History Main / TheLowMiddleAges

But, contrary to popular belief, the Low Middle Ages was not a period of immense stupidity or total collapse of all that is good in the world. In fact, some things improved. Generally speaking, you were less likely to go to war and get killed in the Low Middle Ages than in Roman times (a lack of big civil wars certainly helps) and previous knowledge was still preserved by monks and scholars. The nutritional situation improved. Taxes were ''far'' lower than in the Roman age. The Roman chattel slavery gradually disappeared and was superseded by serfdom, which was a ''vast'' improvement. Yes, things were certainly ''worse'' when compared to the Pax Romana, but it wasn't the abysmal time most history teachers love to paint it as. And from what sources we have, it appears very little actually changed between the Roman Empire's collapse and the conquest by the Germanic Kingdoms as far as living standards.

* JustBeforeTheEnd, for Rome

'''Prelude to the Fall: The Severan Dynasty and the Looming Crisis'''

The period finds its roots sometime in the 3rd Century with the Severan Dynasty. Roman civilization had been in decline since the end of the Pax Romana [[note]]''Roman Peace'' in Latin. It means a time in which the ''internal'' politics of the Empire were stable and there were not civil wars, but wars of expansion continued throughout and could likely be attributed as a big reason for the fall of the Empire.[[/note]] and the notion of Roman identity was starting to change as a product of the edicts during this time that granted citizenship to all freeborn residents of the Empire, effectively making moot many of the distinctions of the client states of Rome with itself, as well as blurring the line between the Legions and its auxiliary counterparts. Roman culture and tradition was gradually changing over time as well, adapting and reacting to outside influences while the veil of continuity with the Roman Republic that had characterized the phase of the ''Principate'' began to unravel.

Most of this was due to the decentralization of the Empire: The increasingly large empire was growing ever more difficult to maintain, and as was common in the late period of the Western Roman Empire, local rulers and generals grew ever more powerful in the absence of the Emperor. Aside from this came the reopening of the gap between the rich and the poor that had been one of the reasons of the fall of the Republic, as well as the stagnation of the frontiers as the conquest of new territory became less and less possible (Trajan was the last of the conquering Emperors and many of the provinces he had conquered were abandoned due to difficulties in holding it by his successor Hadrian, with Dacia being the last to be left behind by Aurelian).

The other major problem was the nature of the Imperial office: The title of ''Imperator'' was a Military Monarchy behind the veil of the Civic authority, and with each passing reign the pressure of the army grew in strength, which lead to the Emperors having to make concessions and donations to the army to maintain its loyalty, such was case of the preceding Antonine dynasty and which grew more under the Severan Dynasty, whom had to struggle with monetary gifts and keeping the respect of the troops to avoid betrayal, something that even Caracalla had the foresight to do.

All of this culminated in the assassination of Alexander Severus, last of the Severan dynasty, who had lost respect with his troops due to him being seemingly controlled by his mother and after failing to prove himself in the military field during a campaign with the nascent Sassanid Empire and his attempt to secure a peace with the Germanic tribes through bribes instead of steel.

In the days of the Principate, the end of a dynasty, while indeed leading to civil war, was still a matter that solved itself in a few years, but what came after the end of the Severan dynasty would be a bloodbath that would take half of a century to end and almost meant the demise of the Roman Empire: The Crisis of the Third Century.

'''An Empire Divided: The Crisis of the Third Century'''

The Crisis of the Third Century, named after the eponymous century in which the civil war took place, was a period of time in which competing general/emperors, apptly named as the Barracks Emperors, waged a massive, brutal civil war for fifty years in an effort to either take over the Empire or make their own, independent empires such as the Gallic and Palmyrian Empires at the height of the Crisis. The Roman army, once the pride of the Empire, spent itself fighting in this Civil War as ambitious leaders kept challenging the authority of the current Emperor to take over with whatever legions he could bring with him.

The struggle had also been something of an EnemyCivilWar for enterprising barbarians who had remained unconquered. With UsefulNotes/TheRomanEmpire weakening, its enemies began to nibble away little by little. The Sassanids (Who had supplanted the Parthians, though both were Iranian/Persian) carved out their own large empire in Persia and parts of Mesopotamia. Germans[[note]]or, to be more precise, Goths, Visigoths, and other tribes[[/note]] would ever encroach on the borderlands of Roman territory. Their frequent raids on the crippled Empire depopulated entire regions. The civil war drew away valuable border troops that kept raiders and bandits at bay. Gaul was said to be plagued by pirates in the absence of the Roman navy, and the withdrawal of the Legions to fight in Italy left entire towns vulnerable to large bands of criminals. Banditry was becoming a ever-aspiring prospect.

The war also crippled the economy. Rome suffered intense inflation and taxes were raised to help pay for the military both by the Emperor and the warring generals as they often were also civic administrators as was the tradition of the ''Cursus Honorum''. This led to a myriad of internal issues.

One was de-urbanization: The middle class became extinguished as few individuals had the money to purchase once thriving services. Stonemasons, carpenters, blacksmiths, artists, and tutors were finding themselves without jobs. This forced many to sell their homes in the city and turn to the tried-and-true business of agriculture; the rich also turned away from the cities as they sought the refuge of their manors and villas in the face of the growing instability, as well as evading the ever increasing taxation; finally, the urban poor, without the means to pay taxes themselves, also followed the rich to serve as ''coloni'', half-citizens that worked for the owner of the land without the right to leave.

As a consequence of all of this, Civic service in the cities began to decline as the Polis and the Municipium could not bear the strain of the crisis nor the abandonment of the upper classes, which had made these urban systems possible in the first place.

Meanwhile, poor farmers (many of whom were ex-legionaries or descendants of legionaries) found themselves unable to pay their taxes. They began to sell their farms and move to plantations that would later become manors, then estates, then finally known as counties or lordships. These plantations were owned by the wealthy patricians, the only class of people who could still afford comfortable living. The advantage for the poor farmers was tax exemption, as a lack of land-ownership and bondage to the plantation owners meant you couldn't be taxed, as you were no longer an independent earner. The advantage for the plantation owners was the ability to have vast farms that could make money by sheer quantity of output.

Trade suffered as well due to the crisis as inflation made large transactions an impossibility. The withdrawal of the armies and navies left the trade routes, maritime and land-based alike, open to banditry and piracy, thus turning merchants away as their safety was no longer protected; even worse, the Roman roads that had served the legions for rapid deployment across the Empire were now death links across the land as armies went through towns and cities to face each other or take whatever supplies they could from the villages. With trade grinding to a halt, the mass manifacture of goods died out and manors began to strive for self-sufficiency in things like pottery or food, thus paving the way for manoralism and the insular nature of the Early Middle Ages.

'''The Low Roman Empire: Militarization and Christianity'''

Following the success of Aurelian against the Gallic and Palmyrian Empires, his successor Diocletian went on to reform the state and prevent a crisis as such from ever happening again, most notably, he separated the territories of the empire in East and West formally, a thing not done since the twilight of the Republic with the Second Triumvirate, with each half now being governed by their own Emperor and Sub-emperor, and while this Tetrarchy would not outlast him, the precedent it left would never fade away.

Diocletian's edicts broke all pretense of institutional influence that the Senate, which had possessed a decreased yet still influential role during the Principate, had held in favour of an expanded Bureacracy to maintain the armies of the Tetrarchy. To avoid career mobility, Diocletian also made jobs hereditary, from the artisans to the peasantry and the soldiery, thus planting the seeds of the social rigidity that would define the incoming era; his reforms also began the process of separating the military and civic offices from each, a change that went against the Republican tradition of the ''Cursus Honorum'' that required aspirants to the public offices to serve in the army while also defanging the military leaders and further securing the office of Emperor as the one above all else, he followed this even further as he doubled the amount of provinces from fifty to almost a hundred, divided amongst twelve diocesis ruled by a civic officer named Vicar (a term which the Catholic Church would later use to denote the area of rule of a Bishop), preventing thus that any military leader could amass again enough troops to defy the Emperor.

It was also during the realm of Diocletian that the last and most brutal of all persecutions of Christians across the Empire took place, taking a span of twenty five years and ending in an ultimate failure as the strength of the Church in front of persecution only made it more sympathetic to the pagans and, with the rise of Constantine the Great, would be eventually be overturned.

Finally, and following the precedent of Aurelian, Diocletian began to include the title of ''Dominus et deus'', Lord and God, amongst the other titles he held as Emperor, which gave the alternative name for the Low Roman Empire: the ''Dominate'' or the period of the Masters.

The crisis and the split were two massive reasons for the decline of the Western Roman Empire: the actions of Odaenathus, the King of the province of Palmyra -nowadays Syria- helped to mantain the unity in the Eastern half of the Roman Empire, giving much needed stability for the Emperors to restore order in the region and thus reducing the eventual impact of the conflict with the Palmyrian Empire; this was not the case in the West, where the war with the Gallic Empire and the incursion of Germanic marauding tribes laid waste to many of the cities and infrastructure, this coupled with the nearity of the Eastern provinces to the wealth of the Silk Route and greater power thanks to Odeanathus's actions gave way to a shift of power from the city of Rome to the East, which was previosly foreshadowed by Diocletian's decision to make the cities of Trier (Germany), Milan (Italy), Nicomedia (Turkey) and Sirmium (Serbia) the four capitals of the Tetrarchy and later cemented by Constantine's decision to move the capital to Byzantium. [[note]]then renamed Constantinople[[/note]] While the East grew rich from trade and prosperity [[note]]although it faced many internal issues and a threat to its cultural identity, like the West[[/note]], the West remained poor.

