Genséric or Geiseric (in Germania, around 389 - Carthage, Africa, in present-day Tunisia , January 25, 477) was king of the Vandals and Alans (Rex Wandalorum Et Alanorum) from 427 to 477. Illegitimate son of Godégisel, vandal king of the Hasdings tribe and a concubine of Alan origin, Habbra.
Boniface, Roman governor of Africa, had married a Vandal princess during his trip to Spain. His wife Pélagie brought back with her retinue many Arianist vandals of religion.
The Empress, on learning of this and pushed by the Church, suspended Boniface from his duties and recalled him to Rome, but he refused to go there.
At the announcement of an expedition against him, Boniface goes to Spain and offers the vandals the division of Africa. He agreed with Gonderic that the vandals would take possession of the three Mauretanias (Tingitana, Caesarean and Setifian) and that he would keep the rest of the possessions. They promise each other mutual assistance against any aggression.
In 427, while the reunited Vandal tribes and Alani clans were stationed in southern Spain (Andalusia), Genséric succeeded his half-brother Gundéric and carried out the agreement.
Leaving Tarifa, he landed in Ceuta with his nation of 80,000 people, including barely 15,000 soldiers made up of Goths, Alans and other mercenaries of all races. This multitude definitively abandoning their province (Andalusia-Vandalusia) crossed the Strait of Gibraltar on vessels partly provided by Boniface.
They sacked the whole coast of Mauretania; then advanced slowly towards Numidia without stopping in any western town.
Some Berbers, because weary of Roman servitude and oppression, others because they thought Genséric's troops would help them chase the Romans from their lands, came in large numbers to swell the ranks of the Vandals. /P>
This progress which exceeded the limits foreseen by Boniface with Gondéric, led Boniface to protest. Genséric, deaf to all the entreaties and threats continued on his way.
Winners in a first battle against Boniface, the "Vandals spread like a torrent throughout the province. Wherever they found the slightest resistance, they gave no quarter:"the death of a single one of them was always avenged by destruction villages or towns in front of which he had lost his life; they subjected their captives, without distinction of sex, age or rank, to the most cruel tortures in order to extract from them information on the treasures which they claimed to be hidden from them; we saw, it is said, many times the Vandals, when they besieged a city, massacring their prisoners en masse at the foot of the walls so that the infection produced by the corpses carried the plague into the interior"
Boniface locked himself behind the ramparts of Hippo (Annaba). The Vandals invested it so tightly that famine was not long in declaring itself there. Saint Augustine died there on August 28, 430. After fourteen months of siege, Genséric withdrew his troops.
Empress Placidia sent Aspar from Constantinople at the head of a powerful army. Boniface, released from Hippo, joined the Byzantine troops. Genséric fought them and defeated them (431).
Recalled by the Empress to Constantinople, Boniface, a year later, died during a campaign.
Genseric ends up obtaining on February 11, 435 (Convention of Hippo) the following advantages:
* Federated member of the Empire
* Free occupation of the lands of the three Mauretanias and part of Numidia up to Galama (Guelma)
In return, he had to pay an annual tribute and send hostages to the imperial court chosen from among his nobles and relatives. These agreements were only a respite for Genséric:the possession of Carthage and through it the possession of the Mediterranean remained his essential objective.
On October 29, 439, he attacked Carthage and conquered it without difficulty. All the inhabitants were obliged to deliver to the conqueror their gold, their silver and all their precious objects; to the pagan nomads and to the Donatist peasants, he granted complete freedom; the towns where Catholicism and Roman mores were the strongest saw their walls demolished. Constantinople barely reacted to it concerned about the problems in Europe and recognized his conquests in 442.
The sacking of Rome and the Mediterranean conquests:
Genseric then attacked the Empire after having sacked Rome in June 455 and several cities in Italy, he returned to Carthage with a rich booty (including the widow of Valentinian whom he married and his two daughters). Having become master of the Mediterranean, following the conquest of Tripolitania, Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, the Balearic Islands and Ischia, he imposed himself on the emperors of the East and West.
He methodically organizes the looting of Rome at the end of an agreement made with Pope Leo I:the "vandal" troops (especially Berbers) are authorized for 15 days of looting, from June 2 to June 16, 455 but must limit the massacres, rapes, vandalism and other persecutions of Christians, looting and destruction of churches, fires, etc. . 45 years after Alaric and the Visigoths, the Vandals therefore entered the city without causing significant damage but amassed considerable booty methodically collected in each district of the city, "explored" one by one. Some Romans are kidnapped for their skills, others for their high social rank such as the young Roman princess Licinia Eudoxia, who remained a prisoner in Carthage for 7 years and who married her son Prince Huneric. The valuables which had then escaped the Goths found themselves on the vandal ships stationed in the port of Ostia ready to leave for Carthage. The gold tiles of the Capitol are even stolen. Finally, the Menorah, fruit of the looting of Jerusalem by the Emperor Titus and which had been preserved from the looting of August 410 is found and also embarked. Continuing his momentum, he defeated the Byzantine fleet around 468.
Genséric, officially federated with Rome but unofficially independent and totally master in his kingdom since his entry into Carthage, will be recognized (symbolically) king of all his possessions in 476 by the new master of the Western Empire who officially disappeared the same year, the leader of the barbarian mercenaries of Italy, the skire or herule Odoacer.
The old Vandal king, who will never be equaled by his successors, died of natural causes in his eighties on January 25, 477 and was buried in Utica.