Origin of the Visigoths

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The Visigoths could be considered the strongest people that reached the Iberian Peninsula and that he managed to unify the territory completely. Next in this lesson from a PROFESSOR we are going to tell you who the Visigoths were and where they came from, to We must place ourselves in the Lower Roman Empire, since it is in this period where we have the first news of this town. Keep reading and you will know the origin of the Visigoths, one of the most important towns that lived in the Peninsula.

Index

1. Where did the Visigoths come from
2. The origins of the Visigothic kingdom
3. The end of the Visigoth monarchy and the arrival of the Muslims

To know the origin of the Visigoths we have to go back to the year 370 when the Huns began the advance from the steppes of Asia towards Europe, thus pushing a series of barbarian peoples that stood between them and the Empire Roman.

One of those peoples were the Visigoths, who asked the emperor Flavius ​​Julius Valente (emperor of the Roman Empire of the East) to cross the Roman border in order to find defense against the movement of peoples much more warlike than they. This one granted the step settling them in Thrace, but the inexperience and badness of the imperial officials on this town, caused an uprising. This brought the emperor himself to the forefront of the battle, in which he was wounded and later died. burned (a fact that shocked the Romans, as he was the first emperor to be assassinated by barbarians), this fact it happened in the

In 382 the emperor Theodosius signed a new treaty by which they became an independent nation seated between the Danube and the Hemus, in exchange they would provide recruits to the army. But in 395, Alarico (king of the Visigoths) broke the pact taking advantage of the political situation for which he demanded more land, granting them Epirus and Ililicum. After this in the year 400 he decided to march west, where we will find the emperor Honorius, who was 11 years old so he was tutored by Estilicon (from barbarian origin) who in the year 402 defeated Alaric's troops, arriving at his camp and taking a great booty and making the king's family hostages Visigoth.

As a result of this Alaric decides to retire, but in the year 408 he returned to Rome and it was sacked by his troops and the slaves who lived there were freed, most of them going freely to belong to the king's army Visigoth. The following year he demanded that Rome remove Honorius and place Priscus and the Senate did so, but the refusal from Africa caused the emperor to be removed as well.

On August 10, 410 Rome was sacked for the third time and burned, after this he tried to take some ships and go to Africa to end the uprising but he fell ill and died.

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The year 418 was the time of the appearance of first barbarian kingdom inside the border, thanks to the help of Ataulfo ​​who ended a conspiracy to end Honorius, this in gratitude allowed them the installation as an independent kingdom over Toulouse, Bordeaux and Nabona. They became confederates of the empire fighting rural banditry, Saxon piracy and the Swabian uprising in the Iberian Peninsula.

The arrival of the Visigoths to the Peninsula

In 507 the Franks (another Germanic people) defeated the troops of Alaric II, forcing the Visigoths to march towards the Iberian peninsula, in which until 554 they would have a rather difficult life, due to the other Germanic peoples who lived in is.

During that time they were taking the cities of Barcelona, ​​Tarragona, Mérida, Seville and Toledo, that is, the most important population centers and thus be able to control the entire territory. This concludes when en 554, Toledo became the capital of the Visigothic kingdom on the peninsula.

Leovigildo (568-586) would submit to the kingdom of the Suevi and Wascones, thus claiming a territorial unity. In the same way, he repealed the law that prohibited intermarriage and wanted to unite the religion (being Christians, they came from a "heresy", Arianism) but failed. In 586 Recaredo, he added Arianism, becoming the official religion of the kingdom Christianity. And in 654 he appeared by the hand of Recess the Jurisdiction (Jurisdiction) (by which all the inhabitants of the kingdom had the same laws).

The territorial union takes place between 631-634 during Suitila's reign, which achieved the surrender of the Wascones and the expulsion of the Byzantines from Baetica, thus leaving the peninsula completely annexed.

In this video of a PROFESSOR we discover the arrival of the Visigoths to the Iberian Peninsula.

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The end of the monarchy came from the hand of a deep political crisis, in which we will find the confrontation of different sides to take over power.

As a Germanic people, when a king died, the primus inter pares was selected from among the nobles and he was appointed the new king. When the different sides do not agree, we will find the beginning of a civil war, in which we will find peaceful reigns with turbulent reigns, the last king being Don Rodrigo, which died in the Battle of Guadalete in 711 before the Muslim troops, due to a betrayal of his own nobles.

In this way the beginning of Al-Andalus began in the peninsula. In this other lesson from a TEACHER we will discover the muslim invasion as well as we offer you a rsummary of the history of Al-Andalus.

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