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00:01From the mists of the north, Germanic tribes headed south,
00:05reaching as far as the borders of the Roman Empire.
00:09Barbarians, the Romans called them.
00:12But in 375 AD, the most feared of all warriors
00:17descended upon Europe murdering and pillaging.
00:21The Huns triggered a great migration.
00:24Hundreds of thousands of Goths, Vandals, and Franks
00:27went in search of a new homeland.
00:31They sacked Rome.
00:35Some tribes disappeared almost without trace.
00:39Others left behind valuable treasures.
00:43The Germanic barbarians were to become the founders of Europe.
00:54375 AD, the Huns were devastating Europe.
01:00Hordes of Germanic peoples fled through the Roman Empire,
01:04spreading fear and terror.
01:24Graves are often the only traces of the great tribal migrations.
01:29The mortal remains of many Germans found their last resting place
01:32in the anthropologist's storeroom in Budapest.
01:40The skull of a Visigoth.
01:43What could he have experienced and suffered?
01:46What might he have looked like?
01:50For anthropologists, a skull is not just a skull.
01:56A recent scientific process makes it possible for Agnes Kushtar
02:01to restore the faces of dead people.
02:06Ancient sources have handed down the names and deeds
02:08only of the great kings.
02:10While the fate of ordinary people remains largely unknown,
02:14yet we can find out something about them today.
02:19Anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians are all involved.
02:28We're going back with him into his past.
02:40We're going back with him into his past.
02:45He was one of 100,000 Visigoths,
02:49a people who made their mark in history
02:51and completely changed the ancient world.
02:58To the Romans, he was sometimes an enemy, sometimes a friend.
03:02However, they always called him a barbarian.
03:05Although, like them, he was a Christian.
03:10As a warrior, he took part in the Visigoths' journey
03:14across the whole of Europe.
03:16He moved through Greece and the Balkans.
03:18He besieged and conquered Rome with King Alaric.
03:23He travelled over 7,000 kilometres with the Visigoths.
03:30Only in the south of France in 418 did he find a permanent home
03:36after wandering for over 40 years.
03:45He survived flight and exile, dangers and hardship, wars and battles.
03:51The historian Jordanus reported on the fate of the Visigoths
03:55from the knowledge of the old, from songs and stories.
04:06As a child, our Visigoth escaped the Huns with his family just in time.
04:13Until then, they had lived peacefully near the Roman Empire.
04:17It was the year 376 AD.
04:21Men, women and children had gathered with their belongings
04:24at the Danube on the border of the Roman Empire.
04:27It took weeks to ferry everyone across to safety
04:31on hastily built rafts.
04:40There was always fear.
04:43They knew the greedy, looting Huns were on their way.
05:05The Visigoths tried desperately to escape from them.
05:10The Visigoths tried desperately to escape from them.
05:20Terrifying stories were told of the Huns' weapons
05:23and their incredible range.
05:31Terrible stories were told of their appearance.
05:34They were said to be ugly, cruel, two-legged animals.
05:44The only way out for the Visigoths was to flee across the Danube.
05:49The Visigoths asked the Emperor Weilands for refuge
05:53and vowed to submit to his rule,
05:55to live according to his laws and to become Christians.
06:01The Emperor is said to have taken them in pro-Misericordia,
06:05out of mercy.
06:06In fact, the Roman Empire was too weak
06:09to defend itself against the Huns on its own.
06:12It desperately needed the Goth warriors.
06:21The Huns had come from deep in the steppes of Asia.
06:25In 375, they subjugated the Alans and the Ostrogoths
06:29and drove the Visigoths ahead of them.
06:33Their army was created to make the world tremble.
06:37They turn up where they are least expected
06:39and attack the people with robbery and cunning.
06:45For the people of the ancient world,
06:47the Huns were the most feared of all warriors.
06:50Never before had people experienced such brutal fighting.
06:54They are extremely fast.
