Gaiseric, also known as Genseric was born around the year 400, the illegitimate son of Godigiselus. Though rendered lame by a riding accident, he was to become one of the greatest, and most feared, of all barbarian warlords, and led his people, the Vandals, to the height of their power.

Gaiseric's brother, Guntheric, was King of the Vandals in 428 when, constructing a great fleet, that peoples crossed from Spain into Mauretania - the largest recorded sea-borne movement of barbarians in all the Völkerwanderung period. Guntheric, however, died before these plans came to fruition and it was left to Gaiseric to lead the enterprise. He defeated the Roman general, Bonifatius, then seized Carthage, which he made the capital of an empire which encompassed much of North Africa.

In 455, he used the death of the western Emperor Valentinian III as a pretext to attack the undefended city of Rome itself, which his warriors pillaged for fourteen days. He took the later Emperor's widow, Eudoxia and her two daughters hostage, treating them as slaves. From here he went on to lay waste to Dalmatia and Greece. Eventually, the eastern Emperor Zeno was forced to recognise Gaiseric and made peace with him in 476, just a year before the king's death.

But for all the savagery of his warriors and his own ruthlessness, Gaiseric was a greatly respected leader - he was both an able military leader and a skillful diplomat. A hundred years later he would be remembered in folklore as the cleverest of men. Still, he was more interested in pillage than in building a lasting domain, integrating into its new surroundings, and the empire he forged proved to be more transient than most.

As a devoted Arian, he bore an uncompromising hatred of the Catholic church (according to one story he was an apostate from the Catholic faith), and this may go some way to explaining the fury of his warriors' pillaging; Gaiseric was more than eager to humiliate the Catholic Roman Empire. Churches and priests were a special target of the Vandal invaders.

He was succeeded by his son, Hunneric (477-484) and almost at once his North African empire began to disintegrate, being finally destroyed by Belisarios in 533.

Mark Furnival, 1998