The other problem following the Crisis was that Roman military power was forced to change. While the legions had been previosly doubled in size during Diocletian's reign, Constantine instead choose to reduce their numbers and reorganize them from the already obsolete duality of legions and auxiliaries into two separate forces: the Limitanei, or frontier forces, who were tasked with guarding the borderland of the Empire and stave off any invasion for as long as they could; next were the Comitatenses, the mobile army, these would be the hammer to the anvil that were the defending Limitanei, pushing back and destroying any force that attacked the Empire, as well as moving to invade in case war demanded it; additionally, from the Comitatenses came two new elite forces to supplant the now defunct Praetorians: the Palatini, who were higher ranked soldiers of infantry; and the Scholae Palatina, who served as guards of the Emperors. Alongside this division of functions came the specialization of tropes, gone were the days where the legions would consist only of heavy infantry wielding swords and pila and now the legions required all types of units to function: heavy and light cavalry, archers, swordsmen, spearmen or engineers no longer depended on your place of birth and cavalry itself began to take a place of power previously held only by the legionnaries. Added to this was the employment of the Foederati, who were often cheaper to employ. [[note]]If a soldier from Italy dies, that is one less man to collect taxes from and one less person outputting goods. If some barbaric German dies, it has no real financial impact on the Emperor.[[/note]]

More than a cost-saving measure, it was also a political maneuver to try to tie the armies to the central government instead of the generals. The Legions tended to be tied more to their generals than to Rome, as the lands the generals led them to conquer would later be divided up into farms. However, the Roman government tried to subvert this to prevent another Crisis by creating mostly paid armies. The mercenaries would be loyal to the source of their pay, which was the Roman treasury and not their generals. This, in theory, insured that the Legions would not betray the central state again.

It is under these conditions that Emperor Constantine rose to power: after the pivotal Battle of the Milvean River during which he recieved the sign to paint the letters ''Chi Rho'' (XP or ☧) and that if he would do this, he would win the day, these letters also happen to be one of the most popular christograms in history as those were the first two greek letters of the word Christ. With his victory, the position of the Catholic Church, which had swung between tolerance and persecution by the Roman Empire, passed to be the first religion amongst all the others of the Empire, a process started by the edict of Milan and settled with the official decree of Emperor Theodosius to make Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire.

This is another break from the ancient ways as the Roman Republic and the Empire had been previosly polytheistic in nature and permitted all religions to exist so long as the Emperor the chief religion of Rome was held as the upper one amongst others, while the tradition of deifing rulers was a trend started by Augustus himself and continued across the Principate, it was only during the realm of Aurelius that a push for monotheism was made with the cult to Sol Invictus; now, as the Church rose to prominence amongst all other faiths of the Empire, the trend of monotheism was followed but with a clear distinction as the Emperor, while influential at times in Church matters, would no longer claim the title of Pontifex Maximus (or Highest Priest), much less be able to claim godhood thus beginning the process of separating secular and ecclesiastic power.

Moreover, the Church was now required to formalise years of theology and debate and conclude what was in accordance or at odds with the teaching of the Church as well as the proper role of the Bishops (who would in time supplant the Vicars as administrators of the cities). This lead to the famed Council of Nicaea, in which the Arian heresy was rejected and the Nicene Creed was adopted by the Church, but the repercusions of the Arian heresy would still be seen in the years to follow.

