The Vandals: Book 3 – Homelands in Hispania

The Asding Vandals were an insignificant Germanic tribe with an undistinguished military record who lost most of their battles. Somehow this small tribe not only survived a great migration from modern day Hungary to Africa but also created a Mediterranean kingdom so powerful it could sack Rome. Few books or films feature the Vandals as the key catalyst in the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Yet if one man can be held responsible for the fall of Rome then the Vandal King Gaeseric would be the choice of many historians.This third book in the series begins in the winter of 409 with the Asding Vandals crossing northern Spain to claim a new homeland. Gerontius, a Romano-Briton general, had allocated the Asdings their territory in Gallaecia in return for military support against the usurper emperor Constantine. The Siling Vandals and the Alans had received much better settlement areas in southern Spain. The Asdings’ poorer land allocation, shared with the Suebes, became their salvation in 417. A Roman sponsored Goth invasion of southern Spain destroyed the Siling Vandals and severely weakened the Alans. A second Roman campaign in 420, supported by the Suebes, targeted the Asdings and those Alan tribes that had joined them, forcing a migration to southern Spain. There, they merged with Siling Vandal survivors and other Alan tribes to rule an area that became known as Vandalucia. In 422, the Vandals and Alans defeated a major Roman army outside of Cordoba and were, for the first time, recognised as a serious military force.