06:56They sit on their agile horses as if they were one with them.
07:00In the fury of battle, they aim with calm hands.
07:04Their arrows bring certain death.
07:15Not one of them touches a plough or cultivates a field.
07:18They know no occupation other than hunting
07:21and they roam about like robbers.
07:30The Huns were mounted nomadic warriors.
07:34They stole everything they needed.
07:36Grain, livestock, gold, even people.
07:47While many smaller groups wandered about looting indiscriminately,
07:51the Huns were far more than a collection of wild, undisciplined hordes.
07:56They subordinated themselves completely to their leaders
07:59and were capable of far-reaching strategic campaigns,
08:04a danger for the whole of Europe.
08:13A sword, a few coins, burial objects from Austria.
08:20One was fatal.
08:23The three-winged tip of a Hun arrow.
08:26It found its mark in a Germanic spine.
08:33The Hungarian archaeologist Peter Tomka
08:37excavated a significant Hun treasure,
08:40the Pannonhalmer find.
08:42Insignificant pieces of gold leaf were part of it.
08:45He was able to use them to reconstruct
08:48one of the fearsome composite bows.
08:57The Huns' magic weapon,
08:59feared for its range and penetrating power.
09:07The biggest optimize in heavy-driven countries,
09:17and they were able to do it at the end.
09:23This was the technique of the UNOC.
09:28For example, in the years of the war,
09:32there was also the E-E-E-E-E,
09:41which is a reflex E, a French type of reflex E.
10:11But they were still able to shoot up to 30 arrows per minute.
10:20Another significant find is this heavy sacrificial cauldron
10:25from the Huns' empire north of the Danube.
10:30Under their king, Attila, they became an ancient superpower.
10:35He aimed to rule the world.
10:38His legendary residence is presumed to have been
10:41between the Danube and the Tiso.
10:44According to ancient descriptions, his palace,
10:47with its Roman bathhouse and surrounded by palisades,
10:51could have looked like this.
10:54The power of the mounted nomads became a threat to Rome.
11:03The Danube in Budapest was once a border of the Roman Empire.
11:09After the Huns had driven the Goths north of the Danube,
11:12this part of Hungary became their empire.
11:20The Huns are terrible, deformed monsters.
11:24Instead of a face, they have a repulsive lump
11:27with pinholes rather than eyes.
11:32That is how their enemies described them,
11:35giving no more than a distorted image.
11:38But what did Attila's warriors, who aroused so much fear,
11:42really look like?
11:44The anthropologist Agnish Kushtar knows how to reconstruct faces.
11:52Now we are able to see a Huns face being restored 1,500 years after his death.
12:01It's not an imaginary face emerging under her hands.
12:05She is using a scientific process.
12:09After weeks of work, the skull turns into a real face.
12:13After weeks of work, the skull turns into a real face.
12:14That of a Hun, with the characteristic small eyes,
12:17flat nose and broad cheekbones.
12:21This is a very nice Mongolian-type piece.
12:25It can be said that it is very large.
12:28The body of the body is very large.
12:30The reconstruction is also very well.
12:33It was a very strange and strange.
12:37The face was formed,
12:38because this was the first type of skull that I was reconstructed.
12:45The horse-riding people of Mongolia today have the same facial features.
12:50It's assumed that the Huns once came from there.
12:54What frightened both the Germans and the Romans was their strange appearance
12:59coupled with their merciless fighting style.
13:02The Ostrogoths were among the first peoples to be attacked by the Huns in 375.
13:12Their legendary king, Ermaneric, was feared because of his valiant war deeds.
13:17He ruled over a huge empire,
13:20but the Huns had already attacked and subjugated the neighbouring tribes.
13:26Emaneric knew that his Ostrogoths would also lose their freedom.
13:31As Ammianus Marcellinus puts it,
13:33he himself wanted neither to experience that nor to be responsible for it.
13:39In the face of the terrible dangers which threatened,
13:43and fearing to make crucial decisions, he put an end to his life.
