Tribes of Ancient Britain and Germany (Military History from Primary Sources)

North Germanic people , often identified with the Goths. From the middle of the 5th century, empire-building on the middle Danube, possibly related to the Goths. At the end of the 5th century on the Upper Thames in England.

Germanic peoples

Split up during the Migration Period into the Visigoths and Ostrogoths , each with their own imperial formations on Roman soil. Ammianus Marcellinus , Jordanes. Between the Vistula and the Oder. In the 1st century BC, allies of the Ariovistus against Caesar. To Ptolemy in the middle of the 2nd century in Jutland. Julius Caesar , Ptolemy. In the 2nd century in Romania and Hungary. Helveconae , Helvaeonae, Helvecones, Helvaeones, Helouaiones. Herminones , Erminones, Hermiones, Irminones. Large group of Germanic people, occupying the middle between the Ingaevones and the Istvaeones.

Tacitus , Pliny the Elder , Pomponius Mela. From the middle of the 3rd century on the north coast of the Black Sea. Tribe of the Rhine-Weser Germanic peoples , middle of the 2nd century, neighbours of the Tencteri. Between the Rhine and the Taunus. Tacitus , Pliny the Elder. Originally in Jutland , later in the south of Great Britain. Kampoi , Campi, Campes. Group of unclear destination north of the Danube and south of Bohemia in the 2nd century.

From the 1st century on the Lahn in Middle Hesse. At Tacitus neighbours of the Rugii and Goths. From the 1st century, southern Baltic Sea coast between the Oder and the Vistula. Mid-3rd century between the Danube in the north, Iller in the east and Lake Constance in the south. Part of the Suebi , from the middle of the 6th century founding of the empire in Italy Kingdom of the Lombards. Possibly a tribe of the Suebi , from the middle of the 2nd century, opponents of the Romans in the Marcomannic Wars.

Destroyed after participation in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in the year 14 by Germanicus. Between the Rhine, Ruhr and Lippe. Probably a part of the Chatti , Romanised from the 1st century. Around Wiesbaden , in the Taunus and in the Wetterau.

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Lower Rhine , Flanders. Moselle Franks , Mosellians. Subset of the Franks , separated from the Ripuarian Franks in the 5th century. Narisci , Naristi, Varisti, Varasci, Varisci. Neighbours of the Marcomanni , Quadi and Armalausi.

In the 1st and 2nd century in the area of Ladenburg. Strongly Celtic Germanic tribe [2] [3]. In the Gallia Belgica between the Meuse and the Scheldt in the north and the west of today's Belgium. Julius Caesar , Tacitus. Collective name for the Northern European Germanic tribes, which undertook raids in the 8th and 11th century to the south England, Ireland, Francia, the Mediterranean and present-day Russia , also synonymous with the Vikings. Part of the Goths , first in Pannonia , then empire-building in Italy.

Tribe of the Suebi , participants of the Marcomannic Wars. Reudignes , Reudinges, Reudinges, Reudingi, Holstens. Subset of the Franks in the Middle Rhine.

Military history of Germany - Wikipedia

Moved in the Migration Period with the Goths to the south. Originally between the Vistula and the Oder , later empire-building in Lower Austria. Ally of the Ariovistus , classified by Caesar as Germanic. Around between the Elbe and the Oder from the Bohemian border to the Havel. Silesia , later Andalusia. Moved with the Bastarnae to the south, in the 5th century short imperial formation in Pannonia. Around Lake Schwerin in Mecklenburg. Sugambri , Sigambri, Sugambi, Sigambri.

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From the 3rd century in Dacia and Moesia. Frederick had a rationale based on Enlightenment thought: The goal was to convince rival kings that it was better to negotiate and make peace than to fight him. In the War of Austrian Succession —48 Empress Maria Theresa of Austria fought successfully for recognition of her succession to the throne.

Prussia had survived the combined force of its neighbours, each larger than itself, and gained enormously in influence at the cost of the Holy Roman Empire. It became recognised as a great European power, starting a rivalry with Austria for the leadership of the German-speaking lands. Frederick would then invade Bohemia, the Prussians besieged Prague , but they were defeated at Kolin. Since Prussia looked vulnerable, the Austrians and French invaded Prussian lands. However, the French were defeated at Rossbach and the Austrians at Leuthen.

In , Frederick the Great tried to invade Austria, but he failed. Now, the Russians tried to defeat the Prussians, but the Prussians earned a pyrrhic victory at the Zorndorf. The Swedes, however, fought the Prussians to a draw at Tornow. However, Austria gained a victory against the Prussian main army at Hochkirch. In , the Prussians lost at Kunersdorf to the combined Russians and Austrians. Berlin itself was taken for a few days in , but its army could not be destroyed.

