Barbarians. The history of the barbarians: how it really was The history of the barbarians

Movements of barbarian tribes and their attacks on Roman provinces became commonplace. However, the Roman Empire managed to hold back this onslaught for the time being. At the end of the 4th century. Mass movements of Germanic and other barbarian tribes began, which were called the Great Migration of Peoples and ended with the conquest of the entire territory of the Western Roman Empire. What caused them?

The main reason for these movements was the growth of the population of barbarian tribes, caused by an increase in living standards due to the intensification of agriculture and the transition to permanent settlement. Barbarian tribes sought to seize the fertile lands of the Roman Empire and create permanent settlements on them. Numerous Germanic nobility used these campaigns to seize spoils and exploit the conquered population.

Huns. Invasion of the Visigoths into the territory of the Roman Empire. The Visigoths were the first to move into the empire. Gothic tribes until the 2nd century. lived in the lower reaches of the Vistula, where, according to ancient legends, they moved from Scandinavia. At the beginning of the 3rd century. Most of the Goths went to the southeast and settled in the Black Sea region (from the lower reaches of the Danube to the Don). The Goths, who settled in the forest zone in the west, separated from the eastern steppe people. The first were called the Visigoths (Visigoths), the second - Ostrogoths (Ostrogoths). In the Black Sea region, the Goths subjugated the Slavic and Scythian-Sarmatian population living there, as well as the Germanic tribe of the Heruls who settled there. Thus a large multi-tribal union was created, in which the Goths (Ostrogoths) were a minority. They borrowed a lot from local residents, particularly in the military field. Eastern Roman sources often call the Goths Sarmatians.

The Goths undertook military campaigns against the Roman Empire. The Heruls, who lived in the Azov region, carried out pirate raids on the Asia Minor coast. At the same time, the Goths were involved in trade relations with the empire and were subject to Roman influence. Christianity spread among them in the form of the Arian heresy. His preacher was Bishop Ulfilas (313-383), who compiled the Gothic alphabet and, it is believed, translated the Bible into Gothic. This translation is the oldest monument of German writing. The “Gothic power” reached its highest power during the time of the Ostrogothic king Ermanaric, who subjugated a number of Slavic tribes and expanded the borders of the Ostrogothic union far to the east. The Visigoths were not part of this association. They were drawn into the orbit of Roman influence.

In 375, the Huns, warlike nomads who moved from the depths of Asia and had already subjugated many peoples, invaded the Black Sea region. Under their blows, the Ostrogoth tribal union and its leader fell. Ermanaric, seriously wounded in the battle, committed suicide. Most of the Ostrogoths fell under the rule of the Huns. The Visigoths, fleeing the Hun threat, asked the Roman authorities to allow them to settle on the territory of the empire as allies. Emperor Valentes concluded an agreement with the Visigoths, and they were settled in Moesia. But the Roman authorities did not fulfill their promises, did not provide them with food and treated the Visigoths as slaves. This led to a barbarian uprising, which was supported by the population of Thrace. In the Battle of Adrianople (378), the Goths were victorious and Emperor Valens was killed. The Roman commander Theodosius barely managed to push the Goths away from Constantinople. Theodosius, who soon became emperor, concluded a peace treaty with the Visigoths, allowing them to settle on the best lands of the Balkan Peninsula as allies of the empire. For some time, the Goths were in peaceful relations with the Romans, but soon, after the death of Theodosius (395), they, under the leadership of King Allaric, began to launch devastating raids and tried to capture Constantinople. The Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire Arcadius was forced to pay a large ransom to the Visigoths and provide the rich province of Illyria. In 401, Allaric undertook a campaign in Northern Italy, but was defeated by Roman troops commanded by the military leader Stilicho.

At the beginning of the 5th century. The Western Roman Empire had to repel an unprecedented onslaught of barbarians. In 404, a mass of Germans led by Radagaisus invaded Italy from the upper reaches of the Danube. They laid siege to Florence. Stilicho mobilized all his forces and defeated them. Many barbarians were captured and enslaved. To defend Italy, Stilicho was forced to withdraw Roman troops from Britain, where the Anglo-Saxons had already begun to invade. The situation in Italy became catastrophic after the execution of Stilicho, who was convicted by the Roman Senate on suspicion of treason. Huge hordes of Visigoths, replenished by people from other barbarian tribes, occupied Northern and Central Italy and approached Rome. Emperor Honorius took refuge in Ravenna. Allarik demanded a large ransom and the surrender of all slaves of barbarian origin. These demands were satisfied, but the emperor refused to give the barbarians the provinces of Dalmatia, Noricum and Venice, which they sought. Then Rome was subjected to a famine blockade. On August 24, 410 the city fell. Allaric's army entered Rome and subjected it to terrible plunder. These events made an indelible impression on contemporaries. The fall of the “eternal city” was considered not only the end of the Roman Empire, but also a show of light. Supporters of paganism blamed Christians for everything. The famous figure of the Christian church, the philosopher Augustine the Blessed, in his essay “On the City of God,” contrasted the perishing “earthly kingdom” with the eternal “kingdom of God,” the prototype of which he considered the Christian church.

Having robbed Rome and captured huge booty, Allarik headed to the south of Italy, intending to move to Sicily and then to North Africa. But here the Visigoths failed. Soon after this, Allarich died. Having elected a new king, the Visigoths moved back to the north.

Visigothic kingdom. The Visigoths captured the southwestern part of Gaul and founded their kingdom there with its capital at Toulouse (419). Formally, they were considered federates of the empire, and their king was a Roman military leader, but in essence it was the first independent barbarian state on Roman territory. The Visigoths seized two-thirds of the arable land from local landowners and divided it among themselves “by lot.” So the barbarian warriors turned into communal peasants. In the second half of the 5th century. The territory of Gaul up to the Loire and most of Spain were conquered. After the loss of Aquitaine to the Franks in 507, the center of the Visigothic kingdom moved to Spain (capital Toledo). In 554, Byzantium captured the southeastern coast of Spain. Thus. The Visigothic kingdom controlled only part of the Iberian Peninsula; the northwestern part belonged to the kingdom of the Suebi.

The conquerors, having settled over a vast territory, constituted a minority of the population. The Visigoths did not create continuous settlements, but lived among the Spanish-Roman population, to which they were clearly inferior in number and level of development of material and spiritual culture. This, despite their special privileges - military profession, tax exemption, naturally led to the Romanization of the Goths. At the end of the 6th century. The Visigoths abandoned Arianism and adopted the Roman Christian religion, which further accelerated their assimilation. The mixing of the Visigoths with the local population contributed to the formation of feudal relations in Visigothic society. The peasants lost their freedom, the nobility turned into large landowners.

With the development of feudal relations in the Visigothic state, internal unrest began. This facilitated the Arab conquest of Spain.

Vandal kingdom. In the 3rd century. Vandals moved from the depths of Germany to the Middle Danube. Under the onslaught of the Huns, they moved west along with the Suebi and Allans (a tribe of Sarmatian origin that came from the east), breaking through at the beginning of the 5th century. Roman defensive line on the Middle Rhine and invaded Gaul and then Spain. In 428, the Vandals, together with the Allans, crossed the Strait (Gibraltar) to North Africa and began to conquer it. The Vandal king Geiseric skillfully used the current situation - the rebellion of the Roman governor Boniface, the liberation struggle of the local Berber population, the agonistic movement, and within ten years conquered most of the Roman possessions. Thus, a new state was created on Roman territory - the kingdom of the Vandals with its capital in Carthage (439). Like the Visigoths, the Vandals were considered federates of the empire, which did not stop them from appropriating its territory and plundering its cities. As Arians, the Vandals seized the lands and property of the Roman church, as well as the wealth of the Roman nobility. They captured the islands of the Mediterranean Sea - Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, the Balearic Islands. In 455, the Vandals sacked Rome. At the same time, many cultural and artistic monuments were destroyed. Later, the term “vandalism” began to be used to describe the senseless destruction of cultural property. The Vandal kingdom lasted until 534 and was conquered by Byzantium.

Kingdom of Burgundy. East German Burgundian tribe in the 4th century. moved to the Middle Rhine and founded his kingdom in the Worms region, which was defeated by the Huns. The remnants of the Burgundians (with the permission of the Roman commander Aetius) settled as federates in Sabaudia (Savoy). Later, the Burgundians occupied the entire Upper and Middle Rhone and in 457 founded a new kingdom with its capital in Lyon. Like other barbarians, the Burgundians divided the land with the local population, seizing first half and later two-thirds of the arable land, as well as half of the estates and common lands and one-third of the slaves from the Gallo-Roman landowners. The Burgundians settled in consanguineous groups (farami), which later turned into territorial communities. Settlement among the Gallo-Romans contributed to the decomposition of communal-tribal relations among the Burgundians and the growth of social differentiation. The Kingdom of Burgundy maintained links with the Roman Empire until its fall. In 534 it was conquered by the Franks.

Fight against the Huns. The Huns, having subjugated a number of Germanic tribes - the Ostrogoths, Heruls, Gepids, Quads, Marcomanni, Scirs, Thuringians, Eastern Burgundians, created a huge military alliance. At the end of the 4th century. they invaded Pannonia and soon turned it into the center of their possessions. The Western Roman Empire and Byzantium used the Huns to fight against barbarian invasions and suppress uprisings in the provinces, which undoubtedly contributed to the strengthening of the Hunnic alliance. In the 5th century the Huns already had hereditary power. They remained nomads, and their conquests were devastating: they destroyed villages and even cities, turning the captured territories into pastures for livestock. The Huns became especially dangerous for the European peoples during the time of Attila (435-453), nicknamed “the scourge of God” for his cruelty.

In 451, the Huns invaded Gaul and besieged Orleans. The common danger forced the Western Roman Empire and the barbarian peoples to join forces. The decisive battle, nicknamed the “Battle of the Nations,” took place on the Catalaunian fields (near Troyes). An allied army, consisting of the Romans, Visigoths, Franks and part of the Burgundians, under the command of the Roman commander Aetius, defeated the Huns, along with whom the conquered Germanic tribes fought. Nevertheless, Attila made a campaign in Italy back in 452 and captured huge booty there. He died in 453, and the Hunnic alliance soon fell apart. The tribes conquered by the Huns gained independence.

The end of the Western Roman Empire. Despite the loss of almost all of their provinces. The Western Roman Empire still formally continued to exist. The imperial court had long been located not in Rome, but in Ravenna, and the affairs of the empire were actually managed by barbarian military leaders who commanded mercenaries from barbarian tribes. In 476, the military leader Odoacer, who came from the Germanic tribe of the Sciri, dethroned the young Roman emperor Romulus Augustulus, executed his father Orestes and became the de facto ruler of Italy and Rome. The year 476 is considered to be the date of the fall of the Western Roman Empire, although in fact Rome fell back in 410, when it was conquered by the Visigoths. Odoacer himself did not believe that by this act he was abolishing the empire. He sent the signs of imperial dignity to the Eastern Roman emperor in Constantinople. But in essence it was a radical revolution. In Italy, as elsewhere in the former Western Roman Empire, the barbarians became the masters. Odoacer carried out a reform, giving his warriors land, for which he took away a third of their land property from local landowners. All the barbarian kingdoms in the west, considered Roman "allies", gained independence.

Ostrogothic kingdom. After the collapse of the Hunnic union, the Ostrogoths settled in the Danube regions as federates of the Byzantine Empire. The leader of the Ostrogoths, Theodoric, from the noble family of Amal, subjugated almost all the Ostrogoths and began to rule as king. In 488, with the consent of the Eastern Roman emperor, he organized a campaign in Italy with the aim of conquering it. The Ostrogoths failed to achieve a decisive victory. In 493, Theodoric concluded an agreement with Odoacer on the division of Italy. But soon Odoacer was treacherously killed at Theodoric’s feast, and all of Italy came under the rule of the Ostrogothic king. Thus a new barbarian state was created - the kingdom of the Ostrogoths. In addition to Italy, it included regions along the Danube - part of modern Switzerland, Austria and Hungary (Pannonia). The capital was Ravenna.

The Ostrogoths settled mainly in Northern and Central Italy. They tore away one third of the land (mainly from the barbarians, who had been allocated at one time by Odoacer) and divided it among themselves. Theodoric also confiscated the possessions of the fiscus and empty lands and distributed them to the nobility. Italo-Roman landowners whose land was not confiscated were required to pay the Goths one-third of their income. Thus, large landholdings were not eliminated. Theodoric even gave some Roman aristocrats new possessions. In general, as a result of the Ostrogothic conquest, small communal land ownership increased slightly, but a radical transformation of agrarian relations did not occur. Under the influence of Roman orders, the Ostrogoths quickly disintegrated clan ties and social differentiation occurred.

Royal power among the Ostrogoths very soon lost its military-democratic character and acquired despotic features. Theodoric considered himself the successor of the Roman emperors and imitated them in every possible way. Theodoric's legislation was based on Roman law. Germanic common law was not laid down and legislated as in other barbarian kingdoms. In Italy, Roman law and the former state apparatus were preserved; the Senate functioned according to the old tradition. Roman nobility were recruited to higher positions. The Roman Church was given equal rights with the Gothic Arian Church. For the Goths, there was a special German system of government headed by counts. Theodoric's policies increased ethnic disunity in the country, which made it difficult for the Romanization of the Goths and the interaction of the Roman and German social systems.

