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The story of their gradual progress in civilization and growth in military power, which at last enabled them to descend with overwhelming force upon Rome itself, forms one of the romances of history. From their first reception into Lower Moesia the Visigoths were subjected to the most contemptuous and oppressive treatment by the Romans who had admitted them into their domains.
Carcassone dates from the Roman occupation of Gaul. The place commanded one of the great roads into Spain, and in the fourth century Romans and Franks ousted each other from such a point of vantage. In the year 436 Theodoric King of the Visigoths superseded both these parties; and it was during his occupation that the inner enceinte was raised upon the ruins of the Roman fortifications.
In four years the entire capitulation of the Visigoths was effected. Theodosius then turned his attention to the Ostro or East Goths, who advanced, with other barbarians, to the banks of the lower Danube, on the Thracian frontier.
Eleven years later in the battle of Xeres de la Frontera, he defeated the king of the Visigoths and then the Moslem army moved northward and following the route of Hannibal, they crossed the passes of the Pyrenees. They defeated the Duke of Aquitania, who tried to halt them near Bordeaux, and marched upon Paris.
After getting permission from the Emperor Valens a large number of the Visigoths crossed the Danube with their families and their cattle and settled in the country now called Bulgaria. In course of time they became a very powerful nation, and in the year 394 they chose as their king one of the chiefs named Al'a-ric. He was a brave man and a great soldier.
They fought, and Syagrius was driven to take refuge in Southern Gaul, with Alaric, king of the Visigoths. Clovis, not content with taking possession of Soissons, and anxious to prevent any troublesome return, demanded of Alaric to send Syagrius back to him, threatening war if the request were refused.
We feel after all those centuries the shock which was produced on the literary world of the day by Alaric's sack of Rome, or by the march of the Roman auxiliary troops called "Visigoths" through Gaul into Spain, or by the appearance of the mixed horde called after their leaders "Vandals" in front of Hippo in Africa.
In the earlier years of the eighth century, less than a hundred years from the death of Mahomet, the Mussulman Arabs, after having conquered Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Northern Africa, had passed into Europe, invaded Spain, overthrown the kingdom of the Visigoths, driven back the remnants of the nation and their chief, Pelagius, to the north of the Peninsula, into the Asturias and Galicia, and pushed even beyond the Pyrenees, into old Narbonness, then called Septimania, their limitless incursions.
Westward of the Goths, the numerous tribes of the Vandals were spread along the banks of the Oder, and the sea-coast of Pomerania and Mecklenburgh. A striking resemblance of manners, complexion, religion, and language, seemed to indicate that the Vandals and the Goths were originally one great people. The latter appear to have been subdivided into Ostrogoths, Visigoths, and Gepidæ.
Angles, Saxons, Goths, Visigoths, Huns, Vandals, Vikings, Slavs, Arabs, and Turks poured over the broken barriers of the empire and threatened to extinguish the last spark of western and Christian civilization.
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