User:Kansas Bear/Battle of Faesulae

Battle of Faesulae
Part of the Roman-Germanic wars
Date 406 CE Location Fiesole, modern Italy Result Roman victory
Belligerents
Western Roman Empire Goths Huns	Goths Vandals
Commanders and leaders
Flavius Stilicho Sarus the Goth Uldin the Hun	Radagaisus†
Strength
15,000-20,000	20,000
Casualties and losses
Unknown	12,000+ captured

The Battle of Faesulae was fought in 406 CE as part of the Gothic invasion of the Western Roman Empire. After General Flavius Stilicho repelled the Visigoths at Pollentia and Verona, he encountered a new incursion of Goths and Celts led by Radagaisus whose forces attacked Florence. Stilicho ultimately defeated the invaders at Faesulae (modern Fiesole) with support from Uldin the Hun and Sarus the Goth. Radagaisus was executed after the battle and survivors of his armies fled to Alaric.

Background

Main article: Siege of Florence (405)

In late 405 or early 406, King Radagaisus crossed the Alps and marched into Italy with a large Celtic/Germanic force. After overrunning the undefended Rhaetia and northern Italy, heavily devastating the fertile countryside, they halted to besiege Florence, only 180 miles north of Rome. Stilicho, Master-General of the west, hastily gathered forces for the defense of Italy. He enrolled in his service a tribe of the Alani, a number of Goths under Sarus and Huns under Uldin. Stilicho's army amounted to some 20,000 Romans and auxiliaries. Radagaisus, by comparison, had in his army miscellaneous detachments of Goths and Alani, and as many as 20,000 barbarian warriors at his back. This totaled altogether with wives, slaves, and children, to between 50,000 and 100,000 people.

The battle

While Stilicho had been collecting his army, the garrison of Florence had held out with fortitude against the Radagaisus' army encamped outside their walls. As soon as Stilicho arrived with his army, he planned to smuggle desperately needed supplies and reinforcements into the beleaguered city. But instead of attempting to crush Radagaisus' army in an open battle, Stilicho adopted a more lengthy, though prudent, course of action. After surrounding the barbarians with entrenchments, he brought in thousands of people from the surrounding area to aid in the construction of a systematic entrenchment of the lines enclosing Radagisus' camp. Although Radagaisus' troops made repeated efforts to break out while the work was still in progress, the Romans were able to repulse every attack. After the trenches were completed Radagaisus realized the hopelessness of his situation. His army was trapped in the midst of enemy territory with no provisions and a vast number of non-combatants in need of subsistence. On August 23 he left his camp to capitulate in the tent of Stilicho. Though he had been promised equitable terms, or even an equal alliance, by Stilicho, the Radagaisus was immediately beheaded by the ruthless Vandalic general, who by thus emerging victorious received a second time the applause of a grateful people as the “savior of Italy”.

Aftermath

Although Stilicho had halted the invasion by the execution of its leader and momentarily averted the collapse of the empire, the issue was, in fact, less decisive than apparent since he was incapable of utterly destroying the enormous army of Radagaisus, and the barbarian survivors were not likely to return north to again confront their more savage Asian enemies, the Huns. Instead, a large detachment of the remnants of Radagaisus' army, comprising Suevi, Vandals, Alans and Burgundians, to a number of over 100,000 escaped north over the Alps, only to reappear on the frontiers of Gaul, which had been stripped of its defenders by Stilicho in 401 to meet Alaric's inroad into Italy at that time. Although initially resisted by the Franks and other Roman auxiliaries, the barbarians were soon enabled to devastate or conquer Gaul, which southwestern area (Aquitania) was lost at this point, never to be recovered by the western empire. Roman rule in Gaul survived in the north for another 80 years in the Roman Domain of Soissons until 486. Roman Armorica, also, was never overrun by the German Barbarians and would welcome Romano-Britons who would rule the area as Brittany for another 1000 years until 1486.

Bibliography

• Heather, Peter (2005). The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians. Oxford University Press.
• Hughes, Ian (2015). Stilicho: The Vandal Who Saved Rome. South Yorkshire, England: Pen & Sword Military. ISBN 978-1-47382-900-8.
• Wolfram, Herwig (1990). History of the Goths. University of California Press.

Dietrich of Meissen (c. 1190; 22 September 1272) was Bishop of Naumburg from 1242 to 1272.

Life

Dietrich was the illegitimate son of the Theodoric I, Margrave of Meissen and an unknown mother. As a child, he was domicellar at the Naumburg cathedral chapter, pastor in Torgau, and from 1213 canon in Naumburg and from 1230 provost. With the help of his half-brother, Henry III, Margrave of Meissen, against Peter von Hagin, who had been elected as Bishop of Naumburg on 5 June 1243 by the majority of the cathedral chapter. After Peter had unsuccessfully intervened against this procedure, Dietrich was finally consecrated by Siegfried III of Eppstein after a papal dispensation in 1245.

In the disputes between Pope Innocent IV and Emperor Frederick II, Dietrich leaned towards the party of the Pope and the anti-king Henry Raspe, but apart from various missions to protect other bishoprics, he did not become involved in imperial politics.

Due to the territorial interests of his brother, Henry, Dietrich soon came into conflict with him. In the Thuringian War of Succession he supported Sophie of Brabant against the Wettin claims. The pressure on him increased when Margrave Henry acquired the Pleissnerland in 1253/56. In addition, the Bishop of Meissen Konrad I of Wallhausen acquired the Naumburg possessions in his diocese. On 25 April 1259 he had to recognise the Wettin protectorate for the diocese of Naumburg in a contract in Nünchritz and demolish the fortifications of the city of Zeitz and several castles. In 1268 he reconciled with his nephews Albrecht and Theodoric, who had fallen into a dispute over the lands ceded to them by their father.

Sources

• Lyon, Jonathan R. (2013). Princely Brothers and Sisters: The Sibling Bond in German Politics, 1100-1250. Cornell University Press.