The Gothic military elite sought to weaken the influence of the Roman nobility and seize its wealth. After Theodoric's death this led to open conflict. Queen Amalasuntha, who inherited the throne, tried to continue her father’s policies, patronizing the Roman nobility and focusing on Byzantium, which cost her not only the throne, but also her life. A fierce struggle for power began among the Ostrogothic nobility. The Byzantine Empire, which had long sought to conquer Italy, took advantage of this.

In 534, the Byzantine emperor sent a huge army and fleet to Italy under the command of Belisarius. Roman aristocrats and Catholic clergy supported Byzantium. In a short time, the Byzantines captured most of the country, including Rome and Ravenna. However, the war did not end. Not only the barbarians, but also the lower strata of the Roman population opposed the restoration policy of Byzantium. The leader of the Goths, Totila, who was elevated to the royal throne, brutally dealt with the pro-Byzantine-minded Roman nobility, deprived them of their possessions and income, and at the same time alleviated the situation of the colons and other dependent people, trying to attract them to his army. This made it possible to achieve a turning point in the war and expel the Byzantines from Northern and Central Italy. But Byzantium sent large military reinforcements to Italy and in 552 defeated the Goths. Totila fell on the battlefield, and the Goths fought a war of liberation for another three years. In 555, Italy, devastated by the Twenty Years' War, was completely conquered by Byzantium. Emperor Justinian, in a law specially issued for Italy, ordered that all lands, slaves and colonies be returned to their former masters. A significant part of the property was taken away from the Ostrogoths. Many Goths left the country; only in the north of Italy was the Gothic population partially preserved. Nevertheless, Byzantium was not able to completely restore the old slave-owning order in Italy.

"Pangobard kingdom. Thirteen years after the Byzantine conquest, the Lombards invaded Italy from the north. They had already settled in Pannonia, creating a large tribal union there, which included not only Germanic tribes (Saxons, Gepids), but also Sarmatians and Bulgarians. Byzantium at one time used the Lombards as allies in the war with the Ostrogoths. Now the Lombard king Alboin decided to recapture Italy from Byzantium. Compared to other Germanic tribes, the Lombards were the most brutal conquerors: they destroyed cities, exterminated civilians or turned them into slaves. Not content with one or two thirds of the land, like other barbarians, they took almost all the property from rich landowners, and expelled them themselves or made them their slaves. The entire local population was taxed and placed under the control of the Lombard dukes.

Gradually the Lombards conquered most of Italy. The entire northern part of the country belonged to them. In Central Italy, only the region of Ravenna (the Exarchate of Ravenna, which remained under Byzantine rule) and a small territory near Rome were not included in the Lombard state. In southern Italy, the Lombards owned the duchies of Benevento and Spoleto. The most numerous settlements of the Lombards were in the valley of the Po River, which was called Lombardy (Lombardy). The Lombard conquest dealt a final blow to the remnants of slavery in Italy and had a decisive influence on the development of feudalism.

Under the influence of a more developed socio-economic system in the conquered country, the Lombards quickly disintegrated communal tribal ties, established private ownership of land and intensified social differentiation. The old military-democratic system was falling into decay. Instead of a general militia, the royal squad acquired decisive importance. For their service, the warriors received land plots and turned into feudal landowners.

As a result of the formalization of feudal relations, the position of royal power was weakened. Political struggle intensified in the country. The dukes and other magnates, who kept the mass of the population dependent and had military squads, strived for complete independence. At the same time, the foreign policy situation of the Lombard state became more complicated. The popes sought to seize the Lombard lands along the Tiber River and called on their allies - the Frankish kings - for help. In 754 and 757 Pepin the Short defeated the Lombard state and took away part of its territory, giving it to the pope.

The concept of “barbarians” appeared in Ancient Greece. This is what they called any foreigners who arrived in Greece from another country. Subsequently, the Greek tradition took root in Ancient Rome. Roman citizens considered any people not related to Roman culture to be barbarians.

Who are barbarians, where did this name come from?

At present it is difficult to say where the name “barbarians” came from. There is only one hypothesis that can partially explain its origin. The ancient Greeks knew the Varii tribe, which are found in written sources of those years. It is not known for sure whether the Varians were Germans, Celts or some other people, but they lived near the island of Rügen.

It is quite possible that the Varia were a super ethnic group, which later split into several large tribes. At least the historians and chroniclers of Ancient Rome knew the following barbarian peoples:

• Skifov;
• Germans;
• Alanov;
• Ready;
• Sarmatov;
• Gauls and many other barbarian tribes.

Most of the barbarian tribes were warlike and constantly raided the border regions of the Roman Empire.

But the ancient Greeks divided the barbarians into only two tribes:

• Hyperboreans;
• Skifov.

If the Hyperboreans were understood as all foreigners from the northern lands, then the Scythians were understood as the tribes of the northern Black Sea region.

Descendants of Hercules - Scythians

The ancient Scythians, who are considered the ancestors of the Russian barbarians, were known to the ancient Greeks as harsh and cruel warriors. They periodically attacked the lands of the Greeks and their allies, but since their tribes were scattered, they did not cause significant damage. However, Scythians were often hired as mercenaries and guards.

Even in those days, some Scythian tribes were influenced by Hellenic culture and began to lead a settled life. They were engaged in trade and crafts, and their religion was practically no different from the Greek. Currently, examples of Scythian culture made of gold and precious stones have been preserved. They were made by masters of their craft who were not inferior to the best Greek craftsmen of that time.

If you believe Herodotus, the main gods of the cultural Scythians were:

• Hercules;
• Ares;
• Hestia;
• Zeus and other Greek gods.

The fact that the gods of war are at the head of the Scythian pantheon clearly demonstrates the warlike nature of this people.

Alans - legendary descendants of the Trojans

The barbarian tribes of the Alans, who are mentioned in chronicles as Ases, Roxalans or Yazigs, were nomads moving along the steppes of the Volga and Dnieper regions. It is very likely that the Alans were the same legendary Trojan Aesir. Not all Alans were nomads. Some of them led a sedentary lifestyle and lived in clay half-dugouts.

The ancient geographer Strabo, mentioning the Alans, calls them the last known Scythians, and talks about the battle of the Roxalans with the Persian king Mithridates. In that battle, the Alan tribes were able to gather an army of 50,000 soldiers to help the Scythian king Palak. Despite their bravery, the barbarian armadas were unable to resist the civilized army of the Persians and were defeated.

The next mention of the Asa-Alans appeared around the 2nd century BC. Then these barbarian tribes unexpectedly appeared in the territories of modern Crimea, where they began to fight the Bosporan Scythian state.

The Goths and the famous conquests of Germanarich

Soon, cruel Gothic tribes came to the Black Sea region in search of more fertile lands. Arriving with their leader Berebista, the Goths immediately devastated the following countries:

• Illyria;
• Thrace;
• Many Celtic tribes.

Arriving in Dacia, the Goths mixed with the local barbarians, the Dacians, since they were related tribes. Strabo claimed that they also got along well with the ancient Germans, constantly concluding military alliances against Rome. However, for ancient Rome, barbarian raids at that time were not scary. As a rule, the border regions of the empire, which were inhabited by conquered peoples, suffered. For the barbarians, a campaign against Rome was a real adventure, which could bring both enormous wealth and glory, and lead to the death of half the army.

The most famous Gothic commander was Hermanaric. His military campaign took place in the second half of the 4th century AD. The conquests of the Gothic leader took place as follows:

1. The Heruli were conquered first;
2. Then Germanaric's army defeated the Bosporan kingdom;
3. Next, the Antes, Sklavens and part of the Venets were defeated.

After this, having gathered the conquered tribes under his banners, the famous commander made a grandiose military campaign, which began from the Baltic Sea and ended in the east of Byzantium.

Like most barbarian commanders, the Gothic leader died a violent death. Germanarich was stabbed to death by the brothers of one of his wives, whom he ordered to be torn to pieces by horses.

Veneti barbarian tribe

The life of barbarians from the Veneti tribe took place in the northern territories, not far from the Baltic Sea. Some scientists consider this tribe to be the descendants of the Vanir, who were mentioned in the ancient Greek “Younger Edda”. The origins of the Veneti are still unclear. There are several points of view on this matter:

• It is possible that the Veneti are related to the Vandals;
• According to one version, the Veneti are the ancestors of the Western Slavs;
• Some give a description of the Venedian warriors, claiming that they are similar to the Russians.

Basically, scientists agree that the Wends and Vandals are representatives of the same super ethnic group.

Vandals - destroyers of Rome

Almost every person in the modern world knows about the tribe of vandals. The word “vandal” has long become a common noun. Vandals are called rude and uncultured people. In the 15th century, the outstanding educator Mavro Orbini proved that this tribe is related to the Slavs. Orbini used the works of Roman and Greek authors as sources of information.

This theory is partly confirmed by Polish legends, which say that their people descended from Prince Vandal. Even in Russian chronicles there is a legend about the Novgorod Tsar Vandal, who was the ancestor of all the Slavs.

How the barbarians conquered the Roman Empire

Although Rome managed to conquer and subjugate vast territories, the eastern lands still lived their own unique life. Of course, there was no question of any Barbarian Empire, but tribes often entered into alliances with each other and organized campaigns together on the territory of the Roman Empire. Although the border of the Roman Empire was protected, cohorts of legionaries could not be in several places at the same time. This was the main component of the barbarian military strategy. Suddenly raiding the border areas, the barbarians burned and plundered everything in their path.

The year 370 was of great importance for the future of the entire Roman Empire. This year, Hunnic warriors attacked the Alans, who were fighting against the Goths. Because of this, the Alans and Goths united and tried to repel the Hunnic hordes. The battle ended in defeat, and the remnants of the Goths and Alans invaded the Balkan lands. There they defeated most of the local tribes, after which they entered into a series of military alliances with the Vandals, Burgundians and Suebi against Rome.

Already in 406, a united barbarian army invaded Italy, where it managed to plunder and destroy not only villas and settlements, but also many large cities, including Florence. The most important among the commanders of the barbarian army was Radigast. Judging by the name, this leader came from a noble family. If you believe the legends, the leader of the barbarian army vowed to destroy Rome to the ground.

Most likely, Radigast, who had gathered a huge army under his banner, would have destroyed the eternal city, but he was overtaken by death almost under the city itself. For the inhabitants of the Roman Empire, the name Radigaste personified horror. Wherever the army passed, enormous human sacrifices were made. The barbarians did not even spare children.

Bloody campaign of barbarians across Europe

Since the Roman army in Italy could not delay the barbarians, their hordes headed to the West. In 409, a united army consisting of Alans, Suevi and Vandals entered the territory of Spain. The barbarian horde was commanded by King Gunteric. With the help of the local military leader Gerontius, who took advantage of the situation and decided to rebel against Rome, the barbarians defeated the Spanish legions, establishing their rule over the Iberian Peninsula. The conquered territory was divided as follows:

• The Alans received the territory in which modern Portugal and part of central Spain are located;
• The Vandals received the territory of modern Andalusia;
• Suevi - all northwestern islands.

Judging by the division of the territory, the Alans formed the basis of the barbarian army. Roman troops subsequently tried repeatedly to drive the barbarians out of Spain, but they were able to strengthen themselves by building protected settlements and fortresses.

The adventures of the barbarian army did not end there, as they had to fight the West Goths, who attacked them from the territory of Gaul, having entered into an alliance with the Roman troops. Rome always tried to pit various tribes of barbarians against each other, and after its weakening, this tactic became the main one. The Goths began to gradually push the united barbarian army south.

African campaign of the barbarian army

In 428, a barbarian army consisting of 80,000 Alans and Vandals decided to leave the territories of Spain and, led by their king Geiseric, crossed into northern Africa. Using the experience of the Spanish company, they agreed with the governor Boniface, who was dissatisfied with Rome. As a result of the agreement, the barbarian troops captured Carthage, losing only a small part of their army.

The barbarians managed to create a new kingdom on the ruins of the African part of the Roman Empire. Oddly enough, the barbarians turned out to be quite a cultured people. Rude vandals, who became the talk of the town, opened many new temples, cathedrals, schools and theaters. By decree of King Geiseric, all vices of the local population of Carthage were strictly persecuted, and the barbarians themselves turned out to be zealous Christians. This state, despite the help of numerous friends and fellow tribesmen in Europe, was conquered in the 6th century by Emperor Justinian.

Soon the warlike Goths also had to go on a military campaign, as hordes of wild Huns began to force them out. The Goths managed to capture first the territory of modern Bulgaria, then the entire Balkan Peninsula. In 410 the Goths captured Rome.

The Huns and their famous leader Attila

Although the origins of Attila are still unclear, it is believed that the son of Mundzuk traced his ancestry to the White Huns, who in ancient times waged war with China. If you believe historians who talked with people who saw the legendary Hun commander, then Attila was a man with a Mongolian complexion, and his skin was very light. Now it is difficult to give an objective assessment of this information, but other sources simply do not exist.

According to the same ancient historians and chroniclers, Attila's power extended from the steppes of Scythia to the dense forests of Germany. Some written sources and legends of various nations claim that Hunnic warriors reached the Volga and the Baltic Sea. Despite the fact that Attila reached Gaul, he failed to defeat the Roman army. Having gathered about 500,000 soldiers under his banner, the Hun commander led his army to Rome.

