Genseric “the Lame”, king of the Vandals. He was my 42nd great grandfather, he ruled over the Germanic tribe of the Vandals for over fifty years, from approximately 425 to January 25, 477.
He was born in Pannonia, which is now in Hungary, and died in Carthage, Zeugitana, which is now in Tunesia, North Africa. How that happened is one of the strangest stories in history.
Rome was still the premiere civilized country during the 400s. Earlier on the descendants of the Phoenicians had built a decent empire around the city of Carthage in North African. The Romans didn’t like that, and a series of wars occurred. It wasn’t all a Roman victory, the Punic Wars were back and forth, and a Carthaginian general named Hannibal nearly destroyed Rome.
In the end, the Romans vanquished Carthage, but feared that it would return, so they did something unusual for even Rome. They carted hundreds of wagons of salt, to spread over the city, and its fields for miles around. They wanted the city to starve and never be able to grow crops again.
Then Rome went on it’s way to conquer the world. They were stopped in a few places, the Medes and the Parthians caused some trouble, but they were so far East that it was another world.
The main problem for Rome was up north. The Germanic tribes lived in a dark forest, and resisted being civilized. And they fought like wild men.
Eventually the Romans stopped trying to make the north into provinces, and used the rivers as a natural border. Keep them on the other side, and we can trade with them now and again.
The Romans didn’t know what was on the other side of the Germans, and that was a problem. The Romans had gone to Gaul (France), and even up to Belgium and Britain, but they kept the Germans in their dark forests.
In the Germanic East the forest thinned to fertile grasslands. The Germanic tribes that were there enjoyed good farming, with rich harvests. The rich harvests attracted tribes that were even farther East. The Hunnish invaders made regular incursions, and some brought horses and carts with the intention to stay. They were fierce fighters, so the Germanic tribes were being pushed to the West.
The problem was the the West already had people living there, and they didn’t want to be replaced. It wasn’t going to be a domino game. The Ostrogoths and the Visigoth tribes decided to keep together and move as a unit through the Eastern part of Germany, or Allemania as it was called.
When they came to a border with Rome, there was conflict, so they continued West. The Visigoths ended up all the way in Spain. The Ostrogoths moved from Romania to Northern Italy and Switzerland. The Vandals were relatives to the Visigoths so the went to Spain as well.
The Vandals were good fighters but everybody was on the move, and they needed to change in order to find their “place”. When they got to the end of the road in Spain, they could see Africa beyond the Gibraltar Strait. They could see the water.
The tribal leaders said, “Let us became sailors, it can’t be that hard!”
Maybe no one said it, but that is what happened. The German tribe called the Vandals, left the plains and the forests, and they became fighters in boats, cruising the shore that was mostly desert.
There had always been pirates, but they were individual thieves sneaking up on travelers or cities. Thousands of years ago there were the “Sea Peoples”, that bought an end to the Bronze Age, but nothing since. This was a tribe, an entire nation that changed there lifestyle. They were very successful.
They continued going East, hugging the coast of Africa until they hit a very attractive area that had harbors and some small villages. It was the ancient site of Carthage. It had recovered to some extent, and the Romans had left it alone for centuries, Spain and Egypt were the breadbaskets.
Using Carthage as a base the Vandals traveled everywhere in the Mediterranean, and they kept bumping into the Romans. By now they knew a little history, and they even knew how Attila the Hun was pressing down from the north.
Rome had even hired German generals to fight back the Germans. A select few tribes were invite to live on the Roman side of the river, to act as a buffer. Some tribes even joined the Roman army.
The Vandals attacked and conquered nearly all the islands off the coast of Europe. The Mediterranean was their lake, Sardinia, Sicily and the Baleric islands were their empire.
From bases in Sardinia and Sicily it was easy to an attack on The City of Rome. Thirty years earlier it was beaten by Alaric and his Ostrogoths.
Genseric threatened Rome but the Emperor Valentinian III had offered his daughter in marriage to Genseric’s son. This was a typical royal bribe with a bride.
Rome had remembered the horror of Alaric breaching the walls of Rome, but they had a Roman general Aetius that was very good about keeping the Germans off guard, and away from Rome.
The Senate grew afraid, with many senators making plans to flee Rone with their wealth, one Senate leader thought that he would be a better Emperorand used his money to buy influence.
Petronius Maximus knew that he could never remove Valentinian as long as Aetius was around, so he made a plan to get rid of Aetius.
At every opportunity he whispered to Emperor Valentinian that Aetius was getting too popular. The Army followed him, the people cheered his victories. Even the Senate had shown extreme thanks.
After months, it finally worked. Aetius had a meeting with Valentinian to discuss the budget for the military, when Valentinian drew a sword and hit the unarmed Aetius in the head. For weeks he bragged that he had killed the “traitor” Aetius.
