Vandal Kingdom

• 1. Introduction

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  The Vandal Kingdom ruled parts of North Africa and the Mediterranean for 99 years, from 435 to 534 AD. Its name lives on today in a word for mindless destruction: vandalism. Yet the story of this kingdom is far more complicated than that legacy suggests. How did a confederation of Alans and Vandals cross from Hispania into Africa and carve out a state powerful enough to sack the city of Rome? How did they hold it for a century? And what brought the whole edifice crashing down in just a few months in 533?

• 2. Crossing to Africa

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  Gaiseric led an estimated 80,000 Vandals and Alans across the water from Hispania to North Africa in 429. Peter Heather estimates that figure translated to a fighting force of around 15,000-20,000 warriors. According to the historian Procopius, the Vandals came at the invitation of Bonifacius, the Roman military ruler of the region. Others have argued the group was simply fleeing eastward after a Roman army attacked them in 422 and no treaty with Rome could be secured.

  Moving along the African coast, the Vandals laid siege to the walled city of Hippo Regius in 430. Inside, Saint Augustine and his priests prayed for relief, knowing a Vandal victory would mean forced conversion or death for Nicene Christians. Three months into the siege, on the 28th of August 430, Augustine died at 75 years old. Starvation may have been a factor; the wheat fields outside the city lay dormant and unharvested. After 14 months, disease and hunger were destroying both the besieged population and the Vandal forces outside the walls. Hippo Regius fell and became the first Vandal capital.

  Historian Averil Cameron has suggested that Vandal rule may not have been entirely unwelcome to the population of North Africa. The previous Roman landowners were, by many accounts, unpopular. Recent archaeological work has also challenged the image of pure destruction: Carthage's street grid remained intact after the Vandal takeover, and some public buildings were renovated.

• 3. Rome's Grain Lifeline

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  Historians since Edward Gibbon have called the Vandal capture of North Africa the greatest single blow to the Western Roman Empire's survival. The region was, in the words used since antiquity, the breadbasket of Rome. The scholar Josephus, writing in the 1st century AD, stated that North Africa fed Rome for eight months of the year, with Egypt supplying the other four months.

  The treaty the Romans struck with the Vandals in 442 appears to have kept grain shipments moving, at least for a time. But the treaty was honored more in the breach than in the observance. Roman leaders understood that losing North Africa meant losing not just food but a significant source of imperial tax revenue. Recovering it became a strategic obsession.

  The Romans had limited room to respond. When the Vandals raided Sicily in 440, the Western Empire was too entangled in conflict in Gaul to react. Theodosius II of the Eastern Empire dispatched a force in 441, but it got no further than Sicily. By 442, Rome had been forced to formally recognize Vandal control of Byzacena, Tripolitania, and part of Numidia, in addition to Proconsular Africa.

• 4. The Sack of Rome

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  The peace treaty of 442 did not stop Gaiseric from raiding Mediterranean coastlines. For 35 years after securing his kingdom, he used his naval fleet to loot the shores of both empires. The decisive break came from a palace intrigue, not a battlefield.

  Valentinian III had arranged for his daughter Eudocia to marry Gaiseric's son Huneric, a diplomatic tie meant to bind the two powers. In 455, Valentinian was murdered by agents of the usurper Petronius Maximus. Maximus then married Valentinian's widow, the Empress Licinia Eudoxia, and dissolved Eudocia's betrothal to Huneric, marrying her instead to his own son Palladius. Eudoxia wrote to Gaiseric, pleading for rescue. Gaiseric moved on Rome, arguing the broken betrothal invalidated his treaty with Valentinian.

  The chronicler Prosper of Aquitaine provides the only contemporary account of what followed on the 2nd of June 455. Pope Leo the Great met Gaiseric and reportedly persuaded him to refrain from murder and arson, settling instead for plunder. The Vandals left Rome with enormous wealth, including treasures originally looted from the Temple in Jerusalem by Titus. Eudoxia and her daughters were taken to Carthage. Maximus and his son Palladius were killed by a Roman mob while fleeing the city.

