175 - Trying to Take It All Back

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Hello, and welcome to the History of Roam, Episode 175, Trying to Take It All Back. Following the defeat, deposition, and execution of Avetis, the Western Empire was once again left without an officially recognized ruler. At least, that's how the leaders of the West looked at it. According to Constantinople, the western half of the empire had been without a ruler since the assassination of Valentinian III almost two years before. The Eastern Augustus Martian had never recognized Petronius Maximus or Aparcheus Avetis, and it didn't look like he had any interest in recognizing the new would-be emperor Majorian either.

The general Ricomer tried to exploit this unwillingness on the part of the East to legitimize the emperors of the West by attempting to secure a sort of viceroy commission for himself to personally rule the western provinces but in the name of Constantinople. But then Martian died, and Leo the Thracian became emperor of the East, and he didn't appear keen to recognize Majorian as emperor or let Ricomer rule as a viceroy. Which was no doubt a little frustrating for them, especially since Leo had no more claim to power than they did. Martian at least had the lingering legitimacy of having married into the imperial Theodosian family. Leo was just some general, so whatever.

By the spring of 457, Ricomer finally gave up on the idea of becoming viceroy, and knowing that the Italian nobility would never accept him as emperor because of his German heritage, he backed his protégé Majorian for the job. In a ceremony in Ravenna on April 1st, Majorian was crowned with the diadem and took over official control of the West. But though the diadem sat on Majorian's head, it was clear that he was really co-ruling with Ricomer. Leo and the court of Constantinople did not immediately recognize Majorian, but really at this point who cared what they said. It's not like Majorian was so offensive to the East that they were going to raise an army to throw him out of power, so you guys do what you want, we'll be over here running the West.

But the West was now a pale shadow of its former self. Britain was gone. North Africa was gone. Most of Gaul was split between barbarian factions, and Spain was now slowly but surely being conquered by the Goths, and you can be sure that the Goths had no interest in letting Majorian tell them what to do. So when the two generals seized power, they were basically seizing control of Italy, and only Italy. Everything else was out of their control. The Romans had not been so geographically circumscribed since the days just before the Punic Wars some 700 years earlier.

But Majorian and Ricomer were ambitious men and vigorous soldiers. They were not going to be content with sitting around Ravenna, running out the clock, governing the Italian peninsula. No, they were going to push back against the tide of history. They wanted it all back. Gaul, Spain, North Africa, hell even Britain if they could swing it. In the minds of Ricomer and Majorian, their rise to power was going to be a turning point in history, the moment when the Western Empire returned to glory. But though, as we're about to see, they made a pretty good run at it, in the end the tide of history was too great to overcome. That and the petty jealousies that so often ruin good work just as it's getting started.

Majorian and Ricomer spent the rest of 457 consolidating their hold over Italy. There appears to have been some sort of attempt by the Alamanni to take advantage of the chaos by possibly raiding over the Alps, or at least getting ready to raid over the Alps, because right off the bat Majorian is credited with winning some sort of victory against the Germans. For the next year and a half, the new regime focused its attention primarily on questions of Italian security, but they also began to make legislative claims on Gaul.

When it came to Italy, the biggest threat was obviously posed by the Vandals. Though Ricomer had beaten them back in 456, the Vandals had regrouped and started raiding the Italian coastline again. At some point in 458, Majorian himself led a counterattack against a force of Vandals invading Italy, and Genseric's brother-in-law was killed in the fighting. To help secure the peninsula in the long term, Majorian initiated the reconstruction of the Roman Navy, a branch of the armed forces that had been completely neglected in recent years. With one fleet based on the Tyrrhenian coast and another based in Ravenna, Majorian hoped to bring an end to 25 years of the Vandals controlling the seas.

In the midst of these operations, Majorian received a critical boost to his legitimacy in December 457, when envoys from Constantinople arrived with the news that Leo had decided to officially recognize Majorian as his co-ruler. For the first time in almost three years, East and West were on the same page. Constantinople's stamp of approval was going to make it hard for the citizens of the West to argue that Majorian was somehow illegitimate.

