But that was some 400 years down the line. It wasn’t the same people fighting, it wasn’t even the same monarchy. *And *we won, dammit !
And for those 400 years, the descendants of Rollo did exactly what they’d signed up for : fought off the Vikings, even conquered half of them. And paid hommage and tribute to the King (well, until they had their own island and kind of let that second part slide).
Besides that, and much like the Visigoths, it’s not like it was immigration, not as such. More a case of “So hey, here’s the thing : we happen to have all these sharp, sharp swords ; mind if we settle here and then we won’t murder the fucking lot of you weaklings in your sleep ? Pretty please ?”. When Latinos or Syrian refugees come in guns blazing, and en masse instead of in a trickle, then the situations might be comparable.
Hard disagree there. For one thing, their old timers would scoff at you calling Latins “local citizens”, on account of the rest of their Italian allies having to fight a goddamn war to gain Roman citizenship in the first place. For “true Romans”, Italians were themselves a bunch of unwashed foreigners.
For another, Rome would never, ever in the history of ever have gotten all that land without the foederati. Let alone hold it, because “military service in exchange for citizenship and some land” kept quite a few warrior tribes tentatively peaceful (mostly not ; but those who took the deal typically fought against those who wanted their independance, so it worked in a dysfunctional bloody sort of way) instead of at Rome’s throat.
As for accomplishments, well, I’m not sure what you put in that category ; but the typical feats of “Roman engineering” were in 95% of cases built by the Legions stationed in the provinces whenever they had nobody it was overly pressing to smash - and those legions were a bunch of non-Latins by and large, because by that time nobody in Italy needed citizenship any more and the citizen-soldier thing was long past. Only the core of the troops and the officers were typically “Romans from Rome”.
Yes, but in truth that would have happened were the legions made up of just about anybody. These commentators (particularly the Antique ones, but Gibbon had his head up his British arse too) didn’t grok that what really had changed the paradigm was letting Octavian declare himself totally_not_King on the back of being acclaimed by his troops.
To be fair, it’s not like they had a real choice, he happened to have said troops camped right outside the city and he knew where the Senators lived ;). But it’s that precedent (really the one set before by Sulla, but Octavian becoming Caesar Augustus was the culmination of that new paradigm) that really screwed the Roman state’s political cohesion and turned every two-bit centurion into a would-be Emperor down the line.
By the way, Sulla’s troops ? Mostly poor Italians.
One could go further and opine that it’s really Marius’ decision to let the poor and the unemployed into the Legion in the first place that started it all. Prior to the reforms only the landed and them as could provide their own gear could enlist. Which made the Legion revolt-proof : they were the ones in power already, the ones who had the money and the land, who were they going to seize it *from *?
After the reform, with weapons provided by the State and the whole “20 years of fighting and then we’ll set you up in a farm in some colonia somewhere” deal, when the soldiers had no more “skin in the Roman game” as it were, the army as a whole became a lot more troublesome because the State now had to get them that farm. Which meant having to be on a constant state of conquest, else the army of have nots would grumble and eventually march on Rome to get their due from the haves. Hence, the Empire.
But as noted, as far as wrong decisions go it had a decent run before biting them in the arse one time too many :).
I’m not sure to which extent the Western Empire ever thought it controlled the Mongol state, or even were aware of its existence when the Vandals and Goths showed up ?
EDIT : WTF is up with the board lately, why does it add all these empty lines whenever I hit the enter key just the once ?
