150 - The Perils of Mismanagement

Hello, and welcome to the History of Rome, episode 150, The Perils of Mismanagement. In the winter of 368 AD, Valentinian was in the northern capital of Trier, making plans to overhaul the fortifications of the Rhine frontier. The whole region had been a disrupted mess since the revolt of Magnentius back in 350, and though Julian had done much to restore order, since the apostate emperor had gone east to meet his destiny, the west had slipped back into chaos. This was partly due to the increasing entropy of the time, but it was also due to Valentinian's own mishandling of the situation. Now that things in Britannia were back in hand and the Alamanni had been defeated in battle, the emperor was of a mind that it was time to re-cement Roman power. The only problem was that Valentinian's plan was so aggressive that it had the exact opposite effect.

When the spring of 369 arrived, a Valentinian ordered his troops to begin repairing and rebuilding various forts along the Roman side of the Rhine, which, so far, so good. But then the emperor took the provocative step of ordering his men to build a fort on the far side of the river, near the spot where the Romans and Alamanni had fought the year before, just south of the modern city of Heidelberg. Envoys from the Alamanni immediately protested the existence of a permanent Roman base in their territory, and they asked for an audience with Valentinian, but, as was the emperor's apparent custom, this request was denied. Once again, the Alamanni left the imperial court furious and hot for blood. Where there had just been a tentative peace, there was now once again a pretext for war.

The new leader of the Alamanni, a wily king named Macrianus, quickly organized a strike force that began attacking the soldiers working on the offending base until the Romans were driven off and the half-built fort was destroyed. This, of course, ticked Valentinian off something fierce, but after his near-death experience at the end of 368, he was wary of just up and invading Alamanni territory again, at least not without stacking the deck a little. So in 370 he presented a plan to the Burgundians, another German confederation who lived a little bit deeper into the interior of Germania. They were already enemies of the Alamanni, and so Valentinian suggested that they just do what he knew they wanted to do, which was go on the offensive against their neighbors. Valentinian promised to support the effort, and implied that once battle was joined, that the Romans would cross over and attack the Alamanni from the rear. But though the supplies were promised, the whole bit about joining in the fight was merely implied. When the Burgundian invoice pressed for a guarantee, the Romans were reluctant to provide it.

So the Burgundians asked for an audience with Valentinian, but as was now standard operating procedure, they were refused. Annoyed by this rebuke, and without much to go on but the manipulative prodding of the Romans, the Burgundians returned home, declining to raise a hand against the Alamanni. But the talks did turn out to stack the deck just a little in Rome's favor. When the Alamanni caught wind of a possible Roman-Burgundian alliance, they decided the most prudent response would be to scatter. When Valentinian heard that the Alamanni forces were decentralized, he immediately prepared for another invasion. This one to be led by the Emperor's newly minted master of the horse, and all-around Mr. Fixit, Theodosius the Elder. Theodosius had come back from Britannia at the end of 369, and was now clearly the one man Valentinian had confidence in. A confidence that he would prove himself worthy of, over and over again.

At some point in 371 or 372, Theodosius gathered up an army in the province of Rhaetia, and then crossed over into Alamanni territory. With no one part of the scattered German confederation large enough to fend off the Roman advance, Theodosius was able to sweep through the territory, rounding up hordes of prisoners in the process. These prisoners were then deposited in the Po Valley of northern Italy, where, in return for their lives, they were to become settled farmers and willing recruits for the Roman army. In the midst of this campaign, Theodosius nearly captured Macrianus, but the Alamanni king managed to slip away. But that did not stop Theodosius from imposing a new order on the Germans. A pro-Roman chieftain was raised up, and the other Alamanni nobles were forced to submit to his supremacy. It was a top-down imposition of authority that would wind up holding no real force once the Romans withdrew, but it was some nice wrapping paper around a very successful campaign season for Theodosius.

Though this would not be the end of the wars against the Alamanni, this was enough of a settlement for Valentinian that the emperor thought it safe to transfer his Mr. Fixit down to North Africa, which had suddenly become the new crisis center of the Western Empire. Apparently, some kind of revolt had broken out, and there were conflicting reports coming in about what was really going on, who was fighting for what, and who was to blame. At the center of the maelstrom was Romanus, the dukes of the North African legions, who is unquestionably the villain of this story. Romanus was exactly the sort of greedy nihilist that you just really want in a high-ranking position of authority, in a territory that you are just barely holding onto. He was a disaster. Without him around, I doubt any of what's about to happen would have happened.

