Mohammed the Persian

I've heard many reasons to why Rome fell, thats another topic (for a thread that already exists).
But It astonished me that the mighty legions of Rome which brought the Mediterranean to its knees and what not, couldn't defeat the Barbarians.

Why not ? Excuse my naiveness in this field of history but couldn't the Roman Senate (or Emperor, I have a poor sense of timing in History) just send an army to Germania or wherver and get it over with (Once again, silly 14 year old uttering rubbish ).

Seems quite amazing that the Romans , disciplined as they are, couldn't handle the raw aggression of the Barbarians.

okamido

Quite simply, they were too busy wasting resources fighting themselves.

Isoroku295

They could. It wasn't until the west became a defunct blob of land under now dead power that the barbarians marched across.

EDIT: to explain, the western empire were using massive numbers of barbarians, dwarfing it's own personal armies, so it's own power wasn't good enough anymore because it was being almost replaced.

Mohammed the Persian

But if the Romans were to have fought against the Barbarians head on, would they win ?
Or would Teutoburg Forest-like event occur ?

Qymaen

Well Teutoberg was a carefully planned ambush. What you are describing is a type of battle where two armies go head on. Examples being Breitenfeld, Agincourt, Cannae, etc.

RoyalGovnaWatts

My 2 cents on why the Roman empire couldn't handle the invading barbarians is because they had simply outgrown the capacity for controlling their lands. The logistics of the time period were simply not developed enough to handle such a broad empire successfully. They also had adopted the use of having barbarian mercenaries in their armies, which would rise through the ranks and sometimes even to general. This caused great political strife and military troubles, as now Roman soldiers were pitted against themselves, and even some barbarians became emperor. The debt from previous unfortunate events caused by bad emperors were also a gigantic factor.

Efendi

As far as I know, the roman army were hired troops. Their main motivation was earning salary.

Barbarians were atacking for loot. The more they atack the more they loot.
They atacked Roman willages, collected loots and fled to mountains. That is how they raped Roman economy. When economy failed you have no enough money to hire enough amount of merchenaries.

It is at least what happeened to east Rome (Byzantine). They were raped by Nomadic Turks. They looted the willages, farms then after fled to mountains. so that regulars armies couldnt catch them. When they loss their competitive powers with their destroyed economies, They became target of neighbouring states. Most notably the Seljuks and Ottomans of course.

Many friends here are more knowledgeable about Roman history.

sylla1

In a nutshell, nuff' said.

Salah

I'll third that.

IMO the barbarians didnt' destroy Rome. They just took advantage of the fact that Rome was destroying itself.

Chrysoloras

I guess another interesting phrasing of the question would be why the Roman Empire disintegrated and failed to produce the lasting Romanization of Europeans whereas the Qin Empire produced the full and lasting sinification of the people who would later become the Chinese. The process had began in Europe with the people of Iberia and modern France and Italy being to a large extent Romanized and the same happened in the Eastern half of the Empire with the romanization of the Greeks. But perhaps this should be looked at in the opposite direction, if the Empire hadn't fell the Romanization would have continued as it did for the Greeks. So why were the Western Romans so busy fighting each other when the Qin were not? There are already many knowledgeable members here and I look forward to their replies.