambridge Ancient History describes the situation after Gaiseric was fully in control of North Africa:
Geiseric and the Vandals had regarded the African provincials, especially the Roman nobility, with considerable suspicion. Members of many leading families were exiled and had their lands expropriated. Similarly, the religious conflict between Arian Vandals and Catholic Romans was unusually savage. Many Catholic bishops and priests were subjected to internal exile, and their churches and landed endowments given to Arians instead. (XIV, 125)
The Vandal king also taxed the Catholics more heavily than the Arians with special attention paid to Catholic churches. The vehemence with which Gaiseric regarded the Trinitarian Christians sprang from the Trinitarians' belief in the trinity (God as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost) as well as their overt antagonism toward the Vandal form of Arian Christianity which incorporated aspects of Christianity into the old Germanic paganism of the tribe.
In the Vandal pagan belief system, Odin was king of the gods and all others were below him and so, in the Vandal form of Christianity, there was only one supreme God and Jesus fulfilled the same role that Thor had previously as a son of the highest god. The concept of three equally powerful deities reigning as one God was totally unacceptable to Gaiseric, as it violated everything he believed concerning the divine. No Catholics were allowed to serve in his government, and every government official had to be a loyal Arian who believed in precisely what Gaiseric believed. These persecutions, however, did not interfere with his rule, and the Vandal Kingdom flourished.
The Sack of Rome
From their port at Carthage the Vandals now launched their fleet at will and controlled the Mediterranean Sea, which formerly had been Rome's. Gaiseric's navy plundered whatever ships crossed their path and raided coastlines. Plans and attempts by the Romans to drive him and his people from North Africa came to nothing and so, in 442 CE, the Romans acknowledged the Vandal Kingdom as a legitimate political entity, and a treaty was signed between Gaiseric and Valentinian III.
In 455 CE, Valentinian assassinated Aetius and was then murdered shortly afterwards by conspirators under Petronius Maximus, who then declared himself emperor. Gaiseric claimed that this nullified the treaty of 442 CE, which had been only valid between himself and Valentinian. He sailed for Italy with his fleet, landed unopposed at Ostia, and marched on Rome. The Romans recognized that their military force was inadequate to meet the Vandals and so put their trust in the diplomatic skills of Pope Leo I (served 440-461 CE) and sent him out to meet Gaiseric and plead for mercy.
Leo told Gaiseric he was free to plunder the city but asked him not to destroy it nor harm the inhabitants - and Gaiseric agreed. This was greatly to Gaiseric's advantage on many points but, mainly, because Italy was suffering a famine and, when he landed at Ostia, Gaiseric recognized that his army would be unable to affect a prolonged siege of the city because they would have nothing to eat and Rome's walls were formidable. His assent to Leo's request, then, was more an act of expediency and prudence than mercy.
Anything of value, from personal treasures to ornaments on buildings and statues, was taken by the Vandals, but they did not destroy the city, and few people were harmed other than Petronius Maximus who was killed by a Roman mob when he tried to flee and was caught outside the walls. The Vandals looted the city and then marched back to their ships and sailed home, taking with them a number of high-profile hostages including Valentinian III's widow and her daughters. Collins writes:
The sack of Rome of 455 had the immediate effect of making the Vandal threat to Italy seem far more menacing than [other threats]. Despite the Vandals immediately returning to Africa with their loot, the whole episode brought home in a way that seems not to have been previously appreciated just how vulnerable Italy, and Rome in particular, was to sea-borne raiding. (88)
Realizing they could no longer afford to tolerate the Vandals in North Africa, the Romans gathered their strength to launch an attack in c.460 CE. Hoping to win a decisive battle, they enlisted the aid of the Vandals' old enemies, the Visigoths, as allies. The fleet gathered in Spain for an invasion of North Africa but Gaiseric, who was always vigilant of Roman military movements, launched a pre-emptive strike and destroyed or captured most of the Roman fleet in 461 CE.
The Battle of Cape Bon
For the next seven years the Vandals continued to command the Mediterranean Sea and terrorize the coastal settlements. Finally, in 468 CE, Rome decided to try again to rid North Africa of the Vandals and take back their provinces. The eastern and western halves of the empire united against the Vandals and sent the whole of their fleet against them. This campaign might have been successful except for the incompetence of the Roman general Basiliscus (later emperor, r. 475-476 CE) and the cleverness of Gaiseric.
Basiliscus anchored his fleet at Cape Bon instead of driving on to take Carthage directly. Gaiseric, who already knew the invasion was coming, feigned surprise and sent Basiliscus a message asking for a five day truce so that he could prepare to negotiate a peace and surrender. Basiliscus granted him the five days and then remained in the port at Cape Bon to await the Vandal emissaries with their surrender.
Gaiseric, meanwhile, ordered all the old ships in port at Carthage to be loaded with dried brush, wood, and jars of oil. On the evening of the fifth day, while Basiliscus was still waiting for the Vandal emissaries to arrive, Gaiseric had the old ships towed slowly toward the Roman fleet. The Vandals waited until the night was fully dark and then fired the ships and sent them toward the Roman galleys.
The Roman fleet was packed closely together in the port at Cape Bon and had no room to maneuver to escape the flaming ships of the Vandals. Fire leapt from ship to ship and, as it was a windy night, the flames spread faster. Amidst the smoke and flames, the Vandal fleet emerged, rammed the Roman ships, and boarded them, killing anyone on board who resisted.
When the Vandals were certain there was no fleet left worth worrying about, they withdrew; the Roman ships continued to burn throughout the night, and those ships that could still sail retreated back toward Rome with a loss of over 600 ships and countless lives. The Romans were forced to ask for peace, and the general Ricimer (who was acting head-of-state in the west, d. 472 CE), had to accept Gaiseric's terms, which were simply a restatement of the treaty of 442 CE allowing the Vandals to do whatever they wanted whenever they pleased.
The Death of Gaiseric & Fall of the Vandal Kingdom
Following this devastating Roman defeat, which had crippled the western empire, Gaiseric mounted a full-scale assault on the eastern empire as retribution. These attacks continued from c. 469 - 475 CE with more Vandal victories than defeats. The Vandals raided the territories of the eastern empire from Alexandria, Egypt up through Anatolia.
When the emperor Leo I died, he was succeeded by Zeno (r. 474-475, 476-491 CE) who almost instantly opened negotiations for peace. Gaiseric, with his customary fairness, asked for no exorbitant terms; he only demanded that Rome recognize his kingdom as legitimate and leave him alone. He granted freedom of religion to the Catholics living in North Africa, agreed to keep his ships from raiding the Anatolian coastline, and freed whatever Roman prisoners he had taken. He remained the uncontested lord of the Mediterranean Sea and of North Africa until his death, by natural causes, at Carthage in 478 CE.
Gaiseric was succeeded by his son Huneric (r. 478-484 CE) who persecuted the Catholics (Trinitarian Christians) at the expense of other, more profitable, pursuits. Unlike Gaiseric's persecutions, Huneric's were particularly intense and took time and effort away from the actual administration of the kingdom. Huneric was followed by other kings who ruled more, or less, successfully than he but who never approached the greatness of Gaiseric.
The last king of the Vandals was Gelimer who was defeated by Belisarius at the Battles of Ad Decium and Tricameron in 533 CE. Gelimer fled the field and was hunted down and captured in March 534; afterwards he was brought in chains to Constantinople, where he was featured in Belisarius' triumphal parade through the streets and then released.
The eastern empire regained control of North Africa, and the Vandals ceased to exist as a cultural entity. King Gaiseric defeated the Romans in almost every engagement and won more battles against Rome than any other military leader in history. He seemed to be able to guess at what the Romans would do before they even knew and consistently thwarted their plans to drive him from his kingdom. He is remembered in the present day as one of the greatest military strategists in history and the most successful ruler of the Germanic tribes of Late Antiquity."
"Gaiseric
Gaiseric (r. 428-478 CE, also known as Genseric and Geiseric) was the greatest king of the Vandals who remained undefeated from the time he took the throne until his death. He was probably born in 389 CE near Lake Balaton (present day Hungary), though this is uncertain. Ancient sources report that he was the illegitimate son of the Vandal king Godigisel who raised him as the equal of his legitimate sons. He was known for his cunning and brilliant military tactics that defeated the armies of Rome in every engagement.
He became king of the Vandals in Spain upon the death of his half-brother Gunderic and led his people to North Africa, where he established a Vandal kingdom -- so powerful it effectively controlled the Mediterranean Sea from 439-534 CE, seizing ships and plundering coastal towns and villages. After his death, the kingdom passed to his son who ruled poorly, as did his other successors, until Gelimer (r. 530-534 CE), the last of the Vandal kings, was defeated by the Roman general Belisarius (l. 505-565 CE) in 533 CE, and the Vandals ceased to exist as a cohesive political and cultural entity by 534 CE.
The Vandals in Spain & Gaiseric's Rise to Power
The Vandals migrated from Scandinavia to the region now known as Poland sometime around 130 BCE and then migrated further south, coming into contact with the Roman Empire. By c. 166 CE they were alternately allied to, or antagonists of, Rome and by 270 CE were actively hostile to the empire. The Hunnic invasions of the late 4th and early 5th centuries CE forced many so-called "barbarian tribes" from their traditional homelands across the borders into Roman territory, seeking safety.
The Vandals were denied entrance but, in the winter of 406 CE, they crossed the frozen Rhine River and invaded Gaul. From Gaul they spread to Hispania (modern day Spain), where they came into conflict with the Visigoths already living there. Further complicating the Vandals' situation was the presence of Romans in Hispania, and so they found themselves fighting against two enemies on separate fronts. Under the leadership of Gunderic (l. 379-428 CE), the Vandals were able to keep both enemies at bay and took control of the coastal cities with many of the most important ports.
Still, the Vandals were constantly threatened with attacks either by the Romans or the Visigoths. While Gunderic was a capable leader, claiming kingship over the Vandals and the Alans (and so possessed of a fairly large army), there was nothing he could do to conquer and hold Hispania as a whole. Gunderic died in 428 CE and was succeeded by the 39-year-old Gaiseric who recognized he needed to find a solution to his people's problem by leaving Spain and establishing a Vandal kingdom elsewhere.
Gaiseric seemed to be able to guess at what the Romans would do before they knew themselves. and consistently thwarted their plans to drive him from his kingdom.
The Invasion of North Africa
The problem, of course, was where to go, but this was resolved for him by his Roman enemies. While the Vandals were fighting off the Visigoths, the Roman Empire was suffering its usual problems with court intrigue. The emperor in the west was Valentinian III (r. 425-455 CE), who was only a child, and actual power lay with his mother, Galla Placidia (l. 392-450 CE), and the general Flavius Aetius (l. 391-454 CE). Romans generally favored either Aetius or Galla, and the two were almost constantly at work trying to devise plans to thwart the hopes of the other.
In c. 428 CE, Aetius devised a scheme whereby a rival of his, Boniface (who ruled in North Africa, d. 432 CE), was charged with treason against Valentinian III and Galla Placidia. Aetius requested that Galla send for Boniface to come from North Africa and answer the charges while, at the same time, sending word to Boniface that Galla was planning to execute him when he arrived. When Boniface sent word to Galla that he would not come, Aetius declared this was proof of his treason.
At this point, the historian Procopius claims, Boniface invited the Vandals of Spain to North Africa as allies against a Roman invasion. Boniface, as Galla would soon recognize, was innocent of the charges and, as he controlled six provinces in North Africa and the military might to defend them, would have had no need for an agreement with the Vandals. Still, as Aetius and Galla were formidable enemies, Boniface could have sent the invitation to Gaiseric in order to muster as many men as he could. Another account of the Vandals' invasion of North Africa suggests that Gaiseric had been injured in a fall from a horse and was lame and so decided to henceforth wage war by sea which led him to invade in order to establish a naval base at Carthage.
