In the year when the Five Hu and Sixteen Kingdoms ended and the Southern and Northern Dynasties began (AD 439), a group of "barbarians" established their kingdom on the site of Carthage.These Vandals who originally lived in Spain came to North Africa through the Strait of Gibraltar.After ten years of fighting, they won most of the African province of the Roman Empire and had their own country. At the same time, Northern Liang in China was destroyed. Beiliang, whose capital was Guzang (now Wuwei, Gansu), was the last of the sixteen kingdoms to perish, but the Vandals were not the first barbarians to establish a kingdom.Before and after that, both China and Rome had many dangerous stories staged.So this year, while significant, is neither the end nor the beginning.

In fact, sixteen years later (AD 455), the Vandals returned to Europe.They plundered the inhabitants of Sicily and Sardinia from house to house, and then in a fortnight from June 2 to 16 methodically ransacked the city of Rome, down to the gilded copper tiles on the roof of the Temple of Jupiter. Ship it away. This is the catastrophe of Rome, but it is not the first time. The first time was in 410 AD, ten years before the fall of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, and the robbers were Visigoths.They ransacked for three to five days like shopping in Rome, and then went south.Overloaded lorries and endless streams of people filled the Via Appia, including even the Roman emperor's sister.

Rome, the capital of the world and the eternal city that has not fallen for eight hundred years, has been turned by the barbarians into a warehouse that can be broken into at any time, or a lamb waiting to be slaughtered on the pasture, just like Chang'an in the eyes of the barbarians in the Western Jin Dynasty in China and Luoyang. Ancient civilizations always seem to be unable to deal with barbarians. Indeed, for the Roman Empire, Visigoths and Vandals were their barbarians, but they were not called barbarians or barbarians, they were called Germanic.This is an appellation already in Caesar's time (it was first seen in Caesar's "Gaul War Records"), although no Germanic people would call themselves this way, just as the Huns and Jie in China would not call themselves Huren .

In fact, "Germanic" is also a collective term like "Hu", including many ethnic groups regarded as barbarians by Rome, such as Vandals, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Burgundians, Franks, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Lombards, etc. The Roman Empire at that time was surrounded by these barbarians.They not only flooded in, but also established their own kingdoms one after another: Visigoths (AD 419), Vandals (AD 439), Burgundy (AD 457), Frank (AD 486) and East Gothic (AD 493), happened to be five, and Rome lost one province after another of the empire.How is this different from our Five Hu and Sixteen Kingdoms?

Not only are they similar, but they may also be related.The connection is with the Huns. In fact, the Germanic barbarians invaded the Roman Empire and were driven away by the Huns with whips.It cannot be definitively proved that the latter is the Northern Huns who originally lived in China, but it seems certain that these are some Ural-Altai nomads who have long drifted in the boundless Central Asian steppes, and through repeated campaigns and migrations Turn yourself into an unstoppable force. As a barbarian among the barbarians, the Huns made even the tyrannical Germans turn pale, not to mention the Romans.In 374 A.D., thirty-six years before the first Roman catastrophe, this nation on horseback crossed the Volga River and conquered the Alans and East Goths in the Don River Basin and the northern shore of the Black Sea. The Germanic barbarian wolves rushed forward.

The great migration of peoples in Europe began from then on. The Visigoths were the first to flee into Rome.They crossed the Danube because they were hunted down two years after the Huns crossed the Volga.Of course, this was approved by the Roman emperor, but the price paid was very heavy: hand over your weapons, and live a life that is not as good as a cow and a horse under the rule of the Romans.They could only eat rotten food and were slaughtered at will by Roman officials. This is unbearable for any nation.As a result, the Visigoths, who could not bear the oppression and humiliation, set off a great riot.They launched an attack on the Romans like lightning flashing across the top of the mountain, swept Thrace (now Bulgaria) with extreme anger, and defeated the Roman emperor Valens who was personally conquered.

Thirty-two years later, they created the first Roman catastrophe. The Visigoths were a blessing in disguise.Nine years after sacking Rome, they established their own kingdom in southern Gaul.In order to avoid the advance of the Huns, other Germanic barbarians also successively occupied the territory of the Roman Empire: Spain, Africa, Corsica and Sardinia, Gaul, Britain, etc., and the poor Western Roman emperor became a German hired A puppet in the hands of the army. In the end, the generals of the Germanic mercenaries simply deposed the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire, Romulus Augustus.The Western Roman Empire perished and only the Eastern Roman Empire remained, just as the Western Jin Dynasty in China perished and only the Eastern Jin Dynasty remained.

The demise of the Western Roman Empire was in AD 476, but Rome's life was already very difficult before that.In addition to the trampling and ravages of the Germanic barbarians, the Huns did not let them go, especially after 434 AD.Because in this year, the Huns had a leader and commander who terrified everyone. The man's name was Attila. He also has a nickname: God's Whip. Attila's deeds can only be regarded as legends now.He was said to be a stocky, broad-shouldered, flat-nosed man with unfathomable black eyes that were cruel and unfathomable, with tenderness only when he looked at his son.His life is as frugal as that of an ordinary herdsman: he lives in a simple wooden house, drinks with wooden cups and eats on wooden plates, and what can be called a luxury is only a bathroom made of stone.

But no one dared to neglect him because Attila was powerful enough to destroy the entire Roman world.In fact, as early as 443 AD, he invaded the Balkans and marched into Constantinople, forcing the Eastern Roman emperor to pay tribute and cede land for peace.By AD 450, his appetite was even greater, and he asked the Western Roman Emperor to give half of the country as his dowry to marry the Roman princess.After being rejected, Attila unceremoniously broke into Western Rome and swept across Europe until the city of Orleans. Both Rome, East and West, became slaughterhouses for the Huns. Few blows could be more devastating.It is said that the crowing of chickens and the barking of dogs are no longer heard in cities swept by the whip of God.This forced the Romans to join forces with the Visigoths and the Franks against him, resulting in the Battle of Chalons in 451 AD.The two sides invested a total of 500,000 troops in this battle. It is impossible not to lose both sides, and it is even more impossible to save Rome.

Only the city of Rome was spared, and it is said that this was due to the pleas and bribes of Pope Leo I.Attila, who had conquered northern Italy, retreated, leaving a broken mountain and river for the Germanic barbarians he drove to share or compete with the Romans. This is the general trend of the world in the eastern and western hemispheres around 439 AD: China is moving towards unification. First, the Hu people will unify the north, and then the Sui and Tang Dynasties, who are mixed Han and Hu, will unify the whole of China.Rome is collapsing, and instead of a unified empire, there will be many small kingdoms.They were all founded by the Germanic barbarians, and it was the Asiatic barbarians, Attila, the whip of God, who accelerated this process.

However, God finally withdrew his whip.After a strenuous exercise with the last bride, Attila died suddenly on the marriage bed.The cause of death was probable haemorrhage from a ruptured blood vessel in AD 453. In this year, both the emperor and the prince of Liu Song in the Southern Dynasty of China were killed.The emperor was killed by the prince, and the prince died under the knife of a prince.The prince himself became emperor, and the successor to his throne would be killed by another prince. Two years later, the Vandals sacked the city of Rome. The Huns without Attila quickly disappeared from history.They melted into the local population and slowly changed from Mongolians to Aryans.This people did not, as people imagine, directly become the ancestors of today's Hungarians, although they may have left many descendants there. So, what about the Huns in China?

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