Crossing of the Rhine

The crossing of the Rhine River by a mixed group of barbarians which included Vandals, Alans and Suebi is traditionally considered to have occurred on the last day of the year 406 (December 31, 406).

Therefore, the crossing of the Rhine is a marker date in the Migration Period during which various Germanic tribes moved westward and southward from southern Scandinavia and northern Germania.

Olympiodorus of Thebes, a generally reliable contemporary historian, wrote an account of the crossing, of which only fragments have survived in quotations by Sozomen, Zosimus and Photius.

[8] The initial gathering of barbarians on the east bank of the Rhine has been interpreted as a banding of refugees from the Huns[9] or the remnants of Radagaisus' defeated Goths,[10] without direct evidence.

[7] Frigeridus does not mention a date nor a precise location for this battle; he only indicated that the Alan army 'turned away from the Rhine' in order to intervene in the Vandal–Frankish war, so it must have taken place some distance away from the river.

[7] MacDowall estimated that this last battle 'probably took place some time in the summer or autumn of 406, and it allowed the Vandals and their allies to move into Frankish territory on the middle Rhine'.

[13] On the other hand, the downstream river fortresses of Nijmegen (Noviomagus) and Cologne (Colonia) in the north were apparently left intact by the barbarians, as was Trier (Augusta Treverorum), situated a few days' march west of Mainz.

[1] Goffart argued in favour of this hypothesis based on the writings of the poet Claudian (died c. 404), who knew Stilicho personally; the general supposedly entrusted the defence of the Rhine frontier to the Franks and Alamanni, who were Roman foederati, for the time being until the Goths had been driven out of Italy.

Furthermore, he interpreted the Frigeridus fragment as showing the Franks being initially successful in preventing the Vandals from crossing the Rhine, but that they could no longer hold them back when the Alans joined the fray.

[11] A 2000 article by Michael Kulikowski,[16] finding that in traditional historiography "the sequence of events bristles with technical difficulties", bypassed modern historians' accounts, which he found to have depended upon Gibbon and one another, and reanalysed the literary sources.

Kulikowski's proposed date of 31 December 405 places the acclamation of the first of the usurpers in Britannia, which was characterised as a fearful reaction to the barbarian presence in Gaul, after the crossing of the Rhine.