History about the Germanic peoples

Overview/Germanic Peoples

Late in the slavery era, the Romans established the Roman Empire, a large empire spanning Europe and Asia. The Romans called the foreign tribes living in the northern part of the Roman Empire "barbarians". The most numerous of these foreign tribes were the Celtics, Germans, and Slavs. The Germans, at this time, were still at the end of the clan society. By the 1st century to the 3rd century AD, the Germanic tribes began to form an alliance, the larger of which was the Franks. By this time, the Roman Empire had declined from the peak of slavery, and slave and peasant revolts continued to occur everywhere, making the dying Roman Empire even more shaky. At the same time, a part of the Xiongnu people, who had been defeated by the Han Dynasty of China at that time, migrated westward through Central Asia and invaded Europe, causing a chain reaction of "Great Migration of Peoples", in which many foreign tribes migrated to the territory of the Roman Empire. At this time, the Roman Empire was no longer able to deal with the invasion of these foreigners, who established their own kingdoms in the territory of the Roman Empire, dividing the Roman Empire, and the invincible Roman Empire fell from then on. The Franks, a Germanic people, also took the opportunity of this great turmoil to invade the territory of the Roman Empire and established the Frankish Kingdom. At this time, the Frankish Kingdom was in the process of disintegration of the clan system and the original Roman Empire within the growing development of the feudal factors combined to form the feudal system of Western Europe. The clan and tribal organizations within the kingdom were gradually replaced by the state authorities, and the customs among the tribes gradually evolved into laws. With the Frankish Kingdom as the main representative of the Germanic people established various kingdoms, in the 5th century AD will be the past unwritten customary law codified into a codified legal code. Since the customs of the Germanic tribes were similar, the basic spirit of the laws of the various kingdoms was also largely the same, and the later generations called these laws Germanic Law. Germanic law, like Roman law, has had a considerable influence on modern capitalist law.

The main representative of Germanic law was the legal system of the Frankish kingdom. At that time, on the one hand, private ownership had appeared in the Frankish Kingdom, and various classes had been formed; on the other hand, although the clan tribes had been gradually disintegrated, their influence had not yet been eliminated. Therefore, these social contradictions and social phenomena were prominently reflected in the Germanic law. The Germanic law has the following basic features: first, emphasize the individual subordinate to the collective, the individual's rights and obligations to be subject to the constraints of the family and the clan. Later jurists called this feature of Germanic law as "group-centered", in order to distinguish from respect for individual will, strict protection of private property. Individual-centered Roman law, this "group-centered" tendency, in the later history of the Germanic peoples, you can still see its traces. Secondly, all members of the clan, no matter where they live, must abide by the law of the clan, but not the law of the location, that is, the so-called "personalism".

Later, due to personalism and the real society is too contradictory, that is to say, a few different clans of people *** with living in the same area, but abide by different laws, and then the judge can not be judged, so the Germanic law of personalism, gradually by the same area of the same people are not reduced to which ethnic groups or countries, must comply with the same law of the territoriality of the doctrine replaced. Finally, there is no abstract statute in Germanic law, but only the rules for solving specific cases for specific living relations. The judgment in one case not only resolved that case, but also served as the basis for subsequent trials of similar cases. The collection of these precedents constituted the code of Germanic law. The Frankish kingdom waged wars for years and years, expanding its territory so much that it was almost equal to the present Western Europe. But the good times did not last long, and this kingdom, which was founded on conquest by force, split into three parts in 843 AD: the Kingdom of France, the Kingdom of Germany, and the Kingdom of Italy. The Kingdom of France was the center and typical representative of the feudal system in Western Europe. In France, the feudal manor replaced the rural commune in the past and became the grassroots organization of the feudal society. Manor lands belonged to the feudal lords, and the king, the church or the great lords owned hundreds or even thousands of manors. Small and medium-sized feudal lords also owned a varying number of manors. The size of the manor varied, but it was generally the same as a village. The manor's cultivated land was usually divided into two parts: the land under the direct management of the lord himself and the share of the land used by the serfs. About half of the serf's time each year in the lord's land unpaid labor, the rest of the time in their own share of the land cultivation, share of the harvest, but also to pay a portion of the lord as rent, in addition, the serf will be unpaid for the lord to do other work. The entire economy of the feudal manor was a self-sufficient natural economy. Everything needed on the estate: food, clothing, farming tools, supplies, and even weapons, were basically made by the serfs of the estate. The feudal laws of the French Middle Ages were also a reflection of the social characteristics of this period. The law stipulated the personal dependence of the serf on the feudal lord, the serf was not allowed to leave the land without the permission of the lord; the serf's marriage was subject to the consent of the lord; the serf could be sold with the land. Therefore, serfs were semi-free. Their status was half as high as that of slaves, and they had certain status and rights under the law, but this status and rights were very poor and limited.

