User:Daanschr/ Historical maps/ Germanic peoples (274-600?)



The Franks used the opportunity of the Gallo Roman army moving south, with a major invasion in 274 which devastated the north of Gaul and Roman Germania. The island between the Rhine and the Waal was forever lost for the Romans, because the area was so much depopulated that the Romans didn't want to rebuild it anymore.

In the late 3rd century, the Rhine delta was used by Salian Frankish pirates to raid the Roman shores of Britain and Gaul. In 288 and 293, the Romans defeated these pirates under Constantius Chlorus. Perhaps Roman soldiers also entered my area, but they didn't stay. From 293 onwards, the border of the Roman Empire was closeby. Between 293 and 314, there were several wars between Romans and Franks in the region. Afterwards there was at least one war in the 340s and one in the 350s between the two adverseries.

In the 350s, the Salian Franks were themselves being harassed by unknown fellow Germanic peoples from the north, perhaps the Saxons. The Romans had a hard time trying to subdue the Franks who invaded the Roman Empire with a ferocity similar to that of 274. Roman ruler Julian agreed to resettle the Salian Franks into Toxandria in 358, south of the Rhine, as a Roman federation. And so, the influence of Roman Empire declined further from the Rhine delta and also the Franks were gone.

In 407, the Salian Franks became independent and Roman control was ceased. The Saxons used the opportunity to settle in the Scheldt estuary, to raid the shores of Britain and Gaul. The Rhine estuary was used by the Anglo-Saxons for the conquest of Great Britain in the 5th century.

The Rhine estuary was inhabited by the Warns in the 6th century. They might have entered the area in the 5th century. King Clovis I of the Frankish Empire might have ruled the area in the early 6th century, but the Franks lost control later on in that century, if they were in charge of it. According to Procopius, a Byzantine historian, the Angles invaded the kingdom of the Warns across the North Sea in circa 540, to avenge a broken engagement of the son of king Hermegiselus of the Warns.

In the 7th century, the Rhine estuary was in the hands of the Frisians. The amount of sources on this period is so flimsy, that some historians question whether the Frisians and the Warns are not the same people. And that Romanized writers simply copied the Roman name of the Frisians for the people living north of the Rhine on the North Sea to describe the Warns. But, perhaps the Warns were defeated or assimilated by the Frisians somewhere in the 6th century. What is certain at least is that my area was inhabitted by several Germanic speaking peoples since 274.