Migration Period  

Migration Period

In the 4th and 5th centuries, a wave of peoples were set into motion in Central Europe that ultimately led to the disintegration of the Roman Empire, marking the beginning of the Middle Ages.

No comments | 101BC - 600

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Migration Period

14 events | No comments | 101BC - 600

101BC

The Roman Empire and Germanic peoples

The Migration Period (also known as the Völkerwanderung, 'migration of the peoples') and is mostly concerned with the Germanic peoples. Although it was triggered by non-Germanic Huns and in the East, the Slavic peoples also went on the move, the stress...

101BC

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300

Germanic tribes before the migrations

By the 3rd century AD various German tribal confederations, all of whom would leave a lasting mark on European history, were ranged along the natural borders of the Roman empire. They had settled in the territories east of the Rhine and north of the...

300

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370

Invasion of the Huns

The Huns, whose name has come to rival the Vandals as an emotive term for destructive violence, arrived on the scene of history with an impact as sudden as it is mysterious. They appeared from the steppes north of the Black Sea in the late 4th century...

370

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371

Goths

The Goths were the first Germanic peoples to become Christians. According to the 6th-century Gothic historian Jordanes, the Goths came from Sweden across the Baltic Sea to the basin of the Wisla (Vistula) River...

371

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376

Visigoths

Many Goths were recruited into the Roman army, and even took offices of state in Constantinople itself. Thus, when the westward drive of a the Huns from the steppes of Russia overwhelmed the Ostrogoths, the emperor Valens of Constantinople was not...

376

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406

Attila

Of all the barbarian leaders who attacked the Roman Empire, none is more famous than Attila the Hun. In western Europe his ferocity earned him the nickname Scourge of God. He was king of the Huns from 434 until his death in 453...

406 - 453

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Vandals

Unlike the Visigoths and the Franks, the Vandals made no pretence of cooperating with Rome. On the last day of December 406, together with other barbarian tribes, they crossed the frozen Rhine near Mainz...

406

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430

Franks

The most significant (in the long term) of all the migrating tribes – the Franks – were a group of Germanic tribes that, about the middle of the 3rd century AD, dwelt along the middle and lower Rhine River...

430

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436

Burgundians

The Burgundians were not far behind the Vandals in crossing the Rhine, in 413, but they remained more modestly just a few miles west of the river, at Worms. They were dislodged from there by the Romans in 436 and were settled in southeast Gaul, to the...

436

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460

Angles, Saxons and Jutes

With Gaul in the hands of Germanic chieftains, and the Roman legions withdrawn from Britain, land-hungry tribes were tempted by the short step across the English Channel. Among those who took this step, invading the eastern and southern coasts of...

460

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476

Fall of the Western Roman Empire

Under the impact of these Germanic invaders, the control of the Roman Empire in Western Europe disappeared. The last emperor in the West was the boy ruler Romulus Augustulus, who was killed in 476 by the Germanic chieftain Odoacer...

476

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487

Ostrogoths and Theodoric the Great

In the early Migration Period, the Ostrogoths had intruded less than the Visigoths upon the imperial territories of Rome and Contantinople. Their region north of the Black Sea had been subdued by the Huns, but after the collapse of the Huns in the...

487

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568

Lombards

Originating probably in northern Germany, the Lombards (also known as Langobards) moved south into the region of Hungary in the early 6th century. From there, in 568, they entered northern Italy...

568

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600

Slavs

The Migration Period did not only affect Western Europe, but Eastern Europe as well, although we have very little historical evidence about these movements of people. In the long term, the most important of these seems to be the migration of Slavs as...

600

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