It was thanks to this " miracle of the House of Brandenburg " and to the unshakable will of Frederick that Prussia survived. The Napoleonic era ended the Holy Roman Empire and created new German-speaking states that would eventually form modern Germany. Napoleon I of France reorganized many of the smaller German-speaking states into the Confederation of the Rhine following the battle of Austerlitz in Neither of the two largest German-speaking states were part of this confederation: At this time the reputation of the Prussian army remained high from the period of the Seven Years' War.

Unfortunately they retained the tactics of that period and still relied heavily on foreign mercenaries. The lack of military reforms would prove disastrous. Prussian defeats at Jena and Auerstedt led to a humiliating settlement that reduced the size of the country by half. The King's German Legion formed in Britain from officers and soldiers of the dissolved Hanoverian army, was the only army of a German state that was continually fighting the Napoleonic army.

The reforms of the Prussian military were led by Scharnhorst and Gneisenau , and converted the professional army into one based on national service. They brought in younger leaders, increased the rate of mobilisation and improved their skirmishing and unit tactics. They also organized a centralized general staff and a professional officer corps. By there were 39 separate German-speaking states, loosely joined for free trade purposes in the German Confederation , under the leadership of Prussia and Austria. Under the leadership of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck , Prussia united the German states and defeated both Austria and France, to , allowing the formation of a powerful German Empire , which lasted until Bismarck after dominated European diplomacy, and set up a complex system of balances that kept the peace.

He was replaced in by the young Kaiser Wilhelm II , who built up a powerful Navy to challenge the British, and engaged in reckless diplomacy. Carl von Clausewitz — was the most important German military theorist; he stressed the moral and political aspects of war. Clausewitz espoused a romantic or Hegelian conception of warfare, stressing the dialectic of how opposite factors interact, and noting how unexpected new developments unfolding under the " fog of war " called for rapid decisions by alert commanders.

Clausewitz saw history as a complex check on abstractions that did not accord with experience. In opposition to his great rival Antoine-Henri Jomini he argued war could not be quantified or graphed or reduced to mapwork and graphs. Clausewitz had many aphorisms, of which the most famous is, "War is not merely a political act, but also a political instrument, a continuation of political relations, a carrying out of the same by other means," a working definition of war which has won wide acceptance.

After a period of constitutional deadlock between crown and parliament in Prussia, a crisis arose in over the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein , disputed between Denmark and the German Confederation. Bismarck then set about making Prussia the undisputed master of northern Germany, weakening Austria and the German Confederation. This eventually led to a German civil war, the Austro-Prussian War , in which in the Battle of Langensalza the last battle between Germanic states on German soil Hanover won a victory, but was so weakened by it, that it could offer no resistance to the occupation by Prussia and ceased to be an independent state.

The result was the dissolution of the German Confederation , and the creation of the North German Confederation one year later. Bismarck wanted a war with France to unify the German peoples, and French Emperor Napoleon III , unaware of his military weakness, provided the Franco-Prussian War of —71, expecting support from Prussia's recent enemies. Unlike in the war only a few years ago, the Germans turned not against each other, with the first emergence of a strong German national sentiment in the background. Within the first month of war the German army encircled big French armies, at Gravelotte , Metz , and Sedan and destroyed them.

The war culminated with the defeat of the French army during the Siege of Paris , and was followed by the proclamation of the German Empire in The results of these wars was the emergence of a powerful German nation-state and a major shift in the balance of power on the European continent. The Imperial German Army now was the most powerful military in Europe. Although Germany now had a parliament, it did not control the military, which was under the direct command of the Kaiser Emperor.

The German economy was rapidly growing, as was German pride and intense nationalism. After , Germany made a major effort to build up its navy, leading to a naval arms race with Britain. Germany also sought coaling stations because the coal-burning warships had to be refueled frequently, and Britain had a large worldwide network. Efforts to gain coaling stations in the Caribbean or west Indies failed.

By , the possibility of a conflict between Germany and Britain loomed larger, as Germany built up its own much smaller colonial empire, and started a naval race to try and catch up with Britain, the world's dominant naval power.

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The German Schlieffen plan to deal with the Franco-Russian alliance involved delivering a knock-out blow to the French and then turning to deal with the more slowly mobilised Russian army. They were beaten back at the First Battle of the Marne. Three years of stalemated trench warfare on the Western Front produced millions of casualties with one-third killed.

New tactics in opened up the war, but a series of massive German offensives failed in spring , and Germany went on the defensive as fresh American soldiers arrived at the rate of 10, a day. Militarily defeated, stripped of allies, and exhausted on the homefront, Germany signed an armistice in November that amounted to a surrender. In the East, however, the war was not confined to trenches. Although Russia's initial advance into Galicia was largely successful, it was driven back from East Prussia by the victories of the German generals Hindenburg and Ludendorff at Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes in August and September Russia's less-developed economic and military organisation soon proved unequal to the combined might of the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires.