'''The Barbarian Invasions or UsefulNotes/TheMigrationPeriod'''
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One of the things that defined the Middle Ages was the mobility of various populations of different ethnicities and origins from their homelands to other places, eventually supplanting or assimilating the local populations to their culture, and during the overlap of Classical and Late Antiquity that was the Late Roman Empire, this would be the case of the many Germanic tribes that were at the outskirts of the Empire.
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These Germanic tribes would become the peoples eventually known as the Visigoths, the Ostrogoths, the Franks, the Saxons, the Burgundians, the Suebi, the Vandals and the Lombards amongst others. It's still discussed whether the incursion of these tribes was another cause for the fall of the Western Roman Empire or if they were a consequence of it, for the sake of brevity we will acknowledge it as both in here.
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The Rhine and Danube borders had been a battleground for the Roman Empire for centuries as the attempts of invasion by various germanic tribes had been repelled with varying degrees of success; but it was after the near collapse of the Crisis that the firsts of the notorious tribes, the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths, would come to the borders of the Empire to ask for safe passage. As it was, these people that once lived in modern Ukraine and Crimea were also facing troubles in the form of weather deterioration and the arrival of a new threat from the steppes and beyond the Ural mountains: the Hunnic Horde.
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The Huns themselves are a mystery and enigma to this day, previosly they were thought to be Proto-Mongols, linking their origin to the expelled Northern Xiongnu that the Han dynasty once faced centuries ago, though now this view has been revised through the lenses of ethnogenesis in tandem with the observation on the span of time that separated the time of the expelled Xiongnu to the arriving Huns, almost three centuries. Though probably lead by the core of the Proto-Mongolian tribes, the Horde was composed from peoples from across the entire Eurasian steppe: from Iranian, Turkic and even Germanic, Slavic and Uralic origins in likelyhood. The arrival of the Huns made pressure on the resident Germanics to leave or submit to the Horde, a treatment that was shared by other peoples like the Alans, who in turn fled from the Horde to the west.
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This came to a head in what was called the Gothic War: ill-treatment by Roman Authorities, desperation and friction between Goths and Romans lead to a rebellion within the borders of the Empire in what is now Bulgaria, the Visigoths and Ostrogoths proceeded to sack the provinces of the Balkans until they faced the Empire in the Battle of Adrianopolis. This battle and the subsequent peace shifted the relationship between the Empire and the incursioning tribes, forcing the Empire to recognize them as peoples within the Empire that had to be negotiated accordingly; military speaking, the triumph of the Gothic cavalry also brought the mounted arms to higher prominence than before, effectively ending the era of infantry that had been seen during Classical Antiquity. Religiously however, the death of Emperor Valens in this war also paved the way to make Nicene Christianity the official religion of the Empire -as done by his successor Emperor Theodosius I- and the conversion of the Germanic tribes to Arian Christianity.
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The Goths were but the first of many, the subsequent years saw the incursion of the other Germanic tribes as they fleed the worsening climate to take advantage of the decaying political situation of the Empire. A pivotal event also happened with the death of Emperor Theodosius I, as he bequeated the Empire to his sons Honorius and Arcadius, dividing the Empire into East and West for the last time.
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From the crossing of the Rhine in 406, the Western Roman Empire was slowly but surely conquered by the Germanic tribes, who rapidly claimed many of Rome's former provinces. The Visigoths took Southern Gaul [[note]]modern day France and Belgium[[/note]] and Hispania [[note]]Spain and Portugal[[/note]] for their own, while the Ostrogoths, who were of similar origin, eventually took Italy after deposing Odoacer. The Vandals set up a short-lived Germanic kingdom in North Africa [[note]]namely, modern day Tunez[[/note]] while the Franks took over Northern Gaul. The Angles and later on the Saxons settled in what is today England, where their culture was largely adopted by the native peoples. The Celtic peoples in what is today Wales remained independent and largely retained their own culture. While it used to be thought that the Angles and Saxons had ''displaced'' the native Britons, but the prevailing theory is that they simply took over as the dominant political class.
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The Western Roman Empire however, while wounded to death and unable to recover its power to the invading germanics, would fight one last war that in hindsight would also determinate the fate of the Germanic Successors. The aforementioned Hunnic Horde had became increasingly aggressive after the ascension of Attila and had costed heavy tribute to the Eastern Roman Empire and at the time, taking advantage of political strife to claim the Western Roman Empire as his dowry, Attila moved to Gaul and began to raid the province. Flavius Aetius, Emperor de facto of the West, allied Rome with King Alaric of the Visigoths, and joined forces with the Salian Franks, the Saxons, the Burgundians and other tribes. This alliance faced the Huns and their vassals in the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains, landing the first defeat to the career of King Attila and forcing the Huns to move away from Gaul, and though one last raid was done on Italy - which was stemmed away by the intervention of Pope Leo I -, the Hunnic Empire would soon meet its end in the plain of Pannonia (modern Hungary) after the death of Attila and the breakaway of the Germanic subjects of the Horde.
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The East, on the other hand, was not in good condition either as the Huns proceeded to raid and attack the borders of the Eastern Roman Empire, extracting a heavy tribute from Constantinople; the Sassanids themselves, while enemies at the time, brokered a truce with the Empire as they were also under the pressure of their own Huns, the Hephtalites or White Huns, who had taken control of the region of Khorasmia or Greater Iran as it was known, [[{{Foreshadowing}} being one of the first nomad empires in Central Asia]]. Constantinople itself was fortified with the the famed Theodosian Walls, securing it from the invasion of the Huns and of later attackers deep into the Middle Ages. The Polis of the Balkans however suffered greatly at the sack of the Goths and the Huns, forcing people to abandon cities like Sparta to seek refuge in other, more defendable places; nevertheless, the Eastern Roman Empire managed to face these troubles, survive these attacks and remain a major player of the known world, outlasting the West for nearly a millenium.
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'''The Fall of Rome: The Late Antiquity'''
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The Western Empire itself didn't collapse entirely, as some of its institutions survived and evolved. The power of the Emperor was largely preserved with the Papacy, as the Pope still held central authority over the kings of Europe and, as head of the Bishops, technically held control over the cities scattered across the continet. Although the secular kingdoms still fought each other and retained ''de facto'' independence, the Pope could still manipulate them and command them in some way, acting as an incredibly marginalized Emperor. This power however would not truly emerge until after a couple of centuries after a particular issue was settled: the Arian christians. Although the Franks were what we can call today Catholic, the Visigoths and Ostrogoths remained faithful to the Arian heresy until the latter's fall to the resurgent Eastern Roman Empire and by the conversion of King Reccared to Catholicism in the year 587 AD.
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Roman military positions gradually transformed as well. The new kingdoms recycled the Roman military organization: for instance, the title of ''comitatenses'', previously for the imperial mobile army was then applied to the loyal troops who served the Germanic kings who first invaded the Empire. This was later shortened to ''comes'', which first was used to call the leader of the ''comitatenses'', which later on became ''count'' in modern English; likewise, the title of ''dux'', which was for the military leader of a province, would later on become ''duke''; and ''marca'', the term to denote a frontier, would be later on known as ''marks'', with their leaders being the ''marquess''. The troops of these Germanic warlords were rewarded for their fealty by the grant of land, and land meant social status. This was a holdover from the Roman system of granting land to the legionaries.
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Of these barbarian kingdoms, formed out of the defunct Western Roman Empire, five would be the most prominent during Late Antiquity: The Ostrogothic Kingdom, highest amongst the other due to its control over the historical province of Italy; the Vandalic Realm, pirates who held a firm grip over North Africa and the Western Mediterranean due to their acquisition of the Western Roman fleet; the Visigothic Kingdom, formed in the Iberian peninsula and which, according to Saint Isidore of Sevilla, preserved more of the culture and knowledge of Rome in their region; the Frankish Kingdom, the most powerful of the others, holding the fertile region of Gaul and which would expand across the eastern frontier, taking territories never held by the Empire before; and the Saxon Realms, formed by the joint efforts of the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes and which held control over Britain as the Heptarchy; of those kingdoms previously mentioned, only the last three would survive in some form throught Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Other peoples like the Burgudians, the Suebi and the Alans would form other kingdoms of their own, however, these were ultimately annexed by the previously five mentioned at some point so they would not play a major role during this time period.
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None of these kingdoms were given much time to breathe. The Eastern Roman Empire wanted the lost territory back, so numerous wars were waged over former Roman holdings in Italy and elsewhere with varying success. The famed general Belisarius, under the orders of the just as famed Emperor Justinian, managed to recover the provinces of Africa and Italy after gruelling campaigns, ending the Vandalic and Ostrogothic realms. By the end of the reign of Justinian, Italy, North Africa, and even parts of Spain were back in Roman hands, though further recovery was halted by the pressure of the Sassanid Empire and the apparition of the Plague of Justinian, which killed off the momentum of the campaigns and dealt a massive blow both to the Eastern Roman Empire and the Sassanid Empire. As if that was not enough, another tribe of Germanic people called the Langobards (from which the term Lombards and the region Lombardy is derived from), invaded the province of Italy, pushing the Empire until it only held the province of Sicily. But the biggest challenge to resurgence would be met with the rise of {{UsefulNotes/Islam}}.
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'''The Rise of Islam: The Closing of Antiquity'''
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In the year 610, Muhammad reportedly received a vision of the angel Gabriel, who gradually revealed to him what would become the Quran. Muhammad preached this new religion in his hometown of Mecca, but found himself driven away by the pagan rulers, who saw him as subversive. He and his followers fled north to the city of Medina, in an event known as the Hijra. There, he helped create the Constitution of Medina, and agreement between the various tribes of the city. The Constitution of Medina was the first step to unifying the Arabs under a single banner [[note]] note that I said ''Arabs,'' not ''Muslims,'' because many of the signatories of the Constitution were Jewish.[[/note]] After some disputes involving the seizure of Muslim property and Muslim raids on Meccan caravans, the city of Mecca raised an army and marched north. They were repulsed twice by Muhammad and his allies in Medina, before Muhammad led his armies to victory and conquered Mecca. From then on, he led his armies across the peninsula, gathering the Arab tribes under his banner.
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Muhammad had effectively united the tribes of Arabia and most had converted to Islam. Abu Bakr, the first Caliph[[note]] although it would be pertinent to point out the Sunni-Shiite split, which originates at this time over the issue of the successor caliph. Essentially, Sunnis believed the ''ummah'', the religious community, had a right to choose the caliph. Shiites believed the caliph was divinely anointed to be Ali, Muhammad's cousin and son in law. Thus, Shiites reject the authority of the first three caliphs and consider Ali to be the first "proper" caliph (Ali had bided his time and allowed the other three to be elected, since he didn't want to start a war). Sunnis believe Ali to be the fourth caliph in the succession. This seemingly minor point has been the cause of countless death and suffering in the Islamic world.[[/note]], conquered Roman Syria and further gains were made by him and his successors in Persia, Mesopotamia, and North Africa. The Umayyad Caliphate came to power in 661 and made further conquests, using the Berbers on North Africa to conquer the Visigothic kingdom in Hispania and establish UsefulNotes/MoorishSpain later on. Most of the Christians fled north, but the Muslim armies just kept on advancing clear on into southern Gaul, which was now Frankish territory. The Franks, led by Charles Martel, dealt them a famous defeat at the Battle of Tours and effectively halted Muslim expansion into Western Europe. Eastern Europe on the hand was reeling from the impact of the Islamic Conquest, the Eastern Roman Empire, which now would take its proper Byzantine form, was left alone as the Sassanid Empire crumbled further East and managed to retain through many hardships the province of Anatolia. Constantinople itself would face various sieges on part of the Muslim forces, whose momentum tried to bring the Byzantine Empire down; yet the East held the line and while Syria, Palaestina, Egypt and North Africa were lost, the Empire would live on.
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If the Fall of Rome could be considered the end of what remained of Classical Antiquity, then the Rise of Islam would be the end of Antiquity itself, for the events of the Arab Conquest would mean the break of the shared history of the Mediterranean that had been seen ever since the days of the Bronze Age. Instead, three areas of influence would be created in the aftermath: the Islamic East, which would assimilate the culture of Persia under the Abbassid Caliphate; the Greek East, which was centered around Byzantium and would expand later on to the slavic peoples; and the Germanic West, now under the hegemony of the Frankish Realm after Charles Martel's victory.
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'''A New Era: The Early Middle Ages'''
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Around this time, we start to see the often exaggerated and mythical "dark ages" in which supposedly scientific advancement, social advancement, and learning came to a crushing halt. So what happened? With the breakdown of the centralized Roman government in the West and further hits by the Justinian Plague and the Rise of Islam, trade and communication began grinding to a halt. The complex, urban metropolises once supported by Greco-Roman civilization would fall to pieces under the management of German administrators who had no concept of cities. Aqueducts fell into disrepair and were often deconstructed to be used as building materials, and famous Roman relics like the Colosseum became the ruins they are today.
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But, contrary to popular belief, the Low Middle Ages was not a period of immense stupidity or total collapse of all that is good in the world. In fact, some things improved. Generally speaking, you were less likely to go to war and get killed in the Low Middle Ages than in Roman times (a lack of big civil wars certainly helps) and previous knowledge was still preserved by monks and scholars. The nutritional situation improved. Taxes were ''far'' lower than in the Roman age. The Roman chattel slavery gradually disappeared and was superseded by serfdom, which was a ''vast'' improvement. Yes, things were certainly ''worse'' when compared to the Pax Romana, but it wasn't the abysmal time most history teachers love to paint it as. And from what sources we have, it appears very little actually changed between the Roman Empire's collapse and the conquest by the Germanic Kingdoms as far as living standards.
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At the time of the rise of the Carolingian dynasty to the Frankish throne, the Merovingian kings and their vassals had attained territory beyond the borders of what used to be Roman territory into what is southwestern German territory. Under their leader Charlemagne, the Franks achieved their highest extent, taking over the Kingdoms of Bavaria, overthrowing the Lombards, making headway into Northern Spain and even conquering the territory of Old Saxony. A cultural revolution was sparked, there was a key revival in literature, art, architecture, and other things that Charlemagne loved, there were previous revivals in the last centuries in the Visigothic realm and then in the newly converted Anglo-Saxon realms but the Frankish push was the most influential overall. Charlemagne himself is most remembered for being the king that "held the post-Roman world together". He also spread Christianity "by the cross and sword", meaning he forced his enemies to convert or to die with their gods. This coincided with better harvests and a string of military victories as the ideas of feudalism, knights, and a warrior caste began to take root in the Medieval world. By the end of Charlemagne's rule, and as thanks for saving the Papacy from being attacked by the Lombards years ago, the Pope crowned Charlemagne as Roman Emperor, thus beginning a new era that would see Western Europe grow out of the shadow of the Eastern Roman Empire.
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Things were also going strong in the new Muslim world. By the time of Charlemagne's rule, the Umayyads had been overthrown, and the Abbasids had taken over. The Abbasids had fought a revolution, starting in Northeastern Persia and eventually killing most of the Umayyad royal family. The remaining Umayyads escaped to Spain, where they set up an independent emirate. Despite the conflict, the Abbasids would oversee a golden age in Islam. There are too many scholarly works from the Muslim world in this time to even count, and numerous sources were translated and many books and theses were written. Schools were being established, as were hospitals. Being right along the largest trade route (the Silk Road) at the time helped the Islamic world progress. After all, to have writers, philosophers, and scientists, you need money to pay them.
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Beyond that, the Islamic world had a curious mixture of faith and reason that contrasted the deeply religious lifestyle of Europeans. Although Muslims were deeply faithful at heart, they rarely let it get in the way of the march of progress. Also unlike Europeans, the Muslims were surprisingly tolerant of the other Abrahamic faiths. Jews and Christians were allowed to live in Islamic society, so long as they paid some extra taxes. As a trade-off, they weren't required to go to war, so therefore they didn't have to go get killed. All in all, the Muslim world was excelling by leaps and bounds at this time, and the Abassids were at the top of their game. (Eventually, the majority of Christians and Jews in that region determined that the lower tax rates and the opportunities for advancement afforded to Muslims outweighed the benefits of keeping their religion, and converted. It also helped that by this point, the local Christians and Jews had spent decades if not centuries heavily influenced by Arab Muslim culture. This is the main reason the Middle East of today is so heavily Muslim.)
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Meanwhile in the Eastern Roman Empire, which we will call the Byzantine Empire at this point, things were still in turmoil after the rise of Islam, although the Byzantines had managed to secure the region of Anatolia, new invaders in the form of the Slavs kept challenging their authority in the Balkans, moreover, the Iconoclasm controversy, which had plagued the Isaurian dynasty, had lead to a divided society that would only begin to recover with the ascension of the Macedonian dynasty in the middle of the Ninth Century AD. Nevertheless, the Byzantine Empire proved to be resilient enough to not break in the face of so many loses and setbacks.
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'''The Second Wave: The Slavs, the Vikings and the Magyars'''
\\\
As we previously mentioned, the Middle Ages are characterized by the movement of peoples from one area to another to settle, with chiefs and kings rising and falling in the span of a lifetime. Although the Germanic Successors were the most prominent amongst the Barbarian peoples, there were others who also followed and settled in what we call Central and Eastern Europe. The most notable of these peoples were the Slavs, who settled the land left behind by the migrating Germanics. The three most prominent groups were the Wends, the Sclavenians and the Ruthenians, with the former settling in the area east of the Elbe river, in the territories that would later on become Poland, Czechia and Slovakia; the Sclavenians on the other hand took residence in the Balkans, taking over the land of Illyria and Thracia from the Byzantine Empire; finally, the Ruthenians settled in the area between the Baltic and Black Sea, neighbouring the Turkic Khazar Khaganate to the east and with their Wendian cousins to the southwest.
\\\
Back in Western Europe, things weren't going so well. Following the death of Charlemagne's son, Pepin the Short, his Empire was divided in three, one for each of his sons by right of what we call gavelkind inheritance. There was the Kingdom of West Francia, which would become the Kingdom of France; the Kingdom of East Francia, that would morph into the Kingdom of Germany; and separating those two was the Kingdom of Middle Francia, which held the region of Lotharingia and Italy, as well as the Imperial title. The first two would survive well into the Main/TheHighMiddleAges, while most of the latter would fall to East Francia as the three brothers began to quarrel over their inherited territory.
\\\
Then it goes FromBadToWorse, as the [[HornyVikings Vikings]] start looting and pillaging Europe. It is unknown as to why the Vikings suddenly started going on an obscene murder frenzy (though the warming of the European region in the time period may have had something to do with it, as previously the northern seas froze over in winter- meaning the Vikings could now send their ships out all year round), but everybody has ''sure heard of them since'', and for good reason. The Vikings were skilled warriors, but what made them truly scary were their boats.
\\\
Yes, their boats. The Viking longship was perfectly suited for traversing both deep and shallow waters, allowing them to sail to anywhere within reach of a body of water. That just happened to include the vast majority of major cities, villages, and monasteries in Europe. The Vikings used their ships to sail as far as Vinland, being the first known Europeans to reach American shores. They also used it to conquer parts of Britain and Ireland. Vikings may have even been responsible for the founding of the UsefulNotes/KievanRus. All in all, the Vikings had a lasting legacy on Europe, and their frequent raids are ingrained in European culture to this very day.
\\\
And as many historians are keen to point out, the Vikings did more than just [[Main/RapePillageAndBurn pillage and rape]] their way across Europe. They had a genuine interest in settling in foreign lands, indicating perhaps a food shortage or a power struggle back in Scandinavia. Whatever the case, the Vikings would settle throughout Europe. First they came to the British Isles, where they successfully set up several independent fiefdoms, the most famous being the Danelaw. They would rule these lands for a while before being forced out by the dominant Kingdom of Wessex. They also invaded Ireland and came to settle in what is now France[[note]]after an attempt to take Paris[[/note]], in the province of Normandy. This province -whose name obviously derives from the term "Norseman" for its Scandinavian settlers- would go on to be highly influential. Despite being subjects of the Carolingian crown, the Normans would continue to conquer and settle across Europe.
\\\
The raiding wasn't just restricted to the West. The Magyars, Bulgars, and Khazars all started raiding territory, usually Eastern Roman, although the Khazars would later help them fight the Muslims. The Bulgars would later carve out their own state. Most contemporary historians use term "Byzantine" to distinguish the Medieval Eastern Roman Empire from the Classical Western one. Although, this term was not used during the time period, and was created in order to separate the Eastern Roman Empire from the Classical one. The gap between the Estern Romans and the West had widened significantly. Rome and Constantinople were constantly in religious squabbles over whether or not the Pope or the Caesar had more authority. Culturally, the Eastern Romans continued many Greek and Classical Roman customs, and for many years their military and bureaucracy greatly resembled that of the earlier Roman Empire. Likewise they continued to carry on the old Roman legal system. This would change over time as they adapted to new challenges and influences, as all things do.
\\\
By 1066, The Norman Conquests marked the end of the Low Middle Ages. Although the conflict was minor at the time, it would have major ramifications in the future, as the English gradually came to be a dominant power in world affairs many centuries later. The gist of the conflict is that Harold, the King of England, had to fight two pretenders to his throne: the Norwegian Harald Hadrada (whose claim largely came from the aforementioned Danelaw) and the Norman William, now known as ''the Conqueror'' after he won the war at the Battle of Hastings.
\\\
It was a transitory period for Europe, where kingdoms rose and fell in mere lifetimes and the social order shifted into a rigid class system. Although there was a serious lull in technological advancement, and indeed the medieval world was just a bit smaller than the Classical one, the Low Middle Ages were not as bad as they are often said to be. Our lack of first hand sources makes the time period seem dark and mysterious, but we know that only holds partially true for Western Europe, since the Muslim world was flourishing in a new age of prosperity.
\\\

