The city for three days and nights was given up to pillage. Alaric, who was a Christian, ordered his followers to respect the churches and their property and to refrain from bloodshed. Though the city did not greatly suffer, the moral effect of the disaster was immense. Rome the eternal, the unconquerable, she who had taken captive all the world, was now herself a captive. The pagans saw in this calamity the vengeance of the ancient deities, who had been dishonored and driven from their shrines. The Christians believed that God had sent a judgment on the Romans to punish them for their sins. In either case the spell of Rome was forever broken. KINGDOM OF THE VISIGOTHS, 415-711 A.D. From Rome Alaric led his hosts, laden with plunder, into southern Italy. He may have intended to cross the Mediterranean and bring Africa under his rule. The plan was never carried out, for the youthful chieftain died suddenly, a victim to the Italian fever. After Alaric's death, the barbarians made their way northward through Italy and settled in southern Gaul and Spain. In these lands they founded an independent Visigothic kingdom, the first to be created on Roman soil. [Illustration: Map, THE GERMANIC MIGRATIONS to 476 A.D.] ROMANIZATION OF THE VISIGOTHS The possessions of the Visigoths in Gaul were seized by their neighbors, the Franks, in less than a century; [9] but the Gothic kingdom in Spain had three hundred years of prosperous life. [10] The barbarian rulers sought to preserve the institutions of Rome and to respect the rights of their Roman subjects. Conquerors and conquered gradually blended into one people, out of whom have grown the Spaniards of modern times. 84. BREAKING OF THE RHINE BARRIER THE GERMANS CROSS THE RHINE, 406 A.D. After the departure of the Visigoths Rome and Italy remained undisturbed for nearly forty years. The western provinces were not so fortunate. At the time of Alaric's first attack on Italy the legions along the Rhine had been withdrawn to meet him, leaving the frontier unguarded. In 406 A.D., four years before Alaric's sack of Rome, a vast company of Germans crossed the Rhine and swept almost unopposed through Gaul. Some of these peoples succeeded in establishing kingdoms for themselves on the ruins of the empire. KINGDOM OF THE BURGUNDIANS, 443-534 A.D. The Burgundians settled on the upper Rhine and in the fertile valley of the Rhone, in southeastern Gaul. Alter less than a century of independence they were conquered by the Franks. [11] Their name, however, survives in modern Burgundy. VANDAL KINGDOM IN NORTH AFRICA, 429-534 A.D. The Vandals settled first in Spain. The territory now called Andalusia still preserves the memory of these barbarians. After the Visigothic invasion of Spain the Vandals passed over to North Africa. They made themselves masters of Carthage and soon conquered all the Roman province of Africa. Their kingdom here lasted about one hundred years. [12] THE FRANKS IN NORTHERN GAUL