Roman History

Rome provided our alphabet (except for the letters W, Z and Y which were added during the late-Middle Ages ) and established Christianity in Europe (in 395 AD Emperor Theodosius declared Christianity the official religion throughout the Roman Empire). Also, together with Ancient Greece, the Roman Republic (the Roman state before the start of rule by the Emperors) they helped start the democratic tradition in Europe with the holding of some elections.

Rome fell for a number of reasons:

A:The division of the empire. In 395AD, the Empire was divided into the Western Roman Empire whose capital was in Milan until moved to Ravenna in 407AD. 70% of the population of the empire's population lived in the Eastern Roman Empire whose capital was at Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul). The Eastern Empire survived the fall of Rome until 1452 (except for the period 1204-1261 when Constantinople was occupied by the Crusaders). The Eastern Roman empire often refused to give the West military help during the Germanic invasions of Italy. Also the manpower stemming from the huge population of the Eastern empire was no longer available to the Western half of the empire and this meant far less tax-revenues and potential military conscripts were available to the Western Empire. This and the increasing tax-avoidance by the wealthy Senators meant that the Western empire could not afford to pay its army. Because of this, troops often mutined, went untrained, and became poorly equipped. Many ended up racketeering from civilians.

B: The Eastern Empire was much richer than the Western Empire because of the spice trade. So they could afford to pay their army and avoided the widespread mutiny, and lack of training, equipment and discipline in their army. They often bribed enemies not to attack them. The Western empire in the 5th century was less able to do so.

C: Italians avoided military service by moving to the cities (traditionally Italians from the countryside were recruited into the Roman army). Senators offered to protect them from being conscripted in return for the Italian rural-dwellers handing over ownership of their lands to the Senators and renting it from the Senators. The Emperors feared that intervening against this could lead to the Senators inviting the Germans into Italy. Among the reasons for avoiding joining the army was the fact that soldiers were going unpaid in currency, and some were even paid in kind e.g. clothes and food. Also, service was unattractive since the minimum period you had to spend in the army was 20 years. Another reason was widespread discontent caused by unemployment, which in turn was mostly due to slavery. A large slave population did all the work for the nobles (Senators), meaning that the Senators did not need to employ wage-earners to do the work for them.

The Western empire had to replace the lack of Italian conscripts with German mercenaries who were cheaper to use because they could be hired during a war and laid off afterwards. However, 40,000 of them defected to the army of the Visigoths (a Germanic tribe led by Alaric) in 410 after a massacre of the families of German soldiers serving in the Roman army and Rome was captured an plundered in 410. The Western empire still continued until 476 as the capital was no longer in Rome. The Visigoths then left Rome and captured southwestern Gaul, which the Emperors were forced to accept as a part of the empire ruled by the Visigoths on the Emperors behalf.

E: During the Visigoths invasion of Italy in 409-410AD, the Romans had to withdraw their soldiers from Britain and from much of Gaul to defend Italy, which allowed the Germanic tribes such as the Vandals, Alemanni, Burgundians etc, to invade Gaul and take it and Spain from the Romans. Then the Vandals crossed into North Africa in 422 and conquered it by 439 (Egypt was not part of the province of North Africa). North Africa was the richest province in the Western empire and losing it further eroded the Western empire's tax-base.It also allowed the Vandals to starve Rome of grain, as North Africa was traditionally the main source of Roman grain. The Vandals also had a huge fleet and sacked Rome in 455.

F:The last 5 or six Western Roman Emperors were actually appointed by German generals in the Roman Army and were puppets. The vast majority of the Western Roman Army in the 400's were German. The official end of the Western Roman Empire happened in 476 when a German general in the Western Roman Army called Odovacar declared himself king of Italy.

There's a common theme to the fall of Rome and the fall of other empires: it had to delegate its administration and importantly its fighting machine to its subordinates drawn largely from its subject peoples. Always a dangerous thing to do.

Britain lost its empire rapidly in the 25 years following WWII.Why? Because it had trained and armed its colonies to the teeth to fight off the threat from the German/Italian/JApanese empires.

What have Costas Grivas from Cyprus, Li Peng from Malaya, Moshe Dayan from Israel got in common, apart from the fact that all were instrumental in freeing their countries from British rule? All learned their trade in the British Army. Much is made of Mahatma Gandhi's pacifist rebellion in India. But the fact that the British had armed and trained a huge India Army to fight the Japanese in Burma must have played on British administrators minds when it came to assessing the situation in India.

'Do we have an army big enough to hold on to these Indian Chaps?'

'Well, yes sir. The only problem is most of the army are Indian Chaps'


Something similar happened in Ireland after World War One. Tom Barry, Emmet Dalton, the two guys who assassinated Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson. Who taught them how to shoot? Yup. Her Majesty's Forces.

Not that this is a phenomenon confined to the British (or the Romans) The French had trouble with their highly trained colonial troops in Algeria. Not least one Ahmed Ben Bella who led the armed wing of the independence movement. Same chap won the Croix de Guerre TWICE while serving in the French and later the Free French forces in WW II.