Images of War in Visigothic Spain

[Menydh]

Images of War in Visigothic Spain

Between Vouillé and Guadalete


by Prof. Orlandis Rovira
Tr.: Mynydd


Two battles --two military defeats-- lie at the chronological extremes of the history of the Visigothic Kingdom of Spain. In the year 507, the battle of Vouillé where the Visigoth King Alaricus II was defeated and killed in battle by the Frankish Clodoveus. This battle decided the birth of the Visigothic Kingdom of Spain. After years of existance, the Kingdom of Tolosa crumbled and the Visigoths crossed the Pyrenees searching for a new settlement in the Iberian Peninsula. The Gauls were, finally, going to transform into France and into the country of the Franks, with the exception of the Gallia Narbonensis which remained a Visigothic domain until the early VIIIth century. This way, as a strange paradox, the military defeat of the Goths in the surrounding area of Poitiers and the efficient intervention of the Ostrogoth Theodoricus in favour of his grandson Amalaricus --the son of the deceased Alaricus II-- determined the creation of a Hispanic kingdom which will be rightfully considered as the kingdom and the homelands of the Goths. Voillé could be considered as the felix culpa which gave life to Visigothic Spain.

That Kingdom of Spain lasted for two centuries and its vanishing took place in yet another military action, the Battle of Guadalete, in July of 711. There are few events in history registered as of having so disastrous consequences as this defeat, which provoked the sudden disappearance of a political reality of the entity of the kingdom of the Goths. And yet, it is mandatory to say that the Visigoths had played --and they would continue doing so-- a decissive role in the configuration of Spain as one of the great nations of Europe. Saint Isidore foretold this, brightly, when he praised the policies of the "most glorious Swinthila", who achieved a victory superior to all other kings when he defeated the last Byzantine strongholds, "as he was the first who gained the power of the monarch over all of peninsular Spain". Because of it, the work of the Visigoths did not vanish with "the loss of Spain". His legacy, Spain, was already born as a historical entity and for that reason the centuries long enterprise of the Reconquista was above all the huge epic to recover Spain, which had been "lost" but which was not dead, and which had to be again.

War, which was present in the dawn and the dusk of Visigothic Spain, reappeared often during the course of its history. There were "major wars" but also, almost continuous, "minor wars" directed especially to obtain and to reinforce the effective power of the monarchy over the entire Iberian Peninsula. The major wars against an external enemy were, above all, those against the Franks which were destined to reppeal the aggressions of the Franks. Such wars, differently to what happened in Voillé, were usually finished with the victory of the Visigoths over the Franks. It is worth to remember the more significant episodes of war.

The major wars

The first of such episodes took place in the Valley of the Ebro River and I've called it on one occasion "the first siege of Saragossa". In the year 541, there was an invasion of the Franks of which we know through an excellent historical source of the time: the Crónica Cesaraugustana:

In this year the Frankish kings, in a number of five, entered Hispania through Pamplona, came to Saragossa and besieged the city during forty-nine days, producing a depopulation which affected almost the entire province Tarraconensis.

Fortunately, the Frankish sources are much more expressive and they offer detailed accounts of the invasion. It was, without any doubts, an important military expedition led by the brother-kings Clotarius and Childebertus, the latter accompanied by three of his sons. Saragossa resisted and, when the situation was unbearable, the people put their hopes in the divine help: they made a rigurous fast and a penitential parade over the walls of the city, carrying with them the tunic of Saint Vicente Martyr. The Franks thought that the besieged were casting an evil spell over them. After being informed by a prisoner, they called the Bishop of Saragossa, Juan, and offered him to lift the siege in exchange for the tunic, to which he agreed.

Once the siege had been lifted, what was the definitive military success of the expedition? Frankish historians say that the invaders could return to the Gauls carrying with them a substantious plunder which they had taken not in Saragossa, but in the rest of the province Tarraconensis. But this version of the relative success of the expedition is contradictory with the version offered by Saint Isidore, who tells that the Franks were expelled from Spain non prece sed armis (not as a consequence of the prayers but as a consequence of the arms). According to one of the accounts of the Historia Gothorum, the Franks were chased by a Visigothic army sent by King Theudis and commanded by the dux Theudiselus, his future successor to the throne. Theudiselus would have cut the retreat to the Franks, who had to buy a brief truce to cross the Pyrenees at a very high price.

But the main franco-gothic war of all times was that provoked by a joint attack of Franks and Burgundians against the Gallia Narbonensis in the year 589. This was the year when the Visigoths solemnly converted to Catholicism in the III Council of Toledo. The object of the attack, inspired by the visceral anti-gothicism of Gontran of Burgundy --the senior monarch of the stirpes of the Merovingians-- was no other than to expell the Visigoths from the Narbonensis, the only Transpyrenean province which had been kept after the end of the Kingdom of Tolosa. It was a big military operation and, although probably exaggerated, the numbers of warriors of the franco-burgundian army which was of 60,000 according to the Hispanic sources, it was undoubtedly vastly superior to that of the Visigoths. The battle of Carcassona became for this reason alone a dazzling victory owed to the military abilities of the Dux Claudius of the Lusitania, the best general of Recaredus. The Dux Claudius was not a Goth by race, but he was a Hispano-Roman and a Catholic: a good indicator of the integration reached of the Roman and Gothic elements, of the people that was already called unanimously as gens gothorum, the Gothic peoples.

