Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 13.djvu/525

* MIGRATION. 473 MIGRATION. continued until it was uunquiicii by the Franks (50710). The jiait south of the l'.yrenecs was conquered in the great .Mohammedan invasion of 711. The Vandals left their homes, which lay between the Gotlis and the Baltic, and moved southeast and then westward to Pannonia, where they were when the battle of Adrianople showed eonelusively the weakness of the Roman lOmpire. After a restless period of several years they were again in motion in 40(i, united with the Suevi and Alani. They swept forward through the north of Gaul and southward into Spain, where they pre- ceded the Visigoths, who appeared in the Penin- sula and overthrew them in the naine of Rome. In 429 they crossed the straits, conquered the Xorth African provinces, set up a Vandal king- dom, and entered upon a career of ]iira(y on the Mediterranean. In 455 they raided and sacked Rome. The Vandal kingdom was overthrown in 534 by the armies of the Emperor .Justinian (q.v )'. The Burgundians. living on the Vistula near the Goths and the Vandals, migrated south- ward to the Rhine frontier of the Roman Empire in the latter part of the third century, received some land from the Emperor Honorius, and spread over the Rhone and Sfione valleys soon after the founding of the Visigothic kingdom. The Burgundian kingdom there established was conuered by the Franks in 534. The Ostrogoths, who had as a whole been sub- dued by the Huns when their cousins the Visi- goths escaped across the Danube, settled in Pan- nonia about 453. In 470 Theodoric, the ablest of all the barbarian chieftains of the period of the migrations, became King of the Ostrogoths. He otl'ered the services of his people to put down the independent kingdom which had been set up in Italy, in defiance of the Empire, by Odoacer. a German adventurer. With the expectation of conquering for themselves new and pleasanter homes in Italy, the Ostrogothic people set out with all their impedimenta. The forces of Odoacer were successfully encountered in Lom- bardy and he was driven back into his capital. Ravenna, where he endured a long siege. The city was finally taken and the defeated King was treacherously killed. Theodoric then set up a kingdom, acknowledging nominal subjection to the Emperor, but in reality acting as an inde- pendent sovereign. He developed the most equit- able and enlightened government then existing in the Roman world ; but his own strong head and hand were necessary to maintain it, and after his death the Ostrogothic kingdom in Italy grad- ually lost its power, and was finally overtlirown under Justinian in 553, when Narses (q.v.) com- pleted the reconquest of Italy for the Eastern Eiujiire. The Ostrogothic occupation left a per- manent influence upon the laws, customs, and language of Italy, although these remained at bottom thoroughly Italian, the German leaven being a comparatively small one. There was one more German migration into Italy, that of the Lombards, who entered the country from Pannonia, in 5(57, They settled in the valley of the Po, in the region which has been named for them, Lonibardy, Their rule extended at one time throughout the Peninsula, except over the Exarchate of Ravenna (q.v.) and Rome. Their influence upon Italian life was lasting he- cause, although their kingdom was overthrown as a political power by Pepin and Tharles the Great, they remained in their Italian home, a permanent factor in the population. See Italy;. Lombards. These were all true migrations, not simply military invasions, the whole people in each case moving over the country with all their goods, and transferring their abodes. Each one of these Germanic kingdoms left a pennanent impression upon the life and institutions of the country in which it was established, although as a formal political institution each gave way to others. With the Huns, whose movement westward had set the Visigoths in motion, it was difl'erent. The}' had no affinities with the Aryan groups an.l were regarded with horror and detestation by all of the European peoples alike. They were not home-seekers, but natural nomads, who lived by fighting and by plunder. They threatened the Danube frontier of the Emjiire for many years, and in 449 their King, Attila (q.v.). led his own tribes, with a miscellaneous contingent of Ger- man adventurers, across to Northern Gaul, where a heavy blow was aimed at the weakened rem- nant of Roman power. The invasion was cheeked by a union of Visigothic and Imperial forces un- der Aetius and Theodorie (qq.v. ) in a great bat- tle near Chalons-sur-Marne (451). Attila never- founded a State that was more than an armed camp, and his power went to pieces at his death, in 455. From that time the Huns disappeared as an organized power, leaving no influence behind, as did the abler and more stable Germans. The conquest of Gaul by the Franks (q.v.) beginning in 486 differed from the other German folk-wanderings in that it was effected primarily by true militaiy campaigns from a strategic base. The Franks had their original homes along the Gallic border, and they made a regular military invasion of Gaul, effecting a thorough conquest before making a settlement in the country. This gave the Frankish kingdom a more lasting foun- dation than those which were established by the migration of comparatively small bodies into the midst of alien populations, with a higher degree of civilization. There remains but to mention the migrations of the Teutonic tribes living on thfr North Sea coa.^t about the mouths of the Elbe and the Weser, and northward, whose pirate forces in the fifth and sixth centuries invaded Britain and made the beginning of England. See Angles : Anglo-Saxon.s : .Iutes, Slavs; Avars; Bitlgars; Magyars, The mi- gration of the Germans was followed by a great movement of Slavic peoples westward and south- ward from the plains of what is now Russia, At the same time the non-Aryan Avars and Bulgars pressed into the regions of the middle and lower Danube. At the close of the ninth century oc- curred the migration of the Magyars into what is now Hungary. Asi.Tic Trihes. The nomadic habits of the interior tribes of Asia of the Mongol-Tatar stock have made great migratory movements of these warlike peoples numerous, likely to occur, in fact, whenever a leader of large capacity and am- bition has arisen among them. It is difficult to classify many of these movements as migrations or as military invasions, since they partake sr> much of both characters. Most notable of these was the great ilongolian niovement set on foot by Genghis Khan (q.v.), which established Mon- gol dynasties in China and Persia, threatened even Central Europe, and placed Russia under the Tatar yoke for several centuries. In these