In the spring of the Russians were driven back in Galicia, and in May the Central Powers achieved a remarkable breakthrough on Poland's southern fringes, capturing Warsaw on 5 August and forcing the Russians to withdraw from all of Poland, known as the "Great Retreat". The German Fleet spent most of the war bottled up in port; the great Battle of Jutland in showed superior German tactics could not overwhelm the more powerful British fleet. Submarines — the U-boats- were used by the Imperial German Navy to sink merchant ships bringing supplies to England. This strategy alienated the United States, which declared war in April Shipments of food and munitions to Britain and France were increased, as the convoy system largely neutralized the U-boats.

By the German army had begun employing new infiltration tactics in an effort to break the trench warfare deadlock. These formations were then deployed to the Western front to counter the British tank attack at the Battle of Cambrai. In March the German army Spring Offensive began an impressive advance creating a salient in the allied line. The offensive stalled as the British and French fell back and then counterattacked. The Germans did not have the airpower or tanks to secure their battlefield gains.

The treaty of Versailles imposed severe restrictions on Germany's military strength. The army was limited to one hundred thousand men with an additional fifteen thousand in the navy. The fleet was to consist of at most six battleships, six cruisers, and twelve destroyers, and the Washington Naval Treaty established severe tonnage restrictions for German warships.

Tanks and heavy artillery were forbidden and the air force was dissolved. A new post-war military Reichswehr was established in March General conscription was not allowed. The new Weimar Republic had to follow these restrictions, which worsened its already low public esteem. General Hans von Seeckt the Army Commander, used the lessons of the First World War and the latest technology to develop advanced tactical doctrines, more efficient organizational structures, and better training that kept the small army ready for expansion.

The government secretly trained soldiers in the Soviet Union, but otherwise generally followed the Versailles restrictions while retaining a strong cadre of officers and senior non-coms. The Nazis came to power in and began remilitarisation. Heavy military spending quickly restored the depression-ravaged economy, making Adolf Hitler popular with the people and the military.

German armed forces were named the Wehrmacht from to The Army Heer was encouraged to experiment with tanks and motorised infantry, using the ideas of Heinz Guderian. The Kriegsmarine restarted naval construction and Hitler established the Luftwaffe , an independent air force. Threats to use military force were a staple in Nazi foreign policy. They were not actually used except as German involvement in the Spanish Civil War —39 , where the Luftwaffe gained important combat experience.

Farrell argues that the historiography of the army in World War Two has been "extremely difficult" because of the stark dichotomy between its superb combat performance and the horrors of its destruction and crimes against civilians and prisoners. At first Germany's military moves were brilliantly successful, as in the "blitzkrieg" invasions of Poland , Norway and Denmark , the Low Countries , and above all the stunningly successful invasion and quick conquest of France in Hitler probably wanted peace with Britain in late , but Winston Churchill , standing alone, was dogged in his defiance. Churchill had major financial, military, and diplomatic help from President Franklin D.

Roosevelt in the U. Rising tensions with the Soviet Union eventually led Germany to launch a full-scale invasion of its former ally in June Hitler's insistence on maintaining high living standards postponed the full mobilization of the national economy until , years after the great rivals Britain, Russia, and the U.

In September , Germany invaded Poland using new tactics that combining the use of tanks, motorised infantry, and air support — known as Blitzkrieg — caused Polish resistance to collapse within weeks. From the beginning of the campaign German forces committed war crimes. Britain and France declared war but over the winter of —40 there was very little combat in what was called the Phoney War. Then they fought a successful Norwegian Campaign against the British and Norwegian forces to conquer Norway and to secure access to the North Sea and to Swedish iron ore.

Sweden remained neutral throughout the war, but Finland fought two wars against the Soviets and became a German ally. The French plans were largely based on a static defense behind the Maginot Line — a series of formidable defensive forts along the French-German border. On 10 May the Germans bypassed the Maginot Line by launching another Blitzkrieg through neutral Belgium, Luxemburg and the Netherlands, drawing the Allied forces out.

The main thrust of the Battle of France attack however was through the Ardennes which were to that time believed impenetrable to tanks. The British Expeditionary Force and other allied units were driven back to the coast at Dunkirk , but managed to escape with most of their troops when Germany made a mistaken decision not to attack with tanks.

In June , with French troops encircled and cut off in the north, France asked for an armistice that allowed Germany to control most of the French coast and left Vichy France under German domination. Hitler at least wanted to threaten an invasion of Britain, perhaps to force a peace, so an armada of small boats and a large combat force was assembled in northern France.

The Battle of Britain was of basic strategic significance, for Berlin believed that it could defeat Britain only by physical invasion by the Army, codenamed Operation Sea Lion. The British Army had rescued its soldiers at Dunkirk but lost most of its equipment and weapons, and was no match for the fully equipped German army. The invasion could succeed only if the Luftwaffe could guarantee the Royal Navy would not be able to attack the landing force. To do so, the Royal Air Force had to be defeated.

The Battle took place August to September The Luftwaffe used medium bombers guarded by fighters; they made sorties a day from bases in France, Belgium and Norway. Thanks to its new radar system, the British knew where the Germans were, and could concentrate their counterattacks. After the RAF bomber forces quite separate from the fighter forces attacked Berlin and other cities, Hitler swore revenge and diverted the Luftwaffe to attacks on London.