In 451, the Battle of Chalons took place, in which the following barbarian tribes took the side of the Huns:

• Rugi;
• Heruli;
• Franks;
• Gepids;
• West Goths;
• Burgundians.

The Ost-Goths and Alans fought on the side of the empire. In this battle, both sides lost between 150 and 300,000 people. Horrified by the huge losses, Attila decided to withdraw his army. This campaign significantly weakened the power of the leader of the Huns, who died two years later.

According to the official version, Attila died due to excessive consumption of wine, but since poison was often added to wine at that time, most likely the famous commander was simply eliminated. The death of the ruler of the Barbarian Empire marked the beginning of a split. The Germanic tribes gained independence, some of the Slavs formed the Bulgarian ethnic group, and some of the Eastern Slavs went beyond the Dniester.

Theodoric's campaign and the emergence of the West Gothic power

At the beginning of the 4th century, power in the Eastern Roman Metropolis fell into the hands of the East Gothic king Theodoric, who served the Byzantine throne. His army of more than 100,000 warriors conquered the Apennine Peninsula. Ravenna became the capital of the new state.

Around this time, the West Goths began to conquer Gaul. After the army invaded the Pyrenees, the Alans and Vandals moved south. The Goths concluded peace and military treaties with the Suevi, after which they began to create their own state. The first king of the West Gothic state was King Ataulf, who was from the ancient Baltic family.

The fate of the Vandals in the 4th century AD

The Vandals, who, together with the Alans, captured Carthage, establishing their own strong state, constantly fought off the legions of Justinian. In the end, Carthage could not resist, and the army of the Byzantine emperor captured it. This event occurred in 534. After capturing the city, the emperor issued a number of decrees that infringed on the local population:

• All noble representatives of the Vandal and Alan tribes lost almost all their privileges;
• Byzantine orders were introduced in the city;
• Arian churches were closed and Orthodox churches opened in their place.

All discontent was brutally suppressed, rebels were executed or sent into slavery. The Arian priests, dissatisfied with the new order, tried to rouse the people into an armed uprising and soon they succeeded. The armed uprising was led by the Vandal warrior Stotz. He was able to gather 400 Vandal warriors, with whom he fled from the ships. Soon another 8 thousand people went over to the side of the rebels, and then 70% of the local army.

Upon learning of this, the Byzantine Emperor Justinian sent legions to suppress the uprisings. As a result of punitive measures, less than 10% of the rebel army, which numbered about 170,000 people, remained. All local residents with Vandal and Alan roots were forced to flee, as the emperor's troops robbed and killed everyone indiscriminately.

Over the course of 10-20 years, Carthage lost almost all of its inhabitants. The majority of the white population was forced to flee to Italy, Byzantium and Spain. According to Byzantine historians, who recorded the events of those years, wars in northern Africa claimed more than 5,000,000 inhabitants.

Slavic wars with Byzantium

Emperor Justinian did not have long to rest on his laurels as the conqueror of the barbarians. In 558, a threat approached Byzantium in the form of Slavic barbarians. An army of Slavs led by the leader Zavergan in the amount of 3,000 people was able to reach the walls of Constantinople. Despite the superior forces of the Byzantine army, the Slavic warriors showed such an indomitable thirst for victory, skill and cruelty that the Byzantines chose to pay them a huge tribute rather than continue to fight.

Accustomed to war, Zavergan became famous as a master of psychological attack. At every opportunity, he demonstrated to the Byzantines what would happen to them if the Slavs won. Picturesque executions were constantly carried out in places open to the eyes of the enemy and mass human sacrifices were carried out.

After these events, the Byzantine emperor Justinian tried to prevent the formation of tribal Slavic unions, constantly sending gifts and quarreling Slavic leaders with each other. Such tactics quickly bore fruit, and the barbarians were mired in bloody civil strife.

At the same time, Byzantium began to contact the Avars tribe, who were of Turkic origin. These steppe warriors in different years could both serve Byzantium and plunder its borders. To rid himself of two enemies, Emperor Justinian sent the Avars, with whom friendly relations were established at that time, against the Slavs.

Famous campaigns of Rus' against Byzantium

At the end of the 8th and beginning of the 9th century, the formation of the people of Rus' began. Russian warriors in 862 created the state of Rus', which began expansion to the south. The main reason for this was the need to establish control over the ancient trade route “From the Varangians to the Greeks.” In addition, Rus' sought to capture Constantinople, which had accumulated untold wealth. Until the mid-11th century, Russian barbarians tried to capture the capital of Byzantium:

• The first recorded raid by the Russian army occurred at the beginning of the 9th century;
• In the 830s, the Russians managed to sack Amastris;
• In the 860s, Rus' launched a great campaign against Constantinople;
• In 907, Prince Oleg set out on a campaign against Constantinople. As a result of this campaign, a trade agreement was concluded with Byzantium and the prince received a large tribute;
• Prince Igor also made two campaigns against Constantinople in the period from 941 to 944. If the first campaign ended in failure, then the second ended with the payment of tribute and a peace treaty;

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Internal and external forces took part in the social revolution that destroyed the slave-owning formation in the Mediterranean. Within the Roman Empire, the bearers of the new, feudal tendency were the owners of estates of a new type, who followed the feudal path, and the civil and military servants who were in their service. Feudalization embraced the broad masses of the population - primarily the coloni and other categories of small dependent holders of land plots, whom Roman legislation consistently and persistently brought closer to slaves planted on the land.

The second, external, camp of participants in the social revolution that crushed the Roman slaveholding power was made up of barbarians. In the IV-V centuries. the balance of power between the Roman Empire and the barbarian periphery changed in favor of the barbarians. The tribes surrounding the empire grew in numbers and became stronger economically and militarily. During the last century of the Roman Empire, there were numerous invasions of barbarian tribes from beyond the Rhine and Danube borders into Roman territory. The barbarians settled in the lands of the western half of the empire and formed their own kingdoms.

When considering the social revolution that took place at the turn of antiquity and the Middle Ages, one must not confuse the subjective goals and objective results of the activities of various social forces. Subjectively, according to their perceived immediate interests, the population of the Roman Empire and the barbarian conquerors who invaded it usually turned out to be enemies. The conquerors brought death and ruin to the population of the empire. If emperors or individual magnates entered into an alliance with barbarian tribes in order to use them in the struggle for power or to protect against the invasion of other barbarian tribes, then land for the settlement of barbarian allies was again allocated at the expense of the local population.

The relationship between the population of the Roman Empire and the barbarians who settled in the 4th-5th centuries. on its territory depended on specific conditions. In some cases, the barbarians undertook violent conquests, and the rulers of the empire and, to the best of their ability, its population, especially the inhabitants of fortified cities, resisted them. In other cases, barbarians entered the territory of the empire as allies, who were allocated lands for settlement. Then the division of land and other property, as well as slaves, was carried out between the barbarians and the local slave-owning landowners. Sometimes there was a transition of individuals or groups of the population of the empire to the side of the barbarians.

But the main thing was that the majority of the population of the empire, dissatisfied with the existing situation in it and in one form or another actually fought against the slave system (through popular movements, the restructuring of production on a feudal basis, the political isolation of large land holdings that acquired the features of feudal estates, and etc.), and the barbarians invading it were doing a common historical thing - they crushed the Roman slave-owning empire, that is, they were objective allies in the social revolution, which destroyed the existing formation and cleared the ground for the next, feudal formation. The transition from antiquity to the feudal Middle Ages was a long and painful process both for the masses of the late Roman Empire and for the barbarians who participated in the Great Migration.

In the III-V centuries. Numerous military-tribal alliances arose in Central and South-Eastern Europe. A Gothic union was formed in the Northern Black Sea region. The Goths are an East Germanic tribe that at the beginning of our era lived on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea, at the mouth of the Vistula, and in the 2nd century. moved from the Baltic states to the Black Sea region. The Gothic League included two main tribal masses: the Visigoths (western Goths) in the lower reaches of the Dniester and the Ostrogoths (eastern Goths) in the lower reaches of the Dnieper. The Goths lived in the territory immediately adjacent to the Black and Azov Seas. The Goths were led by military tribal leaders - kings. Other tribal unions were also led by similar leaders.

Beyond the Rhine and Danube, other military-tribal alliances of the Germans also formed. They were located in the territory from the Rhine in the west to the Vistula in the east, from the upper and middle Danube in the south to the North and Baltic seas in the north; northern Germanic tribes lived on the Scandinavian Peninsula, as well as on the Jutland Peninsula (in the territory of modern Denmark), where in the 3rd-5th centuries. Jutes and Angles were known.

The Germanic tribes that lived in Central Europe are usually divided into western (from the Rhine to the Elbe) and eastern (from the Elbe to the Vistula). Among the West Germans stood out powerful alliances of the Franks (on the middle and lower Rhine) and their eastern neighbors - the Saxons, Alemanni (in the upper reaches of the Rhine and Danube), and the Lombards (who lived along the left bank of the middle and lower Elbe). Among the East Germans, the most famous were the tribal unions of the Burgundians, Suevi, Vandals and Marcomanni. The Burgundians lived in the lower reaches of the Oder and along the southern coast of the Baltic Sea; Suevi - between the middle Elbe and the middle Oder; Vandals - between the middle Oder and middle Vistula; the Marcomanni lived in the upper reaches of the Elbe, occupying the territory as far as the upper Oder in the east and to the middle Danube in the south.

Starting from the upper reaches of the Oder and Vistula, south and east towards the Black Sea and to the upper reaches of the Oka and Volga, a vast territory inhabited by Slavic tribes stretched. To the north of the Slavs were the Baltic tribes.

Tribes that lived in the neighborhood of the Roman Empire beyond the Rhine and Danube, dating back to the 3rd century. intensified their attack on the empire. Under pressure from the Goths, Rome in the 3rd century. withdrew his troops and part of the Roman colonists from Dacia (the territory of modern Romania).

In the attacks of barbarian military-tribal alliances on the Roman Empire in the 4th-5th centuries. Not only Germanic tribes took part, but also other tribes who by this time lived in Central and South-Eastern Europe interspersed with Germanic tribes or who advanced to Central Europe under pressure from the Huns from the east. For example, the Germans - Vandals and Sueves, together with the Iranian-speaking tribe of Alans (Alans are descendants of the Scythian tribal union of the Sarmatians, torn by the Great Migration of Peoples from their habitat in the Don basin.) in the second half of the 4th and early 5th centuries. made a grandiose migration from Central Europe through the Danube and Southern Gaul, first to Spain, and then to North Africa.

The invasion of the Huns from the east into Southern Europe in the 70s of the 4th century. exacerbated relations between European peoples: many of them were displaced and began to move, crowding out their neighbors. The main flow of the Great Migration of Peoples poured in a western direction - to the lands of the Roman Empire.

The Huns, an ethnically diverse horde that included proto-Turkic, possibly proto-Mongol, Ugric and other tribes, made a terrifying impression on the European peoples with their unusual appearance, way of life and military customs. The numerous Hun cavalry horde turned out to be a terrible enemy for settled agricultural peoples. They were unable to provide sufficient resistance to the Huns. Moving from the east, the Huns in the early 70s of the 4th century. crossed the Volga and attacked the Alans who lived southeast of the Don in the Azov region. They subjugated some of the Alans and included them in their horde; these Alans then moved along with the Huns further to the west. Another part of the Alans left the Huns for the Caucasus, where they settled; together with local ethnic groups they became the ancestors of the Ossetians.

Having dealt with the Alans, the Huns in 375 attacked the Ostrogoths in the Northern Black Sea region and defeated them. Part of the Ostrogoths was included in the Hunnic tribal association, and the other part fled across the Danube into Roman territory, following the Visigoths.

The Visigoths, fleeing the Huns, turned to the Eastern Roman Emperor Valens with a request to allow them to settle in the empire as federates and received consent. Thus, formally the resettlement of the Visigoths to Roman territory occurred with the consent of the empire, but in fact it would hardly have been able to oppose this resettlement. Ammianus Marcellinus compares the large mass of Gothic settlers with Libyan sand raised by the wind. Having abandoned almost all their property, they crossed the Danube on ships, boats, rafts and by swimming, and many drowned.

By agreement with the government of the empire, the Visigoths were supposed to receive food from the Romans for the first time and land in the border area. For their part, the Visigoths pledged to serve in the Roman forces. But Roman officials were slow or failed to implement the treaty. Famine began among the Visigoths, surrounded by Roman guards. Roman slave traders bought slaves from them for next to nothing, and then their own children. All this caused indignation of the Goths, and they rebelled. The slaves, their fellow tribesmen, as well as the miners of the gold mines of Thrace, who were in a very difficult situation, went over to their side. These local residents served as guides for the Goths. Emperor Valens called to his aid Gratian, the ruler of the western half of the empire. However, events unfolded in such a way that Valens was forced to enter into battle with the Goths, without waiting for Gratian’s approach.

The battle of the Romans with the Goths took place in 378 near the city of Adrianople (modern Edirne) in Thrace, west of Constantinople. The Roman army was defeated; Emperor Valens also died in the battle. Then the Goths scattered throughout the surrounding areas, engaged in plunder. Attempts by the Goths to capture Adrianople and other cities were unsuccessful due to the determined resistance of the townspeople and the inability of the Germans to conduct a proper siege of cities. Approaching Constantinople, the Goths met resistance from the townspeople and mercenary Arab cavalry; this forced them to move away from the capital.

