Origins - Raids Against the Empire - Subjugation by the Franks

Origins

The first documented reference to the Alamanni occurs in AD 213, when the Emperor Caracalla fought against them. The name Alamanni means "All Men" and implies a confederacy of several tribes, which may very well have included the Hermunduri and the Suebi, since the area of Germany from which they emerged encompassed the old tribal lands of these peoples.

The confederacy must have been a loose one, however, since several Alamannic kings are recorded as ruling simultaneously, and even as late as the Fifth Century there seems to have been no strong, centralised authority. Their homeland in south-western Germany is a broken, highland country, which encourages clannishness and disunity.

In the Third Century, the Alamanni began to trouble the most vulnerable sector of the Roman frontier between the rivers Rhine and Danube, an area finally abandoned by the Empire in 260. By about AD 300, the Alamanni were regularly to be found amongst Roman forces as the wholesale barbarisation of the Roman Army began.

Raids Against the Empire

Throughout the Fourth Century, the Alamanni raided the Western Empire despite a series of defeats inflicted on them by Julian the Apostate, most notably at the Battle of Strasbourg (Argentoratum) in 357 where their leader, Chnodomar, was captured.

In the great invasion of 406, when several Germanic peoples swarmed across the frozen Rhine, the Alamanni played a significant part, and soon afterwards began to settle in Alsace and the Palatinate. From the first, though, they felt the growing power of the Franks to the north. Their energies were directed southwards, therefore, into eastern Gaul, Italy and Noricum. By AD 500, despite defeat by Clovis, they held a fertile region of land between Strasbourg and Augsburg but were not strong enough to force their way into the much-prized plains of northern Italy.

Subjugation by the Franks

Neighboured by the all-conquering Franks in the north and west and by the Ostrogoths in the south, the Alamanni had nowhere to go and could not expand their lands. Between 486 and 508, they were crushed by Clovis' Franks, whose centralised power proved more than a match for them. By 536, their territory was ruled by a lieutenant of a Frankish king. "Alamannia" as the region became known (giving us the modern French word Allemagne - "Germany"), retained a distinct identity within the Frankish world until Charles Martel finally absorbed it into his empire early in the Eighth Century.

De Alamannen

Thanks to the efforts of Rien van de Wall, this page is now available in Dutch translation at http://users.pandora.be/vroege-middeleeuwen/alaman.htm (Or just click on the flag).

Mark Furnival, 1998