The success the Luftwaffe was having in rapidly wearing down the RAF was squandered, as the civilians being hit were far less critical than the airfields and radar stations that were now ignored. The Luftwaffe lost planes, the British, The British showed more determination, better radar, and better ground control, while the Germans violated their own doctrine with wasted attacks on London. The British surprised the Germans with their high quality airplanes; flying close to home bases where they could refuel, and using radar as part of an integrated air defense system, they had a significant advantage over German planes operating at long range.

The Germans immediately pulled out their Stukas, which were so slow they were child's play for the Hurricanes and Spitfires. The Battle of Britain showed the world that Hitler's vaunted war machine could be defeated. Barley identifies numerous failures by the German high command. Hitler was indecisive, failing to identify a political goal that would define the military mission. Luftwaffe planning was muddled, and overlooked the important lessons learned in Spain. The operation was poorly supported by German intelligence. Germany failed to adhere to two key principles of war: To support their weakened Italian allies who had started several invasions, in early Germany deployed troops in Greece , Yugoslavia and North Africa.

In the Balkans it was a matter of guerrilla war which was extremely violent on all sides. Hitler made the fateful decision to invade Russia in early , but was delayed by the need to take control of the Balkans. Europe was not big enough for both Hitler and Stalin, and Hitler realized the sooner he moved the less risk of American involvement. Stalin thought he had a long-term partnership and rejected information coming from all directions that Germany was about to invade in June As a result, the Russians were poorly prepared and suffered huge losses, being pushed back to Moscow by December before holding the line.

Hitler imagined that the Soviet Union was a hollow shell that would easily collapse, like France. During the fourth and fifth centuries CE Roman emperors did their best to stave off the advance of the Germanic tribes. While the rulers in the Eastern Empire were able to endure the frequent clashes without serious consequences to their territorial dominion, this was not the case in the Western Empire. For upwards of two centuries, the Roman emperors fought and confined the Germanic tribes to Rhine-Danube frontier and in far-away Britain, but all that changed in CE when the Visigoths destroyed as much as two-thirds of the Roman army of the East under emperor Valens.

Subsequent historians like Sir Edward Gibbon among others ascribe a similar significance to this event and call the Battle of Adrianople a watershed moment between the ancient world and the medieval one that followed; for not only did this battle reveal Rome's weakness to the Germanic tribes and inspire them accordingly, never again were they to leave Roman soil. Before considering the later migration of various Germanic peoples in the 5th century, it is worth noting that the first recorded great migration of a Germanic tribe occurred sometime at the end of the 2nd century when the Goths left the lower Vistula for the shores of the Black Sea.

By the 5th century CE, the Western Roman Empire was losing military strength and political cohesion; numerous Germanic peoples, under pressure from population growth and invading Asian groups, began migrating en masse in far and diverse directions, taking them to Great Britain and far south through present day Continental Europe to the Mediterranean and northern Africa. Over time, this wandering meant intrusions into other tribal territories, and the ensuing wars for land escalated with the dwindling amount of unoccupied territory. Roaming tribes of Germanic people then began staking out permanent homes as a means of protection.

Much of this resulted in fixed settlements from which many, under a powerful leader, expanded outwards. In England, the Angles merged with the Saxons and other groups notably the Jutes , as well as absorbing some natives, to form the Anglo-Saxons later known as the English. A direct result of the Roman retreat was the disappearance of imported products like ceramics and coins, and a return to virtually unchanged local Iron Age production methods.

According to recent views this has caused confusion for decades, and theories assuming the total abandonment of the coastal regions to account for an archaeological time gap that never existed have been renounced. Instead, it has been confirmed that the Frisian graves had been used without interruption between the 4th and 9th centuries and that inhabited areas show continuity with the Roman period in revealing coins, jewellery and ceramics of the 5th century.

Also, people continued to live in the same three-aisled farmhouse, while to the east completely new types of buildings arose. More to the south in Belgium, archaeological evidence from this period indicates immigration from the north. Some of the Germanic tribes are frequently credited in popular depictions of the decline of the Roman Empire in the late 5th century.

Professional historians and archaeologists have since the s shifted their interpretations in such a way that the Germanic peoples are no longer seen as invading a decaying empire but as being co-opted into helping defend territory the central government could no longer adequately administer. Alaric certainly had no intentions to destroy the great city which was symbolic of Roman power, but he needed to pay his army and the spoils of the city not only afforded the ability to do that, its wealth made him "the richest general in the empire.

At about the same time Alaric was sacking the Empire's capital, there was a Roman exodus from the British Isles, a departure which provided the Germanic Angles and Saxons the opportunity to occupy and control the eastern coastlands of Britain, the southern regions of Sussex, and move into the valley of the Thames. Individuals and small groups from Germanic tribes had long been recruited from the territories beyond the limes i.

