Birthday Greetings # 68

By the early years of the 5th century it had to be admitted that the Roman empire in the west had seen better days.  In fact pretty much all its days were better days.  By 423 AD gibbons were declining and falling all over the place.  Still the year 423 did bring one piece of good news for the increasingly beleaguered empire; it's worthless ruler Honorius took that opportunity to slip unlamented into his grave.

Before he died he nominated the (six year old) son of his half sister as his successor and it is to this misbegotten twat that we send our birthday greetings.  So happy birthday to Valentinian III, Roman emperor and possibly the only man in the world who could have made his people regret the passing of Honorius.

To be fair Valentinian was only six years old when he started ruling so he can't really be blamed for what happened at the start of his reign.  When Honorius died both Valentinian and his mother were at Constantinople as guests of the eastern emperor largely because Honorius persisted in hitting on her.  The absence of the heir from the empire persuaded the Western Empire's military commander to set up a puppet emperor named John in his place.  Coming down hard in favour of legitimacy the eastern emperor sent Valentinian, his mother and a whole bunch of soldiers to dispute this decision, as it happened, successfully.  The would be emperor was killed and Valentinian and his mother settled down to rule.

Well not quite, there was one minor issue to be dealt with first.  Realising he would be meeting an invasion from the east John had sent his best commander to recruit troops from a bunch of people always ready to take a slap at the empire, the Huns.  This commander, one Aetius by name, turned up with several thousand Huns just in time to find John's executed corpse at his feet.  There followed a certain amount of tense circling around each other which ended with Aetius being given the supreme military command in Gaul and the Huns paid a vast amount of money to simply leave.

As Valentinian grew older it would have been apparent to him if he had bothered to pay attention that his empire was in desperate straits.  The tax revenues from the empire were no longer sufficient to pay the soldiers that protected it.  Unlike the eastern empire which still had rivers of gold pouring into its treasury the only river of gold the west saw was Valentinian pissing away what little his treasury still contained.  On a map the borders of the empire still looked impressive but this was largely a cartographic fiction.  Constant barbarian raids had depopulated a lot of the territory and the only way the empire had managed to deal with the flow of warriors across the borders was to settle them in some of the depopulated areas under their own chieftains.  This meant that large parts of the western empire were effectively autonomous kingdoms.

This was tolerated by the empire because it had no choice and because these "kingdoms" were the greatest source of soldiers left to the empire.  The situation required a tough, ruthless, highly capable man to deal with it.  And the empire had such a man.  Unfortunately it wasn't Valentinian it was Aetius.  This was a problem because after the events at the start of his reign Valentinian's mother distrusted Aetius.  A lot of discreet behind the scenes manoeuvring led to a minor civil war between Aetius and the court's choice, one Boniface which Aetius won because Boniface got killed.  After which with the threat of Huns descending on them (Aetius was very, some might say suspiciously, chummy with the Huns) Aetius was reinstated.

Valentinian got older, got married and basically lounged around while Aetius ran his empire for him.  This probably wasn't a bad decision (it was certainly better than any other decision he made) but it got Aetius used to power and constantly contrasted his efficiency with imperial fecklessness.  The next few years were a grim struggle as, with an underpaid and demoralised army Aetius somehow managed to beat up sufficient of the empire's enemies to persuade the rest of the empire's enemies to wait until he was dead before attacking it.  Notionally at least the empire's borders were almost as extensive as before.  Meanwhile Valentinian hit on other men's wives and hung out with soothsayers.

Then Attila the Hun happened.  Technically Attila and several thousand other Huns happened.  They charged into Roman Gaul stealing anything not nailed down and breaking furniture all over the shop.  Under the leadership of Aetius the empire made one final convulsive effort.  Scraping together the remnants of the Roman army and dialling in Burgundian and Visigothic support Aetius met and stopped Attila at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains.  Contrary to popular opinion this didn't discourage Attila from invading the empire (he was back next year) but it did put a serious brake on his ambitions and he conveniently died the next year.

Valentinian celebrated by having Aetius murdered.  OK so Aetius was pushing his luck a bit.  He had managed to marry his son to Valentinian's daughter and so was the imperial father in law.  He was probably already mentally reviewing how good his son looked in purple.  Still he had been a loyal (if not entirely disinterested) subordinate and getting a terminal retirement package was probably a little steep given the efforts he had put in to keeping the empire together.

With Aetius out of the way nobody even bothered to pretend that the empire had a future.  Bits were falling off faster than they could be glued back on.  Plus what was left of the army was really annoyed with Valentinian for killing their commander.  In an attempt to gain the soldier's loyalty Valentinian started training and exercising with them.  That might have worked if a couple of them hadn't killed him while he was doing it.