Above and beyond the petty corruption that usually accumulates around ethically challenged leaders, Romanus had developed a truly sinister means of enriching himself. Once the various municipalities of North Africa had paid all their taxes and sent along all the required conscripts to fill the ranks of the army, Romanus would go around and ask for more. More money, and more men. If the municipalities balked, then Romanus would hint darkly that, you know, should Moorish raiders attack your city, my men might be too occupied to come help you. But if you pay up, then I'll make sure we come running. Most of the cities gave in to this blackmail, but there were a few who refused. And this is where things get ugly. You see, Romanus wasn't bluffing. He used his contacts with various Moor tribes to hint to them that if they were planning on attacking such and such a city, that it was highly likely the legions would be occupied elsewhere, and not make it in time to stop them. The Moors, given the green light, would then come down out of the hills and sack the city. Romanus would not lift a finger to help. The Dukes of North Africa then was not just corrupt or negligent, he was ordering attacks on the very people he was supposed to be protecting.

The citizens of Africa naturally began to complain to the Emperor, but refusing to be anything but just a terrible, terrible guy, Romanus used his connections in the imperial court to pin all of his crimes on innocent subordinates. Disled about the situation, Valentinian ordered the execution of a handful of officials, who, besides having nothing at all to do with Romanus' crimes, had probably tried to stop him, which is why Romanus had singled them out for framing. In 372, this all finally became too much for a Romano-Moorish noble named Firmus. Firmus was the son of a half-Moor, half-Roman leader, whose family played a dual role in Roman Africa. On the one hand, they served as high-ranking officials in the imperial bureaucracy, and on the other hand, they served as the leaders of a local Moorish tribe. Romanus was offensive to both halves of Firmus' identity, and with the Emperor successfully hoodwinked into supporting the evil Dukes, Firmus decided to take matters into his own hand. Backed by the legionary forces under his command, Firmus raised the standard of revolt and called for the people to join his cause.

The uprising came as something of a surprise up in Trier, where Valentinian was now more or less permanently based, because, after all, hadn't he taken care of this problem? Hadn't he just executed a bunch of guys? Why was there now suddenly a revolt? To answer these questions, Valentinian dispatched Theodosius to investigate. There is speculation that the Emperor was already at this point pretty sure that he had been lied to, and that Theodosius was being sent down to Africa as much to deal with the problem of Romanus as he was to deal with the revolt of Firmus. We don't know when exactly Theodosius arrived in Africa, other than that it was sometime between 372 and 375, which isn't very satisfying, but we do know that when he got there, he was able to quickly establish that Romanus was guilty as sin, and the Dukes was arrested.

With Romanus taken care of, Firmus lost his causus belli, and so immediately attempted a reconciliation with Theodosius and the rest of the Roman authorities. But Theodosius was not going to let him off that easy. Justified or not, Firmus had led Roman citizens into revolt against the lawful government. That was a crime that could not go unpunished. So Theodosius rejected Firmus' request for a peace. I can see where Theodosius is coming from, we can't negotiate with usurpers and all that, but by refusing to bring Firmus down from the hills, Theodosius set up the African provinces for years of bloody and ultimately pointless struggle.

The master of the horse launched a military campaign to bring Firmus to heel by force, which divided the citizens of the provinces from each other, and led to bloody reprisals, as cities were caught supporting this side or that at the wrong time. Underlying the war was the fact that Firmus was a Donatist Christian, and Theodosius was a staunch Nicene. So the two sides began to break down along the same religious lines that had been dividing the Africans for years. So all in all, it was a bad time to be a North African. And, as was happening up in Britannia, the bonds that tied the locals to the empire and vice versa were beginning to fray dangerously.