The Rhine and Danube provided the bulk of geographic separation for the Roman limes. On one side of the limes stood 'Latin' Europe, law, Roman order, prosperous trading markets, towns and everything that constituted modern civilization for that era; while on the other side stood barbarism, technical backwardness, illiteracy and a tribal society of fierce warriors.

Historian Evangelos Chrysos argues the implications concerning the recruitment of the barbarians into the Roman army during the migration period were enormous and relates that:. This knowledge of and experience with the Romans opened to individual members of the gentes a path which, once taken, would lead them to more or less substantial affiliation or even solidarity with the Roman world. To take an example from the economic sphere: The service in the Roman army introduced the individual or corporate members into the monetary system of the Empire since quite a substantial part of their salary was paid to them in cash.

With money in their hands the "guests" were by necessity exposed to the possibility of taking part in the economic system, of becoming accustomed to the rules of the wide market, of absorbing the messages of or reacting to the imperial propaganda passed to the citizens through the legends on the coins. In addition the goods offered in the markets influenced and transformed the newcomers' food and aesthetic tastes and their cultural horizon. Furthermore Roman civilitas was an attractive goal for every individual wishing to succeed in his social advancement. Assisting with defense eventually shifted into administration and then outright rule, as Roman government passed into the hands of Germanic leaders.

According to noted historian Herwig Wolfram, the Germanic peoples did not and could not "conquer the more advanced Roman world" nor were they able to "restore it as a political and economic entity"; instead, he asserts that the empire's "universalism" was replaced by "tribal particularism" which gave way to "regional patriotism". The transition of the Migration period to the Middle Ages proper took place over the course of the second half of the 1st millennium.

It was marked by the Christianization of the Germanic peoples and the formation of stable kingdoms replacing the mostly tribal structures of the Migration period. Some of this stability is discernible in the fact that the Pope recognized Theodoric's reign when the Germanic conqueror entered Rome in CE , despite that Theodoric was a known practitioner of Arianism, a faith which the Council of Nicaea condemned in CE In continental Europe, this Germanic evolution saw the rise of Francia in the Merovingian period under the rule of Clovis I who had deposed the last emperor of Gaul, eclipsing lesser kingdoms such as Alemannia.

While the Merovingians were checked by the armies of the Ostrogoth Theodoric, they remained the most powerful kingdom in Western Europe and the intermixing of their people with the Romans through marriage rendered the Frankish people less a Germanic tribe and more a "European people" in a manner of speaking. According to Gregory, this conversion was sincere but it also proved politically expedient as Clovis used his new faith as a means to consolidate his political power by Christianizing his army. When Merovingian rule eventually weakened, they were supplanted by another powerful Frankish family, the Carolingians, a dynastic order which produced Charles Martel , and Charlemagne.

Frankish power ultimately laid the foundations for the modern nations of Germany and France. In England, the Germanic Anglo-Saxon tribes reigned over the south of Great Britain from approximately to the tenth century until the Wessex hegemony became the nucleus for the unification of England. Hence they became the Normans.

They established the Duchy of Normandy , a territorial acquisition which provided them the opportunity to expand beyond Normandy into Anglo-Saxon England. The various Germanic tribal cultures began their transformation into the larger nations of later history, English , Norse and German , and in the case of Burgundy , Lombardy and Normandy blending into a Romano-Germanic culture. Many of these later nation states started originally as "client buffer states" for the Roman Empire so as to protect it from its enemies further away.

The parts south of the Germanic limes came under limited Latin influence in the early centuries CE but were swiftly conquered by Germanic groups such as the Alemanni after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The Germanic tribes of the Migration period had settled down by the Early Middle Ages , the latest series of movements out of Scandinavia taking place during the Viking Age. The Goths and Vandals were linguistically assimilated to their Latin Romance substrate populations. Evidence exists that for 2nd- and 3rd-century Goths as well as for 4th- and 5th-century Lombards that significant population displacement throughout Roman-occupied Europe occurred.

This quite likely contributed to their linguistic assimilation. In Scandinavia , there is a long history of assimilation of and by the Sami people and Finnic peoples , namely Finns and Karelians. In today's usage, the term "Nordic peoples" refers to the ethnic groups in all of the Nordic countries. In Great Britain, Germanic people coalesced into the Anglo-Saxon or English people between the 8th and 10th centuries. The various Germanic peoples of the Migrations period eventually spread out over a vast expanse stretching from contemporary European Russia to Iceland and from Norway to North Africa.

The migrants had varying impacts in different regions. In many cases, the newcomers set themselves up as overlords of the pre-existing population. Over time, such groups underwent ethnogenesis , resulting in the creation of new cultural and ethnic identities e. Thus, many of the descendants of the ancient Germanic peoples do not speak Germanic languages, as they were to a greater or lesser degree assimilated into the cosmopolitan, literate culture of the Roman world.