The new emperor was the famous commander Theodosius (379-395), who for the last time managed to unite the entire Roman Empire under his rule. In 382, ​​he suppressed the Gothic uprising partly by force and partly by ceding lands to them on the Balkan Peninsula: the Goths were settled as foederates in Moesia, Thrace and Macedonia.

In 395, Theodosius, dying, divided the empire between his sons: the eldest son Arcadius received the eastern half, the younger son Honorius received the western half. This division was the last and final for the Roman Empire: two states were formed - the Latin-speaking Western and Greek-speaking Eastern Roman Empires. In fact, the western and eastern halves of the former united Roman Empire, which had long been isolated, turned into independent states hostile to each other. The Eastern Roman Empire later became known as Byzantium, but its population continued to call themselves Romans, that is, “Romans.”

The Eastern Roman Empire was richer and stronger than its western neighbor. It suffered less from the crisis of the 3rd century, since in the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire the classical form of slavery was and had previously been less widespread; workers like colons predominated here, and in a number of provinces, for example in the Danube, a free peasantry remained; in eastern cities, to a greater extent than in western ones, the work of free artisans was preserved. Thanks to the developed foreign and internal trade of Byzantine cities, the treasury of the Eastern Roman emperors was richer, and this allowed them to maintain a large army or pay off barbarians. Finally, a very important role, apparently, was played by the fact that the main flow of the Great Migration took a western direction. True, here it should be recognized that Byzantium had a major hand in sending the majority of the barbarians to the West.

In 402, the Visigoths, encouraged by Byzantium, invaded Italy. The Western Roman government of Honorius, actually headed by a talented military-political figure, a German from the Vandal tribe, Stilicho, organized a rebuff to the Visigoths. In subsequent years, Roman troops from the western provinces were drawn to the Apennine Peninsula to protect Italy. Thus, in 407, Stilicho summoned Roman legions from Britain, which marked the end of Roman rule in this country. Gaul, Spain, North Africa and Britain were flooded in the coming decades by the invasion of the Vandals, Burgundians, Suevi, Franks, Angles, Saxons and other Germanic, as well as some other barbarian tribes.

In 408, Stilicho died as a result of court intrigues. Having learned about this, the leader of the Visigoths Alaric, who actually ruled Illyria (in present-day Yugoslavia), again invaded Italy in 410. The Visigoths captured Rome and plundered it for several days. They then went to Southern Italy. At this time Alaric died. The Visigoths left Italy and, by agreement with the government of the Western Roman Empire, settled in Southwestern Gaul, where in 418 they formed the first barbarian kingdom on the territory of the Roman Empire. The capital of the Visigothic kingdom first became Toulouse, and later, when the Visigoths conquered a significant part of the Iberian Peninsula, Toledo in Spain.

In 429, the Vandals and Alans, who had previously settled on the Iberian Peninsula, moved to North Africa, pressed by the Visigoths, who by this time had conquered most of Spain. In 439, the Alano-Vandal kingdom was formed in North Africa with its capital in Carthage. The Vandal nobility started a large pirate fleet and plundered the islands and coasts of the Western Mediterranean. In 455, Vandals sacked and destroyed Rome, giving rise to the term “vandalism,” meaning the cruel and senseless destruction of cultural property.

In 451, the Western Roman Empire and the barbarian kingdoms that had arisen on its territory by that time had to repel the invasion of the Huns. Under the leadership of their leader Attila, nicknamed by his contemporaries for his cruelty “the scourge of God,” the Huns, moving from the middle Danube to the west, reached the city of Orleans on the Loire, but were unable to take it and moved back. A battle between the Huns and the Romans took place on the Catalaunian fields in North-Eastern Gaul. Many tribes and peoples they conquered fought on the side of the Huns, including the Germans - the Ostrogoths, the Slavs - the Antes, etc. Their allies fought on the side of the Romans - the Germans, the Visigoths, Franks and Burgundians. The Huns retreated, but the next year they attacked Northern Italy. In 453, Attila died, and the Hunnic union, whose center was on the middle Danube, collapsed. The tribes and peoples conquered by the Huns were freed.

In Eastern Gaul at the beginning of the 5th century. The kingdom of the Burgundians was formed, but in 437 it was destroyed by the Huns (Legends about alliances and wars between the Burgundians and the Huns were reflected in the German epic songs about the Nibelungs.). After the collapse of the Hunnic power, a new Burgundian kingdom arose in South-Eastern Gaul with its capital in Lyon (in 457). Being located in a heavily Romanized area with excellent natural conditions, the Kingdom of Burgundy began to develop successfully in socio-economic terms. The long-standing and deep Romanization of this area contributed to the accelerated formation of class (feudal) relations in Burgundy. And in Burgundian society itself, by that time the decomposition of tribal relations was already underway.

In 476, the leader of the German mercenaries in Italy, Odoacer, overthrew the last Western Roman emperor, the young Romulus Augustulus. Odoacer sent the signs of imperial dignity (crown and purple robe) to Constantinople and took the title of king (king), as was customary in other barbarian states. This event is considered the end of the Roman Empire.

True, for contemporaries it passed almost unnoticed, since of the entire Western Roman Empire by this time only Italy and Northern Gaul remained; imperial power was in complete decline; Rome has long ceased to be the capital of the empire; The emperors lived in swamp-ridden Ravenna on the northeast coast of Italy.

In 486, Northern Gaul was conquered by the Franks (Hence the current name of the country - France.). From the middle of the 5th century. the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, who lived on the Jutland Peninsula, and the Saxons, who lived in the coastal region between the lower reaches of the Rhine and Weser, began the conquest of Britain, inhabited by the Celtic Romanized tribes of the Britons; the conquerors formed their own, Germanic, kingdoms, destroying or pushing the Celts north, to the west coast of Britain and across the sea to the Armorica peninsula (now Brittany in France).

So, by the end of the 5th century. Barbarian kingdoms formed throughout the former Western Roman Empire. They were a transitional form from the late Roman statehood and at the same time from the military democracy of the barbarians to the early feudal state. Barbarian states on the territory of the former Roman Empire are those states that retained the class division inherited from the empire (to this were added the embryos of class antagonism that formed at the end of the development of primitive societies); but the main part of the ruling class in them was formed from the top of the tribal (“barbarian”) nobility, i.e., by origin it was not yet entirely class or even pre-class.

Outside the former slave-owning empire, there could be no barbarian kingdoms: here class relations grew directly from the pre-class society, and nothing was inherited from the society that survived the slave-owning formation. This applies to Rus', Scandinavia, most of Germany, part of Britain, where the Celtic population has virtually disappeared. There was a free community here.

In the barbarian kingdoms that arose on the territory of the former Western Roman Empire and in Byzantium, free communities (Germanic in the West, Slavic in Byzantium) were only islands of the barbarian world in the middle of an array of class society, moving from a slave system to a feudal one. For example, in the Visigothic Kingdom, the Germanic community existed in areas with the most compact Gothic population. In those areas where the Goths settled mixed with the local population, mixed Gothic-Roman rural communities arose. The main change in the social structure in South-Western Gaul and Spain after their conquest by the Visigoths was the increase in the stratum of small free landowners and the strengthening of the neighboring community. But subsequently, the decomposition of communal relations, a new growth of large land ownership and social stratification began at a rapid pace. During the Visigoths' conquest of Southwestern Gaul and Spain, 2/3 of the arable land and half of the forests and meadows were taken from local landowners, as well as, it is believed, 1/3 of the slaves and colons. However, this division of land and labor between conquerors and local landowners did not occur everywhere. The Visigoths, who settled in the heavily Romanized regions of Gaul and Spain, got rid of the remnants of tribal relations much faster than, for example, the Franks who conquered Northern Gaul and the Anglo-Saxons who conquered Britain. Formed under the influence of Roman law, Visigothic laws protected private ownership of land and slaves not only by the Goths, but also by the Gallo-Roman and Spanish-Roman nobility. However, large land ownership gradually changed its character, approaching feudal land ownership. Colonies in the Visigothic kingdom were no longer considered subjects of the state and were exempt from state taxes and duties (carriage, construction); at the same time, they retained all the restrictions on their legal capacity in relation to the landowner on whose land they held plots: they were attached to the plots and limited in the right to dispose of their property. Subsequently, the descendants of Roman colons and freedmen merged with slaves planted on the land (servi) and with dependent holders from former free community members of Gothic and local origin, forming a class of feudal-dependent peasantry. The feudal class was formed from the Gothic military-tribal nobility, from large Gallo-Roman and Spanish-Roman landowners and from the highest clergy of the Arian Church. Feudal land ownership was represented by the possessions of the Gothic king, the Arian Church and large secular landowners.

In Byzantium, the social revolution took place without breaking the state machine of the Roman Empire. The inner essence of the social revolution that took place in it during late antiquity and the early Middle Ages was fundamentally similar to the social revolution in the West: it was the collapse of the slave-owning formation and the emergence of a feudal one.

The barbarian invasions also affected Byzantium: on the Balkan Peninsula in the 4th-5th centuries. Huns, Goths, Alans and many other tribes invaded, and in the 6th-7th centuries - the Slavs. But these invasions did not lead to the conquest and destruction of Byzantium. Only in the north of the Balkan Peninsula during the early Middle Ages were the Slavic kingdoms of Serbia and Bulgaria formed. Bulgaria first emerged as a Turko-Slavic state; The Bulgar Turks (from the Volga) dissolved into the Slavic mass only towards the end of the 9th century. In the rest of the territory of Byzantium, the Slavic tribes settled without destroying the Byzantine state, and gradually merged with the local population.

Barbarian invasions of the Balkan Peninsula contributed to the decline of cities, especially small ones; at the same time, villages and villages are preserved; archaeologists trace the continuity of the existence of many villages before and after the appearance of the barbarians, although the composition of the population in them changes; there is mutual influence between local and barbarian communities. In the IV-VI centuries. in the process of feudalization of Byzantium, a new type of village was formed with a mixed population - slaves, colony, free; The villages had their own, although not very developed, craft. The position of rural settlements on state and private lands is being equalized, as is the position of individual groups of workers. In large villages, markets are formed for the surrounding villages. A specific feature of Byzantium, as well as a number of Middle Eastern regions, was the long-term preservation of large villages with a market and handicraft production, which differed little from small towns; their existence hindered the development of new cities.

At the same time, in the 6th century. even large Byzantine cities gradually lost their importance as centers for supplying handicrafts to the rural area. The main role in cities is played by large independent landowners and the church: in the eastern regions of the former Roman Empire, the city, although somewhat later than in the West, ceases to be a municipal organization; by the end of the 6th century. City government disappears. Monasteries, which were not only large landowners (the church subjugated entire communities), but also trade and craft centers, became of great importance in the restructuring of the Byzantine economy.

The free peasant community brought by the barbarians (Germanic in the West, Slavic in the Balkan Peninsula) played a progressive role in the development of feudalism in the lands of the former Roman Empire. The collapse of the Roman state organization in the West contributed to the revival of rural communities, which remained in the provinces during the late empire. The community contributed to the preservation of land ownership and personal freedom of the peasants and, thus, stimulated the development of the productivity of their labor, since these were the workers most interested in its results.

By 200 AD, tribes from central Asia began migrating to China, India, Persia and Europe. The reasons for this migration are not yet fully known. The largest group of nomads were the Huns. They were small in stature and rode ponies, but they became famous for their cruelty and ruthlessness. They intimidated other tribes they encountered along their migration routes, causing something like a domino effect. Moving west, the Huns displaced the Goths, who lived northeast of the Black Sea, for example, forcing them to cross the Danube and go to the Balkans, which were in the possession of the Roman Empire. More and more Huns moved into the Germanic plains, forcing other Germanic tribes to cross the Rhine. The Western Roman Empire was already weakened by sporadic raids and conquests by tribes across the Rhine and Danube. The rapidly growing Germanic tribes were attracted by the sparsely populated lands of Gaul and the advantages of living under the auspices of the Roman Empire. By the 400s, the Roman army already consisted of 30 - 50 percent German mercenaries. In desperation, the Romans enlisted entire Germanic tribes into the Roman army, hoping that they would help defend against other Germanic tribes. This was especially popular during the civil wars of the 4th century, when pretenders to the Roman throne needed to raise armies very quickly. These barbarians did not have the discipline and training of the Roman legions and obeyed only their leaders. But these measures turned against the Romans themselves, when the entire part of the army consisting of barbarians rebelled. The borders along the Rhine and Danube disappeared and Germanic tribes rushed into Gaul, the Balkans and even Italy. There was continuous war around Rome's shrinking borders, and the number of soldiers loyal to Rome was rapidly decreasing. The last legions were transferred to Gaul in 410, leaving England forever. The Saxon raids gained strength and gradually grew into real conquests. The Saxons were joined by Germanic tribes from the northern coast. Together they destroyed the Romano-British culture and captured Hemley, which makes up the territory of modern England. The Eastern Roman Empire suffered damage from the loss of the Balkans, but was able to repel barbarian raids or negotiate with them before they conquered Constantinople. The conquerors there were those Goths who, after communicating with the Eastern Roman Empire, became much more civilized than the Goths who lived along the banks of the Rhine. Although the Goths were mainly colonists, not conquerors. In the 5th century, Rome was conquered several times, and the Western Empire effectively ceased to exist. Italy changed hands many times. In 476, the last recognized Roman emperor was assassinated. Italy and the Old Roman Empire were now occupied by Germanic tribes. Despite the barbarians' desire to preserve the order and stability left over from the Roman Empire, only a small remnant of the empire survived the turmoil that followed the conquest. Most of Europe returned to the wild barbarian period for many more years.