Historians have argued for and against both of these claims and continue to do so. Most likely, Gaiseric simply wanted a homeland for his people that was rich in resources and free of Visigoths and so took advantage of the confused situation of the Romans and invaded when he felt Boniface could do nothing about it (or he simply accepted Boniface's invitation with a plan in mind to take the province). North Africa was the major grain supplier for the Roman Empire and, if Gaiseric controlled it, he would be able to effectively negotiate with the Romans to his advantage.
Whatever his reasons, Gaiseric led 80,000 of his people from Spain to North Africa in 429 CE. Historians continue to debate whether the number was 80,000 or 20,000, but the historian Walter A. Goffart (citing others) writes:
That Geiseric led 80,000 Vandals and associated peoples from Spain to Africa in 429 has been called the one piece of certain information we have about the size of barbarian groups in the age of the invasions. The certainty arises from its being vouched for by apparently independent informants, one Latin, the other Greek. (231)
Once in Africa, if the claim that Boniface invited him is accepted, he turned on his host and led his forces against the imperial army. He took the city of Hippo (where St. Augustine, who died at this time, was bishop) after a siege of fourteen months and overran the territories of present day Morocco and Algeria.
Gaiseric took hundreds of Roman prisoners captive, many of them high-profile citizens, but treated them well and offered them freedom if they would swear never to take up arms against the Vandals again. Many of them accepted his offer and, among them, was a Roman officer named Marcian who would later become emperor (r. 450-457 CE) and would honor his oath.
Valentinian III, meanwhile, had no choice but to recognize Gaiseric's victories and abandon the North African provinces except for Carthage. Gaiseric steadily built up his power base, conquering other cities and, in 439 CE, he took Carthage. He then continued on with a string of victories, conquering cities until he was master of North Africa and the Vandals had their own homeland, much to the dismay of Rome. Historian Roger Collins writes, "The determination to regain Africa dominated western imperial policy for the next fifteen years" (90). The Romans would be unsuccessful in this, however, until after Gaiseric's death.
Persecutions of the Catholics
With the Romans defeated, Gaiseric went about the business of ruling his kingdom. The Vandals were Arian Christians, while the Romans were Trinitarians (later known as Catholics). The historian Victor of Vita described the persecutions of Catholics under Gaiseric's reign in his History of the Persecution of the African Province (c. 484 CE). The Arian Vandals rejected the concept of the Trinity as polytheistic heresy, while the Roman Catholics condemned Arianism as a threat to the true faith. The Cambridge Ancient History describes the situation after Gaiseric was fully in control of North Africa:
Geiseric and the Vandals had regarded the African provincials, especially the Roman nobility, with considerable suspicion. Members of many leading families were exiled and had their lands expropriated. Similarly, the religious conflict between Arian Vandals and Catholic Romans was unusually savage. Many Catholic bishops and priests were subjected to internal exile, and their churches and landed endowments given to Arians instead. (XIV, 125)
The Vandal king also taxed the Catholics more heavily than the Arians with special attention paid to Catholic churches. The vehemence with which Gaiseric regarded the Trinitarian Christians sprang from the Trinitarians' belief in the trinity (God as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost) as well as their overt antagonism toward the Vandal form of Arian Christianity which incorporated aspects of Christianity into the old Germanic paganism of the tribe.
In the Vandal pagan belief system, Odin was king of the gods and all others were below him and so, in the Vandal form of Christianity, there was only one supreme God and Jesus fulfilled the same role that Thor had previously as a son of the highest god. The concept of three equally powerful deities reigning as one God was totally unacceptable to Gaiseric, as it violated everything he believed concerning the divine. No Catholics were allowed to serve in his government, and every government official had to be a loyal Arian who believed in precisely what Gaiseric believed. These persecutions, however, did not interfere with his rule, and the Vandal Kingdom flourished.
The Sack of Rome
From their port at Carthage the Vandals now launched their fleet at will and controlled the Mediterranean Sea, which formerly had been Rome's. Gaiseric's navy plundered whatever ships crossed their path and raided coastlines. Plans and attempts by the Romans to drive him and his people from North Africa came to nothing and so, in 442 CE, the Romans acknowledged the Vandal Kingdom as a legitimate political entity, and a treaty was signed between Gaiseric and Valentinian III.
In 455 CE, Valentinian assassinated Aetius and was then murdered shortly afterwards by conspirators under Petronius Maximus, who then declared himself emperor. Gaiseric claimed that this nullified the treaty of 442 CE, which had been only valid between himself and Valentinian. He sailed for Italy with his fleet, landed unopposed at Ostia, and marched on Rome. The Romans recognized that their military force was inadequate to meet the Vandals and so put their trust in the diplomatic skills of Pope Leo I (served 440-461 CE) and sent him out to meet Gaiseric and plead for mercy.
Leo told Gaiseric he was free to plunder the city but asked him not to destroy it nor harm the inhabitants - and Gaiseric agreed. This was greatly to Gaiseric's advantage on many points but, mainly, because Italy was suffering a famine and, when he landed at Ostia, Gaiseric recognized that his army would be unable to affect a prolonged siege of the city because they would have nothing to eat and Rome's walls were formidable. His assent to Leo's request, then, was more an act of expediency and prudence than mercy.
Anything of value, from personal treasures to ornaments on buildings and statues, was taken by the Vandals, but they did not destroy the city, and few people were harmed other than Petronius Maximus who was killed by a Roman mob when he tried to flee and was caught outside the walls. The Vandals looted the city and then marched back to their ships and sailed home, taking with them a number of high-profile hostages including Valentinian III's widow and her daughters. Collins writes:
The sack of Rome of 455 had the immediate effect of making the Vandal threat to Italy seem far more menacing than [other threats]. Despite the Vandals immediately returning to Africa with their loot, the whole episode brought home in a way that seems not to have been previously appreciated just how vulnerable Italy, and Rome in particular, was to sea-borne raiding. (88)
Realizing they could no longer afford to tolerate the Vandals in North Africa, the Romans gathered their strength to launch an attack in c.460 CE. Hoping to win a decisive battle, they enlisted the aid of the Vandals' old enemies, the Visigoths, as allies. The fleet gathered in Spain for an invasion of North Africa but Gaiseric, who was always vigilant of Roman military movements, launched a pre-emptive strike and destroyed or captured most of the Roman fleet in 461 CE.
The Battle of Cape Bon
For the next seven years the Vandals continued to command the Mediterranean Sea and terrorize the coastal settlements. Finally, in 468 CE, Rome decided to try again to rid North Africa of the Vandals and take back their provinces. The eastern and western halves of the empire united against the Vandals and sent the whole of their fleet against them. This campaign might have been successful except for the incompetence of the Roman general Basiliscus (later emperor, r. 475-476 CE) and the cleverness of Gaiseric.
Basiliscus anchored his fleet at Cape Bon instead of driving on to take Carthage directly. Gaiseric, who already knew the invasion was coming, feigned surprise and sent Basiliscus a message asking for a five day truce so that he could prepare to negotiate a peace and surrender. Basiliscus granted him the five days and then remained in the port at Cape Bon to await the Vandal emissaries with their surrender.
Gaiseric, meanwhile, ordered all the old ships in port at Carthage to be loaded with dried brush, wood, and jars of oil. On the evening of the fifth day, while Basiliscus was still waiting for the Vandal emissaries to arrive, Gaiseric had the old ships towed slowly toward the Roman fleet. The Vandals waited until the night was fully dark and then fired the ships and sent them toward the Roman galleys.
The Roman fleet was packed closely together in the port at Cape Bon and had no room to maneuver to escape the flaming ships of the Vandals. Fire leapt from ship to ship and, as it was a windy night, the flames spread faster. Amidst the smoke and flames, the Vandal fleet emerged, rammed the Roman ships, and boarded them, killing anyone on board who resisted.
When the Vandals were certain there was no fleet left worth worrying about, they withdrew; the Roman ships continued to burn throughout the night, and those ships that could still sail retreated back toward Rome with a loss of over 600 ships and countless lives. The Romans were forced to ask for peace, and the general Ricimer (who was acting head-of-state in the west, d. 472 CE), had to accept Gaiseric's terms, which were simply a restatement of the treaty of 442 CE allowing the Vandals to do whatever they wanted whenever they pleased.
The Death of Gaiseric & Fall of the Vandal Kingdom
Following this devastating Roman defeat, which had crippled the western empire, Gaiseric mounted a full-scale assault on the eastern empire as retribution. These attacks continued from c. 469 - 475 CE with more Vandal victories than defeats. The Vandals raided the territories of the eastern empire from Alexandria, Egypt up through Anatolia.
When the emperor Leo I died, he was succeeded by Zeno (r. 474-475, 476-491 CE) who almost instantly opened negotiations for peace. Gaiseric, with his customary fairness, asked for no exorbitant terms; he only demanded that Rome recognize his kingdom as legitimate and leave him alone. He granted freedom of religion to the Catholics living in North Africa, agreed to keep his ships from raiding the Anatolian coastline, and freed whatever Roman prisoners he had taken. He remained the uncontested lord of the Mediterranean Sea and of North Africa until his death, by natural causes, at Carthage in 478 CE.
Gaiseric was succeeded by his son Huneric (r. 478-484 CE) who persecuted the Catholics (Trinitarian Christians) at the expense of other, more profitable, pursuits. Unlike Gaiseric's persecutions, Huneric's were particularly intense and took time and effort away from the actual administration of the kingdom. Huneric was followed by other kings who ruled more, or less, successfully than he but who never approached the greatness of Gaiseric.
The last king of the Vandals was Gelimer who was defeated by Belisarius at the Battles of Ad Decium and Tricameron in 533 CE. Gelimer fled the field and was hunted down and captured in March 534; afterwards he was brought in chains to Constantinople, where he was featured in Belisarius' triumphal parade through the streets and then released.
The eastern empire regained control of North Africa, and the Vandals ceased to exist as a cultural entity. King Gaiseric defeated the Romans in almost every engagement and won more battles against Rome than any other military leader in history. He seemed to be able to guess at what the Romans would do before they even knew and consistently thwarted their plans to drive him from his kingdom. He is remembered in the present day as one of the greatest military strategists in history and the most successful ruler of the Germanic tribes of Late Antiquity."
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Geiseric & The Kingdom of The Vandals
Watch my latest full length history documentary here:-https://youtu.be/c3Hq6UaFQqkA brief look at Geiseric and the VandalsFurther reading:-Edward Gibbon, The De...
Thank you my friend SGT (Join to see) for making us aware that on October 19, 439 King Geiseric led the Vandals to conquer Carthage in modern day Tunisia.
Geiseric King Vandals and Alans
Geiseric & The Kingdom of The Vandals
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNXfLt2onG0
Images:
1. Siliqua of the Vandal King Gaiseric, circa 400 AD.
2. Reconstruction of Vandal people in the Archaeological Museum of KrakĂłw, Poland.
3. Vandal King Geiserich, Holzstich, 1869, nach Fresko von Julius Naue
4. Gaiseric Sacking Rome, a painting by Karl Briullov (1833–1836).
Background from {[http://homepages.rpi.edu/~holmes/Hobbies/Genealogy2/ps15/ps15_208.htm]}
Gaiseric
King of the Vandals and Alans (428-477)
The Vandal King Gaiseric, also spelled as Geiseric or Genseric, was one of the most remarkable figures of his era. During his nearly 50 years of rule, he raised a relatively insignificant Germanic tribe to the status of a major Mediterranean power - which after he died, entered a swift decline and eventual collapse.
