The Germanic nations beyond the Roman Rhenish & Danubian frontiers did manage to maintain those frontiers for centuries. Attempts by the Roman armies to subdue them had one of two results: either the Germans melted away into their impenetrable forests, leaving the Romans punching thin air or they inflicted military defeats on them, most famously by Hermann in AD 9 when three legions under Quintilius Varus were reduced to 80 survivors, out of the 15,000, who confidently crossed the Rhine.

The one exception was the major effort by the Emperor Trajan to deal with the strong kingdom of the Getians in what is now Romania & then, Dacia. While Trajan managed to conquer this unitary state, first knocked into a coherent shape by 44BC by King Burebista who copied Roman forms of administration & finance, it was an expensive luxury in terms of military maintenance, had constantly shifting exposed frontiers & was eventually abandoned by the Emperor Aurelian, a severe realist, in AD271. The Romans left their language & today, the Romanians speak a Latinate rather than Germanic language, which suggests that the bulk of the inhabitants just took cover during the incursions to be discussed below.

It is possible to read genealogies of the Goths & the Franks going back into incredible mists of time & these must be considered merely legendary. No doubt people with the names found did exist & their stories make work for poets & minstrels but the family trees constructed from them beggar belief. It is however, necessary to start somewhere with the earliest known Delaforce ancestors - one must nail up a plaque & say, "We were here".

The Visigoth lines are complicated, not so much by the conundrum above but because a king needed to marry his predecessor’s widow, in order not to leave a political loose cannon trundling round the deck. (Visigoth kings were elected, although they usually elected the old king’s son, if he came up to scratch. This system allowed them to weed out those who did not or were too young to succeed, although they were eligible for election the next time). This widow might even be his own mother &, since people married young, still nubile. So a Visigoth queen’s children could also be her grand-children. Fortunately, this does not impact the Delaforce line but uncle-niece and aunt-nephew marriages do.

The Goths seem to have originated in Southern Sweden, in the area still known as Gotland. They migrated down through Eastern Europe to Romania (the Visigoths) & the Ukraine (the Ostrogoths). Some historians think the distinction to be artificial. In practice, they all thought of themselves as Goths. However, their separate histories makes the use of the West-East terms useful.

The first Visigoth we detected joining the Delaforce family, was Numabela of Cantabria. By this time (about 775), Northern Spain had been in turmoil for some time. The Moors were encroaching still & there was much shuffling of population both ways over the Pyrenees, depending on the situation. The foundations of the Kingdom of Navarre were being put in place, a Christian buttress against the Moors & also against the Kings of France. The Moors never did control Navarre for any length of time.

Considering that the Goths were ‘barbarians’, how come we know who they were? Because they became Christians, albeit of the Arian tendency and had priests who wrote all this stuff down. One, Ulfilas, translated the bible into Gothic German & about one-third of that has survived, providing a useful guide to Gothic usage. However, only material relating to the time of their conversion, which came before their incursions into the Roman Empire, and onwards is likely to be reliable. The Romans kept intelligence records about the barbarians on their borders but frequently had trouble with correct naming. Those researchers who quote genealogies going back into the mists of time are relying of verbal tradition, for what that is worth. Repectable historians stick at Aoric, which is surprising, considering that the Goths first attacked the Roman Empire in force half a century before his birth, being chased back out again by those two efficient emperors, Claudius II & Aurelian (the one who gave up Dacis).

We are of both the mighty BALT & the even more senior AMAL families & almost everyone mentioned below contributed to the Delaforce gene pool. Goths considered themselves descended from the gods (note the plural), so some families claimed descent from more senior gods than others. The Amal claim seems to have been recognised by other Goths & they will be the subject of a later chapter.

Aoric Balt (abt 290 - 354), is the first reliably known Delaforce ancestor. He was the father of Athanaric II (abt 318 - 381), who lead the Visigoths out of Dacia (Romania) & into the Roman Empire in 376 as federates. However, the bad treatment they received at the hands of Roman officials lead to an uprising two years later. On 9/8/378 & under the command of Fritigern, who's name means 'ardent for peace', they crushed the Eastern Roman army at Adrianople, killing the Emperor Valens. These armies were still largely infantry. The notion that Gothic medieval knights on horseback defeated the Roman infantry is nothing but a romantic Victorian illusion, although the arrival of the Gothic cavalry in the middle of the battle in time to surround the Romans was the turning point. Cavalry were essential for skirmishing and pursuit and both sides used them for these purposes. However, provisioning cavalry is quite difficult, involving vast quantities of hay. It was only after this battle & having digested its lessons, that the Goths took to the horse in a big way. The new Emperor, Theodosius the Great was the last competent one to rule in the West. He suppressed the Goth revolt but had to use them as his army to reunify the empire, for which historians have given him much stick. He seems also to have been a Delaforce ancestor, see Galla Placida below.

Aoric's other son, Rocesthes (abt 340 - 399) was the father of Alaric I of whom, much more below. Athanaric had two children, Athaulf (abt 355 - 415) & a daughter, who married Alaric, the son of Rocesthes.

Alaric I, born about 370 at Peuce in Romania, is famous for sacking Rome in 410. There was more to him than that. He had lead the Visigoths out of Romania &, while not a particularly good general, as he was always being defeated by the Western Roman General Stilicho (himself a Vandal), he was a first class politician who always managed to extricate his army intact from those defeats and take advantage of any situation that arose.

He was central to the Visigoths great 40 year migration, between their entering the Empire in 376 & settling in Aquitaine in 416. Every year, they tried to stay in one place long enough to sow & reap a harvest but it must be taken into account when following this nation on the move, that the first responsibility of the king was to ensure that, if they were 200,000 strong as is suggested, they had about 100 tons of food every day.

The Roman Emperor Honorius usually receives a bad press but given the poor situation he was in, he played a weak hand quite well. But having executed Stilicho, he was no match for the Visigoth army in 409. They left Honorius holed up in Ravenna, the easily defended Roman capital but with bad communications and invested Rome itself. Alaric could not take Rome but he could suborn it & someone opened the gates on 24/8/410. Not since the Gauls in the fourth century BC had foreign boots marched in Roman streets & they had been cleared out quickly. It was the beginning of a trend. Marching South, Alaric had little time to savour his victory, dying suddenly at Lucania. He was not sick nor slaughtered but he might have been poisoned, although there is no suggestion in the record of this.

Athaulf, Alaric's brother-in-law & cousin, had been busy suppressing other barbarians in Pannonia. Having restored order there, he kidnapped Galla Placida during the sack of Rome. On Alaric's death, he was elected King & made an honest woman of Galla in a spectacular Roman-style marriage. There was a son who died young after the marriage. Whether the daughter, Clothilde, actually existed is moot. Presumably, if she did, she was the product of Athaulf & Galla's three year pre-honeymoon, as the record suggests that Galla was quite happy to be kidnapped.

Emperor Valentinian I

Galla Placida, being the daughter of Theodosius the Great, was the half-sister of the Emperor Honorius. Her relationship with Athaulf turned out quite well, so he could not have been that barbarous. Galla's mother, also Galla, was the daughter of the Emperor Valentinian I, possibly bringing two emperors into the Delaforce line. Both were sons of fathers who had risen from the ranks, the Fourth Century being a good time for men of talent & these two emperors were better than average rulers.

Emperor Theodosius