• 5. Imperial Counterattacks

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  Rome's most ambitious attempt to destroy the Vandal state came in 468. Both the Western and Eastern Empires pooled resources for what the historians Andy Merrills and Richard Miles call "the most ambitious campaign ever launched against the Vandal state." Primary sources claimed 1,113 ships and 100,000 men; modern historians, including Peter Heather, put the likely figure closer to 30,000-50,000 soldiers and sailors combined.

  At a naval battle near Cape Bon in Tunisia, the Vandals unleashed fire ships against the Roman fleet, destroying the Western contingent and damaging the Eastern one. Having stopped the invasion, the Vandals then tried to push into the Peloponnese but were driven back with heavy losses by the Maniots at a place called Kenipolis. In retaliation, Gaiseric took 500 hostages at Zakynthos, killed them, and threw their bodies into the sea.

  By the 470s Rome gave up the fight. The Western Germanic general Ricimer concluded a treaty with the Vandals, and in 476, Gaiseric negotiated a perpetual peace with Constantinople. Gaiseric died on the 25th of January 477 at age 88. From 477 onward, the kingdom minted its own coinage, though only in bronze and silver. The historian Merrills noted this showed "reluctance to usurp the imperial prerogative" of gold coinage.

• 6. Religion as a Political Tool

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  From the moment they entered North Africa in 429, the Arian Vandals persecuted Nicene Christians. Victor of Vita's chronicle details the violence against church property and clergy in the earliest years. Bishop Honoratus recorded that "before our eyes men are murdered, women raped and we ourselves collapse under torture." The historian Merrills has argued, alongside Richard Miles, that the Vandals initially targeted the Nicene Church for financial rather than purely religious reasons: its wealth was the prize.

  Gaiseric refined persecution into policy after securing his kingdom. He seized basilicas from three defiant bishops, expelled them from their cities, had the Bishop of Carthage, Quodvultdeus, exiled from Africa, and blocked the ordination of replacements. Four major churches inside Carthage were handed to Arian congregations. A ban on Nicene services was imposed in all areas where Vandals settled.

  The historian Heather argues Arianism served a political function for Gaiseric: it kept his followers unified and separated from the Roman Christian majority. Yet diplomatic need could override doctrine. In 454, at Valentinian III's request, Gaiseric installed Deogratius as Bishop of Carthage, a post vacant since Quodvultdeus's exile, as part of the negotiations over Huneric's betrothal to Princess Eudocia. When Deogratius died in 457 and Roman relations had soured again, Gaiseric left the bishopric empty once more.

  Huneric, who ruled from 477 to 484, exceeded his father in severity. Nearly 5,000 clergy were exiled into the desert. Priests were barred from practicing the liturgy. Homoousian books were destroyed. In 483, Huneric called a council of Chalcedonian bishops and used its aftermath to order all Nicene churches closed and their property confiscated, turning them over to Arian clergy or the royal treasury.

• 7. Fall to Belisarius

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  The last Vandal king before the end, Gelimer, came to power through a palace coup in 530. His predecessor Hilderic had been the most tolerant of Nicene Christians and had allowed Chalcedonian synods to meet again across North Africa. Gelimer threw Hilderic, his nephew Hoamer, and their relatives into prison and had Hilderic executed in 533 when Byzantine armies were already approaching.

  Byzantine Emperor Justinian I declared war, nominally to restore Hilderic. Gelimer's brother Tzazo took a large portion of the Vandal army and navy to Sardinia to suppress a rebellion there, leaving the mainland exposed. Belisarius landed his army unopposed 10 miles from Carthage in the summer of 533. At the Battle of Ad Decimum, the Vandals were holding their own until Gelimer's brother Ammatas and nephew Gibamund were both killed. Gelimer lost heart and fled.

  On the 15th of December 533, Belisarius and Gelimer met again at the Battle of Tricamarum, 20 miles from Carthage. The Vandals broke when Tzazo fell in battle. In 534, Gelimer surrendered at Mount Pappua to the Herulian General Pharas. The best Vandal warriors were organized into five cavalry regiments called the Vandali Iustiniani and sent to the Persian frontier. Gelimer himself was treated honourably: he received large estates in Galatia and lived to old age. He was offered the rank of patrician but declined it, unwilling to convert from Arianism to Nicene Christianity.