Gaiseric, whose actual name Gaisureiks means "spear-king", was an illegitimate son of King Godigisel; he is assumed to have been born near Lake Balaton (now in Hungary) around the year 389. (see note 1, bottom of page) Sources of that time say that Gaiseric was Godigisel's son by one of his slave-girls, but that the father treated him as almost the equal of his legitimate son Gunderic. As a young man, Gaiseric fought in wars against the Romans and Franks; we can presume he participated in a bloody war with the Franks in 406 and the subsequent breaching of the Roman Empire's Rhine frontier on 31 December 406.
After his father's death in battle in 406, Gaiseric was the second most powerful man among the Vandals, after the new king, his half-brother Gunderic. He seems to have held no ill will toward his brother (existing Roman accounts that say he became King by murdering Gunderic are probably propaganda; the same sources often refer to Gaiseric as the Antichrist) and spent most of his time constructing a Vandal fleet, something that they had not possessed in centuries. At the time, the Vandals resided in the Andalusia region of modern Spain (then known as Vandalusia or Land of the Vandals).
After Gunderic's death in 428, almost certainly in a battle with the powerful Visigoths in Spain, the 39-year-old Gaiseric was elected as the new King. Brilliant and well-versed in the military arts, he immediately began to seek ways of increasing the power and wealth of his people. The Vandals had suffered greatly from attacks from the Visigoths, and not long after taking power, Gaiseric decided to leave Spain to this rival Germanic tribe.
The invasion of Africa and the first victories
Taking advantage of a dispute between Boniface, Roman governor of North Africa, and the Roman government, Gaiseric ferried all 80,000 of his people across to Africa in 429. Once there, he won many battles over the weak and divided Roman defenders and quickly overran the territory now comprising modern Morocco and northern Algeria. His Vandal army laid siege to the city of Hippo Regius (modern Annaba, Algeria) in 430. This siege is famous to history because St. Augustine was serving as Hippo's bishop, and died during the siege. At one point, a Roman army dispatched from Constantinople relived the city and actually lifted the siege. But the Vandals responded with a counterattack that captured Hippo late in 431 and ended 14 months of bitter fighting. The next year, Roman Emperor Valentinian III recognized Gaiseric as king of the lands he and his men had conquered, and Hippo became the new Vandal capital.
Gaiseric took hundreds of prisoners in his victory, one of whom was an eastern Roman officer named Marcian. Desiring peace with the Romans at this point, he offered to free any prisoners who would take an oath never to take up arms against the Vandals in the future. Marcian took the oath, and he honored it--something that became extremely significant 19 years later, when he became Emperor. (see note 2, bottom of page)
The fall of Carthage
In 439, after casting a covetous eye on the great city of Carthage for a decade, he took the city, apparently without any fighting. Accounts of the seizure say that Gaiseric paid the gate-handlers to open the city walls late at night, so he could slip hundreds of his soldiers inside the city and seize key points throughout town in the dead of night. That morning, the Vandals threw open all the gates and the city surrendered forthwith. Because the Romans were caught unaware, Gaiseric also captured a large part of the western Roman navy docked in the port of Carthage.
When these ships, most of whose captains simply shifted allegiance, were added to his own burgeoning fleet, the Kingdom of the Vandals threatened the Empire for mastery of the Mediterranean Sea. Carthage, meanwhile, became the new Vandal capital and an enemy of Rome for the first time since the Punic Wars. With the help of their fleet, the Vandals soon subdued Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica and the Balearic Islands. Ironically, Gaiseric had now restored the ancient Carthaginian empire in the exact boundaries it had held prior to the First Punic War.
By 442 the Romans had no choice but to acknowledge the Vandals' new conquests. They furthermore recognized the Vandal kingdom as an independent country rather than one officially subsidiary to the Roman rule. The area in Algeria that had remained for the larger part independent of the Vandals turned from a Roman province into an ally, although later, even it would come under Gaiseric's dominion.
For the next 30 years, Gaiseric and his soldiers sailed up and down the Mediterranean, living as pirates and raiders. One legend has it that Gaiseric was unable to mount a horse because of a fall he'd taken as a young man; so he assuaged his desire for military glory on the sea. He is said to have sometimes taken command of an expedition personally, trusting to fate for a target to attack, with the comment "Let God take us to those He is angry with..."
Life in Gaiseric's kingdom
For a man of such achievements, Gaiseric seems to have in fact been rather humble in boasting of them. In fact, he did not claim any title among his own people other than as their war chief until the fall of Carthage on 19 October 439. It was only then that he chose to assume the title of of reiks (Latin rex ), or King, although he had been the undisputed ruler of the Vandals and the Western Alans for 11 years. Because of his illegitimate birth, it is likely that Gaiseric was reluctant to officially claim the ultimate power until he had won so many victories that his authority was unchallenged.
Another paradox of his life is how he was regarded by the Romans. Most enemies of Rome, even ones whose victories were as damaging as Arminius', earned at least a grudging respect from Rome. But Gaiseric, who won more battles against Roman arms than any other man in history, was never well-regarded by them. As mentioned earlier, the Romans for decades disseminated propaganda accusing Gaiseric of murdering his brother to reach the throne (which is almost certainly untrue) and that he was the Antichrist. And most Roman authorities refused to treat with Gaiseric as a rex until very late in his career (Gaiseric tended to respond to such snubs with the cold steel of his soldiers). When an envoy of the Emperor Zeno came to negotiate for peace with Gaiseric in 475, one of Gaiseric's terms was recognition of himself and his successors as Rex Wandalorum et Alanorum .
On the other hand, Gaiseric was highly respected by other "barbarian" races of his time. The Berber tribes of north Africa had an almost superstitious regard for him, mainly due to his ability to constantly defeat the Romans. Even the stronger Berber kings, who might have maintained their independence, chose to support Gaiseric instead. The few who didn't often saw their own subjects switch allegiances. Gaiseric had off-and-on alliances with the Roman generalissimos Aetius, Aspar and Ricimer, and a formal alliance with Attila the Hun. In fact, Gaiseric may have helped persuade Attila to launch his famous attacks on Gaul and Italy from 451-53; attacks which made the west even more susceptible to the Vandals. One of the major reasons for the Vandals' rapid decline after Gaiseric's death was that no one could command the respect that he had; the Berbers were more inclined to fight than submit, and without a capable leader, the Vandals were no threat to the Goths or Romans.
Gaiseric, like most of the Vandal elite class, adhered to Arianism, a branch of the Christian religion that rejects the doctrine of the Holy Trinity and considers Jesus Christ a separate being from God. In fact, the Vandals even diverged from the Arianism of the Goths. In Vandal Arianism, many of the practices of the old Germanic pagan religion were retained, with God and Jesus taking on many of the attributes of Odin and Thor. Gaiseric was, by all accounts, an almost fanatical Arian who insisted that anyone in his government--Vandal or Roman--adhere to the Vandals' unusual form of Christianity. At times, he even persecuted the Catholics in his kingdom, although this was more a matter of politics than anything. The Romans were Catholics and took a strong interest in supporting their fellow Catholics in the lands that Gaiseric had conquered. On many occasions, Gaiseric used their status as a bargaining chip to get concessions in negotiations with the Romans.
One serious error made by Gaiseric concerned a law he passed regarding the succession to the Vandal kingship. Prior to their arrival in Africa, Vandal kings were elected according to the ancient Germanic custom. The most worthy man, usually from the nobility, was elected by an open vote of the soldiers (in practice, this meant the most worthy member of the royal family that Gaiseric was a part of). However, Gaiseric seems to have been influenced heavily by Roman ways as he aged. He eventually decreed that in the future, the senior member of his family would always succeed to the throne, regardless of merit. Sadly, this resulted in Gaiseric being succeeded by his cruel and incompetent firstborn son Huneric, instead of one of his other, more capable sons, or possibly his very able grandson Gunthamund (see note 3, bottom of page).
The economy of the Vandal state thrived under Gaiseric, in large part due to the largesse brought in by the pirate ships. Even though the Vandals maintained a large standing army filled with Berber mercenaries and a vast navy, their success at piracy (and in exorbitantly taxing the Catholic Church) was enough to maintain the force at a high level and still leave plenty for the royal family and its nobility. Gaiseric allowed essentially free trade through the ports of Carthage, Hippo and Lepcis Magna, and a strong pottery industry was allowed to continue functioning under his rule.
By the middle of the fifth century, Gaiseric was approaching 60 years old--a very old age for a man of that time--and had already accomplished as much as any German in centuries. Little did anyone know that he would like almost 30 more years and win even greater victories.
Hannibal Redux--Carthage takes Rome at last!
In 455, Roman emperor Valentinian III was murdered. The person who ordered his murder, Petronius Maximus, usurped the throne. Gaiseric was of the opinion that these acts voided his 442 peace treaty with Valentinian, and set sail for Rome, which was now hopelessly undefended. Earlier in 455, the great Roman general Aetius had been murdered by Valentinian, and as a result, Rome had no army to defend against the Vandals. Also, as Gaiseric knew, Rome could count on no help from the east, where Marcian had ruled since 450. On May 31, Gaiseric landed at Ostia with a force of 5,000 men of many nations--Vandal warriors, Moorish horsemen, Alans and even former Roman subjects--and marched on Rome itself.
The trick was nearly on Gaiseric, however. A famine had struck Latium that spring and there was nothing for his men to eat in the countryside. Very quickly, his men started to go hungry. Gaiseric would have to either take Rome quickly and get at the food there, or else return to Carthage with a great loss of prestige. His weapons of choice were bluff and bluster. Gaiseric threatened to attack and destroy Rome. Whether his army could have breached the formidable walls or not is problematic, but Pope Leo I chose not to risk that it might. (see note 4, bottom of page) He personally met with Gaiseric and implored him not to destroy the ancient city or murder its inhabitants if it surrendered peacefully. Gaiseric agreed and the gates of Rome were thrown open to him and his men.
Maximus, who fled rather than fight the Vandal warlord, met his fate at the hands of a Roman mob outside the city. He probably would have fared little better at the hands of the Vandals, for he had forced Valentinian's widow Empress Eudoxia to marry him against her will. In fact, one account says that Eudoxia called on Gaiseric for help, and that is why he attacked Rome in the first place. (see note 5, bottom of page.)
Although history remembers the Vandal sack of Rome as extremely brutal (and their act made the word 'vandalism' a term for any group of wantonly destructive people), in actuality Gaiseric honored his pledge not to make war on the people of Rome. The Vandals did not do much destruction (or even any notable destruction) in the city; they did however take gold, silver and many other things of value back to Carthage. He also took with him Eudoxia and her daughters, including Eudocia, who married Gaiseric's son Huneric after arriving in Carthage. Many important people were taken hostage and later ransomed to the Imperial court in Constantinople.
Flush with victory, Gaiseric followed up his raid on Rome with a strict blockade of Italy, which was, as we have seen, already starving. Presumably, he hoped to force the western Empire into a humiliating peace agreement which would make the Vandals even more powerful. However, in 456, the new Roman generalissimo Ricimer defeated the Vandals at sea and compelled them to lift the blockade. Ricimer then won a land battle at Agrigentum in Sicily and regained the eastern half of that island for Rome. Gaiseric, always astute politically, now turned Ricimer into an ally and the two men tried to foist their own candidate for the emperorship, a man named Anicius Olybrius, onto the throne. The emperor in Constantinople didn't agree to this, however.
Not so fast, Majorian!
There was another attempt by the western empire to regain control of Africa in 461. This time, it was Majorian, Ricimer's hand-picked puppet emperor after Olybrius was rejected, who planned to attack Gaiseric's realm.
