Founding the Second Burgundian Kingdom

In the Gallic Chronicle of 452, under the year A.D. 443, it is written “Sapaudia was given to the remnants of the Burgundians to be divided with the native inhabitants.” Though their first kingdom ended in catastrophic failure, the Burgundians survived. For the twenty years between the fall of the first Burgundian kingdom and the re-settlement in Sapaudia, no Burgundian King has been identified, but in A.D. 456 Gundioc was first mentioned. He may have been related to Gundahar, though he probably was the scion of a minor line of the Burgundians. It was also possible that he may have been related to the Goths as stories of the mid-sixth century said that Gundioc was a descendant of the old Goth king Athanaric.

The region called Sapaudia covered land that now comprises present-day eastern Switzerland and the southern portion of the Jura Mountains, near Geneva. It is generally believed that Aetius settled the Burgundians in Sapaudia in A.D. 443 because he intended that they serve as a buffer between the Romans of southern Gaul and the traditional Burgundian rivals, the Alamanni, who wanted to expand into the region. However, others have found it hard to believe that Aetius would have placed the recently defeated, and thus severely weakened, Burgundians in such a strategic position.

Even if the Burgundians were not severely weakened, it is doubtful that a brilliant tactician such as Aetius would have placed a strong and resentful Burgundian tribe in a strategic position. Thus, instead of the Alamanni, the problem Aetius hoped to solve by placing the Burgundians as he did was probably the rebellious Bacaudae and their allies in Gaul. Aetius had settled the Visigoths in Aquitania to quell a similar uprising at about the same time. Given this, the Burgundians, though still weakened by their encounter with Aetius and the Huns, were of sufficient strength to deal effectively with a peasant and slave uprising.

The relationship of the Bishop Hilary of Arles and Aetius has also been proposed by Georg Langgartner as a reason for the relocation of the Burgundians to Sapaudia. Hilary enjoyed widespread ecclesiastical support in the region, with a strong base centered at Lerins. He also had strong secular support outside of his own province. One of his strongest proponents was Aetius, who could have moved the Burgundians to Sapaudia to protect Hilary while he was at Besancon. This latter theory does not necessarily exclude the possibility that the Burgundians were placed in the region to quell a rebellion. Taken together, both may offer a more plausible scenario than that of a weakened people being placed in a key defensive position within the empire.

There are other theories. Some believed the Burgundians were too unsophisticated to realize they were being played as dupes by Aetius. The earlier Burgundian support for Jovinus has been cited as proof for this contention, which asserts that the Burgundians were too naïve in imperial politics to realize that they were being rebellious against Rome. Accordingly, the Burgundians applied a kind of circular logic whereby their support of Jovinus legitimized his imperial claim which in term legitimized their support. Thus, with the precedent of a Burgundian collective of circular logicians established, some historians have suggested that Aetius cleverly placed these “loyal if naïve barbarians” in an area that needed to be protected while simultaneously implying to the Gallic aristocrats that these same barbarians may be manipulated or agree with them on a grander plan for Gauls’ place within the empire.

Another, perhaps more likely reason, was that Aetius realized the benefit of having the allegiance and obligations, guaranteed under foederati status, of a group of barbarians who knew what it meant to face the Huns. Perhaps Aetius realized that the Huns were getting too powerful and were a potential problem with whom he would soon have to deal. The Burgundians were only one of a few key alliances he made to vouchsafe against an eventual loss of the control of his Hunnish mercenaries. On the Burgundian’s part, the desire to ingratiate themselves with Rome also cannot be discounted, thus they may have not been so much naïve as having few other options.

Finally, perhaps J.M. Wallace-Hadrill offered perhaps the most measured (if contrarian) opinion that no one knew precisely why the Burgundians were settled in “Savoy” by Aetius in A.D. 443. As he points out, Savoy didn’t seem to be in any danger of internal uprising and the Alamans were possibly too far away to pose an immediate threat.

Whether the Burgundians were settled to perform their duties as garrison troops, constables, or bodyguards, they were eventually called upon by Aetius to provide warriors for military action in other regions of Gaul. In A.D. 451, a faction of Burgundians followed Aetius and Theodoric, king of the Visigoths, when they faced Attila and his Huns and allies on the Catalaunian Plains, near the city of Troyes. Another faction of Burgundians joined Attila.

