Battle of Fort Adriatic: Europe's largest empire was defeated by tribes.

Battle of Fort Adriatic: Europe's largest empire was defeated by tribes.

On June 12, 378 AD, the Roman emperor Vallance and his elite imperial field army were stationed in the south of the Adriatic fortress. At this time, it was early summer, and the whole military camp was filled with hot air.

They are waiting for another Roman emperor, Grady Annous, to lead reinforcements from the western part of the empire and defeat the Goths who have plundered the Balkans like hungry wolves since crossing the Danube two years ago.

What he didn't expect, however, was that Grady Annous was rushing to meet the news that the Rhine defence was in an emergency, and sent reinforcements to support the Balkans to return to the Rhine. What he didn't expect was that this place, Fort Adria, was about to become the graveyard for him and the imperial soldiers.

In 376 AD, a large number of refugees suddenly appeared on the Danube River at the border of the Roman Empire. Most of these refugees are Goths. They were forced to leave their homes and fled to the west with their small property because Hungarians attacked their residence on the Black Sea coast.

According to the Roman historian Amian, the number of these refugees is as high as 200,000, of which 20,000 are soldiers who can fight. The image of these Goths fleeing in panic was vividly described by Amian: "The news spread all over the Goth tribe, and a nomadic people who had never heard of it suddenly appeared, like a snowstorm on a high mountain, unstoppable, and wherever they went, they were either occupied or destroyed."

These poor Goths hope to be sheltered by the Roman Empire and find a place to live in it. For the Roman Empire, this is not an unprecedented requirement.

As early as the reign of Nero in 1 th century, the empire moved 654.38+million immigrants from the north bank of the Danube to Thrace. In 300 AD, the Roman emperor also placed a large number of Darcy who moved into the empire along Hungary in the Black Sea.

Therefore, when the Goths asked to move into the empire, many people were ecstatic. Officials praised Emperor Varan for being blessed, because a large number of barbarian immigrants not only meant that a large number of barbarian soldiers suitable for enlistment would enhance the military strength of the empire, but also meant that taxes from barbarians would enrich the Roman treasury.

Historical materials do not tell us how the Valens responded to this request of the Goths. Only one of the Goths crossed the Danube in 376.

The time they crossed the Danube happened to be the time when the Danube defended the emptiness. At that time, because of the military threat of Persians in the eastern part of the empire, all the troops in the Balkans were transferred. As a result, the Goths were like nobody's business in the Balkans, which was a very serious threat to the Roman Empire.

Emperor Varan had to negotiate with the Severnji tribe to relax the immigration conditions. It is not the emperor who chooses their place of residence, but they choose their own place of residence. However, because the Roman Empire did not provide enough food for this group of new immigrants, the hungry Sevenji people began to riot, forcing local commanders to dispatch another Gothic tribe on the Danube, the Gruseni people, to cross the Roman army on the Danube to deal with the Sevenji people.

The commander tried to assassinate the leader of the Severnji tribe at the banquet, but failed. The next day, the war between the Goths and the Roman Empire officially broke out.

Despite the crisis in the third century, the Roman Empire in the fourth century still had great strength. Even though Rome lost its territory in northern Germany, northern Switzerland, northern Danube and central Nile, its territory still reaches Hadrian's Great Wall in the north, Sahara Desert in the south, Atlantic Ocean in the west and Mesopotamia in the east. The Roman Empire with a population of 70 million at that time was not only the most vast country in the world, but also the most populous country.

Although Rome is still a super empire, great changes have taken place compared with the early and middle Roman Empire. The Roman army in the first and second centuries was composed of legions and auxiliary forces, and in the fourth century it was composed of field troops and border guards.

In the early days of the empire, the total strength was 300,000-350,000, and the legion and the auxiliary forces were equally divided. Both the legion and the auxiliary forces can travel to various battlefields as mobile forces. Their weapons and equipment are very sophisticated, and their military discipline is very strict, which is a great weapon for the early empire to deal with foreign enemies. However, in the later period of the empire, only the field army could be used as a mobile force to deal with large-scale battles, and the duty of the border guards was only to stay behind the fortifications as a garrison and passively defend.

According to historical records, the army expanded a lot in the later period of the empire, but the specific figures were not explained. Many historians speculate on the number of Roman troops in the late period. Monson speculated that there were 550,000 troops in Rome in the later period, while Nisher gave 730,000, Jones 600,000, Wahad 520,000 and skil 500,000.

