The Probert Encyclopaedia of People

VANDALS

The Vandals were a Teutonic people of the east Germanic stock. Although closely associated with the Goths, they were, unlike them, destitute of the nobler barbarian qualities. Having moved from the shores of the Baltic to the middle Danube, they migrated west. At the beginning of the 5th century they poured into Gaul, and in 409 made their way into Spain. Thither they were soon followed by the Visigoths, who destroyed half of them and penned the rest into the district which still bears their name in the form Andalusia. About 428 they left Spain for North Africa. Upon the Mediterranean littoral they established a powerful dominion, and there they ruled for a hundred years. Of their kings the most famous was Gaiseric who carried out the conquest between 429 and 439, and sacked Rome in 455. Their fanatical devotion to Arianism made them fierce persecutors of the Catholics. The pirate fleets of the Vandals spread terror over the whole Mediterranean, but in 533 the emperor Justinian, bent on a full restoration of the dominion of the Caesars, dispatched Belisarius to tame their insolence. The work was done so thoroughly that the Vandal race was wiped out.
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