Attila’s Burgundians were from among those that still lived on the eastern shore of the Rhine and were part of the Hun army that entered the Belgic provinces, took Metz on April 7, 451, and pillaged and burned many other cities. These Burgundians were probably those who had split from the main body during the Vandal assault of A.D. 406. They were also those whom had purportedly turned to Christianity after defeating the Hun Uptar, but later must have been defeated and integrated into the Hunnic horde. The opposing Burgundians illustrates that Germanic tribes didn’t operate in the classically believed mono-ethnic manner. Germans prioritized booty and strength over racial or social loyalty. (Wolfram theorizes that this group seems to have slowly dispersed after the defeat of Attila, and some of them eventually found their way to the kingdom of their tribesmen along the Rhone).

Aetius’ tactic of pitting one Germanic tribe against another, while often successful, resulted in serious repercussions for the Roman Empire. The Empire’s policy of employing barbarians as mercenaries resulted in the gradual consolidation of military power into the hands of various barbarian generals. Roman rulers had concluded that it was safer to have foreign defenders in lieu of Roman armies because foreign chiefs were excluded by their nationality from having a legitimate claim on the throne. They attracted these chiefs by settling their people on Roman lands and extracting a pledge that they and their people would protect Rome from foreign invaders.

The specific nature of the Roman practice of providing land, or some other form of payment, to barbarians in return for their service as defenders has been much debated by historians. All agree that the Roman legal concept called hospitalitas played a role in this mixing of Germans and Romans within a province, but there has been disagreement over the specific characteristics of this system.

The system of hospitalitas was used to settle the Burgundians in their new kingdom of Sapaudia in A.D. 443. Earlier historians believed that Rome gave one-third to two-thirds of the Roman landowners’ estates, including the people on them, to the Germanic troops billeted there. More recent studies, particularly the work of Walter Goffart, have argued that, while there was probably a system of land allotment, this evolved into a system of tax revenue transfer. According to this theory, the Burgundians, and other Germanic tribes, were actually given a fixed portion of taxes assessed on land held by Romans rather than a portion of the actual land thus occupied. Finally, this transfer of tax revenue was made easier because the collection and distribution stayed in the hands of the Roman municipal office holders, the curiales, and did not fall to the barbarians themselves.

Over the years, the Burgundian king gave royal gifts and every loyal Burgundian retainer gained land to go with their share of the tax revenue, if they had not received land already. This informal system turned the Burgundians into landowners. Further, in a series of trade-offs with Roman landowners, they consolidated and centralized their estates, as did the Romans, and a system of Burgundian/Roman land ownership evolved.

Goffart has argued that these results caused confusion in later historical analysis as they were taken to be the form of the original design rather than the evolved result. Additionally, the system of tax reapportionment made sense because settled Barbarian troops did not cost anymore to the taxpayers than Roman troops. According to C.D. Gordon, the “dignity and eminence” of the existing aristocracies and clergy were not adversely affected by the presence of these barbarians.

[W]hen they finally occupied the Roman lands of the west, they had reached a state of civilization which enabled them to appreciate and to make some effort to preserve the civilization they had taken over. This is to be credited in large measure to the subsidies they had received for so long.

The acute instinct of the vastly outnumbered Burgundians to be inoffensive to the Gallo-Romans probably helped them gain the acceptance of their more tenured neighbors. Some historians believe that the Gallo-Romans even welcomed any Germans as a new source of manpower to till Roman lands, or that, specifically in the Burgundians case, that old memories of joining together in support of Jovinus had eased the way for sharing Roman lands.

There were barbarians within the Roman Empire prior to the “invasions,” mostly former or current members of the Roman army or prisoners and their descendants who had been used to repopulate militarily devastated regions. It has also been determined that the Burgundians modified their military unit structure to include Gallo-Romans within the ranks. As such, military, and later political, command, originally in the hands of chiefs or strong warriors who led comitatus, fell to the counts, or comes, of both Romans and Burgundians.