* The historical portion of ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedValhalla takes place in the 9th Century, the bulk of it in 872 and 873, a few years before the establishment of the Danelaw.

From the crossing of the Rhine in 406, the Western Roman Empire was slowly but surely conquered by the Germans, who rapidly claimed many of Rome's former provinces. The Visigoths, a people originally from the area around Dacia, took Gaul [[note]]modern day France and Belgium[[/note]] and Hispania [[note]]Spain and Portugal[[/note]] for their own, while the Ostrogoths, who were of similar origin, eventually took Italy after deposing Odoacer. The Vandals set up a short-lived Germanic kingdom in North Africa. The Angles and later on the Saxons settled in what is today England, where their culture was largely adopted by the native peoples. The Celtic peoples in what is today Wales remained independent and largely retained their own culture. While it used to be thought that the Angles and Saxons had ''displaced'' the native Britons, but the prevailing theory is that they simply took over as the dominant political class.

The Western Empire itself didn't collapse entirely, as some of its institutions survived and evolved. The power of the Emperor was largely preserved with the Papacy, as the Pope still held central authority over the kings of Europe and, as head of the Bishops, technically held control over the cities. Although the secular kingdoms still fought each other and retained ''de facto'' independence, the Pope could still manipulate them and command them in some way, acting as an incredibly marginalized Emperor. Roman military positions gradually transformed as well. The new kingdoms recycled the Roman military organization: for instance, the title of ''comitatenses'', previously for the imperial mobile army was then applied to the loyal troops who served the Germanic kings who first invaded the Empire. This was later shortened to ''comes'', which first was used to call the leader of the ''comitatenses'', which later on became ''count'' in modern English; likewise, the title of ''dux'', which was for the military leader of a province, would later on become ''duke''; and ''marca'', the term to denote a frontier, would be later on known as ''marks'', with their leaders being the ''marquess''. The troops of these Germanic warlords were rewarded for their fealty by the grant of land, and land meant social status. This was a holdover from the Roman system of granting land to the legionaries.

If the Fall of Rome could be considered the end of what remained of Classical Antiquity, then the Rise of Islam would be the end of Antiquity itself, for the events of the Arab Conquest would mean the break of the shared history of the Mediterranean that had been seen ever since the days of the Bronze Age. Instead, three areas of influence would be created in the aftermath: the Islamic East, which would assimilate the culture of Persia under the Abbassid Caliphate; the Greek East, which was centered around Byzantium and would expand later on to the slavic peoples; and the Germanic West, now under the hegemony of the Frankish Realm.

Around this time, we start to see the often exaggerated and mythical "dark ages" in which supposedly scientific advancement, social advancement, and learning came to a crushing halt. So what happened? With the breakdown of the centralized Roman government in the West, trade and communication began grinding to a halt. The complex, urban metropolises once supported by Greco-Roman civilization would fall to pieces under the management of German administrators who had no concept of cities. Aqueducts fell into disrepair and were often deconstructed to be used as building materials, and famous Roman relics like the Colosseum became the ruins they are today.

From the Frankish tribes spawned the famed Carolingian Empire. Under the leader Charlemagne, a cultural revolution was sparked. There was a key revival in literature, art, architecture, and other things that Charlemagne loved. Charlemagne himself is most remembered for being the king that "held the post-Roman world together". He also spread Christianity "by the cross and sword", meaning he forced his enemies to convert or to die with their gods. This coincided with better harvests and a string of military victories as the ideas of feudalism, knights, and a warrior caste all took root in the Medieval world. By the end of Charlemagne's rule, most of Western Europe was reunited, including parts of Germany, France, Northern Spain, and Northern Italy. The Carolingian Empire was vast, and Charlemagne was undoubtedly the most powerful man in Western Europe.

Back in Europe, things weren't going so well. Following Charlemagne's death, his Empire was divided in three. There was the Kingdom of France and the Kingdom of Germany, separated by the Kingdom of Lotharingia. The first two would survive well into the Main/TheHighMiddleAges, while most of Lotharingia would fall to Germany, which eventually took the Roman name, becoming the UsefulNotes/HolyRomanEmpire, which would fall apart into quarreling states.

Then it goes FromBadToWorse, as the [[HornyVikings Vikings]] start looting and pillaging Europe. It is unknown as to why the Vikings suddenly started going on an obscene murder frenzy (though the warming of the European region in the time period may have had something to do with it, as previously the northern seas froze over in winter- meaning the Vikings could now send their ships out all year round), but everybody has ''sure heard of them since'', and for good reason. The Vikings were skilled warriors, but what made them truly scary were their boats.

Yes, their boats. The Viking longship was perfectly suited for traversing both deep and shallow waters, allowing them to sail to anywhere within reach of a body of water. That just happened to include the vast majority of major cities, villages, and monasteries in Europe. The Vikings used their ships to sail as far as Vinland, being the first known Europeans to reach American shores. They also used it to conquer parts of Britain and Ireland. Vikings may have even been responsible for the founding of the UsefulNotes/KievanRus. All in all, the Vikings had a lasting legacy on Europe, and their frequent raids are ingrained in European culture to this very day.