13:53He died because he could not bear the ferocity of the Huns,
13:57but his death gave them power over his people.
14:04The Visigoths, however, refused to submit to the Huns.
14:09They would rather conquer a kingdom by their own efforts than be subject to others out of sluggishness.
14:19In the year 376, the Visigoths crossed the Danube.
14:24It was the beginning of the greatest of the tribal migrations.
14:34A hundred thousand men, women and children,
14:37including ten thousand warriors, were fleeing from the Huns.
14:48The exiles were accepted into the Roman Empire.
14:52Legend has it that the emperor joyfully consented to taking them in as people seeking help.
14:58They did have to submit to Rome, but were allowed to keep all their weapons,
15:04for the empire depended on the Visigoths' army.
15:11The Visigoths wanted to become part of the empire,
15:15and to participate in the wealth and achievements of Roman civilization.
15:19For this, they were willing to defend the empire's borders.
15:26The Visigoths were the first Germans to settle in the empire as allies of Rome,
15:32as a state within a state.
15:35They were settled south of the Danube,
15:37a valiant outpost of the empire against the Huns.
15:48What the fleeing tribe left behind on the far side of the Danube,
15:52is preserved in Bucharest today.
15:55The capital of Romania was once in the land of the Goths.
16:02The National Museum houses one of the largest and most significant findings from the age of migration,
16:09the treasure of Pietro Aza.
16:11A royal treasure, with more than 40 kilograms of gold and precious stones,
16:17which the Goths buried out of fear of the Huns.
16:21As it has already been stolen from the museum once,
16:25it is now housed in a high-security wing.
16:30It was found by peasants in the Eastern Carpathians in 1837.
16:35Illegal trade, blackmail, robbery and even deaths are all part of the treasure's history.
16:41And, of course, people say today that there is a curse on the barbarians' gold.
16:52It is the pride of the Romanian National Museum.
16:55This is why, as a special privilege,
16:59the archaeologist Radu Hauju is showing us the full splendour of this unique find.
17:08The gold source of the precious stones,
17:12the precious stones, the inventive stones from the deserts and the deserts,
17:16is multiple.
17:19One source was, of course, the Jaff in the Imperium.
17:25With this privilege, there were a number of valuable objects created in the Imperium.
17:33This is the second source, and this is what appears to be in the Apahida.
17:39The gold was from the top of the solidus of the gold coins.
17:48The barbarians' mothers of God made of pure gold.
17:52The priceless treasures were status symbols for the living.
17:57For the dead kings of the Goths, they were an appropriate gift for the other world.
18:06Red almandine stud, saddle mountings, buckles and magnificent fibula or clasps.
18:13The world-famous eagle fibula from the Pietro Aza treasure,
18:17the Goths made the royal bird of prey their symbol.
18:24For archaeologists, the eagle motif is often the only trace of the Goths' wanderings throughout Europe.
18:40In 395, however, they had to leave their settlement south of the Danube.
18:49On their 40-year wanderings, they travelled through Greece, the whole of the Vulcans, and on towards Italy.
19:02Robbed of their homeland by Huns and Romans, and having escaped enemy weapons, they sought a new abode in foreign
19:10parts.
19:16Almost 100,000 busy Goths had been travelling in the Roman Empire since 376.
19:22They had made Alaric their king.
19:25He would go down in history as the conqueror of Rome.
19:32He led the refugees more than ten different peoples who had herded together, including Asiatic tribes.
19:42Not dissent, but courage and valour decided who would be a Visigoth.
19:53Human restlessness drove them on, through impassable unknown terrain.
19:59They were looking for a land that could feed such a multitude.
20:05Those words applied to the Visigoths more than to any other ancient people.
20:10They would be on the move for 40 years, a true felcavanderung, migrants wandering endlessly.
20:19As a child, he had fled across the Danube.
20:22As a man, he became a warrior, like all the Goths.