While the Burgundians attempted to smooth relations between their tribe and their Gallo-Roman neighbors, they also took proactive steps to maintain their own tribal unity within their new kingdom. They prescribed common laws and fostered a “common sense of identity” among their Germanic population while at the same time they tried to segregate between the Germans and the Roman or Gallo-Roman people who made up the majority of their new lands. Part of this Germanic unification process was accomplished by kings associating themselves with heroes of often mythical royal families or, at the very least, storied families from the history of their people, as did the Burgundian kings by associating themselves with the Gibechungs (or Nibelungs).

Most of the German tribes used religion as a unifying element and most, including the Burgundians, were Arian, a heretical Christianity that became a sort of cultural unifier, particularly as it became identified with the members of the royal families. The Burgundians also established law codes that drew from both traditional Germanic codes and probably some “local vulgar” Roman law traditions. Unfortunately, while these actions and beliefs were true for the free men who fought for their king, the opinions and thoughts of the peasants and slaves will probably never be known.

Up Next: Expansion

SOURCES:

Chronicle of 452, in Murray, Merovingian Gaul.
Wolfram, Germanic Peoples.
Musset, Germanic Invasions.
Edward James, The Origins of France: From Clovis to the Capetians, 500-1000 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982).
Anthony King, Roman Gaul and Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).
E.A. Thompson, “The Settlement of the Barbarians in Southern Gaul,” The Journal of Roman Studies 46, parts 1 and 2 (1956).
Justine Davis Randers-Pehrson, Barbarians and Romans: The Birth Struggle of Europe, A.D. 400-700 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1983).
J.M. Wallace-Hadrill, The Long-Haired Kings and other studies in Frankish History (New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 1962).
Mathisen, Ecclesiastical Factionalism.
Heinzelmann, Bischofsherrschaft in Gallien: Zur Kontinuitat romischer Fuhrungsschichten von 4. Bis zum 7. Jahrhundert (Munich, 1976) in Mathisen, Ecclesiastical Factionalism
Georg Langgartner, Die Galliepolitik der Papste im 5. Und 6. Jahrhundert. Eine Studie uber den apostolische Vikariat von Arles (Bonn, 1964) in Mathisen, Ecclesiastical Factionalism.
Jordanes, Goths.
Bury, Invasion of Europe.
C. Delisle Burns, “Christianity and the First Europe,” in The Barbarian Invasions: Catalyst of a New Order, ed. Katherine Fischer Drew (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970).
Collins, Early Medieval Europe.
Goffart, Barbarians and Romans.
Geary, The Myth of Nations.
Goffart, “Rome, Constantinople, and the Barbarians.”
Gordon, “Subsidies in Roman Imperial Defence,”
James, The Origins of France.

Evolution of Barbarian Arms and Tactics

During the first and second centuries A.D., the Germanic armies were primarily made up of foot soldiers armed with lances, spears, shields and only a few swords. Some Eastern Germans also probably used the axe. Very little body armor or helmets were worn. Most warriors fought naked or in little clothing and often wore just trousers or a short tunic and shoes. A shield was often carried and was used as both an offensive and a defensive weapon. Horses were not prevalent, and were used mostly by those tribes nearer to the Roman frontier than in the interior. However, even though most tribes lacked cavalry, their infantry prized speed above all else as an essential tactic against the more heavily armored Romans. Further, during the first two centuries of contact between the Germans and Rome there was little change in Germanic armament or tactics.

From the time of the Marcomannic Wars (166 to 180 A.D.), however, changes began to take place. Roman types of equipment acquired as booty or because of service in the Roman army became more prevalent amongst the Germans. Use of axes and bows and arrows also increased. Swords were common and German smiths often copied captured Roman swords, especially the long, double-edged spatha and the shorter, broad gladius. Roman swords were also imported more at the beginning of the third century, especially into the region between the Oder and Vistula rivers.


The barbarians were not well-schooled in siege warfare and lacked the knowledge to build adequate siege weapons. From the third century B.C. to the second century A.D., Germanic weaponry evolved little. Increasing contact with Rome changed that. By the fourth century, the armament of the Romans and Germans were often indistinguishable, largely because the Roman army itself was largely composed of Germans. Finally, while weapons and armor did change, the hit and run tactics of the ambush and the quick raid on a weak target were still preferred by the tribes.