Ignoring the wishes of his king-maker Ricimer, who had no wish to topple Gaiseric, Majorian made a deal with the Visigoths and assembled a massive fleet at Valentia Edetanorum (modern Valencia, Spain), which was then under Visigothic rule. However, someone (probably Ricimer) informed Gaiseric about Majorian's plans beforehand.
This was a serious threat to Gaiseric, not only because of the size of the Roman fleet but because of the possibility of support from the Visigoths, who were unfriendly with the Vandals when the two peoples shared Spain. They were even more unfriendly in 461 because Vandal pirates attacked them constantly, and because Gaiseric's oldest son Huneric had recently mutilated a Visigothic princess' nose and ears after divorcing her. It was time for some more Vandal "diplomacy" of the type seen in Carthage. Gaiseric paid off agents in Spain, who helped him pull off a surprise attack and destroy Majorian's Roman fleet in April 461.
Ricimer used this as an excuse to bump off Majorian, who had already won smaller victories over the Vandals earlier in his reign. So Gaiseric continued to reign supreme unopposed by the Romans. Ricimer continued to dominate the western empire. He had no interest other than remaining in power and was willing to collaborate even with Gaiseric to stay there. In fact, the Roman strongman at one point ruled the west for two and a half years with no emperor!
Promontorium Mercurii--the greatest victory
In 468, Gaiseric's kingdom was the target of the last concerted effort by the two halves of the Roman Empire. They wished to subdue the Vandals and end their pirate raids. A year earlier, a rogue Vandal captain had raided territory in Greece, a Roman province under the authority of the eastern (Byzantine) Roman Emperor Leo I. Gaiseric had, since the reign of Marcian, an informal agreement with the east not to raid its territory in exchange for no Byzantine attacks on Vandal territory. Gaiseric had not ordered the attacks and probably would have made reparation to keep the peace, but Leo was anxious for a fight anyway. (see note 6, end of page) He believed bringing the Vandals to heel and forcing them to submit to Rome would save the tottering western Roman Empire. He declared war on Gaiseric and forced Ricimer, still the western Roman generalissimo, to do the same by installing a puppet Emperor in the western capital of Ravenna.
The ensuing campaign, which ranks among the greatest victories ever won against Roman arms, took the form of a land-and-sea assault from several directions. Leo funded the attack, paying out 65,000 pounds of gold and 700 pounds of silver to equip over 1,100 ships and sign up 100,000 soldiers and sailors. This looked like an armada even the great Gaiseric had no chance against. But bad decisions, one man's bitterness and Gaiseric's trickery would save the day in the end.
Leo was persuaded by his wife and Aspar, his leading general, into putting his brother-in-law Basiliscus in charge of the sea forces which would sail from the east against Carthage. This was the first mistake, as Basiliscus was both incompetent and a traitor (he briefly and illegally seized the throne after Leo died). Aspar may have had ulterior motives as well; he was an Alan and a an old ally of Gaiseric, who was of course King of the western branch of the Alans as well as the Vandals.
In the meantime, the western general Marcellinus had seized Corsica and Sardinia from the Vandals, defeating a Vandal squadron and 100 of their galleys. Much of his force then sailed toward Sicily to join forces with Basiliscus. The remainder of the western force proceeded to Hippo Regius, blockading its port. This part of the attack was a success, except that Ricimer was angry that he had been forced to accept Leo's choice for emperor and then passed over for command of the western fleet. Soon, he began clandestine negotiations with Gaiseric.
Meanwhile, General Heracleius of the eastern army obtained auxiliaries in Egypt and then sailed for Tripoli where he would disembark and march by land to Carthage. Soon Heracleius moved to within 25 miles of the city, taking Theveste (Tebessa, Algeria) and Basiliscus defeated the Vandals in a great battle off Sicily, sinking 340 of the 500 galleys sent out by the Vandals. It appeared as though Gaiseric would have to accept what would be harsh terms of peace.
Enter Basiliscus. Instead of sailing directly for Carthage and taking the city through its port (it was heavily walled and would have been impossible to take only by land assault), he anchored his powerful fleet off Promontorium Mercurii (Cape Bon) about 45 miles away. Gaiseric sent him a message calling for a five-day truce, presumably so he could negotiate peace.
The gate at the town of Bab-el-Bahr in modern Tunisia, which was built by the Romans in the third century AD. It was here that King Gaiseric is said to have viewed the climactic battle of Promontorium Mercurii in 468. It still stands today and is a popular tourist attraction.
Basiliscus granted it, probably after receiving a bribe from the Vandal king's envoys.
Gaiseric spent the five days preparing his old war galleys, filling them with brushwood and pots of oil. On the fifth day they were ready, waiting for dark to come. When the wind rose and the moon was obscured by cloud, the old galleys were towed out. Against the black sky, the Vandals reached the Cape Bon anchorage and started to fire the galleys. Roman guards observed fire darting to and from ships. The alarm was sounded too late. The fire galleys sailed into the pack of imperial ships which was too crowded, leaving no room for ships to maneuver.
The flagship where Basiliscus stayed at was well away from danger (something which added to the suspicion against him). The wind drove the fire ships into the Roman fleet, throwing it into confusion. The noise of the wind and the crackling flames was mingled with the cries of the soldiers and sailors as they shouted commands to one another, using long poles to push off the fire galleys as well as each other's galleys. The Vandal fleet was behind the advancing fire galleys. They rammed the imperial galleys and sank them. There were some brave Romans in this struggle, including John, who was a general under Basiliscus. When his ship was surrounded by the Vandals and was being boarded, he stood on the deck and, turning from side to side, killed heaps of the enemy. Finally, once his ship was captured, he assured that much of the valuable Roman equipment had been thrown into the sea. Genzon (Gento), the third son of Gaiseric, boarded John's ship. He offered a promise of safety, but John refused, saying "A Roman does not fall into the hands of dogs!" He threw himself into the sea wearing his armor.
The galleys of the Roman fleet burned throughout the night. The ones that didn't burn were attacked and thrashed by the Vandal fleet. What remained of Emperor Leo's mighty host withdrew to Sicily the next day.
Cut off deep in enemy territory with no communications and no way to cut off Carthage's sea routes in a siege of that city, Heracleius beat a hasty retreat to the east, returning to Egypt. The Vandals, who had been handled roughly by this powerful army during its advance, let them go in peace.
The western fleet was all that remained. It withdrew to Rome after Marcellinus was murdered. Some sources blame a Vandal spy for this, but it was probably the work of Ricimer. Ricimer added to the suspicion against himself when he toppled Leo's emperor and, in cahoots with Gaiseric, finally installed Olybrius as the Emperor in the west.
Gaiseric's revenge
After defeating the Romans at Mercurii, Gaiseric sent his Vandals on an all-out rampage against the Leo's eastern Roman Empire, on the grounds that Leo had waged an unjust war against him. He sent ships to the mouth of the Bosporus, where they menaced Constantinople, and sent soldiers to occupy the Greek province of Epirus. Other Vandal squadrons raided Crete, southern Anatolia and even the great port city of Alexandria. Rather than negotiate an end to the war, Leo hired thousands of mercenary soldiers to defend against the Vandal attacks. One of them, the general Tarasicodissa, drove the Vandals from Epirus and was rewarded with the hand of Leo's daughter.
Gaiseric remained as undisputed master of the western Mediterranean until his death, ruling from the Strait of Gibraltar all the way to Tripolitania.
Peace with the Romans
Leo's death In 474 opened the door for peace. This came late in 475, when Tarasicodissa became the new Emperor Zeno (after defeating the traitorous Basiliscus when he usurped the throne) and sent an envoy to Carthage to negotiate with the now-legendary Vandal king, whom many Romans believed to be invincible. Remarkably, Gaiseric made no severe demands for peace. In return for recognition of his empire and an end to the war, Gaiseric granted full freedom of worship to the Catholics under his rule, agreed to stop pirate attacks on Zeno's realm and returned thousands of prisoners that he and his sons had taken in battle over the years.
Used to buying the services of imperial agents, Gaiseric had first presented Zeno's ambassador Severus with rich gifts and money, but Severus refused. “In place of such things, the reward most worthwhile for an ambassador is the redemption of prisoners,” he told the old king. The Byzantine historian Malchus records that Gaiseric acquiesced. “Whatever prisoners I, along with my sons, have obtained, I hand over to you. As for the rest who have been shared out among my followers, you are at liberty to buy them back from each owner, but even I would unable to compel their captors to do this against their will.”
Finally, on January 25, 477, at the advanced age of 87, Gaiseric died at Carthage. His remarkable life spanned from the existence of a united Roman Empire under Theodosius the Great to one year beyond its fall in the west. In fact, his final treaty was with Odoacer, the King of Italy who deposed the last Roman Emperor in the west. (see note 7, below)
Note: I used several sources for this article. One is the Wikipedia , utilizing an article on Gaiseric that I wrote myself, but had since been significantly added on to. Another is Brian Adam's excellent account of the history of the Vandals, located at the http://www.roman-empire.net site. And some of it is from research I did on my own, after the Wikipedia article.
Notes
1. The birthdate of Gaiseric is open to some question. He unquestionably died on 25 January 477; for that we have indisputable evidence. However, different sources claim his date of birth in 389, 390, 400 and 406. One source for his death claims he had seen "87 summers" at the time he died. If so, since he did not see the summer of 477, he must have been born in 389. This means he was leading troops into battle in his 60s and 70s, and for that reason, many historians claim the fifth-century dates must be accurate. I don't. If Narses could lead armies in Italy in his 70s against the Goths, Gaiseric could have done the same for the Vandals. It is also worth noting that we know the chronology for his father and brother almost unquestionably. His father Godigisel lived from 359-406, and Gunderic lived from 379-428. Not only does the 389-390 period seem the most congruent, I would also add that between 400 and 406, Godigisel was fighting constant wars and was less likely to be fathering children--and if he did, even less likely to take illegitimate children and raise them as part of his own family. For those reasons, I accept the 389 date as the most likely.
2. I am offering my own interpretation of the supposed meeting of Marcian and Gaiseric here. According to legend, Marcian was brought face-to-face with the Vandal king, who saw a "heavenly vision" behind Marcian that convinced him that the latter would be Roman Emperor someday, and freed him for that reason, while Marcian agreed never to fight the Vandals. Some modern historians totally reject the story. I believe most of it to be true--that Gaiseric would have freed Roman prisoners at this point makes perfect sense, as he was seeking peace. He did the same thing 44 years later when he again sought peace. I doubt he met Gaiseric personally, but I do believe Marcian was freed after offering the pledge not to fight the Vandals--which is why he was willing to fight even Attila as Emperor, but not Gaiseric, who probably never commanded one-tenth as many soldiers in battle.
3. Huneric's reign as king was a disaster. He was incompetent and a bloodthirsty tyrant who murdered several members of his own family, possibly including at least one of his brothers, and allowed the powerful fleet to go to pot. The most capable son of Gaiseric, Gento, died sometime between 469 and 477, while his father was still living. It is possible that Gaiseric changed the rules of succession to prevent a disastrous civil war after his death--many of the Vandals' soldiers were Romans or African mercenaries steeped in the tradition of hereditary succession. These men likely would have followed Huneric, the oldest son of the king, regardless of the Vandals' own rules on kingship. The result would have been a war between Huneric and whoever was elected by the warriors. However, this is just speculation...what we do know is that Gaiseric did change the rules of succession, for whatever reason. Huneric thankfully died in 484, allowing Gento's son Gunthamund (450-496, reigned 484-496) to become King and partially restore the Vandals' position.
4. Gaiseric had no siege instruments capable of breaching the walls of Rome or even of investing them. He would have had to carry the city by frontal assault, which had not been done since Brennus did it in 390 BC. It is safe to say that Rome surrendered mainly because of Gaiseric's fearsome reputation--it is highly unlikely he could have taken the city had Leo not surrendered.
