Often when reading about the Fall of the Western Roman Empire people begin to wonder, why did the Eastern Roman Empire not help? Actually the Eastern Romans did and spent vast sums in order to aid the western citizens of the Empire.
The fall of of North Africa in 435 to the Vandals was major problem for the entire Roman Empire but especially the Western Roman Empire. North Africa was rich, fertile, and relatively easy to defend. It gave the Vandals a base to become pirates across the Mediterranean which was in part why the Eastern Roman Empire was willing to expend resources despite having it’s own threats. Rome had been sacked for the second time in 455, showing just how serious the Vandal threat was.
Emperor Leo sent his brother in-law and future emperor Basiliscus to be in charge of the operation. It was a threeway operation, the main army sailed from Constantinople to Carthage while smaller armies took Sardinia and marched up the Libyan coast. The three forces converged on Sicily and the massive operation looked positioned to succeed. The estimations vary for the numbers of men and ships but it was certainly a very large force, larger than the armies Belisarius used to destroy the Vandal Kingdom. When the decisive battle came, the small victories counted for nothing. The Romans were defeated decisively, as they fell for the kind of diplomatic trick normally associated with the Byzantines. The Vandals cleverly pretended to negotiate, asking for a five day truce to come up with a peace treaty to end the war. As the massive Roman force waited and thought it had won, the Vandal fleet descended upon them with flaming ships crashing into the Roman navy which had let it’s guard down. The Vandal warships blocked the Roman ships which tried to escape the inferno. About half of the Roman navy was destroyed, and the rest retreated.
This event was a fork in the road for history, had the West been able to secure Carthage it’s very plausible it could of recovered much of its western territory and who knows what could of happened. Instead, just 8 years later in 476 the imperial regalia were sent to Constantinople by Odoacer, signalling the end of the Western Roman Empire.
shadowsofconstantinople.com 