20:29The nomadic life became second nature to the Visigoths, and new generations grew up knowing nothing but the tribulations of
20:38life on the move.
20:45They tried again and again to win asylum in the Roman Empire by force of arms.
20:50For decades, it was in vain.
20:59At the same time as the Visigoths, other Germanic peoples were also fleeing.
21:04The Huns had also driven out the Vandals, who crossed the Rhine in 406 and pillaged their way to Spain.
21:13When they had finished looting the south, they began to implement a daring plan.
21:18They made their way from Gibraltar to Carthage.
21:26Tarifa, on the Strait of Gibraltar.
21:28From here, Geyseric, the King of the Vandals, dared to cross to Africa with his people in 429 AD.
21:39Over the Mediterranean came an invasion as huge as it was dangerous.
21:45They landed near Tangier in Morocco.
21:48Africa was enticing.
21:50A country full of legendary treasures and blessed with abundant resources.
21:59The Vandals are like the wrath of God.
22:02They set fire to cities and steal all the provisions.
22:05The starving people are forced to eat human flesh.
22:09Mothers even eat their children.
22:14So wrote their adversary, Isidore of Seville.
22:18He was a Roman Catholic.
22:20The Vandals, however, were Aryan Christians.
22:23Wanton heretics in his eyes.
22:25That's why Isidore made the Vandals the villains of the Great Migration.
22:34So today, vandalism has come to mean blind, destructive rage.
22:40This is wrong.
22:42Like all the other Germanic peoples, the Vandals were only fighting for survival.
22:53Geyseric had them all counted for the trip across the Mediterranean.
22:5780,000 people took part in the great vandal journey.
23:02Including other tribes, such as Alans and Suevi.
23:08From Tangier, they still had a seven-year long march ahead of them.
23:13On the way, they took what was there for the taking.
23:17And conquered Roman towns.
23:22The Roman provincial town of Duga in Tunisia.
23:25One of many through which the Vandals passed.
23:30Not a trace of vandalism.
23:32The town fell victim to the normal ravages of time.
23:38In the shadow of the capital, they would have learned the local language.
23:45Opposite, the hot springs of Duga, with steam baths and massage rooms.
23:53When they had captured Africa, they took hot baths every day and lived in magnificent villas.
24:01For the Vandals, Africa was Arcadia, paradise on earth.
24:10Underneath the town are the achievements of Roman civilisation.
24:14Running water, sewerage, and floor heating for cold nights.
24:22The Christian Vandals put an end to the Romans' bloody gladiatorial combats.
24:29But they would have gone to the theatre, to both comedies and tragedies.
24:34Besides, why would the Vandals have destroyed what they wanted to occupy,
24:39in the style of the Romans they admired?
24:47The Bardo Museum in Tunis is replete with evidence of ancient culture.
24:52Nowhere are so many and such artistic mosaic floors preserved as in Tunisia.
25:01The archaeologist, Aisha Ben-Abed, is fascinated by the idea that here,
25:07Vandals walked on many of the mosaics,
25:10chatted to the Romans in Latin, listened to Greek music,
25:14and celebrated Bacchanalian feasts.
25:17Hundreds of mosaic floors from the Vandal period
25:20tell stories of the life of the barbarians under the African sun.
25:28Dances and music, everything that delights the eye and the ear, were customary.
25:35They were no less devoted to the joys of the wine cup than to those of love.
25:45The blue-eyed, blond people from the north had once been desired as slaves.
25:51Now they became the masters of the country.
25:54They did not just dispossess, but also purchased villas and land from their owners.
26:01It's known from surviving documents that they respected Roman law.
26:17In the workshop of the Bardo Museum in Tunis,
26:2020 artisans are working under Aisha Ben-Abed, restoring mosaics for the museum.
26:26Year after year, new ones are excavated. They can hardly keep up with the work.
26:30They are in the middle of the house.
