02-11-2010, 09:38 AM
Quote:I am just reading Procopius's The Vandalic War and Ihave two questions I am hoping someone could shed a light on please.
Firstly, Procopius notes that all the Byzantine Court was full of fear about the likely success of the war but in eventuality it proved a walkover. Why did the Vandals, who conquered it from the Romans in the first instance prove so easy to beat? Procopius doesnt give any real reasons other than to imply most of the locals didnt like them due to religious reasons and perhaps that they, the Vandals had gone soft.
Well there was Gelimer's overthrow of Hilderic and the instability that sort of thing would entail, but Gelimer quickly made a lot of enemies by using a Roman-trained secretary named Bonifatius to seize the assets and property of his political opponents. There were revolts in Sardinia and Tripoli almost simultaneously by Goddas and Pudentius, both of whom appealed to Justinian for aid. Gelimer had a lot of other things to deal with at the time and was still in the process of mobilizing his troops once Belisarius had landed.
But the Vandal conquest of North Africa was due in large part to the Western Empire's inability to defend itself. Nobody even put up a fight when they took Carthage in 439. The Vandals were never really a proficient war machine, they had success raiding poorly defended Mediterranean settlements that hadn't seen warfare in centuries, but fared poorly in pitched battles against trained armies. They were beaten badly by the Huns, Goths and later the Franks before migrating south.
Come to think of it, the list of famous battles involving the Vandals where they actually won is quite short. They even managed to lose a battle in the Peloponnese against the Maniots, strange as it sounds.