More broadly, early Medieval Germanic peoples were often assimilated into the walha substrate cultures of their subject populations. For the Germanic Visigoths in particular, they had intimate contact with Rome for two centuries before their domination of the Iberian Peninsula and were accordingly permeated by Roman culture. The Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain resulted in Anglo-Saxon or English displacement and cultural assimilation of the indigenous culture, the Brythonic -speaking British culture, causing the foundation of a new kingdom, England.

As in what became England, indigenous Brythonic Celtic culture in some of the south-eastern parts of what became Scotland approximately the Lothian and Borders region and areas of what became the Northwest of England the kingdoms of Rheged , Elmet , etc. Cultural and linguistic assimilation occurred less frequently between the Germanic Anglo-Saxons and the indigenous people who resided in the Roman dominated areas of England, particularly in the regions that remained previously unconquered. Anglo-Saxons occupied Somerset, the Severn valley, and Lancaster by c.

Over time, the Anglo-Saxons, with their distinct culture and language, displaced much of the extant Roman influence of old. Perhaps the final incursions by Germanic people which altered in some ways the ethnographic map of Europe was made by the Vikings. While their initial exploits were generally raids for plunder, they later settled and mixed with the indigenous people of Europe, which resulted in both conquest and colonization. Known for their unique ships, there is evidence of the Viking presence all over mainland Europe, as no lands with navigable waters or coastlines escaped their pillaging.

Vast territories in eastern England were overrun and occupied by the Vikings and the Danish King, Canute , eventually succeeded to the English crown. Archeological remains on North America even exist which give evidence to the dynamism and territorial ambitions of these Germanic warriors. The Scots language is the resulting Germanic language still spoken in parts of Scotland and is very similar to the speech of the Northumbrians of northern England.

Between the 15th and 17th centuries Scots spread into more of mainland Scotland at the expense of Scottish Gaelic although Gaelic maintained a strong hold over the Scottish Highlands, and Scots also began to make some headway into the Northern Isles. The latter, Orkney and Shetland , though now part of Scotland, were nominally part of the Kingdom of Norway until the 15th century.

A version of the Norse language was spoken there from the Viking invasions until replaced by Scots in the 18th and 19th centuries. Its conclusion with the Peace of Westphalia politically fragmented much of Germanic Europe. Common elements of Germanic society can be deduced both from Roman historiography and comparative evidence from the Early Medieval period. A main element uniting Germanic societies was kingship , in origin a sacral institution combining the functions of military leader, high priest, lawmaker and judge.

Germanic monarchy was elective ; the king was elected by the free men from among eligible candidates of a family OE cynn tracing their ancestry to the tribe's divine or semi-divine founder. To a large degree, many of the extant legal records from the Germanic tribes seem to revolve around property transactions. Free men without landed property could swear fealty to a man of property who as their lord would then be responsible for their upkeep, including generous feasts and gifts.

This system of sworn retainers was central to early Germanic society, and the loyalty of the retainer to his lord generally replaced his family ties. Early Germanic law reflects a hierarchy of worth within the society of free men, reflected in the differences in weregild. Among the Anglo-Saxons, a regular free man a ceorl had a weregild of shillings i.

Similarly, among the Alamanni the basic weregild for a free man was shillings, and the amount could be doubled or tripled according to the man's rank. Unfree serfs did not command a weregild, and the recompense paid in the event of their death was merely for material damage, 15 shillings in the case of the Alamanni, increased to 40 or 50 if the victim had been a skilled artisan.

The social hierarchy is not only reflected in the weregild due in the case of the violent or accidental death of a man, but also in differences in fines for lesser crimes. Thus the fines for insults, injury, burglary or damage to property differ depending on the rank of the injured party. Free women did not have a political station of their own but inherited the rank of their father if unmarried, or their husband if married. The weregild or recompense due for the killing or injuring of a woman is notably set at twice that of a man of the same rank in Alemannic law.

All freemen had the right to participate in general assemblies or things , where disputes between freemen were addressed according to customary law. The king was bound to uphold ancestral law, but was at the same time the source for new laws for cases not addressed in previous tradition. This aspect was the reason for the creation of the various Germanic law codes by the kings following their conversion to Christianity: In the case of a suspected crime, the accused could avoid punishment by presenting a fixed number of free men their number depending on the severity of the crime prepared to swear an oath on his innocence.

Failing this, he could prove his innocence in a trial by combat. Corporal or capital punishment for free men does not figure in the Germanic law codes, and banishment appears to be the most severe penalty issued officially. This reflects that Germanic tribal law did not have the scope of exacting revenge , which was left to the judgement of the family of the victim, but to settle damages as fairly as possible once an involved party decided to bring a dispute before the assembly.

A fascinating component of early Germanic laws were the varying distinctions concerning the physical body, as each body part had a personal injury value and corresponding legal claims for personal injury viewed matters like gender, rank and status as a secondary interest when deliberating cases. Generally speaking, Roman legal codes eventually provided the model for many Germanic laws and they were fixed in writing along with Germanic legal customs.