26:33They are in the middle of the house.
26:36They are in the middle of the house.
26:38You see, for this people a little frustrated and with this reputation
26:44that with Carthage and the province of Africa,
26:46coming and taking possession of this province,
26:50it was a dream, it was a dream, it was a dream in a paradise.
26:54And so, it justified a little bit.
27:00All this peril, it justified all this movement that they had set up earlier.
27:06The goal was this Afrika, rich, rich,
27:11which was a real paradise in their eyes.
27:19In the workshop of the Bardo Museum, Aisha Ben-Abed is training young women in the traditional craft.
27:26They are using original mosaics from the Vandal period as models.
27:31During excavations, Aisha found out that local experts laid the mosaics in the Vandals' villas
27:38with motifs of Roman myths, legends and scenes from everyday life on the Mediterranean.
27:53The Vandals enjoyed the pleasures of a richly laid table.
27:57They ate the best that the sea and the land produced.
28:03Thus writes the ancient historian Procopius.
28:06They adapted very quickly to conditions on the Mediterranean
28:09and lived as the new masters of the country in the style of the Romans they so admired.
28:24The African provinces were called the Granaries of Rome.
28:28For centuries, the fertile land provided the people of Rome with grain, dried dates, wine and oil.
28:42In Africa, the Vandals sought and found the Promised Land,
28:47their Garden of Eden as they knew it from the Bible.
28:51However, their goal was Carthage.
28:58Just the journey from Gibraltar took them six years.
29:02Two thousand kilometres through Roman territory, heading east.
29:10They had reached the second and third generations in their search for a new home.
29:14Not many of those who had first fled from the Huns in their homeland in the cold, rainy north were
29:20left.
29:25The Vandals had left Spain and crossed the Mediterranean to take possession of the Roman provinces in Africa for themselves.
29:32The Emperor, too weak to fight them, made peace with the Vandals and generously handed over a part of Africa
29:39to their king, Gaiseric.
29:45Gaiseric was 40 years old, a general who was as brilliant as he was brutal, a clever strategist and diplomat.
29:54Their king, Gaiseric, was a deep thinker, silent, furious in anger, acquisitive, farsighted and extremely cunning.
30:06That is how the Gothic historian Yordanus described him.
30:11Gaiseric led his people for 50 years and made the Vandals into a power feared by Rome.
30:21They met no significant resistance in Africa as there was no longer a Roman army to block their way.
30:37So Gaiseric led his Vandals without major losses to Carthage.
30:45This is how archaeologists imagined Carthage looked.
30:49It was one of the largest port cities of antiquity.
30:54To protect it against the Vandals, a wall was built around the metropolis, but to no avail.
31:02Gaiseric took the city by surprise during peacetime.
31:05The 19th October 439, the people Vandals is victorious.
31:13He created a dream.
31:15He took the second city of the empire, Carthage.
31:20Carthage, the capital of Africa.
31:22Carthage, the center of the rich and luxury.
31:26A few years later, the Vandals will be declared the Vandals.
31:39However, according to Aisha Ben Abed, Carthage did not suffer under the Vandals rule.
31:46In fact, the ancient metropolis in the Bay of Tunis became a dangerous competition for Rome.
32:01The Carthage Basin has been here for thousands of years.
32:05The legendary prize of the Roman war and merchant fleet was here.
32:10It fell into the hands of the Vandals.
32:15They were not originally seafarers, but took to the sea very quickly.
32:22From here, the Vandals soon controlled distant parts of the Mediterranean with their fleet.
32:29They conquered the Balearic Islands, Sardinia, Corsica and Sicily.
32:36They sailed up the Tiber, sacked Rome and expanded their kingdom in Africa.
32:47Archaeologists have excavated the villa area of Carthage and partially reconstructed it.
32:54This is where the richest of the rich lived.
32:57The Vandal kings joined them in order to live a life of luxury like the Romans.