One senator remarked, “Yes, the Emperor had used his left hand, to cut off his right hand.” Without Aetius, the tribes attacked the border. Without Aetius, the Army was leaderless. More Senators fled the city.
Eventually Valentinian planned to leave the city as well. His personal guards were two centurions that had served with Aetius. The Emperor Valentinian III was killed as he left the city.
Petronius Maximus was thrilled, he immediately made himself Emperor and started his plan to control the country. Petronius Maximus married the Emperor’s widow Licinia, then he cancelled the wedding of the daughter of to Genseric’s son, and made her marry his own son.
This was the last straw for Genseric so he attacked Rome, broke through the walls and the Vandals sacked the City for two weeks. In the end we still remember this when we use the term “vandalized”.
Petronius Maximus fled as the Vandals arrived, became detached from his retinue and bodyguard in the confusion, and was killed.
After the two weeks, Genseric left with the Empress Licinia Eudoxia and her daughters Placidia and Eudocia.
Eudocia did marry Genseric’s son after all.
A Bright Light
I saw a notice in our neighborhood blog about a noise, and a bright light at 12:00 am. The neighbor wanted to know if anyone else had seen it. Dozens of people responded that they had, and suggested that it was fireworks.
Sixty years ago, my close friend said that he had discovered the formula for gunpowder, he didn’t do this by trial and error, he found the proportions listed in some old textbook. He then told me that it was some common chemicals, that were easily obtainable. The hardest to find could actually be purchased at the local drugstore. We enlisted a friend to buy some, and we bought the rest.
What trouble could three teenagers get into with a pound of homemade gunpowder? Our first idea was to buy a pound of caramel chews, melt them in a pan, replacing the sugar in the formula. We could then pour the liquid it into a tube, let it cool to a solid, then we would have a solid fuel rocket… if we added wings.
One of us, with more safety consciousness, said that it probably wasn’t safe to have gunpowder around a flame. We agreed to mix the ingredients dry. All we had was the large coffee can, from my father’s morning brew, Folgers.
It was all about proportions, one half of this, one third of that, etc. by some miracle we added every thing and it filled the can to the brim. We put the lid on it, taped it shut, grabbed some matches, some sparklers, and waited till dark.
The sun was down but we had a problem, at first we thought we would set it off in the alley behind our houses. But we weren’t sure about the end result. It could be a flare, it could be an explosion. We didn’t want to blow up our neighborhood, plus we would certainly be found to have been the ones buying chemicals from the drugstore.
There was the asphalt field at the junior high, but it was ringed by houses, so that was out. We didn’t want to use our bikes to go out into the country. We were lazy, and didn’t want to start a fire. We settled on the local high school football field, 50 yard line, on the school logo.
We had been there before, so we knew it was surrounded by a high chain link fence. I mean very high, three times the height near the stands, and twice the height near the end zones. We quietly climbed the three story fence near the stands.
We managed to carry over the coffee can, the matches, and a few sparklers we had from July 4th to act as a fuse. It was very dark, which was good for us, but we had to take a few moments to find centerfield. We placed the can on the logo, took the lid off, and prepared to light the sparklers.
We first thought to light the sparklers, then toss them into the can from several yards away. We didn’t get remotely close enough. Then we thought about dropping it in as we ran fast beside it. We didn’t even try that. We ended up lighting the sparkler near the can, dropping it in, then running to a safe distance.
I don’t know how we knew a safe distance for one pound of gunpowder. Was it ten yards, fifteen yards? I think we opted for twenty yards. We looked back into the darkness and we could barely see the faint flicker of the sparkler inside the can. It hadn’t ignited. We waited a full five minutes until the sparkler was nearly out, then there was a whoosh!
It wasn’t a bang, it didn’t explode. If it had, I probably wouldn’t be able to write about it sixty years later. The whoosh came from gases being thrown out of the can into the dark sky. From my memory it was as if a moon rocket had buried it self into the earth, with flames going thirty to forty feet into the air. It was so amazing that it didn’t explode, and that we were safe and watching this wonderful light. I could see the laughter of my friends, I could see every freckle on their faces. It was so bright!
We were at least 60 yards from the closest fence, it was like daylight everywhere on the football field. We stood out so plainly that everyone could see what color of clothes we were wearing.
It wasn’t going to be long before neighbors were going to ask questions. It wasn’t going to be long before the police would be looking for us.
It took so long to get to the fence that I thought we would be caught coming down the other side. It was quiet here and some trees had hid the light so that neighbors were not standing it the street wondering.
We hid in some bushes to formulate a plan. Something that we hadn’t conceived earlier. We thought about splitting up and going three different ways on the five block run to our homes.
We didn’t like that, the odds were that at least one of us would be caught and tortured. So we kept together, sending one person out to find the next hiding spot. We took at least two hours leap frogging from one spot into the next. We got home safe.
The following day we heard about a bright light on the football field. They said it was fireworks.