5. Like most modern historians, I have my doubts about the tale that Eudoxia called on Gaiseric for assistance against Petronius Maximus. However, it could be true. Eudoxia certainly had good reason to hate Maximus, who was already a murderer and proved himself a coward as well. And she willingly went to Carthage with Gaiseric, along with her family. In 462, Gaiseric allowed her to leave for Constantinople, where she spent the rest of her life as a respected noblewoman, and died a very old woman sometime around 495.
6. We don't know for certain that Gaiseric did not order the attacks on Greece. However, it is extremely unlikely that he did. Since Hippo, he had followed a strict policy of peace with the Constantinople imperial court, which unlike the western empire still had a formidable military force. Nothing he could have gained from open warfare against the east would have been worth the risk, and Gaiseric almost assuredly knew this. However, after he destroyed their fleet in the ensuing war, it was a different story.
7. The treaty with Odoacer was a mistake that the Vandals paid for much later on. Gaiseric sold Odoacer the rights to almost all of Sicily, retaining only the western tip of the island for himself. The Vandals had never been able to completely subdue Sicily and for that reason, Gaiseric probably saw it as a way to get rid of a trouble spot and get some gold at the same time (Odoacer paid the Vandals an annual subsidy in exchange for Sicily). The deal remained in place under the Ostrogoths, who in 533 allowed the island to be used as a staging area for the Byzantine assault on the Vandal kingdom. By this time, the Vandals no longer had Gaiseric's powerful fleet that allowed them to project their power anywhere in the Mediterranean, which is undoubtedly why Gaiseric saw the deal as no risk to his people's security."
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Geiseric King Vandals and Alans
Geiseric & The Kingdom of The Vandals
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNXfLt2onG0
Images:
1. Siliqua of the Vandal King Gaiseric, circa 400 AD.
2. Reconstruction of Vandal people in the Archaeological Museum of KrakĂłw, Poland.
3. Vandal King Geiserich, Holzstich, 1869, nach Fresko von Julius Naue
4. Gaiseric Sacking Rome, a painting by Karl Briullov (1833–1836).
Background from {[http://homepages.rpi.edu/~holmes/Hobbies/Genealogy2/ps15/ps15_208.htm]}
Gaiseric
King of the Vandals and Alans (428-477)
The Vandal King Gaiseric, also spelled as Geiseric or Genseric, was one of the most remarkable figures of his era. During his nearly 50 years of rule, he raised a relatively insignificant Germanic tribe to the status of a major Mediterranean power - which after he died, entered a swift decline and eventual collapse.
Gaiseric, whose actual name Gaisureiks means "spear-king", was an illegitimate son of King Godigisel; he is assumed to have been born near Lake Balaton (now in Hungary) around the year 389. (see note 1, bottom of page) Sources of that time say that Gaiseric was Godigisel's son by one of his slave-girls, but that the father treated him as almost the equal of his legitimate son Gunderic. As a young man, Gaiseric fought in wars against the Romans and Franks; we can presume he participated in a bloody war with the Franks in 406 and the subsequent breaching of the Roman Empire's Rhine frontier on 31 December 406.
After his father's death in battle in 406, Gaiseric was the second most powerful man among the Vandals, after the new king, his half-brother Gunderic. He seems to have held no ill will toward his brother (existing Roman accounts that say he became King by murdering Gunderic are probably propaganda; the same sources often refer to Gaiseric as the Antichrist) and spent most of his time constructing a Vandal fleet, something that they had not possessed in centuries. At the time, the Vandals resided in the Andalusia region of modern Spain (then known as Vandalusia or Land of the Vandals).
After Gunderic's death in 428, almost certainly in a battle with the powerful Visigoths in Spain, the 39-year-old Gaiseric was elected as the new King. Brilliant and well-versed in the military arts, he immediately began to seek ways of increasing the power and wealth of his people. The Vandals had suffered greatly from attacks from the Visigoths, and not long after taking power, Gaiseric decided to leave Spain to this rival Germanic tribe.
The invasion of Africa and the first victories
Taking advantage of a dispute between Boniface, Roman governor of North Africa, and the Roman government, Gaiseric ferried all 80,000 of his people across to Africa in 429. Once there, he won many battles over the weak and divided Roman defenders and quickly overran the territory now comprising modern Morocco and northern Algeria. His Vandal army laid siege to the city of Hippo Regius (modern Annaba, Algeria) in 430. This siege is famous to history because St. Augustine was serving as Hippo's bishop, and died during the siege. At one point, a Roman army dispatched from Constantinople relived the city and actually lifted the siege. But the Vandals responded with a counterattack that captured Hippo late in 431 and ended 14 months of bitter fighting. The next year, Roman Emperor Valentinian III recognized Gaiseric as king of the lands he and his men had conquered, and Hippo became the new Vandal capital.
Gaiseric took hundreds of prisoners in his victory, one of whom was an eastern Roman officer named Marcian. Desiring peace with the Romans at this point, he offered to free any prisoners who would take an oath never to take up arms against the Vandals in the future. Marcian took the oath, and he honored it--something that became extremely significant 19 years later, when he became Emperor. (see note 2, bottom of page)
The fall of Carthage
In 439, after casting a covetous eye on the great city of Carthage for a decade, he took the city, apparently without any fighting. Accounts of the seizure say that Gaiseric paid the gate-handlers to open the city walls late at night, so he could slip hundreds of his soldiers inside the city and seize key points throughout town in the dead of night. That morning, the Vandals threw open all the gates and the city surrendered forthwith. Because the Romans were caught unaware, Gaiseric also captured a large part of the western Roman navy docked in the port of Carthage.
When these ships, most of whose captains simply shifted allegiance, were added to his own burgeoning fleet, the Kingdom of the Vandals threatened the Empire for mastery of the Mediterranean Sea. Carthage, meanwhile, became the new Vandal capital and an enemy of Rome for the first time since the Punic Wars. With the help of their fleet, the Vandals soon subdued Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica and the Balearic Islands. Ironically, Gaiseric had now restored the ancient Carthaginian empire in the exact boundaries it had held prior to the First Punic War.
By 442 the Romans had no choice but to acknowledge the Vandals' new conquests. They furthermore recognized the Vandal kingdom as an independent country rather than one officially subsidiary to the Roman rule. The area in Algeria that had remained for the larger part independent of the Vandals turned from a Roman province into an ally, although later, even it would come under Gaiseric's dominion.
For the next 30 years, Gaiseric and his soldiers sailed up and down the Mediterranean, living as pirates and raiders. One legend has it that Gaiseric was unable to mount a horse because of a fall he'd taken as a young man; so he assuaged his desire for military glory on the sea. He is said to have sometimes taken command of an expedition personally, trusting to fate for a target to attack, with the comment "Let God take us to those He is angry with..."
Life in Gaiseric's kingdom
For a man of such achievements, Gaiseric seems to have in fact been rather humble in boasting of them. In fact, he did not claim any title among his own people other than as their war chief until the fall of Carthage on 19 October 439. It was only then that he chose to assume the title of of reiks (Latin rex ), or King, although he had been the undisputed ruler of the Vandals and the Western Alans for 11 years. Because of his illegitimate birth, it is likely that Gaiseric was reluctant to officially claim the ultimate power until he had won so many victories that his authority was unchallenged.
Another paradox of his life is how he was regarded by the Romans. Most enemies of Rome, even ones whose victories were as damaging as Arminius', earned at least a grudging respect from Rome. But Gaiseric, who won more battles against Roman arms than any other man in history, was never well-regarded by them. As mentioned earlier, the Romans for decades disseminated propaganda accusing Gaiseric of murdering his brother to reach the throne (which is almost certainly untrue) and that he was the Antichrist. And most Roman authorities refused to treat with Gaiseric as a rex until very late in his career (Gaiseric tended to respond to such snubs with the cold steel of his soldiers). When an envoy of the Emperor Zeno came to negotiate for peace with Gaiseric in 475, one of Gaiseric's terms was recognition of himself and his successors as Rex Wandalorum et Alanorum .
On the other hand, Gaiseric was highly respected by other "barbarian" races of his time. The Berber tribes of north Africa had an almost superstitious regard for him, mainly due to his ability to constantly defeat the Romans. Even the stronger Berber kings, who might have maintained their independence, chose to support Gaiseric instead. The few who didn't often saw their own subjects switch allegiances. Gaiseric had off-and-on alliances with the Roman generalissimos Aetius, Aspar and Ricimer, and a formal alliance with Attila the Hun. In fact, Gaiseric may have helped persuade Attila to launch his famous attacks on Gaul and Italy from 451-53; attacks which made the west even more susceptible to the Vandals. One of the major reasons for the Vandals' rapid decline after Gaiseric's death was that no one could command the respect that he had; the Berbers were more inclined to fight than submit, and without a capable leader, the Vandals were no threat to the Goths or Romans.
Gaiseric, like most of the Vandal elite class, adhered to Arianism, a branch of the Christian religion that rejects the doctrine of the Holy Trinity and considers Jesus Christ a separate being from God. In fact, the Vandals even diverged from the Arianism of the Goths. In Vandal Arianism, many of the practices of the old Germanic pagan religion were retained, with God and Jesus taking on many of the attributes of Odin and Thor. Gaiseric was, by all accounts, an almost fanatical Arian who insisted that anyone in his government--Vandal or Roman--adhere to the Vandals' unusual form of Christianity. At times, he even persecuted the Catholics in his kingdom, although this was more a matter of politics than anything. The Romans were Catholics and took a strong interest in supporting their fellow Catholics in the lands that Gaiseric had conquered. On many occasions, Gaiseric used their status as a bargaining chip to get concessions in negotiations with the Romans.
One serious error made by Gaiseric concerned a law he passed regarding the succession to the Vandal kingship. Prior to their arrival in Africa, Vandal kings were elected according to the ancient Germanic custom. The most worthy man, usually from the nobility, was elected by an open vote of the soldiers (in practice, this meant the most worthy member of the royal family that Gaiseric was a part of). However, Gaiseric seems to have been influenced heavily by Roman ways as he aged. He eventually decreed that in the future, the senior member of his family would always succeed to the throne, regardless of merit. Sadly, this resulted in Gaiseric being succeeded by his cruel and incompetent firstborn son Huneric, instead of one of his other, more capable sons, or possibly his very able grandson Gunthamund (see note 3, bottom of page).
The economy of the Vandal state thrived under Gaiseric, in large part due to the largesse brought in by the pirate ships. Even though the Vandals maintained a large standing army filled with Berber mercenaries and a vast navy, their success at piracy (and in exorbitantly taxing the Catholic Church) was enough to maintain the force at a high level and still leave plenty for the royal family and its nobility. Gaiseric allowed essentially free trade through the ports of Carthage, Hippo and Lepcis Magna, and a strong pottery industry was allowed to continue functioning under his rule.
By the middle of the fifth century, Gaiseric was approaching 60 years old--a very old age for a man of that time--and had already accomplished as much as any German in centuries. Little did anyone know that he would like almost 30 more years and win even greater victories.
Hannibal Redux--Carthage takes Rome at last!
In 455, Roman emperor Valentinian III was murdered. The person who ordered his murder, Petronius Maximus, usurped the throne. Gaiseric was of the opinion that these acts voided his 442 peace treaty with Valentinian, and set sail for Rome, which was now hopelessly undefended. Earlier in 455, the great Roman general Aetius had been murdered by Valentinian, and as a result, Rome had no army to defend against the Vandals. Also, as Gaiseric knew, Rome could count on no help from the east, where Marcian had ruled since 450. On May 31, Gaiseric landed at Ostia with a force of 5,000 men of many nations--Vandal warriors, Moorish horsemen, Alans and even former Roman subjects--and marched on Rome itself.