33:05So, the Vandals, when arriving at Carthage, it is evident that there was surely destruction.
33:11These destruction have been exaggerated by the Byzantine sources, the Roman sources and Byzantine sources.
33:20But what is sure is that there is a continuity, and today, more than ever, the archaeology proves it,
33:28there is a continuity in this possession and possession of the Vandal people in Carthage.
33:40To this day, Aisha Ben-Abed and her colleagues have not found any traces of destruction by the Vandals anywhere
33:47in the whole of Tunisia.
33:49Once they settled down, she says, they had only one interest, to assimilate, to integrate into society and live like
33:57civilized Romans.
34:07So, the Vandals rule is not a blot on Tunisia's history.
34:11On the contrary, it was a period of independence from Rome.
34:16Thus, like many countries in Europe, Tunisia also has a Germanic history.
34:34Archaeologists found important evidence of the Vandals rule deep in the south of Tunisia, in El Gouset, which is Arabic
34:42for the arcades.
34:49A baptismal font from the Vandal period lies buried under rubble.
34:54The Vandals are regarded as suppressors of the Roman Catholics here.
34:59The archaeologist, Fati Bajawi, has excavated the basilica of the Vandal king, Trazamund.
35:05He was more tolerant in religious matters than his opponents would have it, he says.
35:13The religious politics of the Vandals rule in Africa has completely changed.
35:19It is to say that there is not a lot of tolerance, but all the laws interdisant and all the
35:25laws instaurant the persecution have been allegeed.
35:29They have continued to exist, but they have been allegeed.
35:50The Vandals were Aryan Christians, but the local people were Roman Catholic Christians.
35:56The Vandals later gave up persecuting the Catholics in order to win them over.
36:05The basilica in El Gouset is evidence of this.
36:10Here, both Aryans and Catholics went to church, were married, and had their children baptised.
36:20The basilica was built in 521, in the 26th year of the rule of the Vandal king, Trazamund.
36:36Anno bicesimo domini regis Trazamundi.
36:40It is the only known inscription of the Vandals.
36:47After the Vandals failed to keep their promises to Rome, the empire sent General Belisarius with troops in 533.
36:56He defeated the Vandals convincingly.
36:59After 104 years, their empire in Africa ended forever.
37:06Over 100 years before, the Visigoths had journeyed through Greece and the Balkans fleeing from the Huns.
37:14In the year 408, they appeared in Italy.
37:21In 40 years of wandering, about two generations, they had travelled more than 3,000 kilometres.
37:29Alaric was their king.
37:34At the foot of the Italian Alps, they were hoping for more than asylum, for the emperor needed Germans as
37:41legionaries.
37:43Sometimes fighting, sometimes negotiating, they had moved from the Byzantine to the Roman world.
37:51Refugees between the fronts of the divided empire.
37:58All the Visigoths, 80 to 100,000 of them, were on their way to Rome, including 20,000 experienced warriors,
38:07a sizeable army.
38:17The army had lost many battles against the Romans, but not the war.
38:24Emperor Honorius was inclined to underestimate them.
38:27He lived to regret it.
38:38Ubi bene ibi patria.
38:42Where I live well, that is my country.
38:45And where could the Visigoths live better than in the land of their dreams, Italy?
38:52It was 409 AD.
38:55King Alaric sent an emissary to Emperor Honorius to ask whether his people could settle peacefully in Italy.
39:02And offering him the services of the Goths.
39:09Rome, the eternal city.
39:12The Visigoths admired the achievements of Roman civilization, the prosperity and the legal system.
39:19They did not want to destroy all that.
39:21The Germans wanted participation and integration.
39:25They wanted to become like the Romans.
39:30Alaric told the Emperor that the Visigoths were willing to defend the frontiers of the empire.
39:35And wanted to live in such harmony with the Romans that they could be taken for one people.
39:40But if the Emperor were to refuse the request, the stronger of the two would drive away the weaker, and
39:46the victor would rule in peace.
