The Suevi, the Vandals, and the Burgundians.
AS WE now turn our attention to the North, it will be necessary for us to take a brief survey of the positions of the nations which dwelt there at this period—about A. D. 400-406. The right bank of the middle and upper Rhine was inhabited by the Franks and the Alemanni. The Angles dwelt in what is now Southern Denmark, and the Saxons upon the lower Elbe. Eastward of the Elbe, and on the Oder, dwelt the Lombards; on the coast of the Baltic, between the Oder and the Vistula, were the Vandals; south of the Vandals, on the Vistula, were the Burgundians; east of the Vistula, toward the Baltic, were the Suevi; and over the whole country east of the Suevi, and stretching away to the River Volga, were spread the Sarmatians. In the southern country below the Sarmatians, from the Danube through the valley of the Dnieper to the coasts of the Caspian Sea, was the dominion of the Huns ruled by Rugilas. It was, as we have seen, this inundation of the Huns that drove the Ostrogoths and the Visigoths across the Danube into the territories of the Roman Empire. And we shall now find that it was a like movement of another people, further north, that crowded other tribes of the Huns upon the Sarmatians; these, in turn, were forced upon the nations of Northern Germany, which were thus displaced and driven across the Rhine upon Western Rome. Of this we read:— “While Italy rejoiced in her deliverance from the Goths, a furious tempest was excited among the nations of Germany, who yielded to the irresistible impulse that appears to have been gradually communicated [A. D. 400] from the eastern extremity of the continent of Asia. The Chinese annals, as they have been interpreted by the learned industry of the present age, may be usefully applied to reveal the secret, and remote causes of the fall of the Roman Empire. The extensive territory to the north of the Great Wall, was possessed, after the flight of the Huns, by the victorious Sienpi, who were sometimes broken into independent tribes, and sometimes re-united under a supreme chief; till at length, styling themselves Topa, or masters of the earth, they acquired a more solid consistence and a more formidable power. The Topa soon compelled the pastoral nations of the eastern desert to acknowledge the superiority of their arms; they invaded China in a period of weakness and intestine discord; and these fortunate Tartars, adopting the laws and manners of the vanquished people, founded an Imperial dynasty, which reigned near one hundred and sixty years over the northern provinces of the monarchy. “Some generations before they ascended the throne of China, one of the Topa princes had enlisted in his cavalry a slave by the name of Moko, renowned for his valor, but who was tempted, by the fear of punishment, to desert his standard, and to range the desert at the head of a hundred followers. This gang of robbers and outlaws swelled into a camp, a tribe, a numerous people, distinguished by the appellation of Geougen; and their hereditary chieftains, the posterity of Moko the slave, assumed their rank among the Scythian monarchs. The youth of Toulun, the greatest of his descendants, was exercised by those misfortunes which are the school of heroes. He bravely struggled with adversity, broke the imperious yoke of the Topa, and became the legislator of his nation, and the conqueror of Tartary. His troops were distributed into regular bands of a hundred and of a thousand men; cowards were stoned to death; the most splendid honors were proposed as the reward of valor; and Toulun, who had knowledge enough to despise the learning of China, adopted only such arts and institutions as were favorable to the military spirit of his government. His tents, which he removed in the winter season to a more southern latitude, were pitched, during the summer, on the fruitful banks of the Selinga. His conquests stretched from Corea far beyond the River Irtish. He vanquished, in the country to the north of the Caspian Sea, the nation of the Huns; and the new title of Khan or Cagan expressed the fame and power which he derived from this memorable victory. “The chain of events is interrupted, or rather is concealed, as it passes from the Volga to the Vistula, through the dark interval which separates the extreme limits of the Chinese and of the Roman geography. Yet the temper of the barbarians, and the experience of successive emigrations, sufficiently declare that the Huns, who were oppressed by the arms of the Geougen, soon withdrew from the presence of an insulting victor. The countries towards the Euxine were already occupied by their kindred tribes; and their hasty flight, which they soon converted into a bold attack, would more naturally be directed towards the rich and level plains through which the Vistula gently flows into the Baltic Sea. The North must again have been alarmed and agitated by the invasion of the Huns; and the nations who retreated before them [the Sarmatians], must have pressed with incumbent weight on the confines of Germany. The inhabitants of those regions, which the ancients have assigned to the Suevi, the Vandals, and the Burgundians, might embrace the resolution of abandoning to the fugitives of Sarmatia their woods and morasses, or at least of discharging their superfluous numbers on the provinces of the Roman Empire.”—Chap. 30, par. 13, 14.