Although there are great differences in the speculation about the total number of troops, these historians have a highly consistent estimate of the number of field troops, which is basically around 200 thousand. This illustrates a problem. Although the military scale of the later empire was expanded, the number of troops with mobile combat capability was more than 100 thousand less than that of the early empire, so the later Roman empire was quite powerless to deal with foreign enemies of thousands of troops.

We can make a simple comparison, so as to deepen the differences in Rome's handling of high-intensity wars under the two military systems. When Tiberius suppressed the uprising in 6 AD, 65,438+10,000 people gathered in a few months. Trajan invested 654.38+10,000 troops in the two wars launched by the kingdom of Dacia and150,000 troops in the war against Pattaya.

On the other hand, in the later period of the empire, the biggest battle was undoubtedly Emperor Julien's attack on Sassanbos, but only 30,000 soldiers participated in this battle. When fighting barbarians on the Rhine a few years ago, his troops were only ten or twenty thousand. Compared with the early and middle empires, there were very few troops capable of fighting in the late Rome.

In this way, we can't expect too much about the number of Roman troops in the Adriatic Battle. As soon as the Gothic War broke out, the Roman army in the Balkans was defeated. The number of Roman troops in the Balkans is small, and most of them are composed of border guards with low combat effectiveness, so they are easily defeated by the Goths.

At this time, Vallance, who was in Antioch, immediately began to transfer troops from the east to the Balkans. At the same time, he also contacted the western Roman emperor Grady Annous and asked for support.

Gracian naturally agreed to this oriental colleague's request. In view of the slight movement of barbarian tribes on the other side of the Rhine, he sent Gaul's army as reinforcements to the Balkans, but as mentioned earlier, the sudden war in the Rhine basin forced Grady Annous to turn his gun and turn back to Gaul.

As early as 378 AD, when Vallans and his army arrived in the Balkans, Gracian and his reinforcements were out of sight.

After defeating the only local field army, the Goths began to plunder, and large villages in the Balkans were destroyed, ignoring fortified fortresses and cities.

As the days passed, Vallance's soldiers began to get restless, and he himself was worried about the delay in the arrival of reinforcements, although Grati Anders promised that he would go to help.

But in August, more than half of the summer has passed, and Vallance still hasn't waited for the reinforcements he wants. Just then, the Goths were advancing from the north to the Adriatic fortress, with only 10000 troops.

Hearing that the barbarians had only 10,000 troops, Vallance decided that he would go to the decisive battle, because he had 30,000 troops at hand. Facing the barbarians with only 10,000 troops, he had a good chance of winning, so he led the army to the northern part of the Adriatic castle to seek confrontation with the barbarians.

Maybe Vallance was doomed to die here, and the information he got was wrong. The Romans mistakenly thought that the Goths north of the Adriatic Sea Fort were just the Severnji tribe, but they didn't expect Grusen to join the Severnji camp at this time, and the strength of the Goths reached 20,000.

The two sides are very close and can see each other's troops on the battlefield. The Goths sent envoys to make peace, but Vallans flatly refused to accept the peace talks. The Goths refused to give up and sent two envoys, and Vallance began to hesitate. Just as he arranged for the exchange of hostages to ensure the validity of the peace treaty, two troops on the right wing of the Roman army rushed to attack without receiving orders. After all, the battle has begun.

The Goths deployed wagons on their own fronts, while the Romans deployed light infantry and cavalry on their flanks and heavy infantry in the middle. At the beginning of the battle, the left wing of the Roman army had not yet formed a battle formation, but the Romans seemed to be making good progress and the Goths were forced to retreat behind the cart.

The war situation reversed, and the Gothic cavalry "blasted down from the nearby mountains, causing chaos and killing everyone wherever they went". They went straight to the left of the Roman army, and then approached Zhong Jun, Rome, but the Roman cavalry fled without fighting. The situation completely fell to the Goths, the Romans were wiped out, and even the Varans failed to escape and died on the battlefield.

This battle greatly affected the Roman Empire. Not only did the emperor die, but the Goths also stayed in the Empire for decades and became a cancer within the Roman Empire. Until the western part of the Roman Empire completely fell, the Goths still existed and established their own kingdom. After all, even if the two tribes unite, the total population of the Goths is only 200,000, and the strength is only 20,000.

Such a small army defeated the great Roman Empire with a population of 70 million, and since then, it has stabilized its territory in the past Roman territory. It can be seen that no matter how powerful the ancient dynasty was, the innate defects of emperor centralization eventually made it invincible under the erosion of time.