ABSTRACT
The founding of the German kingdoms marked the end of the ancient world. We must, however, while discounting the immediate effects of the Germanic occupation, admit the extraordinarily great influence, in the long run, of the Germans upon later western history and civilization. For years Rome had allowed the German peoples to settle in the border provinces and had recruited her armies from among them; but the introduction of so vast a body at once involved a grave issue. Between the end of the Western Empire and the development of the Frankish kingdom in northern Gaul and that of the East Goths under Theodoric in Italy, the West Goths were the most powerful German kingdom. The land was filled with famished peasants, vagabonds, brigands, wandering bands of soldiery who preyed upon the countryside, and fragments of barbarized and broken German tribes all the terrible aftermath of the retreat of the Huns.