Thus, the first phase of the “barbarian invasions,” which implied a violent struggle “between the civilized Roman citizens of the provinces and uncivilized intruders from outside the empire,” (Whittaker) were in actuality a slow merging of peoples along the border. There were battles, but these were as much between each other as they were against Roman settlements. Eventually, along the limes, the members of the two groups, Roman and German, were nearly indistinguishable from each other, with the Romans assuming many characteristics of the Germans. This has been supported by archeological evidence. Grave goods found in and near the frontier were similar to others found in the graves of Saxons, Franks and Alamani beyond the frontier. There was an especially marked similarity in the brooches discovered in women’s graves from both regions.

The various belts, buckles and military insignia discovered indicated an obvious link to Rome. Further, the inclusion of weapons in the graves seem to be only in those burials of people within the Empire and not among external Germans. This indicated a frontier culture of people “associated with Romans, possibly through military service” (Whitaker). Additionally, as Patrick Geary explained, by the third century, legions, including the many barbarians in them, could marry legally (though many had informally for quite some time) and many, if not most, of their wives were drawn from the local population. This facilitated the assimilation of soldiers into specific localities.

For these reasons, C.R. Whitaker makes two conclusions. First “the change was not sudden” and second the barbarians and the Romans dwelling on the limes had more in common than previously thought. Even children’s graves contained swords and other martial implements and it is probable that not all of the graves were of Germans, “since in Gaul many of these burials appear to be perfectly integrated in provincial communities, using the same graveyards without signs of disruption.” According to Edward James, archeology has also revealed that “the settlements of Visigoths, Franks, and Burgundians in the fifth century, which [were] marked on maps, are really not distinguishable in terms of new cultures coming into Gaul from beyond the frontiers.” As Geary observed, “[a] man or woman with a Lombard-style brooch is no more necessarily a Lombard than a family in Bradford with a Toyota is Japanese; artifacts are no secure guide to ethnicity.”

UP NEXT: End of the Limes

SOURCES:

Todd, Northern Barbarians.
Whittaker, Frontiers of the Roman Empire.
Geary, The Myth of Nations.
Edward James, “The Merovingian archaeology of south-west Gaul,” British Archaeological Reports, Suppl. Series 25, (Oxford, 1977).
Chris Wickham, Early Medieval Italy: Central Power and Local Society 400-1000, (Totowa, N.J., 1981).

Germanic Contact with the Roman Empire - Conflict and Commerce

The Roman trade policy did gradually establish a certain, albeit inconsistent, cultural equivalency between the Empire and the barbarians. However, it also caused conflict within individual tribes as both competition for favors from Rome and between pro- and anti-Roman factions splintered old tribes and formed new ones based on relationships to Rome. These factions resorted to violence to press their case, some at the behest of Rome, which had the money so desirable to barbarian leaders. These leaders held, or desired, political power that was acquired and reinforced through their ability to control trade in their region. As C.R. Whitaker surmised, "It is reasonable to conclude that soldiers, particularly officers, on active service became increasingly powerful locally through their attachment to the land in the regions where they served."

Thus, the result of Roman and barbarian interaction along the limes was a destabilization. Rome, with her money and political power, enabled some chiefs to gain riches previously unimagined. More importantly, these chiefs were trained in the politics and economics of Rome and were able apply these principles successfully among their tribes. At the same time, those barbarian groups not embraced by Rome often grouped into large confederations and wreaked havoc along the borderlands. These new groups formed and re-formed continually, some around a strong, Romanized barbarian and others around a particular leader at the head of a barbarian confederation. These new “tribes” often associated themselves with much older traditions for the sake of unity and continuity.

The incessant barbarian conflicts that occurred during the latter part of the second century increased the importance of the military leaders in the tribes. As Patrick Geary observed, these reiks often attributed their military prowess as “a sign of the gods’ favor,” which enabled them to “add a religious aura to their position.”

The god Tiwaz was a war god (his rune is to the left), influential on the battlefield, but was also more importantly the god of law and order and was associated with the Germanic Thing, the essential governing body of a traditional tribe. As the tribe began to identify itself less with its land of origin, it also de-emphasized the role of the god Tiwaz, and the thiudans, and identified itself more with the new, successful war leader and the corresponding god of war, Woden.