The news transmitted by Saint Isidore could not be more enthusiastic:[indent]Recaredus obtained a glorious victory over almost sixty thousand Frankish soldiers who were invading the Gauls, sending against them the Dux Claudius. Never the Goths had obtained in Spain a victory bigger nor similar; as many lied on the ground or many thousands of prisoners were captured, and the part of the army which was left, after managing to desperately run away, it was chasen by the Goths to the limits of their kingdom and it was crushed. Juan de Biclaro, in his Chronicle which was contemporaneous of these events, saw in it a sign of the help of the divine grace to the Catholic Recaredus and his nation, converted from Arianism, and he compared the heroic deed of Dux Claudius with that of Gedeon, who defeated with only three hundred men to a huge number of Madianites. The magnitude of the Visigothic victory in the Battle of Carcassona is confirmed in the Frankish sources. Gregoire de Tours, who blames for the main part to Dux Boso, commander of the franco-burgundian army, gives some alarming numbers: the Franks had had five thousand dead casualties and another two thousand were made prisoners.

The minor wars

The "minor wars", as I have already said, took place in the lands of Hispania or of the Gallia Narbonensis and their object was the submision of all the peninsular territories to the effective dominion of the Monarchy, included the Suebian Kingdom of Callaecia, which was bound to dissappear annexionated by its powerful Visigothic neighbour. They also tried to overcome the regional rebellions or the attempts of secession which could happen any time. These military actions reached their highest intensity during the reign of Leovigildus, the great monarch unifier of Spain. The Chronica of Juan de Biclaro has transmitted a faithful and detailed news of those actions which took place with surprising regularity, year after year, during fifteen years. A short account of these campaigns can contribute to give an idea of this interesting chapter of the Hispano-Gothic military history.

Short after Leovigildus started reigning in Hispania, the military campaigns started. In 570 the Visigoths fought the Byzantines in the Bastetania and in Malaga; in 571 they occupied the second most important Byzantine stronghold of Sidonia; in 572 they took the rebellious city of Cordoba, the center of the anti-gothic resistance in the Betica, and they reduced other towns and villages of the area to their authority. Starting in 573, the expeditions moved towards other lands of the peninsular south: that year the target was the region of Sabaria, populated by the Sappos, who probably belonged to the group of Astures from the south of the [Cantabrian] moutains. In the year 574 it was the turn of Cantabria, a region which was then located in the lands of modern Cantabria and Burgos and which had kept independent from the authority of the Visigoths. In 575 the army of Leovigildus made an incursion into a region next to the Kingdom of the Suevi, the mounts of Aregenses, which prince Aspidius was captured with his wife and his children. In 576 the Visigoths "disturbed" the frontiers with Galicia and their king, Miro, sent ambassadors to deman a peace which was only a short lived truce.

In 577 the Visigothic military efforts were directed again towards the southern territories, more exactly against Orospeda, a rugged region around the Sierra de Cazorla. The natives rebelled and were reduced by force. The occupation of Orospeda seemed to Blicara as the peak of the great effort deployed by Leovigildus starting in 570. The chronicler wrote that in the year 578, once the rebellions had been crushed all around and the invaders had been defeated, the monarch and his people could enjoy of a well deserved rest. It was only a temporary rest, as soon there was a raise of the Catholic Prince Hermenegildus in the Baetica and the consequent civil war between father and son polaricised the life of the kingdom during the next five years. The civil war, which was fought mainly in Baetica, was no problem for the Visigoths to occupy in 584 a part of Vasconia and to found the city of Victoriacum in a place near to modern Vitoria. In 585, Leovigildus, who died in the next year, completed his grand political design with the annexation of the Callaecia. The Chronica Biclarense proclaims with triumphally this victory:

Leovigildus [...] sumitted to his power the nation of the Suevi, their treasury and their lands, and he turned it into a province of the Goths.

The end of the kingdom of the Suevi and the submision of the peninsular dominions to the Visigothic monarchy did not make the "minor wars" go away of the Visigothic military history. The Byzantine presence in the South-East provoked a series of military campaigns which were prolongued until the vanishing, around the year 620, of the last remains of the Imperial province in Hispania. But other extraordinary episodes, like the rebellion of the Dux Paulus in the Narbonensis and, especially, the survival of a Basque limes in the North of the Peninsula, explain that the military campaigns, the publicae expeditiones, constituted a chronical phenomenon which was prolongued until the end of the Visigothic Spain.

[Veritas Aequitas]

Might I trouble you for a source addy?

[Menydh]

Of course.

Revista de Historia Militar, issue #91
Instituto de Historia y Cultura Militar
Ministry of Defense

The author, Prof. Orlandis Rovira, is a leading researcher of Law and Church History, as well as the Visigoth period in Spain.

Here is a link to the article:
ESTAMPAS DE LA GUERRA VISIGODA EN ESPAÑA

Please, tell me when you have it, so that I can delete these posts and finish translating the rest of the article.

[Veritas Aequitas]

Originally Posted by Mynydd

Of course.

Revista de Historia Militar, issue #91
Instituto de Historia y Cultura Militar
Ministry of Defense

The author, Prof. Orlandis Rovira, is a leading researcher of Law and Church History, as well as the Visigoth period in Spain.

Here is a link to the article:
ESTAMPAS DE LA GUERRA VISIGODA EN ESPAÑA

Please, tell me when you have it, so that I can delete these posts and finish translating the rest of the article.

Much oblidged! Go ahead.