And as many historians are keen to point out, the Vikings did more than just [[Main/RapePillageAndBurn pillage and rape]] their way across Europe. They had a genuine interest in settling in foreign lands, indicating perhaps a food shortage or a power struggle back in Scandinavia. Whatever the case, the Vikings would settle throughout Europe. First they came to the British Isles, where they successfully set up several independent fiefdoms, the most famous being the Danelaw. They would rule these lands for a while before being forced out by the dominant Kingdom of Wessex. They also invaded Ireland and came to settle in what is now France[[note]]after an attempt to take Paris[[/note]], in the province of Normandy. This province -whose name obviously derives from the term "Norseman" for its Scandinavian settlers- would go on to be highly influential. Despite being subjects of the Carolingian crown, the Normans would continue to conquer and settle across Europe.

The raiding wasn't just restricted to the West. The Magyars, Bulgars, and Khazars all started raiding territory, usually Eastern Roman, although the Khazars would later help them fight the Muslims. The Bulgars would later carve out their own state. Most contemporary historians use term "Byzantine" to distinguish the Medieval Eastern Roman Empire from the Classical Western one. Although, this term was not used during the time period, and was created in order to separate the Eastern Roman Empire from the Classical one. The gap between the Estern Romans and the West had widened significantly. Rome and Constantinople were constantly in religious squabbles over whether or not the Pope or the Caesar had more authority. Culturally, the Eastern Romans continued many Greek and Classical Roman customs, and for many years their military and bureaucracy greatly resembled that of the earlier Roman Empire. Likewise they continued to carry on the old Roman legal system. This would change over time as they adapted to new challenges and influences, as all things do.

By 1066, The Norman Conquests marked the end of the Low Middle Ages. Although the conflict was minor at the time, it would have major ramifications in the future, as the English gradually came to be a dominant power in world affairs many centuries later. The gist of the conflict is that Harold, the King of England, had to fight two pretenders to his throne: the Norwegian Harald Hadrada (whose claim largely came from the aforementioned Danelaw) and the Norman William, now known as ''the Conqueror'' after he won the war at the Battle of Hastings.

It was a transitory period for Europe, where kingdoms rose and fell in mere lifetimes and the social order shifted into a rigid class system. Although there was a serious lull in technological advancement, and indeed the medieval world was just a bit smaller than the Classical one, the Low Middle Ages were not as bad as they are often said to be. Our lack of first hand sources makes the time period seem dark and mysterious, but we know that only holds partially true for Western Europe, since the Muslim world was flourishing in a new age of prosperity.

'''The Barbarian Invasions: The Age of Migrations'''

These Germanic tribes would become the peoples eventually known as the Visigoths, the Ostrogoths, the Franks, the Saxons, the Burgundians, the Suebi, the Vandals and the Langobards amongst others. It's still discussed whether the incursion of these tribes was another cause for the fall of the Western Roman Empire or if they were a consequence of it, for the sake of brevity we will acknowledge it as both in here.

* The "Dark Age" of ''VideoGame/AgeOfEmpiresII'' roughly corresponds to this era, and the Attilla the Hun campaign is set during it.

The other problem following the Crisis was that Roman military power was forced to change. While the legions had been previosly doubled in size during Diocletian's reign, Constantine instead choose to reduce their numbers and reorganize them from the already obsolete duality of legions and auxiliaries into two separate forces: the Limitanei, or frontier forces, who were tasked with guarding the borderland of the Empire and stave off any invasion for as long as they could; next were the Comitatenses, the mobile army, these would be the hammer to the anvil that were the defending Limitanei, pushing back and destroying any force that attacked the Empire, as well as moving to invade in case war demanded it; additionally, from the Comitatenses came two new elite forces to supplant the now defunc Praetorians: the Palatini, who were higher ranked soldiers of infantry; and the Scholae Palatina, who served as guards of the Emperors. Alongside this division of functions came the specialization of tropes, gone were the days where the legions would consist only of heavy infantry wielding swords and pila and now the legions required all types of units to function: heavy and light cavalry, archers, swordsmen, spearmen or engineers no longer depended on your place of birth and cavalry itself began to take a place of power previously held only by the legionnaries. Added to this was the employment of the Foederati, who were often cheaper to employ. [[note]]If a soldier from Italy dies, that is one less man to collect taxes from and one less person outputting goods. If some barbaric German dies, it has no real financial impact on the Emperor.[[/note]]

From the crossing of the Rhine in 406, the Western Roman Empire was slowly but surely conquered by the Germans, who rapidly claimed many of Rome's former provinces. The Visigoths, a people originally from the area around Dacia, took Gaul [[note]]modern day France and Belgium[[/note]] and Hispania [[note]]Spain and Portugal[[/note]] for their own, while the Ostrogoths, who were of similar origin, took Italy. The Vandals set up a short-lived Germanic kingdom in North Africa. The Angles and eventually the Saxons settled in what is today England, where their culture was largely adopted by the native peoples. The Celtic peoples in what is today Wales remained independent and largely retained their own culture. While it used to be thought that the Angles and Saxons had ''displaced'' the native Britons, but the prevailing theory is that they simply took over as the dominant political class.

The Western Roman Empire however, while wounded to death and unable to recover its power to the invading germanics, would fight one last war that in hindsight would also determinate the fate of the Germanic Successors. The aforementioned Hunnic Horde had became increasingly aggressive after the ascension of Attila and had costed heavy tribute to the Eastern Roman Empire and at the time, taking advantage of political strife, Attila moved to Gaul and began to raid the province. Flavius Aetius, Emperor de facto of the West, allied the West with King Alaric of the Visigoths, and joined forces with the Salian Franks, the Saxons, the Burgundians and other tribes. This alliance faced the Huns and their vassals in the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains, landing the first defeat to the career of King Attila and forcing the Huns to move away from Gaul, and though one last raid was done on Italy - which was stemmed away by the intervention of Pope Leo I -, the Hunnic Empire would soon meet its end in the plain of Pannonia (modern Hungary) after the death of Attila and the breakaway of the Germanic subjects of the Horde.

The East, on the other hand, was not in good condition either as the Huns proceeded to raid and attack the borders of the Eastern Roman Empire, extracting a heavy tribute from Constantinople; the Sassanids themselves, while enemies at the time, brokered a truce with the Empire as they were also under the pressure of their own Huns, the Hephtalites or White Huns, who had taken control of the region of Khorasmia or Greater Iran as it was known, [[{{Foreshadowing}} being one of the first nomad empires in Central Asia]]. Constantinople itself was fortified with the the famed Theodosian Walls, securing it from the invasion of the Huns and of later attackers deep into the Middle Ages. The Polis of the Balkans however suffered greatly at the sack of the Goths and the Huns, forcing people to abandon cities like Sparta to seek refuge in other, more defendable places; nevertheless, the Eastern Roman Empire managed to face these troubles, survive these attacks and remain a major player of the known world.

The Western Empire itself didn't collapse entirely, as some of its institutions survived and evolved. The power of the Emperor was largely preserved with the Papacy, as the Pope still held central authority over the kings of Europe and, as head of the Bishops, technically held control over the cities. Although the secular kingdoms still fought each other and retained ''de facto'' independence, the Pope could still manipulate them and command them in some way, acting as an incredibly marginalized Emperor. Roman military positions gradually transformed as well. The new kingdoms recycled the Roman military organization, even using the title of ''comitatenses'' for the loyal troops who served the Germanic kings who first invaded the Empire. This was later shortened to ''comes'', which became ''count'' in modern English. These troops were rewarded for their fealty by the grant of land, and land meant social status. This was a holdover from the Roman system of granting land to the legionaries.

Of these barbarian kingdoms, formed out of the defunct Western Roman Empire, five would be the most prominent during Late Antiquity: The Ostrogothic Kingdom, highest amongst the other due to its control over the historical province of Italy; the Vandalic Realm, pirates who held a firm grip over North Africa and the Western Mediterranean due to their acquisition of the Western Roman fleet; the Visigothic Kingdom, formed in the Iberian peninsula and which, according to Saint Isidore of Sevilla, preserved more of the culture and knowledge of Rome in their region; the Frankish Kingdom, the most powerful of the others, holding the fertile region of Gaul and which would expand across the eastern frontier, taking territories never held by the Empire before; and the Saxon Realms, formed by the joint efforts of the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes and which held control over Britain as the Heptarchy; of those kingdoms previously mentioned, only the last three would survive in some form throught Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages.

None of these kingdoms were given much time to breathe. The Eastern Roman Empire wanted the lost territory back, so numerous wars were waged over former Roman holdings in Italy and elsewhere with varying success. By the end of the reign of Justinian, Italy, North Africa, and parts of Spain were back in Roman hands. However, this resurgence hit a major roadblock with the rise of {{UsefulNotes/Islam}}.

Muhammad had effectively united the tribes of Arabia and most had converted to Islam. Abu Bakr, the first Caliph[[note]] although it would be pertinent to point out the Sunni-Shiite split, which originates at this time over the issue of the successor caliph. Essentially, Sunnis believed the ''ummah'', the religious community, had a right to choose the caliph. Shiites believed the caliph was divinely anointed to be Ali, Muhammad's cousin and son in law. Thus, Shiites reject the authority of the first three caliphs and consider Ali to be the first "proper" caliph (Ali had bided his time and allowed the other three to be elected, since he didn't want to start a war). Sunnis believe Ali to be the fourth caliph in the succession. This seemingly minor point has been the cause of countless death and suffering in the Islamic world.[[/note]], conquered Roman Syria and further gains were made by him and his successors in Persia, Mesopotamia, and North Africa. The Umayyad Caliphate came to power in 661 and made further conquests, using the Berbers on North Africa to conquer the Visigothic kingdom in Hispania and establish UsefulNotes/MoorishSpain. Most Christians fled north, but the Muslim armies just kept on advancing clear on into southern Gaul, which was now Frankish territory. The Franks, led by Charles Martel, dealt them a famous defeat at the Battle of Tours and effectively halted Muslim expansion into Europe.

