Vanished Kingdoms: The Rise and Fall of States and Nations (5 page)

‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.
¹⁷

*

From the day of this book’s conception I have concentrated on two priorities: to highlight the contrast between times present and times past, and to explore the workings of historical memory. These priorities suggested that each of the studies should have a three-part structure. Part I of every chapter therefore paints a sketch of some European location as it appears today. Part II then tells the narrative of a ‘vanished kingdom’ that once inhabited the same location. Part III examines the extent to which the vanished kingdom has either been remembered or forgotten; usually it is poorly remembered or half-forgotten, or completely derelict.

I have also been at pains to present vanished kingdoms drawn from as many of the main periods and regions of European history as space would allow. Tolosa, for example, comes from Western Europe, Litva and Galicia from the East. Alt Clud and Éire are based in the British Isles, Borussia in the Baltic, Tsernagora in the Balkans, and Aragon in Iberia and the Mediterranean. The chapter covering the ‘Five, Six or Seven Kingdoms’ of Burgundia tells a medieval story that straddles modern France and Germany; Sabaudia deals mainly with the early modern period while linking France, Switzerland and Italy; and Rosenau and CCCP are confined to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

It goes without saying that the subject of vanished kingdoms cannot be exhausted by the limited collection of examples presented here. The ‘history of half-forgotten Europe’ is far more extensive than any partial selection can cover. Many earlier candidates have had to be dropped, if only for reasons of space. One such study, ‘Kerno’, examines King Mark’s kingdom in post-Roman Cornwall, and is decorated by reflections on the theme of cultural genocide and excerpts from the work of the Cornish poet Norman Davies. Another study, ‘De Grote Appel: A Short-Lived Dutch Colony’, sets out the history of New Amsterdam before it was transformed into New York. A third, ‘Carnaro: The Regency of the First
duce
’, tells the extraordinary story of Gabriele d’Annunzio’s takeover in Fiume in 1919 and concludes with his exquisite poem, ‘
La pioggia nel pineto’
, ‘Rain in the Pinewood’.

In these endeavours, I have inevitably relied heavily on the work of others. No historian can have a thorough knowledge of all parts and periods of European history, and all good generalists feast heartily on the dishes served up by their specialist confrères. Anyone setting out into unfamiliar territory needs to be armed with maps and guides and the accounts of those who went before. In the early stages of research, I gained enormously from the advice of specialist colleagues such as the late Rees Davies on the Old North, David Abulafia on Aragon, or Michał Giedroyć on Lithuania, and almost every chapter has benefited greatly from expert studies and scholarly consultations. In short, every single section of my little cathedral has been built from the bricks, stones and drawings of someone else.

I have always loved Plato’s metaphor of the ‘ship of state’. The idea of a great vessel, with its helmsman, crew and complement of passengers, ploughing its way across the oceans of time, is irresistible. So, too, are the many poems which celebrate it:

O navis, referent in mare te novi

fluctus! O quid agis? Fortiter occupa

  
portum! Nonne vides ut

   
nudum remigio latus…
¹⁸

Or again:

Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!

Sail on, O Union, strong and great!

Humanity with all its fears,

With all the hopes of future years,

Is hanging breathless on thy fate!
¹⁹

These lines from Longfellow were written out by President Roosevelt in his own hand, and sent to Winston Churchill on 20 January 1941. They were accompanied by a note which said, ‘I think this verse applies to your people as it does to us.’
²⁰

The same thoughts come to mind when brains are racked about kingdoms that have vanished. For ships of state do not sail on for ever. They sometimes ride the storms, and sometimes founder. On occasion they limp into port to be refitted; on other occasions, damaged beyond repair, they are broken up; or they sink, slipping beneath the surface to a hidden resting place among the barnacles and the fishes.

In this connection, another string of images presents itself, in which the historian becomes a beachcomber and treasure-seeker, a collector of flotsam and jetsam, a raiser of wrecks, a diver of the deep, scouring the seabed to recover what was lost. This book certainly sits comfortably in the category of historical salvage. It garners the traces of ships of state that sank, and it invites the reader, if only on the page, to watch with delight as the stricken galleons straighten their fallen masts, draw up their anchors, fill their sails and reset their course across the ocean swell.

Norman Davies

Peterhouse and St Antony’s

April 2011

Tolosa

Sojourn of the Visigoths

(ad 418–507)

I

Vouillé, formerly Vouillé-la-Bataille, is a small country
bourg
of some three thousand souls in the French Département de la Vienne, and
chef-lieu
of a rural commune in the region of Poitou-Charente. It lies close to the Route Nationale 149, the old Roman road that runs from Poitiers to Nantes, and it is traversed by a pleasant stream, the Auzance, as it meanders towards the Atlantic. It boasts two churches, two schools, a tiny central square entered through an arch, a large
terrain de pétanques
, some fine riverside gardens, a town hall, a couple of restaurants, a modest stadium, a tall water tower, a listed chateau-hotel, Le Périgny, a Saturday market, and no special celebrity. It is also the presumed site of an early sixth-century battle. A memorial plaque, erected by the local history society in 2007 on the 1,500th anniversary, is so well hidden that the
Office de tourisme
in the square cannot always say exactly where it is.
¹