TO Once upon a time, in ancient times, when the Aryan tribes broke out of the Great Steppe and attacked the surrounding world, some of them moved west - to Europe. Bearded warriors on war chariots subdued the local residents and over time mixed with them, forming a new people, whose descendants were the Germans and Slavs. Later, in the 1st millennium BC, new conquerors came from the Steppe, a people of horsemen who knew how to shoot with a bow at full gallop - in the east they were called Cimmerians, and in the west - Celts. The Celts occupied the best lands of Europe, pushing some of the resisting tribes beyond the Carpathians, and others into Jutland and Scandinavia. Scandinavia was a world of cold plains where the sun rarely appeared from behind the clouds; there were wild forests, wide lakes and vast meadows strewn with boulders once left behind by the retreating glacier to the north. To clear a field of stones, years of hard work were needed, and the sown grains yielded only meager shoots - so famine reigned here; local residents hunted in the forests and grazed herds on the plain - but there was not enough pasture for food. Just as in the Great Steppe, here it was necessary to fight for life, and the cold Northern Plain became the homeland of a new people of warriors - the Germans.

Germanic families lived in large fortified estates made of stone and logs and constantly fought with each other for pastures. The occupation of men was war; when the young men grew up, they were given shields and spears and sent on a raid against a hostile clan. Their clothes were animal skins and pieces of coarse fabric - but in the summer they walked naked and, in order not to restrict their movements, rushed naked into battle. The weapons of the warriors were stone axes, spears and frames - darts with which they could stab and chop; they were thrown at enemies, and then pulled towards themselves by the belt. There was almost no iron in the north, so only the leaders and warriors who went into battle first had swords and helmets. Only a few had horses; they did not breed well in the harsh northern climate, so the Germans fought on foot. Before the battle, human sacrifices were made, the priests shouted spells, beat the drum and smeared blood on the faces of the warriors. The famous berserker heroes drank fly agaric juice before the battle; they flew into a rage and terrified their enemies - but those of them that survived the battles quickly lost their minds.

During times of peace, warriors spent their time in idleness; herding livestock and cultivating the land was the work of women and slaves belonging to the family. A group of related clans made up a tribe, and all matters were decided at a tribal meeting, at which the leader of the tribe was chosen - “riga”, “king” or “duke”. The leader maintained a squad of the best warriors and, together with them, constantly traveled around the lands of the tribe, stopping at family estates and demanding treats, meat and beer from the owners; After feasting for a week or two, the squad moved on. The warriors swore an oath of allegiance to the leader, and if the king died in battle, then they sought death in battle or threw themselves on their swords. After the death of the leaders, their war horses, their wives and concubines were placed in their graves, and mounds were erected over the graves. It was believed that brave warriors who died in battle ended up in Valhalla, the huge heavenly palace of the king of the gods Odin, where they feasted, caressed the heavenly maidens and indulged in military amusements. The life of the Germans was spent in wars, and all their gods were warriors. Odin, the god of the sky, was depicted on a war horse, wearing a helmet and armor; the god Qiu was revered in the form of a naked sword, and Thor, the god of thunder, was armed with a magic hammer. In their heavenly kingdom, the gods were constantly at war with the giants, and, according to ancient prophecy, this struggle was supposed to end with their death - then the sun and moon would go out, the universe would burn and turn to dust, and the “twilight of the gods” would come.

Just like the Great Steppe, the Northern Plain was an area of ​​high demographic pressure, wars were constantly raging there, and waves of invasions emanated from there, penetrating far to the south. At the end of the 2nd century BC. e. the tribes of the Cimbri and Teutons broke into southern Gaul and defeated the border Roman legions. Rome was horrified; They said that the barbarians were like fire in speed and strength, that they, like giants, tore down hills and dammed rivers. In 101 they broke through the Alps into Italy; They walked naked through the snow, through glaciers and climbed to the tops of mountains in deep snow. In August 101, on the plain near the city of Verzella, one of the bloodiest battles of ancient history took place; the famous Roman commander Gaius Marius opposed the wild fury of the Cimbri with iron swords and the training of legions. More than one hundred thousand barbarians fell in the battle; when the Cimbri began to retreat to their camp, their wives came out to meet them; they killed those running and, in front of the Romans, stabbed themselves with swords.

The Romans managed to repel the Cimbri, but in the north the Germans defeated the Celts and in the 1st century BC. e. captured a vast country between the Danube and the Rhine - this country later became known as Germany. During the time of Emperor Augustus, the Roman legions crossed the Rhine and reached the Elbe, but in 9 AD. e. one of the Roman armies was surrounded and defeated by the Germans in the Towtoburg Forest. After this defeat, the Romans considered it best to isolate themselves from the barbarians with border fortifications; ramparts with observation towers stretched along the Rhine and Danube, and legions ready for battle were stationed along the border. From time to time the Northern Plain erupted new hordes of barbarians; they were smashed against the border fortifications, and those that managed to break through were, after a while, exterminated by reserve armies. In the 3rd century, the Germanic tribe of Goths moved to the southeast, the Goths passed through all of Eastern Europe and reached the Black Sea; They mounted horses and, having intermarried with the nomads of the steppes, Scythians and Sarmatians, created a powerful tribal union.

Meanwhile, the time of death of the Ancient World was approaching; fatal events took place in the depths of the Great Steppe, giving rise to a terrible invasion of the Huns. At the end of the 4th century, the Huns attacked the Germanic tribes in eastern Europe and, having subjugated some of them, put others to flight. Fleeing from the Huns, countless hordes of barbarians poured into the Empire, they overthrew border fortifications and rushed to the Balkans, Italy, and Gaul. It was a disaster the likes of which the world had never seen. The once flourishing countries were enveloped in the smoke of fires, cities turned into ruins, mountains of corpses lay on the roads and in the ruins of houses. “Look how suddenly death overshadowed the whole world,” wrote Bishop Oridentius. “With what force the horrors of war fell upon the peoples. And the hilly forests, and high mountains, and rushing rivers, and fortresses with cities - everything was under the rule of the barbarians. Alone died, becoming a victim of meanness, and others were handed over to death by their fellow citizens. Those who managed to resist the force fell from hunger. The unfortunate mother prostrated herself along with her children and husband. The master, along with his slaves, himself ended up in slavery. Many became food for dogs; others burned alive in houses engulfed in flames. In cities and villages, along roads and at crossroads, here and there, everywhere there was death, suffering, conflagration, ruins and sorrow. Only smoke remained from Gaul, burned in a general conflagration."

Time returned to the silence that reigned

in the fields, not a shepherd's whistle...

(Paul the Deacon.)

H A hundred years after the catastrophe, when the fires subsided and death finally took a break, a new world, unlike the previous one, opened up to the eyes of a few chroniclers. Europe seemed to have returned to the beginning of time. Where once there were populous villages and fields with ears of corn, now there were forests full of wild animals. Among these forests there were occasionally small villages of log half-dugouts; in some places people, as in the primitive era, lived in caves. Here and there the ruins of cities could be seen: collapsed walls covered with ivy, columns lying on the ground, dilapidated aqueducts. Sometimes people still lived in the houses around the grassy forum; in the looted church, the priest occasionally led services for the surrounding peasants, baptized, performed funeral services and asked the Lord for salvation from troubles.

The country, stretching from the banks of the Rhine to the Pyrenees, was ruled by leaders from the Frankish tribe. The Franks, who called themselves "free", lived on the lower Rhine; at the end of the 5th century, their leader Clovis from the Merovingian clan defeated the last Roman governor and, having gained the upper hand in a battle with other Germanic tribes, took possession of Gaul. Some of the Franks moved to the banks of the Seine and Loire; they built villages from log houses and forced slaves captured on campaigns to plow the land for them. Clovis gave the estates of the fleeing Roman aristocrats, along with the surviving tenants and slaves, to distinguished warriors; The barbarians did not have any letters, and when donating an estate, the leader handed the warrior a bunch of straw.

As in former times, the Franks preferred to spend their time on campaigns; Every spring they gathered on the “March field” and decided who to fight that year. Clovis had to work hard to force them to obey; Once, after the looting of a church, he wanted to take a silver cup for himself - but one of the soldiers opposed this and cut the cup with an axe. Only a year later Clovis found an opportunity for revenge and, during a review, killed a warrior, declaring that his weapon was worthless. Later, under various pretexts, he managed to exterminate all his relatives and remained the only leader of the Franks; he began to appoint his people to the positions of district commanders preserved from Roman times - previously they were called comites, and now - counts.

However, the counts were the authority for the Roman population, but not for the Franks: the Franks were reluctant to submit to the new authorities. The barbarians did not want to know any taxes and tried according to old customs - the disputants were hacked with swords, or, according to the verdict of the meeting, they were subjected to a test: they held a red-hot strip of iron in their hands. If the burns did not appear immediately, then the accused was acquitted - this was called the Judgment of God. Often the case was decided without trial, by the law of blood feud; as in ancient times, one clan could wage war with another clan for many years, not paying attention to the entreaties of the count. Only ransom, “vertgeld”, could stop the enmity; Clovis instructed Latin literates to write down the usual rates of ransom in the case of various crimes; this collection was called "Salic Truth" - the Salii were one of the Frankish tribes. According to this “truth”, the ransom for the murder of a Frank was three times greater than the ransom for the murder of a Roman, and the life of a Roman was valued as a pair of cows.

The Franks professed the rule of the strong and the only force capable of restraining them was the Lord God. After one miraculously won victory, Clovis believed in the power of the Christian God and decided to “join his squad” and take an oath of allegiance. Together with his soldiers, he was baptized and listened to the story of the suffering of Christ. “If I had been with my Franks then, I would have avenged him!” - exclaimed the brave leader, shaking his sword.

Faith in God softened the temper of the barbarians, they began to rob and kill less, did not touch the churches and revered the priests. Bishops became protectors of the Roman population; during times of unrest, they sheltered local residents in churches and went out with a cross to meet the barbarians. To save their estates from plunder, the surviving Roman aristocrats gave them to the church and became priests, monasteries became places of refuge for educated people, and monks served as scribes for barbarian leaders and counts. At the end of the 6th century, Bishop Gregory of Tours wrote the History of the Franks; he sadly admitted that he was not literate enough, that he confused cases and prepositions - but now it was impossible to find a truly cultured person. When everything in the world ages, Gregory wrote, there is no point in comparing your time with the past, or yourself with former people. Noble Romans began to imitate the barbarians, began to dress like barbarians and take barbarian names. The last poet of Rome, Venantius Fortunatus, sat at the edge of the plank table during feasts and, at a sign from the Frankish leader, shouted out poetic praises. In those days, many crimes were committed, Gregory wrote, and everyone saw justice in their own will. There is so much evil and untruth all around that it seems that the end of the world is approaching.

And the tiles fall from the vaulted roofs,

And here are the ruins, heaps of stone.

(Anglo-Saxon poem.)

ABOUT Many chroniclers of those times wrote about the end of the world. In the middle of the 5th century, wild Germanic tribes - the Angles, Saxons and Jutes - attacked Britain. The monk Gildas left a horror-filled description of these events; in his book “On the Fall of Britain,” he wrote about destroyed cities and abandoned fields, “on which there was not a single ear of grain,” about the stampede of the Britons, about massacres and the enslavement of captives. Most of the Britons were exterminated by the conquerors; many fled to the mountains of Wales and Scotland or to the continent, to the peninsula, to which the fugitives gave their name - Brittany.

Fierce pagans burned cities and destroyed churches; they killed the monks, and after Gildas there was no one left to describe what happened after the “death of Britain.” Archaeologists testify that the country was covered with forests, that Germanic families settled among these forests in large log manors and lived as they once did in their homeland: free men fought in battles, and captive slaves worked the land. Celtic slaves were incorporated into the clans and gradually adopted the language and customs of their masters. Over time, the Anglo-Saxon clans began to disintegrate, and each family received its own house and its own field; those soldiers who did not have slaves had to plow the land themselves.

Having conquered the best plains of Britain, the Germans founded seven tribal principalities; as in the old days, they elected their leaders at gatherings, and the leaders and their warriors toured the estates, feasting and being treated at the expense of the owners. The Germans fought among themselves and with the Celtic tribes of the Britons, Scots, and Picts, and raided Wales, Scotland and Ireland. In Ireland, Christian monasteries still existed, and hermits who lived in huts from generation to generation rewrote the Law of God. The Irish monks looked like Celtic priest-witches: their faces were intricately tattooed, their eyelids were painted red, they wore long hair and clothes made of skins. They told fortunes and cast spells by the stars - and at the same time they sacredly believed in Christ and selflessly preached the Word of God among the wild Angles and Saxons. Having crossed over to Britain, the Irish hermits founded a monastery in Lindisfarne and dispersed throughout the country, trying to convert the barbarians; they talked about Christ and wrote letters on wax tablets, explaining the secret of writing. Later, preachers sent by the Pope arrived in England, and the barbarians were gradually baptized - but churches and cities continued to lie in ruins. By that time, the local population had already forgotten who owned these cities and huge stone buildings - they considered them the creations of giants:

Stone wonder -
giants' work.
Rock destroyed
brick fence,
The rafters fell;
the towers are crumbling,
Gnawed into splinters
roofs with time...