The same effect of political centralization took hold in Scandinavia slightly later, in the 12th to 13th century Age of the Sturlungs , Consolidation of Sweden , Civil war era in Norway , by the end of the 14th century culminating in the giant Kalmar Union. Elements of tribal law, notably the wager of battle , nevertheless remained in effect throughout the Middle Ages, in the case of the Holy Roman Empire until the establishment of the Imperial Chamber Court in the early German Renaissance. In the federalist organization of Switzerland , where cantonal structures remained comparatively local, the Germanic thing survived into the 21st century in the form of the Landsgemeinde , albeit subject to federal law.

Historical records of the Germanic tribes in Germania east of the Rhine and west of the Danube do not begin until quite late in the ancient period, so only the period after BCE can be examined. What is clear is that the Germanic idea of warfare was quite different from the pitched battles fought by Rome and Greece.

Instead the Germanic tribes focused on raids. Warfare of varying size however was a distinctive feature of barbarian culture. The purpose of these was generally not to gain territory, but rather to capture resources and secure prestige. These raids were conducted by irregular troops , often formed along family or village lines, in groups of 10 to about 1, Leaders of unusual personal magnetism could gather more soldiers for longer periods, but there was no systematic method of gathering and training men, so the death of a charismatic leader could mean the destruction of an army.

Armies also often consisted of more than 50 percent noncombatants, as displaced people would travel with large groups of soldiers, the elderly, women, and children. War leaders who were able to secure ample booty for their retainers were able to grow accordingly by attracting warrior bands from nearby villages.

Large bodies of troops, while figuring prominently in the history books, were the exception rather than the rule of ancient warfare. Thus a typical Germanic force might consist of men with the sole goal of raiding a nearby Germanic or foreign village. Thus, most warfare was at their barbarian neighbors. Legitimacy for leaders among the Germans resided in their ability to successfully lead armies to victory.

Defeat on the battlefield at the hands of the Romans or other barbarians often meant the end of a ruler and in some cases, being absorbed by "another, victorious confederation. Though often defeated by the Romans , the Germanic tribes were remembered in Roman records as fierce combatants, whose main downfall was that they failed to join together into a collective fighting force under a unified command , which allowed the Roman Empire to employ a "divide and conquer" strategy against them.

Three Roman legions were ambushed and destroyed by an alliance of Germanic tribes headed by Arminius at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 CE, the Roman Empire made no further concentrated attempts at conquering Germania beyond the Rhine. Then in CE , the last Roman emperor was deposed by a German chieftain, an event which effectively ended Roman predominance in western Europe. That military transition was additionally spurred by the arrival of the Vikings from the 8th to 10th centuries, giving rise to modern Europe and medieval warfare.

For an analysis of Germanic tactics versus the Roman empire see: Roman infantry versus Gallic and the Germanic tribes. Weapons used by the Germanic tribes varied. Some of them used axes, throwing javelins, spears, bows and arrows along with swords. Most of the swords used by the Germanic warriors were those captured from Roman soldiers until the 4th century when German blacksmiths began making the best steel in Europe. It also meant fierce inter-Germanic rivalry which constituted the larger power blocks of the Germanic world.

To the greatest extent, Germanic fighting units consisted of infantry who would emerge from cover and attack, but they also utilized skilled cavalrymen at times, something the Visigoths used decisively to aid in their victory at Adrianople. Cavalry warfare was limited in northern Europe due to the lack of suitably large horses for mounted troops. Caesar provided his Germanic armies with Roman mounts to enable them greater mobility and to enhance their fighting efficiency.

Such resolution led them to believe that dying in such a manner was heroic and would transport the fallen fighter straight into Valhalla where they would be embraced by the warrior maidens known as the Valkyries. Traces of the earliest pastoralism of the Germanic peoples appear in central Europe in the form of elaborate cattle burials along the Elbe and Vistula Rivers from around — BCE.

Central to survival for their assistance in tilling the soil and supplying food, cattle became an economic resource to these early people. The buildings in these villages varied in form, but normally consisted of farmhouses surrounded by smaller buildings such as granaries and other storage rooms.

The universal building material was timber. Cattle and humans usually lived together in the same house. Although the Germans practiced both agriculture and husbandry , the latter was extremely important both as a source of dairy products and as a basis for wealth and social status, which was measured by the size of an individual's herd.

Barley and wheat were the most common agricultural products and were used for baking a certain flat type of bread as well as brewing beer. Evidence from a Saxon village known as Feddersen Wierde near Cuxhaven, Germany which existed between BCE 50 to CE shows that the Germanic people cultivated oats and rye, used manure as fertilizer, and that they practiced crop-rotation.

The fields were tilled with a light-weight wooden ard , although heavier models also existed in some areas. Common clothing styles are known from the remarkably well-preserved corpses that have been found in former marshes on several locations in Denmark, and included woolen garments and brooches for women and trousers and leather caps for men. Other important small-scale industries were weaving, the manual production of basic pottery and, more rarely, the fabrication of iron tools, especially weapons.