The trick was nearly on Gaiseric, however. A famine had struck Latium that spring and there was nothing for his men to eat in the countryside. Very quickly, his men started to go hungry. Gaiseric would have to either take Rome quickly and get at the food there, or else return to Carthage with a great loss of prestige. His weapons of choice were bluff and bluster. Gaiseric threatened to attack and destroy Rome. Whether his army could have breached the formidable walls or not is problematic, but Pope Leo I chose not to risk that it might. (see note 4, bottom of page) He personally met with Gaiseric and implored him not to destroy the ancient city or murder its inhabitants if it surrendered peacefully. Gaiseric agreed and the gates of Rome were thrown open to him and his men.
Maximus, who fled rather than fight the Vandal warlord, met his fate at the hands of a Roman mob outside the city. He probably would have fared little better at the hands of the Vandals, for he had forced Valentinian's widow Empress Eudoxia to marry him against her will. In fact, one account says that Eudoxia called on Gaiseric for help, and that is why he attacked Rome in the first place. (see note 5, bottom of page.)
Although history remembers the Vandal sack of Rome as extremely brutal (and their act made the word 'vandalism' a term for any group of wantonly destructive people), in actuality Gaiseric honored his pledge not to make war on the people of Rome. The Vandals did not do much destruction (or even any notable destruction) in the city; they did however take gold, silver and many other things of value back to Carthage. He also took with him Eudoxia and her daughters, including Eudocia, who married Gaiseric's son Huneric after arriving in Carthage. Many important people were taken hostage and later ransomed to the Imperial court in Constantinople.
Flush with victory, Gaiseric followed up his raid on Rome with a strict blockade of Italy, which was, as we have seen, already starving. Presumably, he hoped to force the western Empire into a humiliating peace agreement which would make the Vandals even more powerful. However, in 456, the new Roman generalissimo Ricimer defeated the Vandals at sea and compelled them to lift the blockade. Ricimer then won a land battle at Agrigentum in Sicily and regained the eastern half of that island for Rome. Gaiseric, always astute politically, now turned Ricimer into an ally and the two men tried to foist their own candidate for the emperorship, a man named Anicius Olybrius, onto the throne. The emperor in Constantinople didn't agree to this, however.
Not so fast, Majorian!
There was another attempt by the western empire to regain control of Africa in 461. This time, it was Majorian, Ricimer's hand-picked puppet emperor after Olybrius was rejected, who planned to attack Gaiseric's realm.
Ignoring the wishes of his king-maker Ricimer, who had no wish to topple Gaiseric, Majorian made a deal with the Visigoths and assembled a massive fleet at Valentia Edetanorum (modern Valencia, Spain), which was then under Visigothic rule. However, someone (probably Ricimer) informed Gaiseric about Majorian's plans beforehand.
This was a serious threat to Gaiseric, not only because of the size of the Roman fleet but because of the possibility of support from the Visigoths, who were unfriendly with the Vandals when the two peoples shared Spain. They were even more unfriendly in 461 because Vandal pirates attacked them constantly, and because Gaiseric's oldest son Huneric had recently mutilated a Visigothic princess' nose and ears after divorcing her. It was time for some more Vandal "diplomacy" of the type seen in Carthage. Gaiseric paid off agents in Spain, who helped him pull off a surprise attack and destroy Majorian's Roman fleet in April 461.
Ricimer used this as an excuse to bump off Majorian, who had already won smaller victories over the Vandals earlier in his reign. So Gaiseric continued to reign supreme unopposed by the Romans. Ricimer continued to dominate the western empire. He had no interest other than remaining in power and was willing to collaborate even with Gaiseric to stay there. In fact, the Roman strongman at one point ruled the west for two and a half years with no emperor!
Promontorium Mercurii--the greatest victory
In 468, Gaiseric's kingdom was the target of the last concerted effort by the two halves of the Roman Empire. They wished to subdue the Vandals and end their pirate raids. A year earlier, a rogue Vandal captain had raided territory in Greece, a Roman province under the authority of the eastern (Byzantine) Roman Emperor Leo I. Gaiseric had, since the reign of Marcian, an informal agreement with the east not to raid its territory in exchange for no Byzantine attacks on Vandal territory. Gaiseric had not ordered the attacks and probably would have made reparation to keep the peace, but Leo was anxious for a fight anyway. (see note 6, end of page) He believed bringing the Vandals to heel and forcing them to submit to Rome would save the tottering western Roman Empire. He declared war on Gaiseric and forced Ricimer, still the western Roman generalissimo, to do the same by installing a puppet Emperor in the western capital of Ravenna.
The ensuing campaign, which ranks among the greatest victories ever won against Roman arms, took the form of a land-and-sea assault from several directions. Leo funded the attack, paying out 65,000 pounds of gold and 700 pounds of silver to equip over 1,100 ships and sign up 100,000 soldiers and sailors. This looked like an armada even the great Gaiseric had no chance against. But bad decisions, one man's bitterness and Gaiseric's trickery would save the day in the end.
Leo was persuaded by his wife and Aspar, his leading general, into putting his brother-in-law Basiliscus in charge of the sea forces which would sail from the east against Carthage. This was the first mistake, as Basiliscus was both incompetent and a traitor (he briefly and illegally seized the throne after Leo died). Aspar may have had ulterior motives as well; he was an Alan and a an old ally of Gaiseric, who was of course King of the western branch of the Alans as well as the Vandals.
In the meantime, the western general Marcellinus had seized Corsica and Sardinia from the Vandals, defeating a Vandal squadron and 100 of their galleys. Much of his force then sailed toward Sicily to join forces with Basiliscus. The remainder of the western force proceeded to Hippo Regius, blockading its port. This part of the attack was a success, except that Ricimer was angry that he had been forced to accept Leo's choice for emperor and then passed over for command of the western fleet. Soon, he began clandestine negotiations with Gaiseric.
Meanwhile, General Heracleius of the eastern army obtained auxiliaries in Egypt and then sailed for Tripoli where he would disembark and march by land to Carthage. Soon Heracleius moved to within 25 miles of the city, taking Theveste (Tebessa, Algeria) and Basiliscus defeated the Vandals in a great battle off Sicily, sinking 340 of the 500 galleys sent out by the Vandals. It appeared as though Gaiseric would have to accept what would be harsh terms of peace.
Enter Basiliscus. Instead of sailing directly for Carthage and taking the city through its port (it was heavily walled and would have been impossible to take only by land assault), he anchored his powerful fleet off Promontorium Mercurii (Cape Bon) about 45 miles away. Gaiseric sent him a message calling for a five-day truce, presumably so he could negotiate peace.
The gate at the town of Bab-el-Bahr in modern Tunisia, which was built by the Romans in the third century AD. It was here that King Gaiseric is said to have viewed the climactic battle of Promontorium Mercurii in 468. It still stands today and is a popular tourist attraction.
Basiliscus granted it, probably after receiving a bribe from the Vandal king's envoys.
Gaiseric spent the five days preparing his old war galleys, filling them with brushwood and pots of oil. On the fifth day they were ready, waiting for dark to come. When the wind rose and the moon was obscured by cloud, the old galleys were towed out. Against the black sky, the Vandals reached the Cape Bon anchorage and started to fire the galleys. Roman guards observed fire darting to and from ships. The alarm was sounded too late. The fire galleys sailed into the pack of imperial ships which was too crowded, leaving no room for ships to maneuver.
The flagship where Basiliscus stayed at was well away from danger (something which added to the suspicion against him). The wind drove the fire ships into the Roman fleet, throwing it into confusion. The noise of the wind and the crackling flames was mingled with the cries of the soldiers and sailors as they shouted commands to one another, using long poles to push off the fire galleys as well as each other's galleys. The Vandal fleet was behind the advancing fire galleys. They rammed the imperial galleys and sank them. There were some brave Romans in this struggle, including John, who was a general under Basiliscus. When his ship was surrounded by the Vandals and was being boarded, he stood on the deck and, turning from side to side, killed heaps of the enemy. Finally, once his ship was captured, he assured that much of the valuable Roman equipment had been thrown into the sea. Genzon (Gento), the third son of Gaiseric, boarded John's ship. He offered a promise of safety, but John refused, saying "A Roman does not fall into the hands of dogs!" He threw himself into the sea wearing his armor.
The galleys of the Roman fleet burned throughout the night. The ones that didn't burn were attacked and thrashed by the Vandal fleet. What remained of Emperor Leo's mighty host withdrew to Sicily the next day.
Cut off deep in enemy territory with no communications and no way to cut off Carthage's sea routes in a siege of that city, Heracleius beat a hasty retreat to the east, returning to Egypt. The Vandals, who had been handled roughly by this powerful army during its advance, let them go in peace.
The western fleet was all that remained. It withdrew to Rome after Marcellinus was murdered. Some sources blame a Vandal spy for this, but it was probably the work of Ricimer. Ricimer added to the suspicion against himself when he toppled Leo's emperor and, in cahoots with Gaiseric, finally installed Olybrius as the Emperor in the west.
Gaiseric's revenge
After defeating the Romans at Mercurii, Gaiseric sent his Vandals on an all-out rampage against the Leo's eastern Roman Empire, on the grounds that Leo had waged an unjust war against him. He sent ships to the mouth of the Bosporus, where they menaced Constantinople, and sent soldiers to occupy the Greek province of Epirus. Other Vandal squadrons raided Crete, southern Anatolia and even the great port city of Alexandria. Rather than negotiate an end to the war, Leo hired thousands of mercenary soldiers to defend against the Vandal attacks. One of them, the general Tarasicodissa, drove the Vandals from Epirus and was rewarded with the hand of Leo's daughter.
Gaiseric remained as undisputed master of the western Mediterranean until his death, ruling from the Strait of Gibraltar all the way to Tripolitania.
Peace with the Romans
Leo's death In 474 opened the door for peace. This came late in 475, when Tarasicodissa became the new Emperor Zeno (after defeating the traitorous Basiliscus when he usurped the throne) and sent an envoy to Carthage to negotiate with the now-legendary Vandal king, whom many Romans believed to be invincible. Remarkably, Gaiseric made no severe demands for peace. In return for recognition of his empire and an end to the war, Gaiseric granted full freedom of worship to the Catholics under his rule, agreed to stop pirate attacks on Zeno's realm and returned thousands of prisoners that he and his sons had taken in battle over the years.
Used to buying the services of imperial agents, Gaiseric had first presented Zeno's ambassador Severus with rich gifts and money, but Severus refused. “In place of such things, the reward most worthwhile for an ambassador is the redemption of prisoners,” he told the old king. The Byzantine historian Malchus records that Gaiseric acquiesced. “Whatever prisoners I, along with my sons, have obtained, I hand over to you. As for the rest who have been shared out among my followers, you are at liberty to buy them back from each owner, but even I would unable to compel their captors to do this against their will.”
Finally, on January 25, 477, at the advanced age of 87, Gaiseric died at Carthage. His remarkable life spanned from the existence of a united Roman Empire under Theodosius the Great to one year beyond its fall in the west. In fact, his final treaty was with Odoacer, the King of Italy who deposed the last Roman Emperor in the west. (see note 7, below)
Note: I used several sources for this article. One is the Wikipedia , utilizing an article on Gaiseric that I wrote myself, but had since been significantly added on to. Another is Brian Adam's excellent account of the history of the Vandals, located at the http://www.roman-empire.net site. And some of it is from research I did on my own, after the Wikipedia article.
