162- Opening the Floodgates

This holiday season, reach for the one butter that never disappoints, Kerrygold. Made with milk from grass fed cows on Irish family farms, it's rich, creamy, and perfect for baking. Whether browning butter for cookies or crafting the flakiest pie crust, Kerrygold's high butter fat content makes all the difference in flavor and texture. Holiday treats will taste extraordinary. Hello, and welcome to the history of Rome. Episode one sixty two, opening the floodgates. On New Year's Eve April, a massive horde of barbarians crashed across the Lower Rhine and began spilling into the interior of the Roman Empire. The mixed group included Vandals, Alans, Burgundians, and Alemanni, and their combined strength overwhelmed the local Roman defenses. Well, local Roman defenses isn't entirely accurate. For the most part, the legions proper had been pulled south, either to bolster the defenses of the Upper Rhine or to augment Stilicho's Italian army as he faced off against Radagaisuses invading Goths. The northern section of the frontier was thus protected only by the allied Franks. The Franks fought hard to stop the invasion, after all the Lower Rhine was now as much their territory as it was the Romans, but they were simply unable to hold the line. So the hordes poured in, and when they did, they triggered a series of upheavals that completely remade the political map of the Western Empire. Stilicho, as I mentioned at the end of last week, got this news while he was in the middle of rattling his saber at Constantinople and demanding the return of Illyria to the western sphere of influence. Sitting at the head of an army that had been reinforced by troops from the Rhine and some 12,000 Gothic warriors from Radagisius's group, Stilicho was feeling pretty confident about his military position and wanted to press home his advantage. Now, there are some good long term reasons for Stilicho being so obsessed with the return of Illyria. For starters, it was the gateway to Italy. And with Constantinople showing little interest in using its resources to defend the eastern ends of the Alpine Passes, the leaders of the western court needed to take matters into their own hands. Beyond that was the fact that Illyria was a prime recruiting ground for soldiers. Stilicho had taken a lot of flack from the senate for his reliance on barbarian mercenaries, but at the same time they had consistently resisted all efforts to draft young men from their estates into service. All efforts to draft young men from their estates into service. So Illyria promised to be a nice answer to the conundrum. But though these were noble and legitimate reasons for Stilicho's Eastern focus, There was no escaping the fact that the decision to use his newly enlarged army as a political tool to menace Constantinople necessarily meant leaving the Northern Rhine frontier dangerously under garrisoned. Though the particulars are different, this all reminds me a great deal of the empire round about February, …