Fall of the Western Roman Empire

It was a fitting end for the hollowed-out, finished husk of a once-great empire, once the envy of the world.

That right there is the basic story, the fundamental narrative of the fall of the Roman Empire.

If you've ever studied this topic in high school or college, this is the version you probably learned.

Hordes of savage, fur-wearing barbarians poured into a prosperous and civilized empire, defeated its armies, sacked its cities, and brought it to its knees, ushering in the Dark Ages and centuries of decline before the rise of modernity.

But that's not the whole story.

It's not even the right story.

I'll be your host on a journey as we figure out what the fall of the Roman Empire really was.

I recently finished my PhD in this topic, and I wrote my dissertation about precisely this subject.

Chapter 1.

The Fall of Rome.

Section 1.

Taking of the City.

Who would believe, exclaims Jerome, that Rome, built up with the spoils of the whole world and the very cradle of nations, should be turned into a sepulchre, that the shores of Egypt, Africa and the East should be crowded with the handmaids of the imperial city, that every day nobles of both sexes who had lived in affluence should come as beggars to the sanctuaries of Bethlehem? But it is not the intention of the author to write a history of the invasion of Rome by Alaric.

He has selected that event simply as a starting point in his introduction to a review of the state of society in the Middle Ages.

That invasion forms the first grand epoch in the fall of Rome, which thenceforth became the prey of barbarian violence till, at length, no traces of its greatness remained and the eternal city itself became a field of ruins.

And as it was the fall of Rome which prepared the way for the social phenomena of the medieval period, it was natural, before entering upon an enumeration of those times, to glance at the event which appears so conspicuously among the causes which affected them.

"The barbarians chase us into the sea," groaned the Britons helplessly.

"The sea throws us back upon the barbarians, and we have only the hard choice left us of perishing by the sword or the waves." This was but the expression of many whom the fall of Rome had exposed to the attack of these wild marauders.

These barbarians appeared under various names.

There was a powerful tribe under the name of Vandals who had already overrun Gaul and crossed the Pyrenees into Spain.

My knights are sworn to vows of utter hardihood, utter gentleness and loving, utter faithfulness in love, and uttermost obedience to the king.

Tennyson.

Let us now take a look at Europe during the Crusades and see how the people of these Middle Ages struggled from out of the Dark Ages, which followed the fall of Rome, to something higher and better.

We have seen how the Romans had lost their old loyal spirit.