Iron covered the fields and roads,

iron points reflected the sun

rays, hard armor covered

even harder hearts.

(Manuscript from San Galena.)

T Now we will return again to the banks of the Seine and Loire, to the possessions of the Franks. Despite the general savagery, the end of the world has not come. Life went on, the peasants still worked their fields, giving part of the harvest to the count or the owner of the estate. There was enough land, but taxes were collected less and less often: the barbarians could not organize accounting. The Frankish leaders freed the estates of the warriors from taxes and, paying for the remission of sins, gave villages to the bishops - as a result, the church collected almost half of all the land into its possession. Taxes stopped coming and the leaders, as in the old days, wandered with their retinue around the country, feeding in cities and estates. Clovis's descendants divided his inheritance among themselves and started internecine wars; just as in their distant northern homeland, the barbarians fought among themselves and burned the surviving settlements. The Merovingians gradually lost the respect of their fellow tribesmen and were pushed out of power by their home rulers, the “mirodoms.” At the beginning of the 8th century, the mayor Charles Martell managed to unite most of the Franks - and just in time: a new formidable danger was approaching from the south - the Arabs.

In Europe they knew about the power of the distant eastern caliphs and the desperate bravery of the Saracens, but no one expected to see horsemen wrapped in white blankets in front of their house. The Arabs' blow was like the blow of a Damascus saber: in 710 they suddenly crossed from Africa and in a bloody battle defeated the Goths who owned Spain; in 718 they broke through the Pyrenees and soon found themselves in the heart of the Frankish possessions. In 725, near Arles, Frankish infantry armed with axes were surrounded by Arab cavalry and fell under the blows of curved sabers. Having plundered the Rhone Valley, the Arabs left - but everyone understood that they would return. In the face of mortal danger, Charles Martel hastily began to create a cavalry army. At the risk of incurring the curse of the church, he took away villages once donated by the Merovingians from bishops and monasteries - and distributed them to his “vassal” warriors so that they could buy a horse and armor. "Vassals" had no rights over the peasants; they only collected taxes from them, which had previously been taken by bishops, and even earlier by Roman tax collectors. This system of maintaining soldiers was borrowed from the Arabs and was called “ikta” in the East, and “benefits” in the West; it was MILITARY MODERNIZATION according to the Arab model.

The reform of Charles Martel was a great event that determined the fate of Europe for centuries. From now on, knights dominated the battlefields: armored horsemen with spears at the ready crushed infantry formations and finished them off with heavy swords. In 732, at the Battle of Poitiers, the new army of Charles Martel repelled the Arabs and drove them beyond the Pyrenees. Charles's son Pepin (741-68) became so powerful that he planned to finally remove the Merovingians from power; in 751, at a meeting of “all the Franks,” he was “anointed as king”: on the instructions of the pope, the bishop, dressed in sacred robes, sprinkled the kneeling Pepin with “divine oil” and “peace.”

The popes who lived among the ruins of Rome wanted to see Pepin as their ally: they were threatened by the wild tribes of the Lombards who were ravaging Italy, and the emperors of Constantinople did not pay attention to their calls for help. At the request of Pope Stephen II, Pepin made two campaigns in Italy, repelled the barbarians and handed over the lands taken from them to the pope. Pepin's son Charles (768-814) became famous as a great conqueror who conquered the Saxons, Bavarians, Frisians, Basques, Lombards and many other tribes; He crossed the Alps and Pyrenees more than once and watered his horse from the Elbe. At the head of his knightly army, he crossed all of Europe - and the surrounding peoples looked with horror at never-before-seen iron men riding on mighty war horses. “Then the iron Charles himself appeared,” the chronicler wrote. “All his weapons were made of iron, in his left hand he held a spear in the air, and his right hand did not leave an invincible sword. His horse was iron in color and strength. All his companions had the same weapons. Iron covered fields and roads, iron points reflected the sun's rays, hard armor covered even harder hearts..." In 774, this invincible conqueror solemnly entered Rome: he rode up on horseback to St. Peter's Cathedral, dismounted and, unexpectedly for everyone, stood on knees. On his knees, kissing each step, he climbed the stairs to the entrance; The Pope lifted him from his knees, hugged him and led him into the cathedral to the sounds of the solemn anthem.

It was a symbolic event: the barbarian conqueror bowed before the gray-haired old man, appointed by fate to keep the precepts of the ancient culture.

Let everyone live with justice

following God's law.

(Capitulary of 802.)

P the visit to Rome made an indelible impression on the young leader of the Iron Franks. He wandered for a long time through the ruins of the Eternal City among huge amphitheaters, ruined palaces and half-collapsed aqueducts. Pope Adrian told him about the greatness of the ancient Empire, about Constantine and Justinian, about the Earthly City and the City of God. From that time on, a dream must have settled in Karl’s soul that haunted him all his life - the dream of building the City of God on earth. For the glory of Christ, year after year he went on campaigns against the pagan Saxons who lived beyond the Rhine, fought in battles, destroyed idols and baptized the vanquished by force. Returning to Gaul for the winter, he, imitating the Christian emperors, tried to improve the lives of his subjects and organize fair governance. “Let everyone live in justice, following the law of God,” read one of his decrees. “Let laity and priests use the laws fairly and without treachery, let everyone build relationships with each other on the basis of mercy and peace...”

Karl determined feasible duties for the peasants and instructed the bishops to ensure that the counts and other officials did not offend the common people. He sent his inspectors to the districts and himself traveled around the country, checking things. When visiting monasteries, Charles demanded that the monks spend their lives in daily work and prayer, that they create shelters for the poor and monastery schools. In those days, literacy was almost forgotten, and even the Bible was copied with errors and omissions. Charles summoned priests and monks known for their learning to his court and instructed them to restore the holy books in their true form. The most famous of these scientists was Alcuin, who came from England; he became a close friend of Charles, the teacher of his children and the head of a small literary circle, where they read the Bible mixed with Virgil and Fortunatus. Karl with naive pride called this circle the Academy, and assigned its members the names of ancient poets. He learned Latin and Greek and learned to read, but never mastered writing - although he tried very hard and even kept wax tablets under his pillow for writing.

All of Charles’ state activities boiled down to the adoption of Roman traditions in the process of SOCIAL SYNTHESIS, to an attempt to restore the Christian Empire in the west. Ever since the times when barbarian tribes settled within Roman borders, it was formally believed that their leaders ruled on behalf of the emperors - and Charles respected the basileus of Constantinople. However, in 797, an unprecedented event occurred in Constantinople - power was in the hands of a woman, Empress Irene. The bishops of Italy and Gaul did not recognize her power and offered the imperial crown to Charles. On Christmas Day 800, Charles was crowned Emperor of the Roman Empire by the Pope in St. Peter's Basilica. The huge crowd chanted: “August Charles, crowned by God, great peace-loving emperor, life and victory!”

To reunite the Empire, Charles offered his hand and heart to Irina, but the Greeks did not want to accept the power of the “barbarian”. The war began, Charles won and forced recognition of the imperial title - from now on there were two emperors and two “Roman Empires”, in the West and in the East. The symbol of the restoration of the Western Empire was the huge imperial palace built by Charles near the Rhine, in Aachen. During the reign of the barbarians, the secrets of constructing stone palaces were forgotten, and the learned monks from Charles's "Academy" had to look for secret knowledge in the ancient works of Vitruvius; They coped with their task and erected a grandiose building - but marble columns and sculptures had to be taken from the ruins of Italian cities. At that time, all the cities lay in ruins, and Charles ordered the construction of a palace in a clearing in the middle of a virgin forest, in the place where he usually hunted. His court was unlike the decorous court of eastern emperors; Together with his friends, sons and daughters, Karl spent time hunting and rode through the forest from morning to evening, driving deer. He loved to go one-on-one with a wild boar and in the heat of battle more than once found himself on the brink of death - but he always won. Then the hunters counted the trophies, pitched tents in the forest and had a merry feast. Once upon a time, in ancient times, all the leaders of the Franks lived like this, hunting and feasting. Karl was a true Frank - and only sometimes, when he was thinking about something, he took out the Bible and treasured writing tablets from under his pillow.

“Let there be schools to teach children to write,” Charles, later nicknamed the Great, carefully concluded. – Let everyone live in justice, following the law of God...

...The age of storms and wolves - until the destruction of the world,

Man will not spare man...

(“Edda.”)

G It is more difficult to build a state than a palace in Aachen. We need thousands of competent officials, we need written laws, we need centuries of education, the ability to manage and the willingness to obey. Charles called on the last literates who survived the barbarian invasions, bishops and monks, to rule the state, but the warlike Franks did not want to obey the monks. They still remembered barbarian freedom, when soldiers raised their chosen leaders on their shields - and Charles respected their freedom: every year, when the Franks gathered in the “May Fields”, preparing for the next campaign, he went to the army and asked them to confirm their decisions. True, Charles’s army did not in any way resemble the previous barbarians dressed in skins with axes in their hands - they were orderly rows of horsemen in leather armor with iron plates. Charles called on the campaign only those who could appear in armor and on horseback - first of all, his vassals, who received benefits and swore an oath of allegiance to him. Ordinary people, who did not have armor or a horse, folded up to display a rider; Without participating in campaigns, commoners ceased to be warriors and turned into tax-paying peasants. They could no longer stand up for themselves and lost the freedom that a sword in their hand gives; they had nothing to say to the count, who, accompanied by a detachment of iron horsemen, came to the village and demanded new taxes. Only the “sovereign envoys” sent by Emperor Charles could protect them from the arbitrariness of vassals and counts - but Charles’s successors stopped sending out envoys.

The descendants of Charlemagne were called Carolingians or “kings” - then all monarchs began to be called this word. They also loved barbaric freedom - in the sense that a son could raise his hand against his father, and brothers could furiously fight with swords. According to the custom of the barbarians, they divided Charles's state among themselves and began to fight with each other. After the division of the Empire between the grandchildren of Charles in 843, three kingdoms were formed: the western regions went to Charles the Bald, the eastern to Ludwig the German, and Italy and the lands on the Rhine to the “emperor” Lothair. In 855, Lothair's possessions were divided between his three sons, the state of Charlemagne disintegrated and plunged into civil strife - and at that very moment a wave of a new German invasion hit Europe.

The Northern Plain remained a population volcano, where new tribes of warriors were born in the fire of fierce battles and from which lava erupted from time to time. The moment of the new eruption was predetermined by the appearance of “drakens” - large seaworthy boats decorated with the head of a dragon, which the northern barbarians learned to make. “Drakens” could accommodate fifty warriors and could cross the North Sea in a week, and reach the shores of Italy in a month. All of Europe was in the power of the barbarians; Flotillas of tens and hundreds of "drakens" devastated the banks and rose up the rivers, burning villages.

The banner of the raid, the “Viking”, could be raised by any warrior famous in battle, and, having gathered on the shore, the squad made a sacrifice to the god of war Thor. “The priest, by lot, nominated people for the sacrifice,” the chronicler wrote, “they were stunned with a blow from the yoke to the head; they knocked out the brain using a special technique, then dumped them on the ground and looked for the heart gland. Having extracted all the blood from the victim, they, according to custom, smeared their faces with it and quickly deployed the sails of the ships...” “Almighty God sent crowds of ferocious pagans,” says the English chronicle, “Danes, Norwegians, Goths and Swedes. They devastated sinful England from one coast to another, killed people and livestock, did not spare either women or children ". “The Vikings do not spare anyone until they give the word to spare. One of them often puts ten or even more to flight. Poverty inspires them with courage, wandering makes it impossible to properly fight them, despair makes them invincible.” Chroniclers spoke with horror about berserker warriors who rushed into battle half naked - they drank fly agaric juice and fell into fits of rage; if there were no enemies nearby, they rushed to trees and rocks.

By the end of the 9th century, everything that was able to be rebuilt during the time of Charlemagne - churches, monasteries, villages - everything turned to ashes. The cruel “people from the north,” the “Normans,” killed monks and sacrificed thousands of captives to their gods. “The waters of the rivers are stained with the blood of victims and covered with decaying corpses,” wrote the Gallic bishop. “The bones of Norman captives rot without burial on the islands of the Seine; the once beautiful shores are completely devastated by fire and sword.” Having captured the horses, the Normans created mounted detachments that scoured Gaul in all directions. The Frankish cavalry could not cope with this elusive enemy; each count tried to protect his possessions, built wooden fortresses-burgs and fought on his own. Count Ed managed to defend Paris, but all the lands on the northern coast were in the hands of the Normans. After the death of King Charles the Fat (885-88), no worthy heir was found, and the counts began to proclaim themselves kings - or simply ceased to obey anyone. Each ruler who had a log burg and a detachment of horsemen became the “senior” of his area, master over the life and death of the surrounding peasants. The lords fought among themselves and with the Normans, and then the Normans began to build burghs and, having turned into lords, became indistinguishable from the Franks. Having settled on the northern coast, in Normandy, from here they made campaigns into the interior of Gaul, into Britain and even into the south of Italy.