After BCE the societies of Jutland and Northern Germany along with the Celtic people experienced a major revolution in technology during the Late Bronze Age, shaping tools, containers and weapons through the improved techniques of working bronze. Both the sword and the bow and arrow as well as other weaponry proliferate and an arms race of sorts between the tribes ensued as they tried to outpace one another. Trade was taking place to a greater degree and simple gems and amber from the Mediterranean indicate that long-distance exchange of goods was occurring.

Widening trade between the Germanic tribes and Rome started later following the Empire's wars of conquest when they looked to the Germanic people to supply them with slaves, leather and quality iron. One of the reasons the Romans may have drawn borders along the Rhine, besides the sizable population of Germanic warriors on one side of it, was that the Germanic economy was not robust enough for them to extract much booty nor were they convinced they could acquire sufficient tax revenue from any additional efforts of conquest.

Drawing a distinctive line between themselves and Germanic people also incentivized alliances and trade as the Germanic people sought a share of the imperial wealth. Tacitus does mention the presence of a bartering system being observable among the Germanic people, but this was not exclusive, as he also writes of their use of "gold and silver for the purpose of commerce", adding rather sardonically in his text, that what they exchanged was nothing more than "petty merchandise.

The writings of Tacitus allude to the Germanic peoples being aware of a shared ethnicity, in that, they either knew or believed that they shared a common biological ancestor with one another. Just how pervasive this awareness may have been is certainly debatable, but other factors like language, clothing, ornamentation, hair styles, weapon types, religious practices and shared oral history were likely just as significant in tribal identity for the Germanics. Village life consisted of free men assembled under a chieftain, all of whom shared common cultural and political traditions.

Status among the early Germanic tribes was often gauged by the size of a man's cattle herd or by one's martial prowess. Before their conversion to Christianity , the Germanic peoples of Europe were made up of several tribes , each functioning as an economic and military unit and sometimes united by a common religious cult. Kinship , especially close kinship, was very important to life within a tribe but generally was not the source of a tribe's identity. In fact, several elements of ancient Germanic life tended to weaken the role of kinship: The retinue often called "comitatus" by scholars, following the practice of ancient Roman writers consisted of the followers of a chieftain, who depended on the retinue for military and other services and who in return provided for the retinue's needs and divided with them the spoils of battle.

A chieftain's retinue might include close relatives, but it was not limited to them. Eventually the rising power of individual chieftains and kings from among the military leadership of Germanic tribes and confederations curtailed and in many ways replaced the power once enjoyed by tribal assemblies. According to Tacitus, the "greatest disgrace that can befall" a warrior of a clan among the Germanic tribes was the abandonment of their shield during combat, as this almost certainly resulted in social isolation.

Feuds were the standard means for resolving conflicts and regulating behavior. Peace within the tribe was about controlling violence with codes identifying exactly how certain types of feuds were to be settled. This duty helped reaffirm the bonds between extended family members. Yet such feuds weakened the tribe as a whole, sometimes leading to the creation of a new tribe as one group separated from the rest.

Clans of Germanic people consisted of groupings of about 50 households in total with societal rules for each specific clan. Though most members of a tribe would have been more or less distantly related, common descent was not the main source of a tribe's identity, and extended families were not the main social units within a tribe. Traditional theories have emphasized the supposedly central role in Germanic culture of clans or large groups with common ancestry.

But there is little evidence that such clans existed, and they were certainly not an important element of social organization. As historian Alexander C.

History of Medieval and Renaissance Europe: Primary Documents

Murray concludes, "kinship was a crucial factor in all aspects of barbarian activity, but its uses and groupings were fluid, and probably on the whole not long lasting. The most important family relationships among the early Germanic peoples were within the individual household, a fact based on the archaeological evidence from their settlements where the long-houses appeared to be central in their existence. Within the household unit, an individual was equally bound to both the mother and the father's side of the family. Some Germanic tribes even believed that women possessed magical powers and were feared accordingly.

He also notes that during times of peace, women did most of the work of managing the household. Along with the children, they apparently did most of the household chores as well. Children were valued, and according to Tacitus, limiting or destroying one's offspring was considered shameful. Mothers apparently breast-fed their own children rather than using nurses.

Besides parents and children, a household might include slaves, but slavery was uncommon, and according to Tacitus, slaves normally had households of their own. Their slaves usually prisoners of war were most often employed as domestic servants. The overall territory occupied by people from the same tribe was designated in the writings of Tacitus as a civitas , with each of the individual civitas divided into pagi or cantons , which were made up of several vici. In cases where the tribes were grouped into larger confederations or a group of kingdoms, the term pagus was applied Gau in German.

As individuals rose to prominence, a distinction between commoner and nobility developed and with it the previous constructs of folkright shared equally across the tribe was replaced in some cases by privilege. Elites within the Germanic tribes who learned the Roman system and emulated the way they established dominion were able to gain advantages and exploit them accordingly.