Eventually, a Firmus was brought down the same way that Jugurtha had been brought down five hundred years before. Another Moorish chief looking to get into Theodosius' good books lured Firmus into a trap under false pretenses and captured him. But unlike Jugurtha, Firmus was able to escape the humiliation of being presented to the Romans in chains, and he committed suicide before he could be handed over. As I just said, although Theodosius was technically successful in his mission, Romanus was out of the picture, and Firmus had been taken down without having to compromise with him. The net result of it all was that the Roman hold over North Africa was further eroded. As with Britain, in about fifty years Roman rule in North Africa will enter its death spiral, and though Justinian will be able to briefly reassert control over the region at disastrous cost, the end of the Western Empire clearly was nigh.

While Theodosius was quelling the revolt in Africa, Valentinian struggled to deal with the continued intransigence of the Alamanni, while also dealing with yet another hotspot lit on fire by Roman mismanagement, this one flaring up along the Danube. Failing to learn his lesson from what had just happened with the Alamanni, in 373 Valentinian ordered forward bases built across the Danube in the territory of the Quadi. Like the Alamanni, the Quadi were annoyed when they found out that forts were being built in their lands, and so sent representatives to bargain with Aquitius, who was still in charge of military operations in Illyria. But Aquitius, taking his cues from Valentinian, refused to meet with the representatives when they arrived. We don't know exactly what happened next, that is, whether the Quadi began to actively hinder the building projects like the Alamanni had, or if they just kept up their complaining, but for one reason or another, construction of the forts began to fall behind schedule.

In response, the Praetorian Prefect of Gaul, who had the Emperor's ear because Valentinian was based in Trier, had his son Marcellianus assigned to the project with a mandate to get it back on track. Marcellianus packed his bags, and made sure to bring his jug of gasoline and strike anywhere matches. When the new foreman arrived, he did all the normal things you do when a project is stalled out. He cracked the whip, and demanded results and not excuses. As he was attempting to turn things around, though, he quickly learned that the Quadi were still refusing to just roll over and accept the new forts, and they peppered him constantly with complaints and petitions and demands, anything to get the Romans to knock it off. All of this came to greatly annoy Marcellianus, and so he decided to send the Quadi a message. He invited the leadership of the tribe to a Roman-sponsored peace banquet, and then, when everyone was good and lubricated, he seized the most powerful Quadi king and had him executed. Marcellianus was under the impression that this would cow the Germans into submission. Instead, as I'm sure any objective observer could have predicted, Marcellianus' treachery sparked a war.

When the Quadi found out what had happened, they got together with some Allied starmations and launched a full-scale attack on the Romans' forward position on the north side of the Danube. Taken completely off guard, because he was under the impression that his sneaky murder had been so super-intimidating, Marcellianus and his men were forced to pull up stakes and make a run for it. When they got back across the Danube, they sat down to catch their breath, but then looked up and realized that the Quadi and starmations were not stopping. So Marcellianus and his men kept running south. The barbarian force crossed the Danube and kept up the pursuit, burning and pillaging anything they came across. The Roman alarm was quickly raised, and two legions were sent to intercept the invaders, but just to compound an already disastrous situation, the commanders of the two legions didn't get along with each other, they failed to cooperate, and so the Quadi-starmation army was able to continue their marauding unchecked, now less interested in revenging themselves upon Marcellianus and more interested in just plundering.

While Illyria burned, another branch of the starmations decided to join in the fun, and crossed over the Danube into Moesia. But unlike the Roman response in Illyria, which was a delicious mix of cowardice and internal bickering, the Roman response in Moesia was smart, prompt, and effective. Mostly because the duke of Moesia was an able young commander named Theodosius. Yes, that Theodosius.

With the Danube under attack, and North Africa still a mess, Valentinian was forced to do something that he really, really didn't want to do. Make peace with the Alamanni. And not just the Alamanni in general, but Macrianus in particular. Since Valentinian had assassinated his predecessor, Macrianus had emerged as the leading anti-Roman chief in the German ranks. He had orchestrated the attack on the Heidelberg fort, and then kept up the resistance, even as Theodosius won engagement after engagement. Technically, he had then been deposed, but as soon as Theodosius withdrew, the Alamanni began agitating against their new puppet king, and pledging their allegiance once again to Macrianus. Unable to spare the men or the manpower to head back into German territory and force the Alamanni to do what Valentinian wanted them to do, around 374 the emperor gave up and came to terms with his enemy, recognizing Macrianus as the rightful leader of the Alamanni, and promising to respect their territorial claims. It was a bitter, but necessary pill for Valentinian to swallow.