Origins/Germanic Peoples

Germanic Atlas

The origin of the Germanic peoples has not been conclusively established. The Germanic peoples are said to have been a mixture of Nordic people, who used iron, and Indo-European people, who used bronze, and who lived in the late Bronze Age in the area between the rivers Em and Oder and the Hartz Mountains in what is now southern Sweden, the Danish peninsula, and northern Germany. The earliest use of the term "Germanic" was by the Greek historian Bohemian. He first used the word about 80 years ago. It is possible that he heard the word in contact with one of the small, today unidentifiable peoples of central Europe and used it to refer to all Germanic peoples. It is possible that the name of such a small people later became the name of an entire group of peoples. Julius Caesar used the name Germanic in 51 BC in his Gallic Wars. Caesar here refers to all peoples east of the Rhine as Germanic peoples. Up to this point the Romans referred to the peoples of western Europe as Celts and the peoples of eastern Europe as Scythians. It was only at this point that the Romans realized that the Germans were not Celts, but a separate group of peoples. Tacitus says that the Gauls called the peoples east of the Rhine "Germans". Later these peoples themselves called themselves Germanic. According to this account it is possible that the word came from the Celtic language. Strictly speaking, it is only from this time on that we can refer to these peoples as Germanic. The Bronze Age people of northern Europe are almost certainly Germanic. The relationship between the so-called Tomahawks and the Germanic peoples is still debated. The latest theory, through the study of rivers and place names, suggests that the Germanic peoples arose in the northern part of the mountainous area of present-day central Germany. However, most scholars are skeptical of this theory. During the time of Tacitus, the various Germanic peoples were aware of the existence of a kinship with each other. Some Germans serving in the Roman army sometimes called themselves Germani (Germani), while those living east of the Rhine free Germans did not have a collective name for themselves until the 11th century A.D., when they adopted the adjective diutisc (modern German Deutsch, meaning "belonging to the people") to call themselves, and the word became popular. The word became popular. The exact meaning of the Germani name and language is not known.

History/Germanic peoples

During the Late Bronze Age, the Germanic peoples inhabited the southern part of modern-day Sweden, the Danish peninsula, and the northern part of Germany between the rivers Em and Oder and the Hartz Mountains. With the use of iron, economic development and natural disasters, the Germanic tribes began to move south from around the 6th century BC. The Vandals, Gepids (Gepidae) and Goths (Goth) migrated from southern Sweden, occupying the area on the southern shore of the Baltic Sea roughly equivalent to the area between the Oder and Vistula rivers. Early migratory movements also took place to the south and west. The result was to crowd out the Celtic

peoples who inhabited much of present-day western Germany. In the 3rd century B.C. they traveled south along the Elbe River to northern Bohemia and then along the Saale River to Thuringia. At the end of the 2nd century BC, Germanic tribes settling in the Jutland peninsula invaded the Mediterranean cultural area and directly confronted the Romans. In the middle of the 1st century BC, a large number of Germans set out from the hinterland to the Rhine, where they were in constant military conflict with the Roman Empire. After a long struggle, the Germanic tribes of Vandals, Burgundians and Goths occupied the Vistula river basin. In the middle of the 1st century B.C., the Celtics were again expelled and eventually settled in the vast area east of the Rhine, north of the Danube and between the North Sea. At the end of the 1st century BC, after the Roman slave **** and state was replaced by the empire, the Germanic tribes directly neighboring it to the north were then targeted for conquest. In 9 B.C., the Romans expanded their territory from the Rhine eastward to the Elbe, and by the time of Julius Caesar (102?44BC) the Germans had already settled west of the Rhine, and had reached the Danube to the south. One of the earliest major battles between them and the Romans occurred at the end of the 2nd century BC, when the Cimbri and the Teutons joined forces to invade southern Gaul and northern Italy, but were all annihilated by Gaius

Marius (157?86?BC) in the first two years of the reign of Julius Caesar (102?44BC). The goal of the Roman conquests was to capture the vast Germanic tribal settlements up to the Elbe River and to incorporate them into the empire, forming the Roman province of Germania Grande. The Roman Empire concentrated on establishing the Rhine as a military base. In 12 B.C., the Roman Empire concentrated 36 legions on the Rhine, totaling 30,000 men, and began its war of conquest against the Germanic tribes in that year.

In the early stages of the war, the Roman army encountered stubborn resistance from the Germanic tribes and suffered heavy losses. In 8 B.C., a Roman army that penetrated deep into the Germanic hinterland was dealt a heavy blow by the Germanic tribes. The Romans "struggled to conquer their rivals on the road ahead, and for every victory they had to pay in blood." However, the resistance of the Germanic tribes was individualized and not united. This allowed the Romans to concentrate their superior forces on attacking the tribes in turn. After more than 10 years of war, most of the Germanic tribes were conquered. Unable to send enough troops to occupy the entire Germanic inhabited area and exercise effective rule over them, the Roman Empire had to force the conquered Germanic tribes to pay tribute to the empire and establish a mandatory treaty dependency.

