Our Visigoths

When Rome began to decline, it included in the Roman legions Germanic barbarians whose tribes ultimately destroyed Rome. Today, according to a story in the Chicago Sun-Times, the U.S. military includes an unknown number of black and Hispanic gang members who are using their military training to fortify the gangs in their war against American society.

Howard Sutherland writes:

Thanks for highlighting our mestizo mercenary problem; it is only going to get worse.

I have been trying lately to come up with some historical parallel to the situation we are in now. While I haven’t been able to find anything exact, one time and place is close. It is the one you allude to. The fatal error of late Roman emperors was to allow barbarian resettlement within the empire. Perhaps they could not have resisted it in the end, but in fact they acceded to it largely because they hoped to tap the reservoir of German manpower for the army. And so they did.

Where we are today is where the Western Roman Empire was at the death of Valentinian (375). Valentinian was an able soldier and a Catholic emperor. He spent most of his 10 year reign fighting barbarians on the northern frontier, when he wasn’t distracted by the inevitable usurpers. He died on the Danube of what appears to be an apoplectic stroke, enraged by the importunate demands of German tribal leaders. (Of course, our emperor is not enraged by the importunings of our Vandals; he agrees with them. [LA adds: and waves their flag.]) Valentinian’s less capable younger brother, the Arian Valens, survived as emperor in the East. A few years after Valentinian’s death, Valens agreed to the resettlement of two German tribes within the empire in Moesia and Thrace. Of course the barbarians ignored the requirement that they not settle in arms. Resentful at being chiseled by Valens’ bureaucrats, in 378 these interlopers turned on their Roman hosts and utterly destroyed Valens’ army (and him with it) at Adrianople. Chroniclers of the time called it the worst defeat Rome had suffered since Cannae and clearly felt that a great and terrible change had occurred. While Theodosius restored a great deal after Adrianople and revived the army for a time, he continued the policy of allowing barbarians to settle within the frontiers. The Western Empire’s collapse began in earnest after his death in 395. Only 80 years later, the last Western emperor was deposed by his German masters, but by then that was a mere formality. [LA note: Gibbon’s account of Valens’s deal with the Germans leading to the catastrophe at Adrianople is dramatic and memorable.]

As with the Romans of the late Fourth Century, we stand looking into the abyss. We have to decide whether we really want to jump in. I think the main difference is that they did not want to jump in, but most of our leaders do. The other difference is that they did not yet have Islam to contend with…

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 04, 2006 05:15 PM | Send