39:54The Emperor brusquely rejected Alaric's request.
39:58With their military strength greater than ever, the Visigoths were confident.
40:03Their army was extremely well equipped.
40:06Many of them had served as officers and generals in the Roman army.
40:16A Spangenhelm, or helmet, of the kind worn by the Germanic army leaders.
40:21The Visigoths were all professional soldiers, willing to serve Rome for gold, grain and land to settle.
40:29And to use their weapons against the empire's enemies.
40:41But although the Emperor in Italy no longer had any legions worth mentioning, he refused the Visigoths' request.
40:49He did not want them in Italy.
40:51He felt safe behind the walls of the cities.
40:59That could mean only one thing. War.
41:03War.
41:07In the year 410, the battle for Rome began.
41:12For 800 years, Rome's enemies had entered the city only as prisoners or slaves of the most powerful ancient empire.
41:21Never as conquerors.
41:27The Senate and the people of Rome felt safe.
41:30200 years earlier, Marcus Aurelius had had the foresight to have new walls built around Rome to stop the barbarians.
41:39The walls are still standing today.
41:44For the Visigoths, the city proved impregnable.
41:48As they were approaching, Emperor Honorius had the gates closed to Alaric's hordes.
41:54Apparently, 10,000 Romans were ready to defend the city.
41:59The thicker the grass, the easier it is to mow, Alaric is believed to have said.
42:09In August 410, the Visigoths besieged the eternal city.
42:14It was the third time.
42:16This time, they were serious.
42:18They cut off the water supply and blocked the grain shipments to Rome.
42:23Rome was thirsty and starving.
42:25Epidemics spread.
42:2760,000 Germanic slaves were waiting for their liberators.
42:32They had plenty of accounts to settle with the Romans.
42:35Turmoil reigned.
42:36To prevent things getting worse, a noble lady apparently had a gate opened for the Visigoths.
42:52For three days, an eternity for the Romans, the Visigoths pillaged, killed and raped.
43:00At Alaric's behest, the Visigoths sacked Rome.
43:04However, they did not set fire to it, as wild peoples usually do,
43:08and did not allow the sacred places to be desecrated.
43:15Roma Capta.
43:17On 24 August 410, Rome was captured.
43:22After 800 years, the most powerful city in the world
43:26was once again in the hands of strangers, of barbarians.
43:36While his warriors were marauding in Rome, Alaric proved himself to be a Christian.
43:42The Pantheon, the former temple of all the gods, was now a Roman Catholic church.
43:48For a thousand years, it was the largest in the world.
43:56Alaric placed all the priests under his personal protection.
44:00No one was allowed to touch them.
44:03And he forbade the looting of church treasures, for the Visigoths were Christians.
44:08Although they were Aryans, they respected the Roman Catholic Church and the Bishop of Rome.
44:22Many Romans preferred the Christian barbarians to their fellow citizens,
44:27who still offered bloody sacrifices to the heathen gods.
44:43Although the Visigoths did not believe Jesus was of one substance with God,
44:48they did believe in God the Father, read the same Bible, and say the same Christian prayers.
45:03Alaric never wanted to rule over the Empire.
45:06All he wanted was a place for his people in the Roman Empire.
45:10But the Emperor had refused him that.
45:13An error with fateful consequences.
45:16The city of Rome has been conquered, that previously conquered the whole world,
45:23lamented Hieronymus, a father of the church.
45:28Rome had lost much of its power.
45:31The Roman Empire had long been an invalid, barely able to survive without the Germanic peoples.
45:38So the Goths merely toppled what was already falling.
45:42Only after a further eight years of wandering and war were they able to settle in the Roman provinces of
45:49the south of France in 418.
45:51They finally became what they always wanted to be, legionaries in the service of Rome.
46:01As hospites, or guest workers for a period, they received latifundia, or estates from the Roman state.
46:10But like all guest workers, they would remain.