In Britain, the Normans chose the north-eastern part of the island for settlement - this area later became known as the “Area of ​​Danish Law”, “Danelag”, or in English, “Denloe”. Advancing inland, they killed two English leaders and drove the Saxon king, Alfred, into the forests and swamps of the southwest. Alfred (871-900) still managed to gather forces; Following the example of the Franks, he created a cavalry army and stubbornly fought against the enemies for thirty years. For his courage and remarkable intelligence, Alfred received the nickname of the Great; he tried to restore life to his devastated country, built burgs and monasteries, invited learned monks and even created a school at court. He himself found time to study and, in the intervals between battles, leaning on the croup of his horse, analyzed Latin letters; he learned Latin, and then translated into his native language several works that had survived in the monasteries. After Alfred's death, his successors resisted the Normans for another hundred years, until the Danish king Canute took possession of Britain in 1016; the island was devastated by wars, and the surviving Anglo-Saxons were subject to heavy tribute.

Britain and Gaul took the brunt of the invasion - but separate Viking flotillas broke through far to the south, west, and east. The Normans plundered Lisbon and Seville, the famous Viking Hastings ravaged Italy. Later, in the 11th century, the Italian south was conquered by troops of knights from Normandy; The Normans created a strong kingdom here and more than once invaded the Balkans across the strait, threatening Constantinople. Fleets of dragon-headed ships roamed the North Atlantic, and Vikings conquered Ireland and established settlements in Iceland and Greenland. Around the year 1000, one of the Greenlandic settlers, Leif the Happy, sailed on his ship far to the south and reached a warm, forested country where grapes grew and salmon lived in clear streams. Leif called this region Vinland, “Land of Grapes” - it was the island of Newfoundland off the coast of America. The Normans failed to gain a foothold in America - the path there was too far and difficult; In the memory of the northerners, only legends remained, passed from mouth to mouth and telling about voyages to unknown lands.

The oars were noisy,
the iron rang
the shields rattled -
The Vikings sailed.
She rushed quickly
flock of rooks,
carried the squad
to the open sea.

Now it's time to show

courage and love for the fatherland...

(Otto I.)

IN In Europe, covered in smoke from fires, there was only one Christian country that resisted the second German invasion. This probably happened because the Germans already lived in this country - and, having burst into it, the Normans met people who were just as fierce in battle. In 891, the Viking hordes that captured the lower Rhine were defeated by the German king Arnulf and fled overseas in panic.

After numerous redistributions of the legacy of Charlemagne, his great-great-grandson Arnulf inherited the region east of the Rhine, the lands of the German tribes once conquered by the emperor - the Saxons, Swabians, Thuringians, Bavarians. It was a country of forests, among which here and there were fields, villages and monasteries founded by Charles. The Germans still carried weapons, preserved their barbaric freedom, and sometimes elected their duke leaders at tribal gatherings. The dukes often fought among themselves, but during the years of peace, together with the tribal nobility, they gathered at congresses where they elected kings - Arnulf was just such an elected king, the leader of the all-German militia. Gathering all his strength, he managed to repel the Normans - but soon a new, even more terrible danger appeared in the east: the Hungarians. After the explosion that occurred in the 4th century, the Great Steppe continued to spew out more and more tribes from its womb; after the Huns came the Avars, then the Bulgarians, and now a new horde poured through the Carpathian passes to the west. Hundreds of thousands of wild horsemen dressed in skins poured into the plains of Pannonia in a continuous stream, local residents mistook them for demons and fled north in horror, in 896 the Hungarians pitched their tents on the banks of the Danube. The Horde was not accustomed to a peaceful life: having settled on the Danube, it began to raid the surrounding countries. Every year, tens of thousands of horsemen, devastating everything around, broke through Germany, crossed the Rhine and plundered Gaul; they crossed the Alps and Pyrenees, destroying everything that was left after the Normans.

The German king Henry I (919-936) made desperate efforts to stop this flood. Tens of thousands of mobilized peasants built wooden fortifications, burgs, “the work on the construction of these burgs went on continuously day and night,” says the chronicler. Following the example of the Franks, a knightly army was hastily created from vassals who received benefits. The military danger forced the Germans to unite; Henry's son Otto I (936-973) managed to subjugate the tribal dukes and gather all his forces for the decisive battle. In June 955, on a field near the Lech River, a crushing attack by knightly cavalry crushed and put to flight a huge Hungarian horde.

According to legend, King Otto fought in this battle with a sacred spear, the tip of which was a nail from the cross on which Jesus was once crucified. Otto was a devout warrior of Christ - the same as Charlemagne - he spent his whole life in battles with the pagans, first with the Hungarians, and then with the Slavs. He conquered the Slavs who lived on the Elbe and Oder, and encouraged the Zaoder tribe of the "Polyans" - that is, the Poles - to accept Christianity. The Polish prince Mieszko and the Czech prince Boleslav became Otto's vassals and paid him tribute. Returning from campaigns, Otto, like Charles, tried to establish governance based on the commandments of Christ; he took away many regions from the dukes and transferred them to the bishops, together with them he decided matters at councils, and in order to understand the Bible, already at an advanced age he diligently learned to read. Otto called monks from Italy and restored Charles's "Academy" - a court school, the classes of which took place in the Aachen palace church, the "chapel"; the pupils of the court chapel were appointed bishops and abbots - and then faithfully served the king and God. In 962, at the call of the Pope, Otto, together with his army, crossed the Alpine passes and descended into Italy, engulfed in unrest; he established his power in Italy and accepted the imperial crown of Charlemagne from the pope. History repeated itself, just like a century and a half ago, the pope and the emperor, embracing, stood under the dome of St. Peter's Cathedral, and the people shouted: “Otto the august, crowned by God, the great peace-loving emperor, life and victory!”

Henry the King, who is in unheard of

pride rebelled against your church...

I anathematize!

(Gregory VII.)

H that is, the Empire?

Shortly after Pope John crowned Otto in St. Peter's Basilica, Patriarch Polyeuctus in Hagia Sophia placed the crown on Emperor Nicephorus. In the Christian world there were again two emperors, two holy fathers and two Roman empires - but how different these empires were. There, in the east, was Constantinople, a huge city of marble and stone, noisy streets and markets, a harbor filled with ships, and all around - well-groomed fields, paved roads and populous villages - a comfortable world where education, law and order reigned. And there was another world - the ruins of Rome overgrown with bushes, small villages among the forests, log burghs with the banners of dukes and counts flying above them - a world in which a sword in the hand of a knight meant law, and the patience of a peasant meant order. It was still the same barbaric world, and although Otto really wanted to call it the Roman Empire, beautiful words could not change the reality.

True, Otto managed to prevent anarchy similar to that which reigned in neighboring Gaul - there each owner of the burg called himself a Count by God's Grace and turned the surrounding villagers into slaves. Otto and his heirs managed to keep their vassals in subjection for a long time, and the lords could not commit arbitrariness over the peasants. Of course, dukes and counts rebelled, and half of the emperors' lives were spent in wars with the rebels. In the end, the vassals achieved the right to transfer their possessions by inheritance, and the emperors, in response to this, stopped distributing fiefs. Now they preferred to allocate small estates of 3-5 peasant households to their loyal people, slaves or freedmen, and these estates could be taken away at any time. Such warrior-slaves were called ghulams in the East, and ministerials in Germany; The ministerials became the faithful support of the emperors.

Another support of the emperors was the church. Once upon a time in Roman times, the bishops who led the community of believers were freely chosen by the priests and the people - but later the right to appoint bishops passed to the emperors, and they preferred to give bishoprics to the pupils of their court chapel. The ceremony of the emperor presenting the signs of episcopal dignity, the staff and the ring, was called investiture: the ring meant spiritual power, and the staff meant temporal power, the right to rule the bishopric as an imperial governor. In the 11th century, most of Germany and Italy were ruled not by counts and dukes, but by bishops, and they served the emperor faithfully, sending him money and military troops - and sometimes even going into battle at the head of their warriors. The participation of the holy fathers in knightly battles was not considered a sin at a time when the church was in decline, the strict rules of Roman times were forgotten, priests had families, church positions were sold, and housekeepers and deacons traded in the church without a twinge of conscience. Only a few monasteries still adhered to the ancient rule of St. Benedict, according to which the monks were supposed to live modestly, not eat meat, pray fervently and work in the fields. One of these monasteries was the monastery of Cluny in western Gaul; The local monks led a strict life, did not forget the commandments of the Lord, helped poor wanderers and treated the sick. They were highly respected, and the popes more than once sent them to other monasteries to instruct monks who had lost their way; if careless monks did not want to listen to instructions, then the emperor sometimes sent his soldiers to support the holy fathers.

One of the Cluniac monks famous for their asceticism was Brother Hildebrand, a peasant son who renounced his father and mother for the sake of serving God. Hildebrand fiercely opposed married priests, the sale of positions, and believed that all evil stems from the fact that bishops are appointed by the emperor, not the pope. Thanks to Hildebrand's insistence, one of the church councils decided that popes would henceforth be elected by a college of the most prominent bishops, "cardinals." In the end, Hildebrand, under the name of Gregory VII, took the papal throne - and immediately demanded that the emperor renounce his right to appoint bishops, “investiture.” Emperor Henry IV refused: this would have deprived him of his main support - then the Pope, in front of a huge crowd of people, cursed Henry and excommunicated him. “King Henry, who rebelled in unheard-of pride against your church,” the pope proclaimed, stretching out his hands to the sky, “I deprive him of the rule of the entire Teutonic kingdom and Italy and anathematize him!”

To the people who heard these words, it seemed as if an earthquake had occurred; Germany and Italy were thrown into horror; many thought that the end of the world was coming. The German counts and dukes, who had previously rebelled, demanded that Henry remove his crown and ask for mercy from the pope. In the harsh winter of 1077, Henry, his wife, child and a few loyal people set off across the Alps to Italy. The passes were covered with deep snow, people had to be lowered down on ropes, many fell off and died. On January 25, Henry, barefoot and dressed in rough linen, appeared in front of the gates of Canossa Castle, where the pope was at that time. They didn't let him in; For three days he stood in the snow and, shedding tears, begged for forgiveness. The princes and bishops of Europe who had gathered in Canossa silently looked from the walls at the unheard-of humiliation of the emperor. On the fourth day, the gates opened and Henry, with difficulty stepping on his frostbitten feet, came up and fell prostrate before the throne of the pope. Some of those present smiled triumphantly, but many cried - they understood that the shame of Canossa was the END OF THE EMPIRE.

Of course, life continued after Canossa. The Pope graciously forgave Henry, but the German dukes and counts rejected the disgraced king and chose a new one. An internecine war began, which lasted for forty years. In 1084, Henry took revenge on the pope, captured Rome and forced Gregory VII to flee the city; Dad died soon after. Henry IV died in 1106; since he was again anathematized, his body lay unburied for five years. In 1122, peace was concluded at Worms; the emperor renounced his right to appoint bishops, who became independent rulers. The dukes and counts also became almost independent; together with the bishops, they gathered in diets, elected and overthrew emperors, who from now on ruled almost nothing - only the name remained of the Empire. Just as in France, anarchy reigned in Germany; local rulers built castles and fought among themselves. Attempts by Charles and Otto to revive the Roman Empire ended in failure; the new emperors were unable to organize governance and keep the church in submission. They did not have skilled officials, and their subjects did not want to obey them: the barbarians understood only the rule of the strong. Centuries had to pass before agricultural labor would teach them patience; then the Compression had to come, cities and the culture that made possible the organization of government, the conduct of censuses and the collection of taxes had to appear. In the end, the Compression was supposed to give rise to a revolution and a new Empire - but this was a matter of the future, and in the 11th century only what was supposed to happen happened: the destruction of the remnants of Roman statehood and the victory of the barbarian order.

"We are people created in the image of God,

and we are pushed around like cattle!”

(Chronicle of Froissart.)

IN About all the times when barbarians invaded an agricultural country, having won a victory over its kings, they divided the lands among themselves. The tribal leader handed the warrior or head of the clan a bunch of straw and gave him lands, villages and rivers; the new ruler and his detachment went to their possessions - and what later historians called “the establishment of feudal relations” began. A detachment of barbarians occupied a convenient hill and built a burg - a small fortress made of earth and wood, and then began to conquer the local population. The barbarians killed, robbed, raped and took women to themselves. Captives were turned into slaves, and the rest were forced to pay tribute and work the fields of their masters. The same events were repeated many times in history, in Sparta, in Rome, in Parthia, in Rus'. It also happened that kings, fighting the barbarians, gave their soldiers the right to collect taxes from the peasants, and then, in a climate of war and anarchy, the soldiers began to behave like barbarians: they demanded more and more, and whipped to death those who did not agree to pay. The peasant did not care who robbed him and took away his daughters - “his own” or “strangers”; no matter who lived in the castle on the hill, the order was the same - the same ancient “Aryan order” that was established by the Aryan conquerors and which scientists call “feudalism”. In the 11th century, “fief” was the name given to knightly possessions, which had previously been called “benefits” and which now, during the period of anarchy, became hereditary and almost unlimited.