But even still, the political, military, and religious leadership in Gaul were thoroughly disdainful of Majorian. They were not ready to forgive or forget the overthrow of their man Avetis. Throughout 458, there is evidence that on questions of taxation, the Gallic nobility appealed directly to Constantinople for rulings, and that inscriptions from Lyon were dated only with reference to Leo. No mention is made of Majorian. There is also a passing reference made to a Marcellinian revolt, whatever that was, and whichever Marcellinus happened to be leading it.

Majorian and Rickemer wanted Gaul to recognize their authority, but they were not so blind as to think that they were just going to get it for nothing. So, while they built a force of barbarian mercenaries that they planned to use to enforce their will in Gaul, they also laid the groundwork for a friendlier reception than the Gauls were probably planning on giving them right at that moment. And when you are a new ruler looking to make nice with a bunch of people who are not at all predisposed to liking you, what is the number one surefire way to bring them around? Did someone say tax relief? I thought I heard somebody say tax relief, which would be good because the answer is tax relief.

As was so often the case, the collection of taxes was these days an intermittent and corrupt sort of thing. The richest landowners did their best to avoid giving anything to the central government, another one of the 257 different reasons why the Western Empire fell, which meant that the civil authorities were forever coming up short on the total due. The rules of the game specified that if they failed to collect the proper taxes, that the civil authorities themselves would be on the hook for the shortfall. But these civil authorities, called the Curians, were themselves basically middle-class bureaucrats who had no great fortunes to draw upon and who wielded no significant power over the people who did have great fortunes to draw upon. And so, they usually wound up turning viciously on the lower classes to extort every last dollar they could find. Even then, they all wound up woefully short.

So the bottom line was that everyone owed the central government obscene amounts of back taxes and the middle and lower classes were being squeezed to death. So, Majorian passed laws specifically pertaining to Gaul that tried to rein in the rampant corruption and then announced that the back tax debt was hereby cancelled. So, I can't be all bad.

In the autumn of 458, Majorian marched over the Alps at the head of a pretty good-sized army composed mostly of barbarian mercenaries to help bring Gaul under imperial control. Ricomer stayed behind in Italy, setting up the ruling dynamic that would hold for the remainder of the partnership between the two men, Majorian traversing the provinces trying to rebuild the empire, and Ricomer staying behind in Italy to mine the shop. Traveling with the emperor was a top lieutenant who had just been promoted to the rank of Magister Militum for Gaul. With the imperial authorities not really in charge of Gaul right at the moment, the promotion was more aspirational than factual. But in very short order, shorter order than one might reasonably expect, it would be quite factual. And then, it would become something more. So take note of the name Aegidius, the promoted officer in question, because we are not done with him by a long shot.

The court of Ravenna had managed to hang on to the Gallic territory immediately abutting the Alps. But beyond that, Majorian had his work cut out for him. He wasted no time though, and before winter set in, he marched due west. The most powerful force in Gaul was the Goths, and so it was the Goths whom Majorian would deal with first. No slow turning of the screw, no gradual tightening of the noose, a stab right at the heart. Theodoric II mustered an army when it became clear that the emperor was on his way, because there was no way he was just going to roll over. Avetis had finally given the Goths license to territorially expand to their heart's content. Theodoric planned to defend that right to the hilt.

In late 458 the two armies faced off at Arles, site of so many Roman-Goth confrontations. But a willingness to defend something to the hilt is no guarantee of success. Majorian's army smashed the Goths up, and won a decisive victory. Theodoric was forced to concede the rights Avetis had given him, and it was back to being a federated ally of Rome, to be used and not used at Ravenna's discretion. With the Goths cowed, the Gaul-Roman nobility had to take a good hard look at the situation, and decide how much they were going to continue to resist the new regime. They may not like Majorian or what he had done to Avetis, but man, look at what he just did to the Goths.