After years of struggle, the Germanic people gradually realized that to defeat the well-equipped and experienced Roman army, they had to change the disorganized state of the individual tribes fighting on their own. So tribal alliances began to emerge. In the fall of 9 A.D., the Germanic tribes of warriors, in the Teutonburg forest with 30,000 Roman troops encountered, the Germans achieved a major victory, the Roman three legions were almost completely annihilated. After this victory, many Germanic tribes regained their independence. The Battle of Teutonic Forest put the Roman Empire in a difficult situation, and the Roman Emperor was forced to give up the plan of establishing the province of Germania. This determined that the boundaries of the Roman Empire's sphere of influence were not at the Elbe, but remained along the Rhine Valley.

In 11 A.D., the Roman Empire once again crossed the Rhine and waged a new war of conquest against the Germans, and won a partial victory. In 17 AD, the Roman army occupied Strasbourg, Windisch and Mainz. However, the Romans were no longer able to continue deeper into the Germanic hinterland. In the decades of the mid-1st century AD, the Roman Empire gradually pushed its borders to the east bank of the Rhine, thus reinforcing the Roman Rhine-Danube border system. After the second half of the 1st century AD, the Romans began to build boundary walls in the area on the east bank of the Rhine. This meant that the Roman Empire finally ended its wars of conquest. At the beginning of the 1st century A.D., the Roman Empire formally incorporated the upper Rhine and Danube into the imperial territory and established two provinces: the Upper Germanic Province and the Lower Germanic Province. The capital of the former was Mainz and the latter was Cologne. The governors of the two provinces were vice-admirals of the local Roman garrison. 167 The entry of the Markmen, Quadrians, Lombards, Vandals and other tribes into the Pannonian Province led to the Markmen War (167-180). Marcus Aurelius led four military campaigns to conquer the invading Germans. At that time Rome may have had plans to create two new provinces. But after the death of Marcus Aurelius in 180, his son Commodus resumed the defensive strategy of the past. He repaired peace with the Germanic peoples.Two important changes took place in the 2nd century in the Germanic area: firstly the Germanic tribes, which had been divided in the past, united into large tribes, and secondly the Germanic peoples increasingly carried out raids on the Roman borders. The reasons for the migration of these Germanic peoples cannot be proved today, but one possible reason was that as the Germanic tribes developed economically and culturally, and as the clan-commune system was disintegrating, the upper echelons of the tribes aspired to expand outward and plunder new lands and wealth, and the lower echelons of the tribes were forced to move outward due to the growth of their population in search of new lands on which they could make a living. The Roman Empire was weakening and unable to defend itself against foreign invasion. Or it could have been caused by famine. In any case, from the 4th century A.D. onwards, the Germanic tribes, which had been scattered outside the Roman Empire, began to migrate to the Roman Empire on a large scale. In 376 A.D., the Germanic tribes of the Visigoths were attacked by the Huns, who, after obtaining the consent of the Roman Emperor, crossed the Danube into Thrace on the Balkan Peninsula. In the next year the Visigoths, unable to withstand the oppression of the Romans, revolted again. 395 when the Roman Empire was divided, the Visigoths, together with the local slaves and peasants, fought against the Western Roman Empire, and established the Kingdom of Visigoths in southwestern Gaul in 418. The Germanic tribes that followed the Visigoths into the Roman Empire included the Burgundians, the Franks, the East Goths, the Angles and the Saxons. The great migration of the Germanic peoples lasted about 2 centuries, and they, together with the local slaves and peasant revolts, destroyed the Roman Empire and established many Germanic kingdoms on Roman territory, among which the Frankish kingdom gradually became the most powerful country among the Germanic kingdoms.

The Roman Empire faced the threat of the Franks in the frontier region of the lower Rhine. The valley of the Main River was occupied by the Burgundians around 260 years ago, and the Black Forest region of Agri? Agri

Decumates in the Black Forest was occupied by the Alemanni

. Those Burgundians apparently migrated from the eastern regions of Germany. The Franks and the Alemanni may have been a confederation of two peoples who, in the time of Tacitus, had each been on one side, although some immigrants, probably from the east, intermingled among them. The peoples of whom Tacitus speaks who lived on the Baltic coast had migrated to the south-east within the second half of the second century. Thus, the Goths controlled much of the Ukraine and present-day Romania during this period; the Gepids occupied the mountains north of Transylvania; and the Vandals became their neighbors to the west. By the year 500, the Angles and Saxons had entered England, and the Franks possessed the northern part of Gaul. The Burgundians occupied the area around the Rhone Valley, and the Visigoths lived to their west. The Ostrogoths settled in Italy and the Vandals reached Africa. in 507 the Franks expelled the Visigoths from most of the part of Gaul they occupied. The Visigoths, whose territory in Gaul had by then extended from the Pyrénées to the Royale, were expelled by the Franks and went into Spain, where they were completely annihilated by the Muslims in 711. The Lombards entered Italy in 568 and established an independent kingdom, which was destroyed by Charlemagne (742?814) in 774. Since the departure of the Goths and some other peoples, some areas in eastern Germany were occupied by the Slavs, who also expanded westward as far as Bohemia and the Elbe Valley. 8 centuries later, the Germans recovered most of the land in the eastern part of Germany, Lower Austria, and Styria, and Carinthia, and expelled all of the Slavs from these places. collectively expelled the Slavs from these places.