In one of those delectable adjectival flourishes which the French language adores, the inhabitants of Vouillé rejoice in the name of Vouglaisiens or Vouglaisiennes; they call the surrounding district, popular with ramblers, the Pays Vouglaisien. Not surprisingly, they take great pride in their
patrimoine
, the legacy of their forebears. A statement made in 1972 by the president of the local Syndicat d’Initiative can be found both on the municipal website and on a simple monument erected at the Carrefour de Clovis. ‘
L’histoire de la France
’, it says with no noticeable modesty, ‘
commença donc a Vouillé’
(‘The history of France began at Vouillé’).
²

II

On 24 August 410 Alaric the Visigoth achieved the ultimate goal of the many barbarian chiefs who invaded the crumbling Roman Empire of the West. At the third attempt, he sacked Rome:

Having surrounded the city and once more reduced the inhabitants to the verge of starvation, he effected an entry at night through the Salarian Gate… This time, the king was in no humour to spare the capital of the world. The sack lasted for two or three days. Some respect was shown for churches… [but] the palace of Sallust… was burned down; and excavations on the Aventine [Hill], then a fashionable aristocratic quarter, have revealed many traces of the fires which destroyed the plundered houses. A rich booty and numerous captives, including the Emperor’s sister, Galla Placidia, were taken.

On the third day, Alaric led his triumphant host forth… and marched southward… His object was to cross over to Africa, probably for the purpose of establishing his people in that rich country… But his days were numbered. He died at Consentia [Cosenza] before the end of the year.
³

Alaric’s name meant ‘the Ruler of All’.

Alaric’s people, known as the Visigoths – in German, the
Westgoten
– had been the first of the Germanic hordes to break into the Roman Empire. Originating in the distant Baltic region but long settled in the abandoned province of Dacia (in modern Romania), they were semi-itinerant agriculturalists who typically stayed for long periods in one fertile vicinity before moving on to the next. They were also converts to the Arian branch of Christianity.
*
Displaced from their earlier districts of residence, they were seeking a new place to rest. But they never made it to Africa. Instead, being stranded in southern Italy after the sack of Rome, they bargained their way to a new accommodation with the Romans. Their success inspired their Gothic kinsfolk whom they had left far behind in Eastern Europe. Within three generations, their cousins, the Ostro- or ‘Eastern’ Goths, would follow them on the road to Italy.
⁴

The Visigoths were not a tribe, in the usual sense of the word; and there is some doubt whether their name can be etymologically connected with ‘the West’. They had been brought together from a variety of ethnic components during Alaric’s wanderings, and they only acquired the ‘Western’ epithet after becoming separated from the main Gothic concentration.

Alaric’s exploits broke the spell that held back many of his barbarian counterparts. As a Byzantine commentator had noted, the Empire was not protected by ‘rivers, lagoons or parapets, but by fear’ – fear being ‘an obstacle that no man has surmounted once he is convinced that he is inferior’.
⁵
Thanks to Alaric, the barbarians lost their sense of inferiority.

The spectacular rites of Alaric’s funeral caused comment among the ancients, and have inspired much speculation among modern historians and anthropologists:

The ferocious character of the barbarians was displayed in the funeral of a hero whose valour… they celebrated with mournful applause… they forcibly diverted the course of the Busentinus, a small river that washes the walls of Consentia. The royal sepulchre, adorned with the splendid spoils and trophies of Rome, was constructed in the vacant bed; the waters were then restored to their natural channel; and the secret spot where the remains of Alaric had been deposited was for ever concealed by the inhuman massacre of the prisoners who had been employed to execute the work.
⁶

Despite his sensational reputation, however, ‘the Ruler of All’ achieved none of his long-term objectives. He was the eternal wanderer, who constantly switched his allegiance. In turn he had been Rome’s ally, Rome’s enemy, Rome’s destroyer, a legitimate emperor’s protector and a usurper’s partner.
⁷

In Alaric’s time, the Western Empire was inundated by barbarian hordes moving across the Empire’s frontiers in many directions. Britannia was succumbing to Picts from the north, to Scots from Hibernia and to Germanic raiders besieging ‘the Saxon shore’ to the south-east. Roman Gaul had been transfixed by ‘the horde of hordes’ that crossed the frozen Rhine in the winter of 406/7. War-bands of Vandals, Alans and Suevi were ransacking Gallia Aquitania in the south and spilling over the mountains into Iberia. Further hordes, including the Huns, were lining up to take the Visigoths’ route through the Danubian provinces.

Alaric’s successor as leader of the Visigoths, therefore, struck a deal with imperial Rome. Ataulf – the ‘Noble Wolf’ – agreed to leave Italy and to chase his fellow barbarians from Gaul and Spain. His one condition was that he could return to the status of an imperial
foederatus
or ‘ally’, which Alaric had once enjoyed. As reported by a contemporary, the historian Paulus Orosius, Ataulf’s ‘Declaration’ makes interesting reading: