The Middle Kingdoms: A History of Central Europe
Martyn C. Rady
Basic Books (May 2, 2023)
715 Pages
Chapter 1: The Roman Empire, The Huns, and The Nibelungenlied
Ovid's exile to Tomis, a remote Black Sea settlement, was one of the worst places on the Roman empire's frontiers. It was a savage and frozen wasteland regularly assaulted by Sarmatian tribesmen on horseback who plundered farmsteads and murdered indiscriminately.
By 300 CE, the empire had 5 million square kilometers of territory. No fewer than 50 hostile peoples lay outside its borders. However, some areas of the border were more secure such as the areas around the Rhine and the Danube, while others the Romans had pushed too deep without consolidation, notably in Transylvania, Dacia, and Germania Superior.
The consequence was a retreat in the 3rd century CE that forced them to abandon these unstable frontiers and fall back to the Rhine and Danube where they built warcrafts, towers, palisades, ditches, and garrison blockhouses.
The Devil's Dykes
The Devil's Dykes were 500km of earther rampart fortifications built mostly during the reign of Constantine the Great (306-337) that stretched between modern-day Hungary, Romania, and Serbia. Further dividing Roman from barbarian (foreigners), the lines were meant to secure the empire so as to continue to engage in a successful divide and conquer strategy that had worked so well in previous centuries.
Tacitus wrote:
"Long, I pray, may foreign people's persist; if not in loving us, but in hating one another - for, fortune now has no better gift than the discord of our foes."
The disunited tribes that inhabited the vast forests of oak trees to the north had no word for themselves - this was given to them by the Romans: Germans. Divided they were - some had kings, some had assemblies, but by favoring some tribes over others, Roman policy eventually led to their consolidation.
However, gradual banditry soon gave way to mass migration in the late 4th century as they began to run for their lives.
Men from the Secret Corner of the Earth
They swept away and destroyed everything in their path. Those to survive passed on the tales. Born of the union of witches were the unclean spirits that dwelled in the swamps, they were only known as the Huns. Half-human, they ate their own, descending from from what Virgil had written. "Springing from the trunks of tree and belonged to the Old Testament people of Gog and Magog."
They were nomads, but needed settled peoples to provide them manufactured goods. The Huns pushed the Gothic Germans (Goths) into the Roman empire.
The Battle of Adrianople (378 CE)
Emperor Valens of Constantinople in the eastern capital allowed the Goths to settle in the Balkans hoping they would become farmers and soldiers. His goal was to reduce them to obedience by force, but the strategy proved a massive mistake. His army was destroyed at the Battle of Adrianople in 378 CE where he died in battle. The Gothic infantry had managed to delay the battle with hostage exchanges long enough for their cavalry to arrive and encircle the Romans.
With their victory, the Goths proceeded to brutally plunder the Balkans and leverage a peace treaty which allowed them farmlands, forced the Romans to pay annual tribute money, exempted them from taxes, and allowed them to continue governance by their own princes.
This concession marked a turning point.
New bands that broke into the Roman empire now pressed for the same extensive rights. Eventually the Huns, themselves, broke through. Adrianople was the start of the events that led to the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century.
Attila and Hunnic Collapse
Attila brought the Huns under control through a Confederation that was loyal to him. His extreme tactics forced cohesion punishing the faithless through crucifixion and the errant tribes with extinction. He murdered his way to become the sole power.
First waging a war of terror to extract loot around the Danube, Attila then turned to the west. Emperor Valentin's sister, negotiated with him and persuaded him to try to take the Roman empire entirely and his vast army descended upon Italy with great panic as there were also many Ostrogoths and Franks with bones to pick.
It was not, as many believe, that Pope Leo convinced him to turn back in 452; rather, it was more likely a lack of fodder for his horses brought on by a hot summer that forced Attila to return to the Hungarian plain and regroup.
He died from a nosebleed a year later.
With their powerful and ruthless leader now gone, the loose assemblage of Hunnic and German tribes collapsed into civil war. Germans filled the vacuum left by the Huns and imposed their own taxes and gave land to their followers thereby effectively replacing the Roman provincial aristocracy - civilization contracted.
These tribes were never expelled, exterminated, or assimilated; they remained as a distinct entity within Roman frontiers, for a few years allies, later semi or fully independent or often hostile.
The Rhine was the Divider
Roman speakers to the west and German speakers to the east.
The Huns legacy was also the cultural and economic impoverishment of a wide swath of Central Europe. In the wake of the destruction, the Visigoths took southern France and Iberia, while the Ostrogoths took Italy. These groups would become a culturized in the Roman ways and the Latin language prevailed.
However, this did not happen in Central Europe as it became German speaking.
Central Europe was settled by Franks, Germans, Slavs, and Hungarians (Carpathians with unique language) who adopted common code of kingship, chivalry, and law, knighthood, and Catholic Christianity.
Common literary tradition proved a uniting factor, as the story of the Hun invasion had been such a horrible shared experience. However, many other Germans had fought with Attila. And conversely, this was a heroic and romantic story for them.
The Nibelungenlied is a tragedy. It describes the consequences of betrayal, jealousy, and grief. These contributions came from the heroic contest between the Huns and the Romans.
Works like this became cultural relics that brought realms together as part of a larger cultural community.
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