If the Fall of Rome could be considered the end of what remained of Classical Antiquity, then the Rise of Islam would be the end of Antiquity itself, for the events of the Arab Conquest would mean the break of the shared history of the Mediterranean that had been seen ever since the days of the Bronze Age.

Beyond that, the Islamic world had a curious mixture of faith and reason that contrasted the deeply religious lifestyle of Europeans. Although Muslims were deeply faithful at heart, they rarely let it get in the way of the march of progress. Also unlike Europeans, the Muslims were surprisingly tolerant of the other Abrahamic faiths. Jews and Christians were allowed to live in Islamic society, so long as they paid some extra taxes. As a trade-off, they weren't required to go to war, so therefore they didn't have to go get killed. All in all, the Muslim world was excelling by leaps and bounds at this time, and the Abassids were at the top of their game. (Eventually, the majority of Christians and Jews in that region determined that the lower tax rates and the opportunities for advancement afforded to Muslims outweighed to benefits of keeping their religion, and converted. It also helped that by this point, the local Christians and Jews had spent decades if not centuries heavily influenced by Arab Muslim culture. This is the main reason the Middle East of today is so heavily Muslim.)

* ''Disney/TheSwordInTheStone''

Moreover, the Church now required to formalise years of theology and debate and conclude what was in accordance or at odds with the teaching of the Church as well as the proper role of the Bishops (who would in time supplant the Vicars as administrators of the cities). This lead to the famed Council of Nicaea, in which the Arian heresy was rejected and the Nicene Creed was adopted by the Church, but the repercusions of the Arian heresy would still be seen in the years to follow.

It is under these conditions that Emperor Constantine rose to power: after the pivotal Battle of the Milvean River during which he recieved the sign to paint the letters ''Chi Rho'' (XP or ☧) and that if he would do this, he would win the day, these letters also happen to be one of the most popular christograms in history as those were the first two greek letters of the word Christ. With his victory, the position of the Catholic Church, which had swung from tolerance and most recently persecution by the Roman Empire, passed to be the first religion amongst all the others of the Empire, a process started by the edict of Milan and settled with the official decree of Emperor Theodosius to make Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire.

The other problem following the Crisis was that Roman military power was forced to change. While the legions had been previosly doubled in size during Diocletian's reign, Constantine instead choose to reduce their numbers and reorganize them from the already obsolete duality of legions and auxiliaries into two separate forces: the Limitanei, or frontier forces, who were tasked with guarding the borderland of the Empire and stave off any invasion for as long as they could; next were the Comitatenses, the mobile army, these would be the hammer to the anvil that were the defending Limitanei, pushing back and destroying any force that attacked the Empire, as well as moving to invade in case war demanded it; additionally, from the Comitatenses came two new elite forces to supplant the now defunc Praetorians: the Palatini, who were higher ranked soldiers of infantry; and the Scholae Palatina, who served as guards of the Emperors. Alongside this division of functions came the specialization of tropes, gone were the days were the legions would consist only of heavy infantry wielding swords and pila and now the legions required all types of units to function: heavy and light cavalry, archers, swordsmen, spearmen or engineers no longer depended on your place of birth and cavalry itself began to take a place of power previously held only by the legionnaries. Added to this was the employment of the Foederati, who were often cheaper to employ. [[note]]If a soldier from Italy dies, that is one less man to collect taxes from and one less person outputting goods. If some barbaric German dies, it has no real financial impact on the Emperor.[[/note]]

Following the success of Aurelian against the Gallic and Palmyrian Empires, his successor Diocletian went on to reform the state and prevent a crisis as such from ever happening again, most notably, he separated the territories of the empire in East and West formally, a thing not done since the twilight of the Republic with the Second Triumvirate, with each half now being governed by their own Emperor and Sub-emperor, and while this Tetrarchy would not last him, the precedent it left would never fade away.

The Western Empire itself didn't collapse entirely, as some of its institutions survived and evolved. The power of the Emperor was largely preserved with the Papacy, as the Pope still held central authority over the kings of Europe and, as head of the Bishops, technically held control over the cities. Although the secular kingdoms still fought each other and retained ''de facto'' independence, the Pope could still manipulate them and command them in some way, acting as an incredibly marginalized Emperor. Roman military positions gradually transformed as well. The new kingdoms recycled the Roman military organization, even using the title of ''comitatenses'' for the loyal troops who served the Germanic kings who first invaded the Empire. This was later shortened to ''comes'', which became ''count'' in modern English. These troops were rewarded for their fealty by the grant of land, and land meant social status. This was a holdover from the Roman system of granting land to the legionaries. Of these barbarian kingdoms, five would be the most prominent: The Ostrogothic Kingdom, the Vandalic Realm, the Visigothic Kingdom, the Frankish Kingdom and the Saxon realm, of those, only the last three would remain in some form.

None of these kingdoms were given much time to breathe. The Eastern Roman Empire wanted that territory back, so numerous wars were waged over former Roman holdings in Italy and elsewhere with varying success. By the end of the reign of Justinian, Italy, North Africa, and parts of Spain were back in Roman hands. However, this resurgence hit a major roadblock with the rise of {{Islam}}. In the year 610, Muhammad reportedly received a vision of the angel Gabriel, who gradually revealed to him what would become the Quran. Muhammad preached this new religion in his hometown of Mecca, but found himself driven away by the pagan rulers, who saw him as subversive. He and his followers fled north to the city of Medina, in an event known as the Hijra. There, he helped create the Constitution of Medina, and agreement between the various tribes of the city. The Constitution of Medina was the first step to unifying the Arabs under a single banner [[note]] note that I said ''Arabs,'' not ''Muslims,'' because many of the signatories of the Constitution were Jewish.[[/note]] After some disputes involving the seizure of Muslim property and Muslim raids on Meccan caravans, the city of Mecca raised an army and marched north. They were repulsed twice by Muhammad and his allies in Medina, before Muhammad led his armies to victory and conquered Mecca. From then on, he led his armies across the peninsula, gathering the Arab tribes under his banner.

Muhammad had effectively united the tribes of Arabia and most had converted to Islam. Abu Bakr, the first Caliph[[note]] although it would be pertinent to point out the Sunni-Shiite split, which originates at this time over the issue of the successor caliph. Essentially, Sunnis believed the ''ummah'', the religious community, had a right to choose the caliph. Shiites believed the caliph was divinely anointed to be Ali, Muhammad's cousin and son in law. Thus, Shiites reject the authority of the first three caliphs and consider Ali to be the first "proper" caliph (Ali had bided his time and allowed the other three to be elected, since he didn't want to start a war). Sunnis believe Ali to be the fourth caliph in the succession. This seemingly minor point has been the cause of countless death and suffering in the Islamic world.[[/note]], conquered Roman Syria and further gains were made by him and his successors in Persia, Mesopotamia, and North Africa. The Umayyad Caliphate came to power in 661 and made further conquests, using the Berbers on North Africa to conquer the Visigothic kingdom in Hispania and establish UsefulNotes/MoorishSpain. Most Christians fled north, but the Muslim armies just kept on advancing clear on into southern Gaul, which was now Frankish territory. The Franks, led by Charles Martel, dealt them a famous defeat at the Battle of Tours and effectively halted Muslim expansion into Europe.

'''A New Era: The Early Middle Ages'''

Around this time, we start to see the often exaggerated and mythical "dark ages" in which supposedly scientific advancement, social advancement, and learning came to a crushing halt. So what happened? With the breakdown of the centralized Roman government in the West, trade and communication began grinding to a halt. The complex, urban metropolises once supported by Greco-Roman civilization would fall to pieces under the management of German administrators who had no concept of cities. Aqueducts fell into disrepair and were often deconstructed to be used as building materials, and famous Roman relics like the Colosseum became the ruins they are today.

But, contrary to popular belief, the Low Middle Ages was not a period of immense stupidity or total collapse of all that is good in the world. In fact, some things improved. Generally speaking, you were less likely to go to war and get killed in the Low Middle Ages than in Roman times (a lack of big civil wars certainly helps) and previous knowledge was still preserved by monks and scholars. The nutritional situation improved. Taxes were ''far'' lower than in the Roman age. The Roman chattel slavery gradually disappeared and was superseded by serfdom, which was a ''vast'' improvement. Yes, things were certainly ''worse'' when compared to the Pax Romana, but it wasn't the abysmal time most history teachers love to paint it as. And from what sources we have, it appears very little actually changed between the Roman Empire's collapse and the conquest by the Germanic Kingdoms as far as living standards.

From the Frankish tribes spawned the famed Carolingian Empire. Under the leader Charlemagne, a cultural revolution was sparked. There was a key revival in literature, art, architecture, and other things that Charlemagne loved. Charlemagne himself is most remembered for being the king that "held the post-Roman world together". He also spread Christianity "by the cross and sword", meaning he forced his enemies to convert or to die with their gods. This coincided with better harvests and a string of military victories as the ideas of feudalism, knights, and a warrior caste all took root in the Medieval world. By the end of Charlemagne's rule, most of Western Europe was reunited, including parts of Germany, France, Northern Spain, and Northern Italy. The Carolingian Empire was vast, and Charlemagne was undoubtedly the most powerful man in Western Europe.

Things were also going strong in the new Muslim world. By the time of Charlemagne's rule, the Umayyads had been overthrown, and the Abbasids had taken over. The Abbasids had fought a revolution, starting in Northeastern Persia and eventually killing most of the Umayyad royal family. The remaining Umayyads escaped to Spain, where they set up an independent emirate. Despite the conflict, the Abbasids would oversee a golden age in Islam. There are too many scholarly works from the Muslim world in this time to even count, and numerous sources were translated and many books and theses were written. Schools were being established, as were hospitals. Being right along the largest trade route (the Silk Road) at the time helped the Islamic world progress. After all, to have writers, philosophers, and scientists, you need money to pay them.