So, a knight with a detachment of armed servants, mercenaries or ministerials, established himself in a wooden castle on a hill. At first he collected the required taxes, and then began to demand more and more, reinforcing his right by beating the peasants. “They are pursued by fires, robbery and war,” a contemporary wrote, “they are thrown into prison and shackled, and then forced to pay a ransom or starved and subjected to all kinds of torture...” Desperate villagers were forced to sign enslavement documents: “Everyone I know that extreme poverty and heavy worries have befallen me and I have absolutely no way to live and dress... Therefore, I ask you to carry out and approve the enslavement of my free personality...” “Not through captivity, not through coercion, not through deception - I donated by my free will a belt around your neck..." Some of the peasants became slaves - "servas", others - tributaries - "villans"; The villans gave the “lord” part of the harvest, and the serfs cultivated his fields. The peasants still lived in their villages and cultivated their plots - but the land, pastures and forests were now considered the property of the lord. All that was left with the peasants were their log thatched huts, where the window was covered with a bull's bladder, and the smoke came out through a hole in the roof - so that when the fire was lit, you had to breathe in the smoke, the walls inside were covered with soot, and the peasants themselves were "black-faced" The peasant's clothing consisted of old rags and animal skins, and his food was liquid porridge, often without salt, because it was brought from afar and was expensive. Bread was also rare - the gentleman forced flour to be ground only at his mill, and you had to pay for it.

Dense forests still surrounded fields and villages on all sides - but the lord did not allow clearing and expansion of arable land: after all, the forest was his favorite hunting spot. A peasant who killed a deer or cut down a tree was punishable by death - so the peasants could not feed themselves on their plots, which were divided from time to time among their sons. They were doomed to starvation - and the 11th century is filled with descriptions of constantly recurring hunger strikes: “People went so far as to snatch carrion and other disgusting garbage from each other,” a chronicler wrote about the famine of 1033. “Some, fleeing death, ate forest roots and algae - all in vain! Even in good years, the only dream of the peasants was to eat well; they told each other legends about saints who fed crowds of people with seven loaves, and about the fabulous country of Kokkan, where “milk rivers flow in the banks of jelly.”

The peasants were forbidden to have weapons, and they were helpless against the iron-armored horsemen. But sometimes despair pushed them to revolt; they gathered with scythes and sickles and approached the castle; a detachment of knights left the castle - and the reprisal against the rebels began. This is how a medieval novel describes the reprisal carried out by the Norman Count Raoul:

He treated the peasants rudely,
Knocked out the eyes, did not leave the teeth,
He impaled many villans,
He pulled the veins and cut off the bones of his hands.
Others were burned alive
Or baptized with hot lead...

The survivors fled into the forests and hid there, sometimes attacking lone horsemen. Like Robin Hood, they led the life of robbers - the gentlemen had to be wary of these forest fellows with tight bows. All knightly literature is filled with hatred and disgust for peasants - especially those who suddenly emerge from the forest: “A young peasant appeared from the forest,” the knightly novel narrates. “He was overgrown with long stubble blacker than coal, he had thick cheeks and a huge flattened nose, big wide nostrils and ugly yellow teeth." And here’s what the noble knight looked like (in his own eyes):

Its body is strong and its proportions are excellent.
Broad shoulders and chest; he was beautifully built:
Powerful hands with huge fists
And a graceful neck.

On the side of the beautiful knight hung what made him beautiful and noble - a long iron sword, his main treasure, which he affectionately called by name and sometimes worshiped as a god. The life of a noble knight was completely different from the life of a peasant: with a cheerful company of friends, he spent time hunting, rushed through the thicket, driving boars and deer - and then feasted in his castle: game and spit-roasted pigs were served on the table, wine flowed like a river and wandering singers sang knightly ballads. The log walls of the feast hall were hung with homespun carpets depicting battles, the furniture was simple and rough, and dogs were gnawing bones on the floor - the time of luxury and grace had not yet come, as well as the time of education and piety. The knights were illiterate; they believed that studying meant “damaging the soul”; they did not know prayers and did not respect the monks. They gladly robbed merchants on the roads and plundered other people's villages - and then fought with neighboring lords, burned their fields and villages, and devastated the area. This was their way of life, war and robbery: after all, each knight had several sons, the eldest of them inherited the estate, and the rest had to obtain wealth with a spear and sword.

The priests came to despair from this robbery, from constant private wars; they provided shelter in churches for all persecuted people and, together with the peasants, erected large wooden crosses at crossroads - the knights were not supposed to touch those who, fleeing persecution, clung to the cross. At the beginning of the 11th century, the bishops suggested that the Frankish king Robert oblige the lords to take an oath on the sacred scripture: “I will not take away from the villagers either a bull or a cow,” the knights had to promise, “I will not grab a peasant, a peasant woman, or a merchant; I will not take their money and force them to pay a ransom... I will not subject them to blows to take away their livelihood...” The validity of this oath extended to the time of sowing - and nothing more; the church did not dare demand more. She tried many times to establish “God’s peace”, a ban on wars and robberies at least from Friday evening to Monday morning - but to no avail. In the spring of 1095, when the church council in Piacenza was again discussing the issue of “God’s peace,” ambassadors from Emperor Alexei arrived from Constantinople - they asked for help against the Turks approaching the city. Pope Urban II seized on this idea: to proclaim a crusade against the Turks, for the liberation of the Holy Land, Jerusalem, and, by sending all the robber knights there, to establish “God’s peace.” In the fall, the pope convened a new council in the center of war-torn Gaul, in Clermont; he invited not only priests there, but also knights from all over Europe. On the wide plain near Clermont he addressed a huge crowd with a speech:

“This land that you inhabit,” said dad, “is squeezed from everywhere by mountains and the sea, it is cramped by your large numbers and barely feeds those who cultivate it.” Hence it follows that you bite and devour each other, wage wars and inflict many wounds on each other. Let the hatred between you cease, let the enmity cease and the wars subside...

– Let those who are maliciously accustomed to wage war against fellow believers come out against the infidels... May those who were previously robbers become warriors of Christ from now on!

And the sea of ​​people standing on the plain shook and uttered a single cry:

- God wants it that way! God wants it that way!

Franks roam the city with their swords drawn,

They spare no one, not even those who

begs for mercy...

(Chronicle of Fulcher of Chartres.)

R The Pope of Rome instructed all monks and priests to preach a crusade for the liberation of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. The bishops persuaded the noble knights, and the monks went to the villages and addressed the common people; the most eloquent of these monks was Peter the Hermit, who walked barefoot, wearing coarse sackcloth worn over his naked body; he drew crowds of people with him. The monks promised the crusaders forgiveness of sins and eternal bliss in heaven - and people immediately sewed crosses on their clothes, sold their property and got ready to go on a campaign. While the knights were still preparing to set off, crowds of peasants moved through Germany to the southeast, accompanied by women who did not want to leave their husbands, and old men who dreamed only of dying in the Holy Land. They had no guides, and the chroniclers say that thousands of people followed the goat, on which they believed the Holy Spirit had descended - approaching each city, they asked if it was Jerusalem. The supplies taken for the road soon ran out, and the peasants begged for alms, and then began to rob those who refused to give them bread or money. They especially attacked Jews, wealthy merchants and moneylenders who lived in cities on the Rhine. “Here we are going to take revenge on the Mohammedans,” said the peasants, “and here in front of us are the Jews who crucified our Savior; Let’s take revenge on them first!”

Suffering from famine and clashes with local residents, crowds of peasant crusaders marched through Hungary and Bulgaria and reached Constantinople. Emperor Alexei knew about the strength of the Turks and understood what fate awaited the peasants; he advised Peter the Hermit to wait before crossing to Asia - but the enthusiastic crusaders did not listen to the old commander. A crowd of one hundred thousand crossed the strait and soon met the invincible cavalry of the conquerors of Asia. The outcome of the battle was terrible: according to a contemporary, after the battle the Turks piled a high mountain of corpses with crosses on their clothes on the shore. Thus ended the crusade of the poor.

In the summer of 1096, following the peasants, knights gathered on the road. Such a huge militia had never been seen in Europe: together with infantrymen, servants and baggage trains, its number was estimated at half a million. No country could support such an army, so the crusaders moved by different roads to gather near Constantinople. Separate columns of the militia were led by Duke Godfrey of Lorraine, Duke Robert of Normandy, Count Raymond of Toulouse and Duke Bohemond of Tarentum; The main force of crusader knighthood were the Franks and Normans.

In December 1096, the crusaders approached Constantinople. “There are more of them than the sand on the shore and the stars in the sky,” Princess Anna said to Emperor Alexei, looking from the city walls at the boundless stream of people. The crusaders looked in amazement at the huge bastions and gilded domes of churches rising to the sky - how different this amazing world was from their log castles, forests and villages. Alexei led the crusader leaders into Hagia Sophia, and, amazed by the greatness and wealth of the Empire, they took an oath of vassal allegiance to him. However, the emperor understood how little the loyalty of these unbridled barbarians meant; Bloody clashes occurred more than once between his soldiers and the crusaders, and the huge city breathed a sigh of relief when the barbarians finally crossed into Asia.

Now the everyday life of war has begun. The first thing the crusaders should have seen on the other side of the strait was a mountain of skeletons left over from their predecessors. The Turks were fearless warriors; they were not afraid of the rage of the Normans and the ramming blows of the knightly cavalry - life had accustomed them to campaigns and battles. True, the invincible horde that conquered the Middle East had disintegrated by that time, and individual sultans and emirs opposed the crusaders. In June 1096, the crusaders captured Nicaea, the largest city in Asia Minor, and soon met the army of Sultan Soliman on the Dorilean Plain. “A terrible battle took place,” the chronicler testifies, “both sides, rushing at each other, fought fearlessly and mercilessly, like wild animals.” The Crusaders were victorious and paved their way through Asia Minor; began a three-month journey through the steppes and deserts under the scorching summer sun. The steppes and deserts could not feed the huge army, and soon a terrible famine began; they say that Christ’s soldiers ate human flesh; their path was strewn with the bodies of the dead.

In October, the crusaders approached Antioch, but the city was well fortified and the siege dragged on for nine months. All this time, the ranks of the besiegers were decimated by hunger and epidemics, the army was melting before our eyes, and by the end of this terrible winter, only a small part of the formidable army that had crossed the strait a year ago had survived. Those who survived could barely stand on their feet and had already lost hope of salvation - they were alone in the depths of a hostile country, and the Turks gathered a huge army and marched towards Antioch. The crusaders were saved by treason in the ranks of the city’s defenders; one Armenian, by agreement, opened the gates for them and the knights broke into Antioch. “The soldiers of Christ killed all the inhabitants, including children and women. All the squares were filled with corpses,” says the chronicler. Never before had such rich booty fallen into the hands of the knights - but there was no time to divide it: the next day, hordes of Turks, led by Emir Kerboga, approached the city walls. The crusaders left the city and gave battle, but were defeated and took refuge behind the fortress walls. They were still plagued by hunger and disease; many warriors refused to obey the leaders; having captured city houses, they holed up in them, guarding their prey. Bohemond of Tarentum ordered these houses to be set on fire, the fire spread in all directions, and a significant part of the city burned down. At this time, when despondency reigned in the ranks of the crusaders, one simple man named Peter saw in a dream a saint who told him that in one of the Antioch churches, a Christian shrine was hidden under the floor - a spear, with which one of the legionnaires had once wounded someone hanging on the cross. Jesus. The crusaders broke open the floor in the place indicated by Peter and found the Sacred Spear; A triumphant cry resounded throughout the city, and immediately everyone began to put on armor and mount horses to go into battle. With a cry: “God is with us!” The crusaders attacked Kerboga's army, overthrew it and sent the Turks into a stampede.

Having repelled the Turks, capturing food and rich booty, the soldiers of Christ rested in Antioch for four months. There was no agreement among their leaders, they argued about who would get the city, and their warriors fought in the streets over the spoils. Eventually, the army moved south along the coast, devastating coastal cities and mercilessly exterminating the inhabitants - Muslim chroniclers described this barbaric invasion with horror. While killing and robbing Muslims, the crusaders themselves were dying of hunger, and their path was strewn with corpses. Finally, in June 1099, the army approached Jerusalem; by this time only 20 thousand soldiers remained of the huge army. With the last of their strength, they built siege towers and moved them to the walls of the city. On July 15, 1099, the crusaders broke into Jerusalem.

...As soon as they entered the city, they scattered everywhere,
They rushed into houses, onto roofs, into gardens, vegetable gardens - everywhere
They kill, rob and devastate
One strangles the elders, the other takes away the babies,
Many people care about one thing: tearing jewelry out of their ears...

“No one has ever heard or seen such an extermination of the pagans,” says the chronicle. “To burn the corpses, it was ordered to build fires like pyramids, and no one knows their number, except one god.” At sunset, the warriors, burdened with booty and not having time to wash the blood from their armor, gathered in front of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and sang a hymn of praise to God. They were on their knees, stretching out their hands to the sky, their faces were in tears and they selflessly thanked the Lord for the victory. “Their very soul carried a voice of praise to God, victorious and triumphant, a voice that cannot be expressed in words,” an eyewitness testifies. “This day is glorified forever, for this is the day of the death of paganism and the establishment of Christianity...”