For his part, the Emperor was not looking to punish their initial reluctance to back him. He adopted a conciliatory posture, and offered top positions in his government to members of the Gallic aristocracy. Coupled with the cancellation of the tax debts, this left most of the major landowners in Gaul quietly accepting Majorian's authority. Which was good for the Emperor, because he was really not trying to get bogged down in Gaul. He wanted to move on to Hispania, and reassert imperial authority there.

But Majorian was also hoping to not get bogged down in Hispania, because his ultimate goal was to use the ports of Spain as a springboard for an invasion of North Africa. This was his real dream, to expel the vandals from Carthage once and for all. Pull that off, and he becomes one of the greatest emperors in Roman history, a sort of mini-Aurelian who reunites a broken empire. But first he had to make sure that he was launching from a secure base. The lands taken by the Goths were easily redrawn onto the Roman side of the map, but actually securing them, in fact, was a different story. The locals were starting to get ideas that maybe they didn't need to listen to anyone anymore, and so Majorian had to march around showing the colors to remind them all that, yes, there is still an empire, and yes, you still need to pay your taxes.

Majorian also hoped to finally lance a boil that had been festering up in northern Spain since way back right after the great New Year's Eve barbarian invasion of 405. A Germanic tribe called the Suebi had followed the vandals and Alans into Spain, but they had stayed behind when Genseric led his people across the Strait of Gibraltar. Ever since, they had lived as a small de facto independent kingdom in northwest Spain. Majorian planned to crush them and return the whole of the peninsula to direct imperial control. Couple this with his plan to retake North Africa, and it is clear that Majorian wanted to write the final chapter of the New Year's invasion by destroying the last remnants of the invaders.

While his army was off campaigning against Spanish holdouts, Majorian went down to the coast to initiate the construction of an invasion fleet. When Genseric found out what the Romans were up to, he started to worry a little bit. This new emperor was not like previous emperors, who had been docile toward and even a little neglectful of the vandals. This Majorian, on the other hand, seemed obsessed. The new Roman fleet under construction in Italy was starting to hit the water. The emperor had himself beaten the vandals in battle and killed Genseric's brother-in-law. And now an invasion fleet was under construction in Spain? I imagine that Genseric was missing old Aetius just about now.

So the vandal king did what any good statesman would do if he started to believe that the military balance of power was starting to shift against him. He offered to negotiate a settlement. But Genseric's newfound desire to talk was likely met with a few incredulous guffaws throughout the halls of Roman power. The courts of both East and West had been regularly sending diplomatic missions to North Africa since the sack of Rome, trying to get the vandals to back off. And they had just as regularly been greeted by a dismissive wave of the hand. Now that the West was rebuilding its strength, now Genseric wants to talk? He was not going to get off that easily. This time it was the vandal emissaries who were dismissed.

Rebuffed, Genseric took the rather extreme step of launching a scorched earth campaign against the North African province of Mauritania. But, you ask, isn't that territory held by the vandals? Why would they want to scorch their own land? Well, to make life extremely difficult for the invading Romans, of course. A scorched earth meant no living off the land. It meant the Romans would be slowed down because they would be tied down to supply ships from Spain. But the Vandal King also launched a second initiative, one that would prove to be more directly successful, in which, I'm sure the people of Mauritania loved this, made the scorching of their earth totally unnecessary.

The timeline gets a little muddled here, and it's difficult to tell whether this all happened in 460 or 461, but vandal saboteurs were able to bribe or trick their way into the shipyards where the Roman invasion fleet was under construction in Spain, and once inside, these saboteurs went to work with the torches. Before anyone knew what happened, the entire fleet was in flames, and then it sunk to the bottom of the ocean. When Majorian learned what had happened, he surveyed the damage report with a resigned sigh. That fleet had been pushing the imperial budget to the limit. There was no way they could just start again from scratch. Bitterly disappointed, Majorian cancelled the planned invasion. It was time to head back to Italy and regroup.