Beyond that, the Islamic world had a curious mixture of faith and reason that contrasted the deeply religious lifestyle of Europeans. Although Muslims were deeply faithful at heart, they rarely let it get in the way of the march of progress. Also unlike Europeans, the Muslims were surprisingly tolerant of the other Abrahamic faiths. Jews and Christians were allowed to live in Islamic society, so long as they paid some extra taxes. As a trade-off, they weren't required to go to war, so therefore they didn't have to go get killed. All in all, the Muslim world was excelling by leaps and bounds at this time, and the Abassids were at the top of their game. (Eventually, the majority of Christians and Jews in that region determined that the lower tax rates and the opportunities for advancement afforded to Muslims outweighed to benefits of keeping their religion, and converted. It also helped that by this point, the local Christians and Jews had spent decades if not centuries heavily influenced by Arab Muslim culture. This is the main reason the Middle East of today is so heavily Muslim.)

Back in Europe, things weren't going so well. Following Charlemagne's death, his Empire was divided in three. There was the Kingdom of France and the Kingdom of Germany, separated by the Kingdom of Lotharingia. The first two would survive well into the Main/TheHighMiddleAges, while most of Lotharingia would fall to Germany, which eventually took the Roman name, becoming the UsefulNotes/HolyRomanEmpire, which would fall apart into quarreling states.

Then it goes FromBadToWorse, as the [[HornyVikings Vikings]] start looting and pillaging Europe. It is unknown as to why the Vikings suddenly started going on an obscene murder frenzy (though the warming of the European region in the time period may have had something to do with it, as previously the northern seas froze over in winter- meaning the Vikings could now send their ships out all year round), but everybody has ''sure heard of them since'', and for good reason. The Vikings were skilled warriors, but what made them truly scary were their boats.

Yes, their boats. The Viking longship was perfectly suited for traversing both deep and shallow waters, allowing them to sail to anywhere within reach of a body of water. That just happened to include the vast majority of major cities, villages, and monasteries in Europe. The Vikings used their ships to sail as far as Vinland, being the first known Europeans to reach American shores. They also used it to conquer parts of Britain and Ireland. Vikings may have even been responsible for the founding of the UsefulNotes/KievanRus. All in all, the Vikings had a lasting legacy on Europe, and their frequent raids are ingrained in European culture to this very day.

And as many historians are keen to point out, the Vikings did more than just [[Main/RapePillageAndBurn pillage and rape]] their way across Europe. They had a genuine interest in settling in foreign lands, indicating perhaps a food shortage or a power struggle back in Scandinavia. Whatever the case, the Vikings would settle throughout Europe. First they came to the British Isles, where they successfully set up several independent fiefdoms, the most famous being the Danelaw. They would rule these lands for a while before being forced out by the dominant Kingdom of Wessex. They also invaded Ireland and came to settle in what is now France[[note]]after an attempt to take Paris[[/note]], in the province of Normandy. This province -whose name obviously derives from the term "Norseman" for its Scandinavian settlers- would go on to be highly influential. Despite being subjects of the Carolingian crown, the Normans would continue to conquer and settle across Europe.

The raiding wasn't just restricted to the West. The Magyars, Bulgars, and Khazars all started raiding territory, usually Eastern Roman, although the Khazars would later help them fight the Muslims. The Bulgars would later carve out their own state. Most contemporary historians use term "Byzantine" to distinguish the Medieval Eastern Roman Empire from the Classical Western one. Although, this term was not used during the time period, and was created in order to separate the Eastern Roman Empire from the Classical one. The gap between the Estern Romans and the West had widened significantly. Rome and Constantinople were constantly in religious squabbles over whether or not the Pope or the Caesar had more authority. Culturally, the Eastern Romans continued many Greek and Classical Roman customs, and for many years their military and bureaucracy greatly resembled that of the earlier Roman Empire. Likewise they continued to carry on the old Roman legal system. This would change over time as they adapted to new challenges and influences, as all things do.

By 1066, The Norman Conquests marked the end of the Low Middle Ages. Although the conflict was minor at the time, it would have major ramifications in the future, as the English gradually came to be a dominant power in world affairs many centuries later. The gist of the conflict is that Harold, the King of England, had to fight two pretenders to his throne: the Norwegian Harald Hadrada (whose claim largely came from the aforementioned Danelaw) and the Norman William, now known as ''the Conqueror'' after he won the war at the Battle of Hastings.

It was a transitory period for Europe, where kingdoms rose and fell in mere lifetimes and the social order shifted into a rigid class system. Although there was a serious lull in technological advancement, and indeed the medieval world was just a bit smaller than the Classical one, the Low Middle Ages were not as bad as they are often said to be. Our lack of first hand sources makes the time period seem dark and mysterious, but we know that only holds partially true for Western Europe, since the Muslim world was flourishing in a new age of prosperity.

* ''Literature/Crossover Series'', takes place in 1054, the last years of the Early Middle. Though the first book focuses on the New World rather than Europe

** Mostly because there was no writing medium. Paper had not yet been invented, papyrus tends to disintegrate in the European climate, and parchment was ''horribly'' expensive. The notable exception were the Northern countries, where people used ''birch bark'' as writing medium. The Norsemen, which we often consider as "barbaric" were surprisingly literate compared to their enemies. Once paper became commonplace in the High Middle Ages, also literacy became common.

** Mostly because there was no writing medium. Paper had not yet been invented, papyrus has a tendency to disintegrate in the European climate, and parchment was ''horribly'' expensive. The notable exception were the Northern countries, where people used ''birch bark'' as writing medium. The Norsemen, which we often consider as "barbaric" were surprisingly literate compared to their enemies. Once paper became commonplace in the High Middle Ages, also literacy became common.

The other major problem was the nature of the Imperial office: The title of ''Imperator'' was a Military Monarchy behind the veil of the Civic authority, and with each passing reign the pressure of the army grew in strength, which lead to the Emperors having to make concessions and donations to the army to maintain its loyalty, such was case of the preceding Antonine dynasty - a policy which even Commodus had the foresight to follow - and which grew more under the Severan Dynasty, whom had to struggle with monetary gifts and keeping the respect of the troops to avoid betrayal.

The Crisis of the Third Century, named after the eponymous century in which the civil war took place, was a period of time in which competing general/emperors, apptly named as the Barracks Emperors, waged a massive, brutal civil war for fifty years in an effort to either take over the Empire or make their own, independent empires such as the Gallic and Palmyrian Empires at the height of the Crisis. The Roman army, once the pride of the Empire, spent itself fighting in this Civil War as ambitious leaders kept challenging the authority of the current Emperor to take oever with whatever legions he could bring with him.

Finally, and following the precedent of Aurelian, Diocletian began to include the title of ''Dominus et deus'', Lord and God, amongst the other titles he held as Emperor, which gave the alternative name for the Low Roman Empire: the Dominate or the period of the Masters.

The other problem following the Crisis was that Roman military power was forced to change. While the legions had been previosly doubled in size during Diocletian's reign, Constantine instead choose to reduce their numbers and reorganize them from the already obsolete duality of legions and auxiliaries into two separate forces: the Limitanei, or frontier forces, were tasked with guarding the borderland of the Empire and to stave off any invasion for as long as they could; next were the Comitatenses, the mobile army, these would be the hammer to the anvil that were the defending Limitanei, pushing back and destroying any force that attacked the Empire, as well as moving to invade in case war demanded it; additionally, from the Comitatenses came a two new elite forces to supplant the now defunc Praetorians: the Palatini, who were higher ranked soldiers of infantry; and the Scholae Palatina, who served as guards of the Emperors. Alongside this division of functions came the specialization of tropes, gone were the days were the legions would consist only of heavy infantry wielding swords and pila and now the legions required all types of units to function: heavy and light cavalry, archers, swordsmen, spearmen or engineers no longer depended on your place of birth and cavalry itself began to take a place of power previously held only by the legionnaries. Added to this was the employment of the Foederati, who were often cheaper to employ. [[note]]If a soldier from Italy dies, that is one less man to collect taxes from and one less person outputting goods. If some barbaric German dies, it has no real financial impact on the Emperor.[[/note]]

The East, on the other hand, was not in good condition either as the Huns proceeded to raid and attack the borders of the Eastern Roman Empire, extracting a heavy tribute from Constantinople; the Sassanids themselves, while enemies at the time, brokered a truce with the Empire as they were also under the pressure of their own Huns, the Hephtalites or White Huns, who had taken control of the region of Khorasmia or Greater Iran as it was known, [[{{Foreshadowing}} being one of the first nomad empires in Central Asia]]. Constantinople itself was fortified with the the famed Theodosian Walls, securing it from the invasion of the Huns and of later attackers deep into the Middle Ages. The Polis of the Balkans however suffered greatly at the sack of the Goths and the Huns, forcing people to abandon cities like Sparta to seek refuge in other, more defendable places; nevertheless, the Eastern Roman Empire managed to face these troubles and survive these attacks and remain a major player of the known world.

The Empire itself didn't entirely collapse, as some of its institutions survived and evolved. The power of the Emperor was largely preserved with the Papacy, as the Pope still held central authority over the kings of Europe. Although the secular kingdoms still fought each other and retained ''de facto'' independence, the Pope could still manipulate them and command them in some way, acting as an incredibly marginalized Emperor. Roman military positions gradually transformed as well. The new kingdoms recycled the Roman military organization, even using the title of ''comitatenses'' for the loyal troops who served the Germanic kings who first invaded the Empire. This was later shortened to ''comes'', which became ''count'' in modern English. These troops were rewarded for their fealty by the grant of land, and land meant social status. This was a holdover from the Roman system of granting land to the legionaries.

* AnAxeToGrind: probably the most frequent non-spear weapon, as an axe is fairly easy for a relatively unskilled smith to make, and peasants tended to have these around anyway for firewood.

* AncestralWeapon: often TruthInTelevision, as the difficulties of making steel and pattern welding made high-quality blades expensive, and they tended to get passed down, some eventually receiving [[ICallItVera a name]] and a legendary BackStory.

* KnightInShiningArmor: historically inaccurate though it is - "warlord in overpriced chainmail" was the ''best'' they had then. Knighthood as we picture it didn't exist yet. In particular, {{Knighting}} is an anachronism; the ceremony was developed after this era, and in this time, a man who fought was a knight. (Hence the medieval Latin term for "knight" was ''miles''.)