46:14The Visigoth immigrants must have lived in harmony with the local people.
46:19Today the historians are sure of that.
46:25But very few of those who had fled over the Danube from the Huns as children were still alive.
46:31From the knowledge of the old, from songs and stories, the historian Jordanus wrote the saga of the Goths.
46:39It tells of their ancestors, who had once left Scandinavia and travelled to the Black Sea and the Danube as
46:46far as the south of France.
46:47Of all the Germanic peoples on the Vilka Wanderung, the Visigoths had the longest journey to find a permanent home.
47:10The Visigoths were the first of the wandering Germanic tribes to found their own realm in the Roman Empire.
47:17The Visigoth Kingdom in the south of France.
47:20However, they did not destroy the Roman Empire, they established themselves in it.
47:27But danger still threatened them from the Huns.
47:33In 451, the Huns attacked Gaul, looting and murdering.
47:38Germanic tribes followed them.
47:41Ostrogoths, Herulians, Makomani, Burgundians and Frankish groups.
47:46A huge military column challenged Rome.
47:52At the head of the Huns was the most terrible of all warriors, Attila, the leader of so many victories
47:59and ruler of so many peoples.
48:02The scourge of God.
48:06History has demonised the king of the Huns and made him into an antichrist.
48:11It is true that Attila could only increase his kingdom at the expense of the Western Roman Empire.
48:18That is why he invaded Gaul.
48:23The campus Moriacus, or the Catalonian Plains.
48:26Here, near Troyes, in the heart of France, two gigantic armies opposed one another in a decisive battle.
48:36The battlefield was a plain with a gradual incline.
48:40General Aetius and his Romans formed the left flank, while King Theodoric and his Visigoths formed the right flank.
48:48It was 451 A.D.
48:52The historian Yordanis recorded what happened on that day.
48:56A turning point in Europe's destiny.
49:00The battle with the Huns lasted all day.
49:03The stream was swollen with blood.
49:06Nightfall put a stop to the battle.
49:08However, the result was uncertain.
49:14Only the next morning, when they saw the piles of corpses on the fields and saw that the Huns no
49:21longer dared to leave their camp, did the Romans and Visigoths believe that the battle was won.
49:33But the Visigoths were missing their king, Theodoric.
49:37They searched for him desperately among the dead.
49:42This part of the earth became the battlefield of countless peoples.
49:46How great must the hatred have been to make them all resort to arms against one another.
49:56Not only Huns and Romans lay among the dead on the Catalonian plains.
50:06Ostrogoths had fought against Visigoths, Franks from the Lower Rhine against Franks from the Upper Rhine.
50:13Germans against Germans.
50:17For them, loyalty and allegiance counted more than dissent.
50:21The relationship between their tribes did not prevent the Germans from fighting one another to the death.
50:35And then the Visigoths found their brave and noble king, Theodoric, among the corpses, pierced by the spear of an
50:42Ostrogoth from a related tribe, who had followed Attila's flags.
50:49It was forced fratricide, Yordanus wrote in his saga of the Goths.
50:57In the battle, however, it was the courageous Visigoth army that attacked Attila and the Huns and forced them to
51:03flee.
51:07Was it the barbarians, the Visigoths of all people, who saved the Roman Empire from the Huns?
51:15That's one way of looking at it.
51:17After they had terrorised Europe for 80 years, the myth of the invincible Huns was shattered.
51:39They had finally been defeated by the alliance of the Romans, Visigoths and Franks.
51:46Their rule in Europe had come to an end.
51:49Their king, Attila, died in 453 AD.
51:55The Huns moved back to the steppes of Asia.
51:59Just as they had appeared from nowhere, they vanished again, into nothing.
52:08In 463 AD, everything was open again.
52:12Would Rome regain its power and strength?
52:15Would the Germanic barbarians destroy the Roman Empire and the ancient civilisation?
52:22Or would they become the heirs of the Empire?
52:55The
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