Notes
1. The birthdate of Gaiseric is open to some question. He unquestionably died on 25 January 477; for that we have indisputable evidence. However, different sources claim his date of birth in 389, 390, 400 and 406. One source for his death claims he had seen "87 summers" at the time he died. If so, since he did not see the summer of 477, he must have been born in 389. This means he was leading troops into battle in his 60s and 70s, and for that reason, many historians claim the fifth-century dates must be accurate. I don't. If Narses could lead armies in Italy in his 70s against the Goths, Gaiseric could have done the same for the Vandals. It is also worth noting that we know the chronology for his father and brother almost unquestionably. His father Godigisel lived from 359-406, and Gunderic lived from 379-428. Not only does the 389-390 period seem the most congruent, I would also add that between 400 and 406, Godigisel was fighting constant wars and was less likely to be fathering children--and if he did, even less likely to take illegitimate children and raise them as part of his own family. For those reasons, I accept the 389 date as the most likely.
2. I am offering my own interpretation of the supposed meeting of Marcian and Gaiseric here. According to legend, Marcian was brought face-to-face with the Vandal king, who saw a "heavenly vision" behind Marcian that convinced him that the latter would be Roman Emperor someday, and freed him for that reason, while Marcian agreed never to fight the Vandals. Some modern historians totally reject the story. I believe most of it to be true--that Gaiseric would have freed Roman prisoners at this point makes perfect sense, as he was seeking peace. He did the same thing 44 years later when he again sought peace. I doubt he met Gaiseric personally, but I do believe Marcian was freed after offering the pledge not to fight the Vandals--which is why he was willing to fight even Attila as Emperor, but not Gaiseric, who probably never commanded one-tenth as many soldiers in battle.
3. Huneric's reign as king was a disaster. He was incompetent and a bloodthirsty tyrant who murdered several members of his own family, possibly including at least one of his brothers, and allowed the powerful fleet to go to pot. The most capable son of Gaiseric, Gento, died sometime between 469 and 477, while his father was still living. It is possible that Gaiseric changed the rules of succession to prevent a disastrous civil war after his death--many of the Vandals' soldiers were Romans or African mercenaries steeped in the tradition of hereditary succession. These men likely would have followed Huneric, the oldest son of the king, regardless of the Vandals' own rules on kingship. The result would have been a war between Huneric and whoever was elected by the warriors. However, this is just speculation...what we do know is that Gaiseric did change the rules of succession, for whatever reason. Huneric thankfully died in 484, allowing Gento's son Gunthamund (450-496, reigned 484-496) to become King and partially restore the Vandals' position.
4. Gaiseric had no siege instruments capable of breaching the walls of Rome or even of investing them. He would have had to carry the city by frontal assault, which had not been done since Brennus did it in 390 BC. It is safe to say that Rome surrendered mainly because of Gaiseric's fearsome reputation--it is highly unlikely he could have taken the city had Leo not surrendered.
5. Like most modern historians, I have my doubts about the tale that Eudoxia called on Gaiseric for assistance against Petronius Maximus. However, it could be true. Eudoxia certainly had good reason to hate Maximus, who was already a murderer and proved himself a coward as well. And she willingly went to Carthage with Gaiseric, along with her family. In 462, Gaiseric allowed her to leave for Constantinople, where she spent the rest of her life as a respected noblewoman, and died a very old woman sometime around 495.
6. We don't know for certain that Gaiseric did not order the attacks on Greece. However, it is extremely unlikely that he did. Since Hippo, he had followed a strict policy of peace with the Constantinople imperial court, which unlike the western empire still had a formidable military force. Nothing he could have gained from open warfare against the east would have been worth the risk, and Gaiseric almost assuredly knew this. However, after he destroyed their fleet in the ensuing war, it was a different story.
7. The treaty with Odoacer was a mistake that the Vandals paid for much later on. Gaiseric sold Odoacer the rights to almost all of Sicily, retaining only the western tip of the island for himself. The Vandals had never been able to completely subdue Sicily and for that reason, Gaiseric probably saw it as a way to get rid of a trouble spot and get some gold at the same time (Odoacer paid the Vandals an annual subsidy in exchange for Sicily). The deal remained in place under the Ostrogoths, who in 533 allowed the island to be used as a staging area for the Byzantine assault on the Vandal kingdom. By this time, the Vandals no longer had Gaiseric's powerful fleet that allowed them to project their power anywhere in the Mediterranean, which is undoubtedly why Gaiseric saw the deal as no risk to his people's security."
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Geiseric was one of the major players in the decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire and the man who brought the Vandal people to Africa. Twitter: https...
King Geiseric of The Vandals
Geiseric was one of the major players in the decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire and the man who brought the Vandal people to Africa.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEkMlVO635w
Images:
1. Vandal cavalryman, c. AD 500, from a mosaic pavement at Bordj Djedid near Carthage
2. Geiseric, King of the Vandals crossing over to Africa, wood engraving, 19th century
3. Vandals Map during the migration period
4. Pope Leo the Great attempts to persuade Genseric, prince of Vandals, to abstain from sacking Rome. (miniature ca. 1475).
Background from {[https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-famous-people/va-va-vandal-life-and-times-gaiseric-vandal-king-north-africa-008763]}
10 SEPTEMBER, 2017 - 19:00 CARLY SILVER
The Life and Times of Gaiseric, the Vandal King of North Africa
Meet one of the most important late antiquity kings you’ve never heard of: Gaiseric (a.k.a. Genseric), a Germanic kinglet who transformed his tribal affiliations into a massive realm in the 5th century AD.
In the 4th and 5th centuries, those Rome might have deemed “barbarians” in previous centuries were, in fact, more Roman in attitude than the Romans themselves. Oftentimes, warriors of Germanic or Gallic descent became important officials in the Roman military fixture. For example, Stilicho, son of a Vandal soldier, swiftly climbed the ranks after serving in the imperial bodyguard. He married into the royal family and became the magister utriusque militiae, master of both infantry and cavalry (a.k.a. the most important general in the Roman forces); in the process, he fought the likes of his own Vandals, Alans, Goths, and more.
A Wave of Invasions
At the beginning of the 5th century, a wave of invasions from these same groups battered at the gates of Rome. Five years before Alaric the Visigoth famously sacked Rome in 410, a Gothic king named Radagaisus nearly got so far, invading much of Italy. In the next few decades, Goths, Suevi, Vandals, Alani, and the like spread their military influence, highlighted by the crossing of the Rhine in 406, a mass migration westward. One of the men who crossed the Rhine was a Vandal princeling named Godegisel, a member of the Hasding clan, who died in battle against Rome not long after.
Luckily for Godegisel, his sons kept the mantle of kingship alive. Godegisel’s son Gunderic unified the Vandals and Alani and conquered the south of Spain by 422. But Gunderic died during the sack of Seville in 428, and his little brother Gaiseric came to power; he established the rule that the oldest male in the family, rather than a minor-age son, would take the throne. Thus, even after Gaiseric’s death, the kingship bounced around a bit from relative to relative.
The Arian Gaiseric got a bit of a bad rap from Catholic chroniclers, but in truth, he was rather an epic monarch. What did Gaiseric look like? Jordanes claimed he was a “man of moderate height and lame in consequence of a fall from his horse.” In fact, Gaiseric was a man of few words and much action. He held “luxury in disdain, [was] furious in his anger, greedy for gain, shrewd in winning over the barbarians and skilled in sowing the seeds of dissension to arouse enmity.” Very regal!
In truth, Gaiseric didn’t just concentrate his efforts on Western Europe, but on areas that were suffered from weak central organization and thus were ripe for conquest. In this case, that meant North Africa. Gaiseric and thousands of his men invaded, supposedly at the invitation of an official named Count Bonifacius who wanted help against Rome. In 429, Gaiseric went to Africa with 80,000 men and started conquering lands for Bonifacius. He then flipped on Bonifacius and seized power for himself in 430 before defeating imperial armies.
In 431, he besieged the city of Hippo, home of the famed St. Augustine, who died in that very conflict. According to ancient writer Procopius, Gaiseric tore down the walls of every city except Carthage to discourage native rebellions or imperial sieges. To top it off, Gaiseric made a treaty with the Roman authorities, then took Carthage in 439 in direct defiance of his agreement with Emperor Valentinian III. A new treaty in 442 elevated Gaiseric’s own reputation to the point that he was recognized as master of proconsular Africa, Numidia, and Byzacena (modern Tunisia).
A leader on sea and land, Gaiseric wasn’t content to stick to Africa. As master of Carthage, he had a port from which his fleets could wreak havoc on the entire Mediterranean. Gaiseric captured Sardinia, Corsica, and the Balearic Islands, made headway in Sicily, seized most of Greece’s Peloponnese, made like Alaric and sacked Rome in 455 (pillaging for two straight weeks, after allegedly invading on behalf of Valentinian’s wife), and beat the imperial forces sent against him by Rome time and again (twice in the 460s alone). Between his wars, raids, and the huge taxes he levied on native nobles he let keep their land, Gaiseric got rich; he kept his men happy too by exempting Vandal-owned lands from taxation, said Procopius.
A Final Victory
Gaiseric’s last victory against Rome came versus the Eastern Emperor Leo I, who had sent every available force he had against the Vandals, but lost. Remarkably long-lived for a monarch of his time, Gaiseric held power for nearly fifty years, reigning until his death in 477. The Vandals, led by Gaiseric’s dynasty, continued to hold power in North Africa until the Byzantine Emperor took it over about a hundred years later.
But Gaiseric wasn’t all conquest and bloodshed. His personal life was a bit iffy, as well. His eldest son was married to Eudocia, daughter of Western Roman Emperor Valentinian III. The Valentinian-Gaiseric relationship wasn’t always smooth. When he took Rome, Gaiseric captured Valentinian’s wife, Eudocia (on whose behalf he claimed to have invaded, a detail specific to only one chronicler), and her two kids—Eudocia and Placidia—and took all their gold, which he sent home to Carthage. Gaiseric even sacked the famous temple of Jupiter Capitolinus and tore off its roof, which was made of bronze overlaid with gold, according to Procopius. It was after this, apparently, that he betrothed Eudocia to his son Huneric.
In exchange for the match, Gaiseric paid grain tribute to Valentinian and sent Huneric to Rome as a royal hostage. Gaiseric got his son back safe and sound, forging a strong friendship between Rome and the Vandals, according to the ancient chronicler Procopius. But he still played power politics with both eastern and western emperors, even trying to get his own candidates on the throne when possible.
But at the time Huneric got engaged, he was already married to the daughter of Theoderid, king of the Visigoths. According to the ancient chronicler Jordanes, Gaiseric suspected his daughter-in-law was trying to poison him; as a result, “he cut off her nose and mutilated her ears. He sent her back to her father in Gaul thus despoiled of her natural charms.” Theoderid was understandably furious at this treatment; in an attempt to distract his former in-law from retaliation, Gaiseric bribed Attila the Hun to fight the Visigoths, at least in Jordanes’s mind.
Bibliography
1. Claridge, Amanda. Rome: An Oxford Archaeological Guide . 2 nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Online.
2. Conant, Jonathan. Staying Roman: Conquest and Identity in Africa and the Mediterranean, 439-700. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Online.
3. Frassetto, Michael. Encyclopedia of Barbarian Europe: Society in Transformation . Denver, CO: ABC-CLIO, 2003. Online.
4. Friell, Gerard, and Stephen Williams. The Rome that Did Not Fall: The Survival of the East in the Fifth Century . New York: Routledge, 1998. Online.
5. “Gaiseric.” The Encyclopedia Britannica. Online.
6. Grierson, Philip, and Mark Blackburn. Medieval European Coinage. Volume 1. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Online .
7. Jordanes. The Gothic History . Translated by Charles Christopher Mierow. Princeton, NJ: Oxford University Press, 1915. Online.