So it's tough to tell when this actually happened, because all our fine sources say is that after Genseric torched the fleet, Majorian left Spain and headed back to Italy. Some imply that this was a bang-bang thing, and further imply that it was the loss of the fleet that caused the fatal rift between Majorian and Ricamar. Others imply that the fleet was destroyed sometime in 460, so it's possible that Majorian lingered in country for a while before leaving, or that he immediately left Spain but lingered in Gaul for a while before deciding to return to Italy. Whatever the exact order of events, in the spring of 461, Majorian was back in Arles and preparing to return to Italy. By the time he left Arles, it is almost certain that Ricamar had decided to move against him.

Which brings us to the question of why Ricamar decided to take out his long-time partner-slash-accomplice-slash-protégé Majorian. They had been serving together for at least 20 years, going back to the campaigns of Aetius in Gaul. Ricamar had been the voice calling for Majorian's rehabilitation following the death of Aetius. The two had subsequently teamed up to form a powerful political faction following the death of Valentinian III, which culminated with their overthrow of Aetius in 456. So why was Ricamar about to throw all of that history away?

In the Gallic Chronicle, it is simply reported that Ricamar was envious of Majorian, which may well have been the case. After all, Majorian was 15 years his junior. Subservience, even if it was merely technical, can't have sat well with Ricamar. If I were a speculating man, I would also guess that it had something to do with Majorian's success in retaking Gaul. This success rested a great deal on bringing the Gallic nobility over to his side, which meant that Majorian now had the building blocks for a power base independent of Ricamar. It also meant that Gallic nobles were going to get jobs that might have gone to Italian nobles. Whatever the wider merits of the strategy, this meant that there were now plenty of irked Italians complaining to Ricamar that Majorian was forgetting who his friends were. And, of course, we should not forget that Ricamar always wanted to rule in his own right. Majorian was just supposed to be a convenient puppet. It may well have been that Majorian was not dancing the way Ricamar wanted him to dance.

As he traveled from Gaul to Italy, Majorian appears to have made exactly the same mistake Avetis had made back in 456. He dismissed most of his retainers and chose instead to travel with a small company of bodyguards and advisors. After all, he was just heading back to Italy, where his regime was strongest and where his old friend Ricamar was waiting for him. But as he crossed the Alps, his old friend Ricamar was waiting for him. On August 3, 461, Majorian's entourage was surrounded by Ricamar's forces and the Emperor was taken into custody. Whatever had been Majorian's crime and whatever exactly were Ricamar's reasons, the Emperor was held for five days and after enduring prolonged torture, he was finally beheaded on August 7. He was about 40 years old and had ruled the West for four years.

In many ways, Majorian's downfall closed the door on any real resurgence for the Western Empire. Though I do think that Anthemius did enough to earn the title Last Halfway Decent Emperor of the West, it all depends on how you grade them. Lots of people say that no, it was actually Majorian who deserves the title. He vigorously attempted to reclaim what had once been Rome's, defeated numerous foreign enemies in battle, strengthened the navy, and was in the process of reforging the political bonds between Italy and the provinces. Had Genseric's saboteurs failed, we might be talking about Majorian as the man who won back North Africa. He was only 40 years old when he died. He was a smart guy and a good general. He might have been able to pull something off. But then he got killed, almost certainly because he was a smart guy and a good general. He almost certainly was not turning out to be the kind of puppet Ricamar wanted him to be.

Next week, we will get into the disastrous consequences of Ricamar's decision to overthrow Majorian. Just at the moment when it looked like the West was working its way back into fighting shape, Ricamar would throw it all away, appearing to choose undisputed master of Italy over de facto co-ruler of a reunited West. Because when the dust settled, four years of Majorian marching around had been for naught. The Western Empire was right back where it started, and it didn't look like it was going anywhere any time soon.