According to Geary, “[v]ictories created new traditions,” and, according to Malcolm Todd, regardless of race, language, or political origin, if an individual fought along side a certain war leader, he was a member of that war leader’s tribe. Geary also believes that the Marcomannic Wars were evidence of “a radical restructuring of the Germanic world” and “the last decades of the second century were the most vital period of ethnogenesis in Germanic history.”

Barbarians had been used by Rome for her armies almost from their first exposure to the Empire. Caesar used Germanic troops during his Gaul campaign. Initially serving as separate, tribe-based auxiliary forces, they were eventually merged into the general Roman auxiliary forces. Some were picked to be special body guards for the emperor, which formed an important political counterweight to the Praetorian Guard. Most important were the German leaders who learned the Roman way of war and brought their knowledge back to their tribes. Barbarian war-leaders also identified themselves as both members of barbarian society and Roman officers and often used one position to advance the other. Some, such as Arbogast, used their position as Roman generals to marshal the necessary forces to attack their barbarian rivals, as Arbogast did by attacking Marcomer and Sunno across the Rhine. However, most often, accepting a high position in the Roman army usually meant forfeiting tribal political power.

Roman money was important, especially to the barbarian leader, because victory alone could not maintain a king’s prestige against other leaders in the tribe. Money equaled power, and Rome had a seemingly endless supply of the former. In exchange for money, barbarian kings provided Rome with military manpower. They used Roman money and booty acquired while pursuing Roman military ventures to satisfy their supporters and attract more warriors to their tribe. As such, military leaders did not rely solely on strict tribal bonds to attract warriors. Warrior bands, called comitatus, were based on personal loyalty to a leader rather than tribal bonds, and these became prevalent and added to the confusion among tribal society.

Often, individual members of these bands participated in raids against tribes with whom their ancestral tribe was ostensibly at peace. This in turn caused more widespread conflict. Also, when a tribe moved, and inevitably encountered and fought other tribes, a natural upward social mobility occurred within its ranks as warriors proved themselves on the battlefield. Skill was prime, not ethnic or social background, and those that distinctly exhibited these characteristics emerged as leaders. This near-constant state of warfare resulted in the splintering and reformation of tribes, often with a war leader and his comitatus serving as the nucleus for a new tribe. The war leaders of these new or reformed tribes called upon their own tribal heritage to provide an identity for their new tribe, often recycling remembered and revered tribal names to add an air of authenticity and respect. While probable that the mixed ethnicity of a comitatus could cause problems for a leader, being able to overcome such internal unrest would bolster his reputation. Further, according to Lucien Musset, perhaps the solutions reached by such successful leaders eventually led them "to modify their institutions, and thus pav[ed] the way for an eventual reconciliation with the Romans.”

The Romans did not recruit barbarians for only military purposes. They also settled them on their lands to provide a needed workforce in regions that had been ravaged of their former population by war or famine. These barbarian were usually those who themselves had been defeated in war and were either held by the Romans or had asked the emperor for permission to settle on Roman lands. In exchange, these groups paid tribute and lived under Roman law, though they were not considered to be freemen and were subject to the emperor’s whim. “Privileges could not be accorded to those whose origin lay beyond the boundaries of the Roman state.” Thus, barbarian workers in the Roman Empire helped to convert uncultivated land into cultivated and taxable land and provided manpower for other endeavors, such as mining.

This constant state of societal flux as tribes formed, splintered, and re-formed both within and outside of lands under imperial control has revealed that tribes “were more processes than stable structures.” In essence, the tribes were similar to modern political parties. Each exalted a founding father, or concept, and included people and families of different ethnic stock, but shared cultural values. Additionally, given the inability of the Germans to act in concert at the tribal level, the traditional belief that they had acted in concert to raid the Roman Empire en masse has been shown as incorrect.

