Page:General History of Europe 1921.djvu/255

The Period of Invasions .183 289. West Goths settle in Southern Gaul and Spain; the Vandals. After the death of Alaric the West Goths wandered into Gaul and then into Spain, where they came upon the Vandals, another German tribe, whom they seem to have finally driven across the Strait of Gibraltar into northern Africa. Here the Vandals established a kingdom and conquered the neighboring islands in the Mediterranean. Having rid themselves of the Vandals, the West Goths took possession of a great part of the Spanish peninsula, and this they added to their conquests across the Pyrenees in Gaul, so that their kingdom extended, from the river Loire to the Strait of Gibraltar. It is unnecessary to follow the confused history of the move- ments of the innumerable bands of restless barbarians who wan- dered about Europe during the fifth century. Scarcely any part of western Europe was left unmolested ; even Britain was con- quered by German tribes, the Angles and Saxons. 290. Attila and the Huns. To add to the universal confusion, the Huns (the Mongolian people who had first pushed the West Goths into the Empire) now began to fill Europe with terror. Under their chief, Attila, this savage people invaded Gaul, but were repulsed in the battle of Chalons, in 451. Attila then turned to Italy ; but the danger there was averted by an embassy headed by Pope Leo the Great, who induced Attila to give up his plan of marching upon Rome. Within a year he died, and his warriors were scattered. 291. The Fall of the Empire in the West (475). The year 476 has commonly been taken as the date of the "fall" of the Western Empire and of the beginning of the Middle Ages. What happened in that year was this. Most of the Roman emperors in the West had proved weak and indolent rulers ; so the bar- barians wandered hither and thither pretty much at their pleasure, and the German troops in the service of the Empire became accus- tomed to set up and depose emperors to suit their own special interest. Finally, in 476, Odoacer, the most powerful among the rival German generals in Italy, declared himself king and ban- ished the last of the emperors of the West.