8. Kleinhenz, Christopher, ed. Medieval Italy: An Encyclopedia. New York: Routledge, 2004. Online.
9. Kulikowski, Michael. “The Western Kingdoms.” The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity . Ed. Scott Fitzgerald Johnson. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. 31-59. Online.
10. Mackay, Christopher S. Ancient Rome: A Military and Political History . New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Online.
11. Meijer, Fik. Emperors Don’t Die in Bed . New York: Routledge, 2004. Online.
12. Merrills, Andrew, and Richard Miles. The Vandals . Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. Online.
13. Potter, David. Theodora: Actress, Empress, Saint . New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. Online.
14. Procopius. Vandalic War . Translated by Henry Bronson Dewing. Vols. 3 and 4. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1915. Online.
15. Pryor, John. “The Mediterranean Breaks Up: 500-1000.” The Mediterranean in History . Ed. David Abulafia. London: Thames and Hudson, 2003. 155-182. Online.
16. Sarris, Peter. Empires of Faith: The Fall of Rome to the Rise of Islam, 500-700 . New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Online.
17. Ward, Allen M., Fritz M. Heichelheim, and Cedric A. Yeo. A History of the Roman People . 6 th ed. New York: Routledge, 2016. Online.
18. Wolfram, Herwig. The Roman Empire and Its Germanic Peoples . Translated by Thomas Dunlap. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1997. Online.
FYI CPL Dave Hoover Sgt John H. Maj Wayne CristSGM Bill FrazerCSM (Join to see)SSG Jeffrey LeakeSSG Paul HeadleeSSG Samuel KermonCpl Vic BurkCpl (Join to see)SGM Major StroupeCPL Michael PeckSSG Jeff Furgerson]Sgt (Join to see)PO1 Steve Ditto SPC Michael Terrell CPL Douglas ChryslerSP5 Geoffrey Vannerson LTC John Shaw
Geiseric was one of the major players in the decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire and the man who brought the Vandal people to Africa.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEkMlVO635w
Images:
1. Vandal cavalryman, c. AD 500, from a mosaic pavement at Bordj Djedid near Carthage
2. Geiseric, King of the Vandals crossing over to Africa, wood engraving, 19th century
3. Vandals Map during the migration period
4. Pope Leo the Great attempts to persuade Genseric, prince of Vandals, to abstain from sacking Rome. (miniature ca. 1475).
Background from {[https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-famous-people/va-va-vandal-life-and-times-gaiseric-vandal-king-north-africa-008763]}
10 SEPTEMBER, 2017 - 19:00 CARLY SILVER
The Life and Times of Gaiseric, the Vandal King of North Africa
Meet one of the most important late antiquity kings you’ve never heard of: Gaiseric (a.k.a. Genseric), a Germanic kinglet who transformed his tribal affiliations into a massive realm in the 5th century AD.
In the 4th and 5th centuries, those Rome might have deemed “barbarians” in previous centuries were, in fact, more Roman in attitude than the Romans themselves. Oftentimes, warriors of Germanic or Gallic descent became important officials in the Roman military fixture. For example, Stilicho, son of a Vandal soldier, swiftly climbed the ranks after serving in the imperial bodyguard. He married into the royal family and became the magister utriusque militiae, master of both infantry and cavalry (a.k.a. the most important general in the Roman forces); in the process, he fought the likes of his own Vandals, Alans, Goths, and more.
A Wave of Invasions
At the beginning of the 5th century, a wave of invasions from these same groups battered at the gates of Rome. Five years before Alaric the Visigoth famously sacked Rome in 410, a Gothic king named Radagaisus nearly got so far, invading much of Italy. In the next few decades, Goths, Suevi, Vandals, Alani, and the like spread their military influence, highlighted by the crossing of the Rhine in 406, a mass migration westward. One of the men who crossed the Rhine was a Vandal princeling named Godegisel, a member of the Hasding clan, who died in battle against Rome not long after.
Luckily for Godegisel, his sons kept the mantle of kingship alive. Godegisel’s son Gunderic unified the Vandals and Alani and conquered the south of Spain by 422. But Gunderic died during the sack of Seville in 428, and his little brother Gaiseric came to power; he established the rule that the oldest male in the family, rather than a minor-age son, would take the throne. Thus, even after Gaiseric’s death, the kingship bounced around a bit from relative to relative.
The Arian Gaiseric got a bit of a bad rap from Catholic chroniclers, but in truth, he was rather an epic monarch. What did Gaiseric look like? Jordanes claimed he was a “man of moderate height and lame in consequence of a fall from his horse.” In fact, Gaiseric was a man of few words and much action. He held “luxury in disdain, [was] furious in his anger, greedy for gain, shrewd in winning over the barbarians and skilled in sowing the seeds of dissension to arouse enmity.” Very regal!
In truth, Gaiseric didn’t just concentrate his efforts on Western Europe, but on areas that were suffered from weak central organization and thus were ripe for conquest. In this case, that meant North Africa. Gaiseric and thousands of his men invaded, supposedly at the invitation of an official named Count Bonifacius who wanted help against Rome. In 429, Gaiseric went to Africa with 80,000 men and started conquering lands for Bonifacius. He then flipped on Bonifacius and seized power for himself in 430 before defeating imperial armies.
In 431, he besieged the city of Hippo, home of the famed St. Augustine, who died in that very conflict. According to ancient writer Procopius, Gaiseric tore down the walls of every city except Carthage to discourage native rebellions or imperial sieges. To top it off, Gaiseric made a treaty with the Roman authorities, then took Carthage in 439 in direct defiance of his agreement with Emperor Valentinian III. A new treaty in 442 elevated Gaiseric’s own reputation to the point that he was recognized as master of proconsular Africa, Numidia, and Byzacena (modern Tunisia).
A leader on sea and land, Gaiseric wasn’t content to stick to Africa. As master of Carthage, he had a port from which his fleets could wreak havoc on the entire Mediterranean. Gaiseric captured Sardinia, Corsica, and the Balearic Islands, made headway in Sicily, seized most of Greece’s Peloponnese, made like Alaric and sacked Rome in 455 (pillaging for two straight weeks, after allegedly invading on behalf of Valentinian’s wife), and beat the imperial forces sent against him by Rome time and again (twice in the 460s alone). Between his wars, raids, and the huge taxes he levied on native nobles he let keep their land, Gaiseric got rich; he kept his men happy too by exempting Vandal-owned lands from taxation, said Procopius.
A Final Victory
Gaiseric’s last victory against Rome came versus the Eastern Emperor Leo I, who had sent every available force he had against the Vandals, but lost. Remarkably long-lived for a monarch of his time, Gaiseric held power for nearly fifty years, reigning until his death in 477. The Vandals, led by Gaiseric’s dynasty, continued to hold power in North Africa until the Byzantine Emperor took it over about a hundred years later.
But Gaiseric wasn’t all conquest and bloodshed. His personal life was a bit iffy, as well. His eldest son was married to Eudocia, daughter of Western Roman Emperor Valentinian III. The Valentinian-Gaiseric relationship wasn’t always smooth. When he took Rome, Gaiseric captured Valentinian’s wife, Eudocia (on whose behalf he claimed to have invaded, a detail specific to only one chronicler), and her two kids—Eudocia and Placidia—and took all their gold, which he sent home to Carthage. Gaiseric even sacked the famous temple of Jupiter Capitolinus and tore off its roof, which was made of bronze overlaid with gold, according to Procopius. It was after this, apparently, that he betrothed Eudocia to his son Huneric.
In exchange for the match, Gaiseric paid grain tribute to Valentinian and sent Huneric to Rome as a royal hostage. Gaiseric got his son back safe and sound, forging a strong friendship between Rome and the Vandals, according to the ancient chronicler Procopius. But he still played power politics with both eastern and western emperors, even trying to get his own candidates on the throne when possible.
But at the time Huneric got engaged, he was already married to the daughter of Theoderid, king of the Visigoths. According to the ancient chronicler Jordanes, Gaiseric suspected his daughter-in-law was trying to poison him; as a result, “he cut off her nose and mutilated her ears. He sent her back to her father in Gaul thus despoiled of her natural charms.” Theoderid was understandably furious at this treatment; in an attempt to distract his former in-law from retaliation, Gaiseric bribed Attila the Hun to fight the Visigoths, at least in Jordanes’s mind.
Bibliography
1. Claridge, Amanda. Rome: An Oxford Archaeological Guide . 2 nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Online.
2. Conant, Jonathan. Staying Roman: Conquest and Identity in Africa and the Mediterranean, 439-700. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Online.
3. Frassetto, Michael. Encyclopedia of Barbarian Europe: Society in Transformation . Denver, CO: ABC-CLIO, 2003. Online.
4. Friell, Gerard, and Stephen Williams. The Rome that Did Not Fall: The Survival of the East in the Fifth Century . New York: Routledge, 1998. Online.
5. “Gaiseric.” The Encyclopedia Britannica. Online.
6. Grierson, Philip, and Mark Blackburn. Medieval European Coinage. Volume 1. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Online .
7. Jordanes. The Gothic History . Translated by Charles Christopher Mierow. Princeton, NJ: Oxford University Press, 1915. Online.
8. Kleinhenz, Christopher, ed. Medieval Italy: An Encyclopedia. New York: Routledge, 2004. Online.
9. Kulikowski, Michael. “The Western Kingdoms.” The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity . Ed. Scott Fitzgerald Johnson. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. 31-59. Online.
10. Mackay, Christopher S. Ancient Rome: A Military and Political History . New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Online.
11. Meijer, Fik. Emperors Don’t Die in Bed . New York: Routledge, 2004. Online.
12. Merrills, Andrew, and Richard Miles. The Vandals . Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. Online.
13. Potter, David. Theodora: Actress, Empress, Saint . New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. Online.
14. Procopius. Vandalic War . Translated by Henry Bronson Dewing. Vols. 3 and 4. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1915. Online.
15. Pryor, John. “The Mediterranean Breaks Up: 500-1000.” The Mediterranean in History . Ed. David Abulafia. London: Thames and Hudson, 2003. 155-182. Online.
16. Sarris, Peter. Empires of Faith: The Fall of Rome to the Rise of Islam, 500-700 . New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Online.
17. Ward, Allen M., Fritz M. Heichelheim, and Cedric A. Yeo. A History of the Roman People . 6 th ed. New York: Routledge, 2016. Online.
18. Wolfram, Herwig. The Roman Empire and Its Germanic Peoples . Translated by Thomas Dunlap. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1997. Online.
FYI CPL Dave Hoover Sgt John H. Maj Wayne CristSGM Bill FrazerCSM (Join to see)SSG Jeffrey LeakeSSG Paul HeadleeSSG Samuel KermonCpl Vic BurkCpl (Join to see)SGM Major StroupeCPL Michael PeckSSG Jeff Furgerson]Sgt (Join to see)PO1 Steve Ditto SPC Michael Terrell CPL Douglas ChryslerSP5 Geoffrey Vannerson LTC John Shaw
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SSG Jeff Furgerson
Love these historical shares , the older I get, the more I realize I have more to learn.
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Like all your shares, SGT (Join to see), this one opened my eyes to a lot of things. But this one also solved a mystery I always wondered about. Reading this it occurred to me why The University of Idaho call themselves The Vandals. I always kind of thought vandals were people that went around trashing property and wondered why a school would refer to themselves as vandals. Now I know how the university came across that name.
PO3 Bob McCord
PO3 Bob McCord
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SGT Robert Pryor
PO3 Bob McCord - I took a few classes at Washington State University via closed circuit TV that was a shared curriculum with ISU. That meant we could see maybe six students from the Moscow campus that were taking the class with us. Those were Agriculture Science classes, and farmers aren't known for being all that liberal, so the students I interacted with were all pretty conservative. They were probably attending school in what to them was a hostile environment.
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