THE CAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY I 149
Euric the Fratricide's War in Gaul
10-4. Euric the Fratricide’s War in Gaul
Theodoric, freed from his most dangerous enemy, did not delay making good the losses he had suffered; but he died in the year 466 at the hand of his brother Euric, who was a champion of the anti-Roman national party and now ascended the throne. Contemporaries agree in describing the new king as characterised by great energy and warlike ability. We may venture to add from historical facts that he was also a man of distinguished political talent. The leading idea in his policy — the entire rejection of even a formal suzerainty of the Roman Empire — came into operation on his accession to the throne.
The embassy which he then sent off to the Emperor of Eastern Rome can only have had for its object a request for the recognition of the Visigoth sovereignty. As no agreement was arrived at he tried to bring about an alliance with the Vandals and the Sueves, but the negotiations came to nothing when a strong East-Roman fleet appeared in African waters (467). Euric at first pursued a neutral course, but as the Roman expedition, set on foot with such considerable effort against the Vandal kingdom, resulted so lamentably, he did not hesitate to come forward as assailant, while he simultaneously pushed forward his troops into Gaul and Spain in 469. He opened hostilities in Gaul with a sudden attack on the Bretons whom the Emperor had sent to the town of Bourges; at Deols, not far from Chateauroux, a battle took place in which the Bretons were overthrown.
Yet the Goths did not succeed in pushing forward over the Loire to the north. Count Paulus, supported by Frankish auxiliaries, successfully opposed them here. Euric therefore concentrated his whole strength partly on the conquest of the province of Aquitanica Prima, partly on the annexation of the lower Rhone valley, especially the long-coveted Aries. The provinces of Novempopulana and (for the most part) Narbonensis Prima had been probably already occupied by the Goths under Theodoric II.
An army which the West-Roman Emperor Anthemius sent to Gaul for the relief of Aries was defeated in the year 470 or 471, and for the time being a large part of Provence was seized by the Goths. In Aquitanica Prima, also, town after town fell into the hands of Euric's general Victorius; only Clennont, the capital city of Auvergne, obstinately defied the repeated attacks of the barbarians for many years. The moving spirits in the resistance were the brave Ecdicius, a son of the former Emperor Avitus, and the poet Sidonius Apollinaris, who had been its bishop from about 470. The letters of the latter give us a clear picture of the struggle which was waged with the greatest animosity on both sides. Euric is said to have stated that he would rather give up the much more valuable Septimania than renounce the possession of that town.
The wholly impotent Western Empire was unable to do anything for the besieged. In the year 475 peace was at last made between the Emperor Nepos and Euric by the intervention of Bishop Epiphanius of Ticinum (Pavia). Unfortunately the conditions are not more accurately known, but there can be no doubt that, besides the previously conquered territory in Spain, the district between the Loire, the Rhone, the Pyrenees, and the two seas was relinquished to Euric in sovereign possession. Thus Auvergne, so fiercely contended for, was surrendered to the Goths.
But in spite of this important success the king of the Goths had by no means reached the goal of his desires; it may be seen from the line of policy he followed later that the present moment seemed to him fit for carrying out that subjection of the whole of the West which had long since been the aim of Alaric I.
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