Visigoth (Civ3)/Civilopedia

The Goths were one of the most important groups of Germanic barbarians to invade the Roman Empire during the 4th and 5th centuries. Originating as one tribe in the fertile region north of the Black Sea, by 300AD they had divided into two distinct groups. These consisted of the Visigoths (West Goths), who had settled in the former Roman province of Dacia (roughly modern Romania), and the Ostrogoths (East Goths) who remained in what is today the Ukraine.
Living for centuries just across the Danube from the Romans, the Visigoths had absorbed a great deal of Roman culture by the end of the 4th century, including their conversion to the Arian form of Christianity by the bishop Ulfilas (circa 350). The adherence of the Visigoths to what most Romans believed was a heretical version of Christianity contributed to considerable mistrust between the two groups.
The arrival of the fierce Huns around 375 upset the delicate balance between the Romans and their neighboring barbarian tribes. The Huns conquered the Ostrogoths in short order and began moving further west, prompting the Visigoth chieftan Fritigern to ask permission of the Emperor Valens for his people to move across the Danube into Moesia (modern Bulgaria) and serve as a federated ally, an offer which the Roman Emperor was only too glad to accept. The Visigoths moved en masse across the Danube in 376, but due to their shameful exploitation by Roman tax collectors they revolted the following year and began rampaging through Thrace. The army of the Eastern Empire met them at the Battle of Adrianople in 378, where the timely arrival of the Visigothic cavalry resulted in massive defeat for the Romans, including the death on the field of Emperor Valens. The following Emperor Theodosius was able to conclude peace with the Visigoths in 382, under which they became formal Roman allies settling in Thrace, but the balance of power between Romans and barbarians had been decisively altered.
Upon the death of Emperor Theodosius in 395, the Visigoths elected the ambitious Alarich as their king. Alarich began a series of attacks on the provinces of the Eastern Empire; although he was trapped and nearly destroyed twice by Roman armies, the Eastern Emperor Arcadius spared the Visigoths and decided to rid his half of the empire of the Goths by sending them to the province of Illyricum in the northwest Balkans (397). Although they were again nominally a Roman federated ally, the Visigoths quickly turned their attention towards an invasion of Italy. Alarich was defeated twice in 402 and 403 by the Vandal general of the Roman army Flavius Stilicho, but the Western Emperor Honorius foolishly had Stilicho put to death in 408 as part of a palace intrigue. The Visigoths shortly returned to Italy for a third time, and with no force to oppose them they ravaged the peninsula for a number of years, culminating in the three-day sack of Rome itself in 410. Alarich's victory was short-lived; while planning on crossing the Mediterranean to Africa province, he began suddenly ill and died in southern Italy (410). His brother Athaulf assumed control of the Visigoths and led them out of Italy to Gaul.
The Visigoths settled in southwestern Gaul and received a formal recognition of their control of the region from the Western Emperor in 416. Although they remained nominally a Roman client state, the new Visigoth Kingdom was in reality almost completely independent of Roman authority. The Visigoths eventually drove the Vandals out of Spain (circa 470) and briefly ruled over a huge stretch of territory consisting of Iberia, Aquitaine, and Provence from their capital at Toulouse. By 510, however, they had been driven out of Gaul entirely by the invading Franks under their king Clovis, who benefited from the support of the remaining Roman Church against the Arian Visigoths. The Visigothic kingdom of Spain endured for another two centuries from Toledo before being destroyed by the invasion of the Islamic Moors in 711, who would create the Caliphate of Cordova in its place.