The Western Empire had now but a short time to live. The dastardly emperor Valentinian III., suspicious of the independent position of Ætius, recalled the conqueror of Attila from Gaul, and slew him with his own hand (A. D. 454). He was himself murdered soon after, and his widow, Eudoxia, though forced to marry the assassin, determined to avenge her husband. She invited the Vandals, for this purpose, from Africa across the sea to Rome. This German tribe, still ruled by the aged Genseric, was the only one which possessed a fleet; and by this means the Vandals had already made themselves masters of the great islands of the Mediterranean, of Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica. The “sea-king” eagerly obeyed the summons (A. D. 455), and now “golden Rome” was given up for fourteen days to his soldiers, and was sacked with such horrors that the name of Vandal has ever since been a proverb for barbarity and destruction. Yet the mediation of Leo the Great, then Bishop of Rome, saved the city from utter ruin. From this time onward the emperors, who followed one another in quick succession, were mere tools of the German generals, and symbols of power before the common people; for the whole imperial army now consisted of the remnants of various German nations, who had sought service for pay. These too, at last, like their kindred in the provinces, demanded lands in Italy, and would have no less than one-third of the soil. When this was refused, Odoacer, at the head of his soldiers—Heruli, Sciri, Turcilingi, and Rugii, who forced their way thither from the Danube—put an end to the very name of the Roman Empire, stripping the boy Romulus Augustulus, the last emperor, of the purple, and ruling alone in Italy, as German general and king. Thus the Western Empire fell by German hands, after they had already wrested from it all its provinces, Africa, Spain, Gaul and Britain. This occurred in the year 476. Ancient history ends with this event; but in the history of the Germans it is merely an episode.