It was a necessary pill, because in the middle of 374, Valentinian received a full report on how operations were going along the western Danube frontier. The answer, as we just saw, was a resounding, really not well. Marcellianus had high-tailed it out of the area, and the commanders of the border legions were pointing fingers at each other, concentrating far harder on covering their asses than actually dealing with the barbarians in their midst. This was clearly going to take the presence of the emperor to sort out, so Valentinian made plans to leave the Rhine for the first time in nearly a decade. When he finally departed, it would be the last time that a senior Augustus would make his headquarters in the western half of the empire.

It had already come as something of a surprise that Valentinian had taken the west as his territory in the first place, since, at this point in history, it was neither economically nor culturally as rich as the east, and going forward, no powerful emperor would make the mistake of basing himself in Gaul when he could base himself in Constantinople. The eastern empire had its problems, sure, but look around. The west is a decaying, poor wreck. Who wants any part of that dump? Maybe Stilicho could have done something with it had he been given a chance, but that is a what-if comic for another day.

In the spring of 375, Valentinian arrived on the Danube frontier and surveyed the damage. He didn't need any more reports to tell him how bad things had gotten. When he arrived at the key military city of Carnuntum, he found it a ghost town. With the army out in the field, the inhabitants had fled for their lives. But though things had gotten out of hand, it wasn't that bad. As Theodosius the Younger had shown, the Romans were more than capable of dealing with a few barbarian invaders, they were just doing a really crappy job of it in Illyria. When word got around that the emperor was now in the area, even the barbarians had to admit that, yeah, maybe we have been taking advantage of the situation. Switching immediately from raising hell mode to abject groveling mode, representatives of the Quadi and Sarmatian showed up at the imperial court, begging forgiveness. They laid out their case against Marcellianus and swore up and down that had their king not been murdered, that none of this would have happened.

The emperor, through intermediaries of course, promised to investigate the matter so he could decide for himself who was to blame and who should be punished. But the members of the imperial court were not typically in the habit of siding with barbarians against the son of a praetorian prefect, and so when the investigators came back, they reported that the Quadi had been completely out of line and were 100% to blame. Verdict in hand, Valentinian announced that he was going to punish the Quadi for their unprovoked invasion of Roman territory. He gathered up an army, and in the late summer of 375, he launched a punitive expedition into Quadi territory, crossing the Danube near modern Budapest. He spent the next few months successfully punishing the barbarians for something that, yeah, they had done, but really, wasn't Marcellianus' just awful diplomacy really to blame?

As winter approached, the emperor withdrew back across the Danube and moved a bit up river. It seemed that that would be the end of Valentinian's campaigning for the year, but for reasons unknown, it appears that he changed his mind and decided to keep going with a winter offensive. In November of 375, having been battered around more than enough and ready to put an end to the fighting, envoys from the Quadi once again showed up at the imperial court, begging forgiveness and asking what it would take for the emperor to desist. Satisfied that the barbarians were now showing the proper degree of humility, Valentinian's courtiers informed the Quadi that the terms would be the standard arrangement, provide X number of young recruits for the legions each year, and there will be peace. The Quadi agreed, but before they went back home, they once again humbly requested a personal audience with the emperor. Breaking with his established practice, this time Valentinian agreed to meet them.

But as we will see next week, it was perhaps a good thing that the emperor had kept himself distanced from the barbarians for all these years. However, before we get to that fateful meeting, we must turn our attention back to the East. We left Valens off two episodes back, firmly in command of the Eastern Empire after defeating Procopius in May of 366, and now we're up to November of 375. So what had Valentinian's brother been up to for the last decade? Twiddling his thumbs and waiting for Adrianople? Hardly. The Eastern Empire, though stronger and richer than the Western Empire, was not exactly a bed of roses. So next week, we will cover the adventures of Valens, as he deals first with unruly Goths, and then presumptuous Sassanids. With the latter being a far more powerful and far more organized threat, the Eastern Augustus tended to focus all of his attention on the Persian issue, especially because Shapur was causing so much trouble in what has to be by far the most important technically neutral little kingdom in the history of the world, Armenia.