Our archenemy of today was a character of little relevance to contemporary Roman historians, but his deeds and family gossip were collected in one of the most relevant Germanic epics of the early Middle Ages, The Song of the Nibelungs .
Twenty-fourth installment of “Archienemies of Rome “. Collaboration of Gabriel Castelló
The first question is… Who was Gunther really? Precisely, this legendary king of the Burgundians was known by various names depending on the origin of the sources:Gundahar for the Germans, Gúðere in Old Norse, Gundaharius for the Romans or Gunnar for Angles and Saxons. Gundahario He was born around 385 AD somewhere indeterminate on the north side of the Rhine in one of the lesser-known Germanic tribes, but which, unlike other more noted ones, endured in the medieval memory and topography of Europe. The Burgundians they came from the Baltic, most likely from the Danish island of Bornholm (Perhaps for this reason the Norwegian Vikings called it Burgundarholmr , the island of the Burgundians), passing over the year 200 to the north of present-day Germany and joining other Germanic peoples on their slow path towards more fertile and warmer lands, towards the Roman Empire.
Gundahario
His entry into history was as dramatic as the terrible years in which he lived. In the harsh winter of 405/406, a huge confederation of Germanic peoples waited on the other side of the Rhine, waiting for the optimal conditions to cross it and settle in the fertile lands of the Empire. It seems that that winter was one of the most severe of the decade and the river froze at the height of Mongotiacum (today Mainz), place through which thousands of Alans, Swabians, Vandals and Burgundians entered the limes , looting everything that fell in its path between Borbetomagus (today Worms) and Augusta Treverorum (today Trier). This terrible moment can be remembered in a big way in the wonderful novel “The Eagle in the Snow ” by the British Wallace Breem .
The King of the Burgundians, in collaboration with Goar , his Alan counterpart, placed a Roman emperor of his liking in Gaul, a certain Jovinus , which "officially" granted him in 411 the entire bank of the Rhine between the Lauter and the Nahe, occupied "unofficially" since 406, leaving important cities on the northern border such as Argentoratum in Burgundian hands. (Strasbourg) or the aforementioned Borbetomagus , city where he established his permanent throne.
Jovinus was a manipulable senator who was proclaimed emperor by the Gallo-Roman nobility and who, during the two brief years that his attempted usurpation lasted, was a mere puppet of the two barbarian chieftains. He granted them more privileges, cities and lands in return for their nominal obeisance to him and the promise of his help should they confront the true emperor of Rome, Flavius Honorius . That strange alliance was broken by Gundahario as many times as he wanted, carrying out razzias from end to end of ancient Gaul Belgium without the energetic protests of the battered Gallo-Roman population having any effect.
Burgundians
The departure of the Goths from Italy in mid-411 caused an imbalance of power that ended with the attack of Ataulfo to the usurping caesar, the capture of Jovinus at Valentia (the Valence French) and the execution of him in Narbo by the governor of Gaul, faithful to the mellifluous emperor Honorius. Rome was not in a position to remove the Germanic invaders from Gaul, so the emperor's chancellery had no choice but to ratify the cession agreement signed by Jovinus, in addition to granting him the title of foederati . In this way, in his role as an ally of the Empire, Gundahario remained master and lord of a vast territory that would end up being known as the land of the Burgundians , today Burgundy .
This advantageous pact with the weak Honorius only encouraged the Burgundian warrior nobility. The raids throughout the province multiplied during the following years, creating a situation of misrule and terror that alarmed the most brilliant and last of Rome's legates. With Honorius dead, the purple fell on another useless man, Valentinian , the son of his stepsister Gala Placidia. While that incompetent regent lived locked up in his lair in Ravenna, Flavio Aetius took control of the Western Empire, ruling it with an iron fist. For many historians he was the best Roman soldier of the entire 5th century. Raised as a hostage in the courts of the Goth Alaric and the Hun Rugila , where he spent 9 years, he knew and had good contacts with both ethnic groups. In 433, the emperor granted him the position of Magister Militum , equivalent to a captaincy general of the armies of Rome. From that year, who would go down in history with the nickname of "the last of the Romans ” was dedicated to recovering the authority that Rome had lost during the disastrous mandate of Honorius. Master of strategy, and after stopping the pretensions of the Visigoths in Gaul using his intrigues, in 436 Aetius encouraged an expedition of his Huns to dismantle the kingdom of Gundaharius.
The campaign was a success, according to the historians Prospero and Hidacio; Gundahario fell in combat, as well as thousands of his own. His son, Prince Gondioc , and the surviving Burgundians were settled in the spruce country, Sapaudia (today known as Savoy) and, years later, those same Burgundians participated under the orders of Flavio Aetius in the last great battle of the Western Roman Empire, the Catalaunian Fields , defeating Attila and the federates of him and thus taking revenge on those other Huns who devastated his kingdom and killed the great king who led them from the cold lands of the north to the fertile plains of Gaul.
Huns
So far the story, because Norse mythology gives us more details about Gunther (Gundahario ). The legends that forged the Nibelungenlied Song They tell us about the tortuous relationship between his wife Brunilda and his sister Krimilda , as she was the wife of the hero Sigurd (Siegfried) and his death due to the intrigues of his sister-in-law. Also, this legendary work gives us a different version of Gundahar's ending:the king and his nobles were invited to dinner at the court of King Etzel ( Attila ), and this one, greedy for the treasure of the Nibelungs, since only those knew its precise whereabouts at the bottom of the Rhine, ordered them to be killed.