14-9. The Vandal Invasion of Africa
Meanwhile in Italy Castinus, who appears to have been the chief supporter of John, had been punished by exile; and a certain Felix had taken his place at the head of affairs, with the titles of magister militum and patricius. Inheriting the position of Castinus, Felix seems to have inherited, or at any rate to have renewed, his feud with Boniface, the governor of Africa. Possibly Boniface, the old friend and supporter of Placidia, may have hoped for the position of regent which Felix now held, and he may have been discontented with the reward which he actually received after Placidia's victory — the title of comes and the confirmation of his position in Africa; possibly the situation in Africa itself may have forced Boniface, as it had before forced Heraclian, into disloyalty to the Empire.
Africa was full of Donatists, and the Donatists hated the central government, which, under the influence of clericalism, used all its resources to support the orthodox cause. Religious schism became the mother of a movement of nationalism; in contrast with loyal and imperialist Gaul, Africa, in the early years of the fifth century, was rapidly tending to political independence. At the same time a certain degeneration of character seems to have affected Count Boniface himself. The noble hero celebrated by Olympiodorus, the pious friend and correspondent of St Augustine, who had once had serious thoughts of deserting the world for a monastery, would appear — if it be not a calumny of orthodox Catholics — to have lost all moral fibre after his second marriage to an Arian wife. He shewed himself slack at once in his private life and in his government of Africa; and the result was a summons from Felix, recalling him to Italy, in 427.
Boniface shewed himself contumacious, and a civil war began. In the course of the war Boniface defeated one army sent against him by Felix; but when a second army came, largely composed of mercenaries hired from the Visigoths, and under the command of a German, Sigisvult, he found himself hard pressed At this moment, if we follow the accounts of Procopius and Jordanes, Boniface made his fatal appeal to the Vandals of Spain, and thereby irretrievably ruined his own reputation and his province. But Procopius and Jordanes belong to the sixth century; and the one contemporary authority who writes of this crisis with any detail — Prosper Tiro — definitely says that the Vandals were summoned to the rescue by both contending parties (a concertantibus) , and thus implies, what is in itself most probable, that the imperial army under Sigisvult and the rebel force of Boniface both sought external aid.
It may well have been the case that the Vandals were already pressing southward from Spain towards Africa, and that, perhaps impelled by famine, or attracted by the fertility of Africa, the El Dorado of the Western Germans of this century, they were following the line of policy already indicated by Alaric, and unsuccessfully attempted from Spain itself by Wallia Spain and Northern Africa have again and again in history been drawn together by an inevitable attraction, alike in the days of Hamilcar and Hannibal, in the times of the Caliphate of Cordova, and during the reigns of the Spanish monarchs of the sixteenth century.
So the Vandals, who in 419 had moved down from their quarters in the northwest of Spain, and again occupied its southernmost province (Baetica), already appear as early as 4£5 in Mauretania (probably the western province of Mauretania Tingitana, which lay just across the Straits of Gibraltar and counted, for administrative purposes, as part of Spain). Their pressure would naturally increase, when the civil war in Africa opened the doors of opportunity; and we may well imagine that the incoming bands, whose numbers and real intentions were imperfectly apprehended in the African diocese, would naturally be invited to their aid by both sides alike. In any case Gaiseric came with the whole of the Vandal people in the spring of 429, and evacuating Spain he rapidly occupied the provinces of Mauretania.
The Romans at once awoke to their danger: the civil war abruptly ceased; and the home government quickly negotiated first a truce, and then a definite treaty, with the rebel Boniface. Uniting all the forces he could muster, including the Visigothic mercenaries, Boniface, as the recognised governor of Africa, attacked the Vandals, after a vain attempt to induce them to depart by means of negotiations. He was defeated; the Vandals advanced from Mauretania into Numidia; and he was besieged in Hippo (430). A new army came to his aid from Constantinople, under the command of Aspar; but the combined troops of Aspar and Boniface suffered another defeat (431). After the defeat Aspar returned to Constantinople, and Boniface was summoned to Italy by Placidia; Hippo fell, and Gaiseric pressed onwards from Numidia into Africa Proconsularis.
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