* SwissArmyWeapon: inverted - most Dark Agers carried one big knife that they used for everything from cutting food to carving wood to killing. Hopefully with a cleaning of some kind in between - you wouldn't want to get food stains on your dead enemy, after all.

* ''VideoGame/{{Rune}}'' probably takes place in a fantasy time period of Dark Age Norway.

* ''VideoGame/{{Rune}}''

* Technically, ''Theatre/{{Hamlet}}'' is set in this era, as is ''Theatre/{{Macbeth}}''. [[note]] By a very slim margin: the historical Macbeth ruled during the 1050s [[/note]]

** In a case of RealityIsUnrealistic, battleaxes were generally lighter than wood-working axes (especially felling axes) on the basis that it takes a lot less axe to bring down a man than a tree, and being able to swing it around very quickly is very important especially if you don't have a shield. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boioSxBIkfk Lindybeige explains]] on YouTube.

The Rhine and Danube borders had been a battleground for the Roman Empire for centuries as the attempts of invasion by various germanic tribes had been repelled with varying degrees of success; but it was after the near collapse of the Crisis that the first of the nototious tribes, the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths, would come to the borders of the Empire to ask for safe passage. As it was, these people that once lived in modern Ukraine and Crimea were also facing troubles in the form of weather deterioration and the arrival of a new threat from the steppes and beyond the Ural mountains: the Hunnic Horde.

The Huns themselves are a mystery and enigma to this day, previosly they were thought to be Proto-Mongols, linking their origin to the expelled Northern Xiongnu that the Han dynasty once faced centuries ago, though now this view has been revised through the lenses of ethnogenesis in tandem with the observation on the span of time that separated the time of the expelled Xiongnu to the arriving Huns, almost three centuries. Though probably lead by the core of the Proto-Mongolian tribes, the Horde was composed from peoples from across the entire Eurasian steppe: from Iranian, Turkic and even Germanic, Slavic and Uralic origins in likelyhood. The arrival of the Huns made pressure on the resident Germanics to leave or submit to the Horde, a treatment that shared by other peoples like the Alans, who in turn fled from the Horde to the west.

The Gothic War is just one example of the Migration Period, which some historians include in the Low Middle Ages. Germans began moving en masse to various parts of the weakened Roman Empire, each taking their own slice of the pie. This wasn't done entirely out of greed, however, as most were fleeing the Huns, Magyars, and other steppe peoples of the east. The weakened Empire was incapable of putting up much of a fight against these Germanic invaders.

The East, on the other hand, was not in good condition either as the Huns proceeded to raid and attack the borders of the Eastern Roman Empire, extracting a heavy tribute from Constantinople; the Sassanids themselves, while enemies at the time, brokered a truce with the Empire as they were also under the pressure of their own Huns, the Hephtalites or White Huns, who had taken control of the region of Khorasmia or Greater Iran as it was known, [[Foreshadowing being one of the first nomad empires in Central Asia]].

From the crossing of the Rhine in 406, the Western Roman Empire (or whatever shell of it remained) was effectively conquered by the Germans, who rapidly claimed many of Rome's former provinces. The Visigoths, a people originally from the area around Dacia, took Gaul [[note]]modern day France and Belgium[[/note]] and Hispania [[note]]Spain and Portugal[[/note]] for their own, while the Ostrogoths, who were of similar origin, took Italy. The Vandals set up a short-lived Germanic kingdom in North Africa. The Angles and eventually the Saxons settled in what is today England, where their culture was largely adopted by the native peoples. The Celtic peoples in what is today Wales remained independent and largely retained their own culture. While it used to be thought that the Angles and Saxons had ''displaced'' the native Britons, but the prevailing theory is that they simply took over as the dominant political class.

'''The Fall of Rome: The Late Antiquity'''

The Empire itself didn't entirely collapse, as some of its institutions survived and evolved. The power of the Emperor was largely preserved with the Papacy, as the Pope still held central authority over the kings of Europe. Although the secular kingdoms still fought each other and retained ''de facto'' independence, the Pope could still manipulate them and command them in some way, acting as an incredibly marginalized Emperor. Roman military positions gradually transformed as well. The new kingdoms recycled the Roman military organization, even using the title of ''comitatenses'' for the loyal troops who served the Germanic kings who first invaded the Empire. This was later shortened to ''comes'', which became ''count'' in modern English. These troops were rewarded for their fealty by the grant of land, and land meant social status. This was a holdover from the Roman system of granting land to the legionaries.

It was a transitory period for Europe, where kingdoms rose and fell in mere lifetimes and the social order shifted into a rigid class system. Although there was a serious lull in technological advancement, and indeed the medieval world was just a bit smaller than the Classical one, the Low Middle Ages were not as bad as they are often said to be. Our lack of first hand sources makes the time period seem dark and mysterious, but we know that only holds true for Western Europe (if at all), since the Muslim world was flourishing in a new age of prosperity.

Most of this was due to the decentralization of the Empire: The increasingly large empire was growing ever more difficult to maintain, and as was common in the late period of the Western Roman Empire, local rulers and generals grew ever more powerful in the absence of the Emperor. Aside from this came the reopening of the gap between the rich and the poor that had been one of the reasons of the fall of the Republic, as well as the stagnation of the frontiers as the conquest of new territory became less and less possible (Trajan was the last of the conquering Emperors and many of the provinces he had conquered were abandoned due to difficulties in holding it by his successor Hadrian, with Dacia being the last to be left behind).

In the days of the Principate, the end of a dynasty, while indeed leading to civil war, was still a matter that solved itself in a few years, but what came after the end of the Severan dynasty would be a bloodbath that would take half of a century to end and almost meant the demise of the Roman Empire: The Crisis of the Third Century.

The war also crippled the economy. Rome suffered intense inflation and taxes were raised to help pay for the military. This led to a myriad of internal issues.

Trade suffered as well due to the crisis as inflation made large transactions an impossibility. The withdrawal of the armies and navies left the trade routes, maritime and land-based alike, open to banditry and piracy, thus turning merchants away as their safety was no longer protected; even worse, the Roman roads that had served the legions for rapid deployment across the Empire were now death links across the land as armies went through towns and cities to face each other or take whatever supplies they could from the villages. With trade grinding to a halt, the mass manifacture of goods died out and manors began to strive for self-sufficiency in things like pottery or food, thus paving the way for manoralism and the insular nature of the Early Middle Ages.

''The Low Roman Empire: Militarization and Christianity''

The crisis and the split were two massive reasons for the decline of the Western Roman Empire: the actions of Odaenathus, the King of the province of Palmyra -nowadays Syria- helped to mantain the unity in the Eastern half of the Roman Empire, giving much needed stability for the Emperors to restore order in the region and thus reducing the eventual impact of the conflict with the Palmyrian Empire; this was not the case in the West, where the war with the Gallic Empire and the incursion of Germanic marauding tribes laid waste to many of the cities and infrastructure, this coupled with the nearity of the Eastern provinces to the wealth of the Silk Route and greater power thanks to Odeanathus's actions gave way to a shift of power from the city of Rome to the East, which was cemented by Constantine's decision to move the capital to Byzantium. [[note]]then renamed Constantinople[[/note]] While the East grew rich from trade and prosperity [[note]]although it faced many internal issues and a threat to its cultural identity, like the West[[/note]], the West remained poor.

Diocletian's edicts broke all pretense of institutional influence that the Senate, which had possessed a decreased yet still influential role during the Principate, held in favour of an expanded Bureacracy to maintain the armies of the Tetrarchy. To keep career mobility, Diocletian also made jobs hereditary, from the artisans to the peasantry and the soldiery, thus planting the seeds of the social rigidity that would define the incoming era; his reforms also began the process of separating the military and civic offices from each, a change that went against the Republican tradition of the Cursus Honorum that required aspirants to the public offices to serve in the army while also defanging the military leaders and further securing the office of Emperor as the one above all else.

It was also during the realm of Diocletian that the last and most brutal of all persecutions of Christians across the Empire took place, taking a span of twenty five years and ending in an ultimate failure as the strength of the Church in front of persecution only made more sympathetic to the pagans.

The other problem following the Crisis was that Roman military power was forced to change. The legions as they had been know during the ''Pax Romana'' were reorganized from the already obsolete duality of legions and auxiliaries into two separate forces: the Limitanei, or frontier forces, were tasked with guarding the borderland of the Empire and to stave off any invasion for as long as they could; next were the Comitatenses, the mobile army, these would be the hammer to the anvil that were the defending Limitanei, pushing back and destroying any force that attacked the Empire, as well as moving to invade in case war demanded it. Alongside this division of functions came the specialization of tropes, gone were the days were the legions would consist only of heavy infantry and now the legions required all types of units to function: heavy and light cavalry, archers, infantry, spearmen or engineers no longer depended on your place of birth and cavalry itself begaan to take a place of power previously held only by the legionnaries. Added to this was the employment of the Foederati, who were often cheaper. [[note]]If a soldier from Italy dies, that is one less man to collect taxes from and one less person outputting goods. If some barbaric German dies, it has no real financial impact on the Emperor.[[/note]]

However, the lack of discipline made the West increasingly vulnerable to other threats. This was ever noticed during the Gothic War, in which Goths, fleeing the migrating Huns, resettled on Roman territory, but they rebelled due to mistreatment. The Goths won a decisive battle against the Roman troops at the Battle of Adrianople, which exposed the weakness of the decaying Roman Empire. And when the Romans did break down and become unable to pay these ''feodorati'', they often rebelled and attacked the Empire anyways.

The reasons for this rapid decline are too numerous to count, but a growing gap between the social classes (combined with severe rigidity, meaning it was nigh-impossible for people to rise in social class like they had done previously in the Empire), the rise of Christianity, a gradual reliance on local rulers, and a growing lack of cultural identity in the Empire as local culture began to exert influence once more, all laid the groundwork of the Early Middle Ages.