Geary has argued that the Romans applied a faulty template to the Germanic tribes in an attempt to put a familiar societal structure over the chaotic Germanic tribal world, which strengthened the perception that Germans were both similar and even united in action. Further, Walter Goffart has concluded that this faulty theory of united Germanic action led to the belief that Germanic tribes consciously set out to set up kingdoms on Roman soil and these mistaken assumptions contributed to the flawed motif of Barbarian Invasions. It also implied that a single, united German entity opposed the Roman Empire and that both entities were conscious of being on opposing sides. Conversely, Peter Heather asserts that, while the independent Germanic tribes didn’t act in concert to attack the Roman Empire, the widespread displacement caused by the Huns effectively produced this effect. Finally, Malcolm Todd observes that while:

...the history of the Germanic peoples in the fourth and fifth centuries, particularly in western Europe, is inextricably bound up with that of the declining Roman provinces… the tale is by no means always one of destruction and waste. Barbarians were by this time better equipped for life inside the empire than most ancient writers believed.

UP NEXT: Evolution of Barbarian Arms and Tactics

SOURCES:
Geary, Before France and Germany.
Goffart, Barbarians and Romans.
Ralph Whitney Mathisen, Roman Aristocrats in Barbarian Gaul: Strategies for Survival in an Age of Transition (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993).
Whittaker, Frontiers of the Roman Empire.
Todd, The Northern Barbarians.
Musset, Germanic Invasions.
Miroslava Mirkovic, “The Later Roman Colonate and Freedom,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 87, no.2 (1997).
Peter Heather, in “The Huns and the End of the Roman Empire in Western Europe,” The English Historical Review 110, no.435 (1995).

Early Germanic Society - Social Groups

The largest portion of the population of a Germanic "community" was comprised of the free men. The number of cattle or swine they held determined their status in the community and they exhibited their freedom by joining in warfare. Generally, it was a patriarchal society and households combined into a larger group, or clan. The unifying factors of the clan were twofold, internal and external. Internally, the clan provided a basic form of law that kept the peace among its members. Externally, the members united into greater groups, the largest called tribes, to participate in feuds with other groups.

Families composed villages, led by a group of free men led by a headman, or chief, who may have been determined based on a variety of attributes, including, but not limited to, wealth, ancestry, family connections or influence in the larger group of kindred, “the people” or gentes, of which his village was a part. As explained by Patrick Geary, the villages that made up these gentes “were bound together by a combination of religious, legal, and political traditions that imparted a strong, if unstable, sense of unity.” Ancestry myths were based on the lives and exploits of heroes, who were seen as divine founders of a gentes. The tales of revenge, war, blood feud and kinship helped groups of Germans to unite because of a sense of shared ancestry to a specific individual.

According to Geary (The Myth of Nations), some historians believe that the royal families were those primarily associated with the particular myths of a group. It is also possible that different families had other traditions and stories and attempted to impose these as preeminent over those of other families. Such stories and traditions were also probably more dispersed throughout a society than being seen as the sole property of one family. If this is so, then Geary asserted that, during the fourth and fifth centuries, when certain individuals emerged as tribal leaders, they and their families became associated, or they claimed for themselves, the traditional myths and stories of the tribe. Later, we will see how this may be the case with how the Burgundians came to associated themselves with the Gibichungs (or Niebelungs).

The Germanic tribes were led by two sorts of kings, one religious and the other military. These men ruled the tribe by a complicated mixture of single or joint rule, dependent upon the particular situation in which the tribe found itself. The first type of chief, identified as being more religious in nature, was the thiudans. He belonged to a traditional royal family that was associated with the mythic, historical and cultural origins of the tribe and was a symbol of tribal stability. In time of war, military authority was given to the martial, usually non-royal leader, called a dux (or general) by Tacitus. These leaders presided over the Germanic council of free warriors, called a Thing. The organization of a Thing varied, but in general, it gathered to judge its members, discuss war, and to formulate tribal policy. The Thing was the core of the fundamental idea of kindred, or gentes, which was the basis of Germanic society. Yet, tribes were constantly in flux as every disruption of internal or external peace could result in a splintered clan and new clans reformed along different lines. This natural state of tribal ebb and flow was exacerbated by contact with the Roman Empire, which intensified both kinds of disruption.

UP NEXT: Characteristics of Early Germanic Migrations

SOURCES:

Patrick Geary, Before France and Germany.
Patrick Geary, The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002).