40. The Vandal War

533

The first of Justinian’s wars in the West begins, as Belisarius leads an army to Africa. Early victory makes the war seem like a slam dunk, and Procopius is there to tell us all about it.

Vandal horseman on a fragment of mosaic from a villa at Bourdj Djedid, Tunisia.

I’ve teased it long enough; it’s time for the armies of the Eastern Empire to strike out into the West. Their target was North Africa, but while it can be seen as the beginning of a program of restoration and reconquest, Justinian’s war against the Vandals had much more prosaic origins.

Before starting on that, I have to make a quick correction to my narrative of the riots. I conflated Hypatius, the nephew of Anastasius, with his two brothers. One of these, Probus, is the one who professed his innocence to Justinian and escaped retribution in the riots aftermath. The crowd actually went to his house first, planning to twist his arm into taking the purple. When they found him (wisely) not at home, they burned the place down. Anastasius’ other nephews, Pompeius and Hypatius, seem to have been willing participants in the proceedings, and so Hypatius’ execution seems a little less harsh. My bad on that one, sometimes the names get to be too much even for me.

The Nika riots had left Justinian with a prestige problem. He had won domestic peace by the brutal suppression of the uprising, but had to win back respect for his rule if he wanted to accomplish all his plans. With the end of war in the Persian theater, he also had a clutch of young, ambitious generals who needed something to do. The conventional interpretation of events used to be that Justinian was preparing for war in Africa before the Persian peace was concluded, and I hinted at that possibility last time myself. More contemporary historical opinion doubts whether that was the case. Circumstances arranged themselves to provide Justinian with both the opportunity and justification for the war, and if they hadn’t worked out just the way they did, I’m not sure that war in Africa would have ever occurred to the emperor.

The roots of conflict actually lay in the domestic politics of the Vandal kingdom.

We left off our check-up on the Vandal kingdom last time with the death of king Thrasamund in 523, to be succeeded by Hilderic, son of Huneric, and the eldest surviving grandson of Gaiseric, as the great king would have wanted.

It’s very hard to describe the course of the Vandal War without simply paraphrasing Procopius’ account page-by-page. Better writers than me have tried and failed. It’s just that he is nearly the only source, and by far the most detailed and engaging, but I will do my very best to bring in outside insights where possible. Let me now undermine that statement with my very next sentence:

Procopius describes Hilderic as a gentle man, with an instinct toward peace. He delegated command of his military forces to his nephew Hoamer, and cultivated a relationship with the emperor Justin and then with his successor, Justinian, who were happy to keep Vandal piracy from disrupting maritime trade. None of those traits endeared him to large segments of the Vandal nobility. According to Roman sources, the Vandal elites had allowed generations of rich living to soften them, but their own self-perception was still as a warrior people. To be a noble was to be a warrior, and an unwarlike king didn’t sit well with men like that. Hilderic also favored the Catholic faith of his mother, Licinia Eudoxia, which helped smooth relations with the emperors, but did nothing to reassure the Vandal nobility. Likewise, a visit to Constantinople, after which Hilderic recalled a clutch of exiled catholic bishops, went down poorly.

Hilderic wasn’t necessarily a doormat. For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, he became paranoid about Amalafrida, Thrasamund’s widow and Theodoric the Great’s sister, and around 527 he had her imprisoned. He accused her of having “revolutionary designs”, and also purged the Gothic troops that had accompanied her. Amalafrida later died in prison. Hilderic claimed that it had been natural causes, which the Ostrogoths didn’t buy for a minute. This was around the time that Theodoric died, and power passed nominally to his grandson Athalaric, with his mother as regent. The Ostrogoths weren’t internally in a position to do anything to avenge Amalafrida, and even if they were, Vandal naval strength made any serious invasion unfeasible. Cassiodorus sent a strongly worded letter to Hilderic, but couldn’t muster any threat greater than “we must leave you to the judgment of the Divine Majesty, which heard the blood of Abel crying from the ground.” (Cassiodorus 1886, IX.1)

Hilderic did have some reason to be concerned about bad actors in his regime, and we don’t know enough to say whether Amalafrida was a threat or not. One who definitely was a threat was the man who was next in line for the Vandal throne, Hilderic’s cousin Gelimer. Under the terms of seniority, Gelimer would take over whenever Hilderic died, but as Procopius put it, “he was a cunning fellow and base at heart.” Unwilling to wait for his inheritance, Gelimer orchestrated a coup. Hilderic was deposed and imprisoned, along with his nephew and chief military commander Hoamer, and the king’s son Euagees, who was probably arrested for having too many vowels in his name. In 530 Gelimer took the title of King of the Vandals and Alans, and reversed Hilderic’s tolerant stance toward the catholic/orthodox church in his territories. Arian supremacy was back.

One of the points Gelimer had made to the Vandal nobility as he was canvassing for support was that Hilderic was far too cozy with Justin and Justinian. He went so far as to suggest that Hilderic was lining up an imperial takeover of Africa by the empire, which had to be prevented at all costs. There’s no evidence of such a plan, but Hilderic had been friendly with Justinian since before Justin died, and Gelimer’s coup didn’t go unnoticed in Constantinople.

When news of the takeover reached him, Justinian responded with a letter of protest, quoted or paraphrased by Procopius. “You are not acting in a holy manner, nor worthy of the will of Gaiseric,” Justinian appears to have been aware of the reverence in which the old king was held.

Justinian suggested that Gelimer work out some kind of power-sharing deal with Hilderic. Hilderic was in his sixties, after all, Gelimer probably wouldn’t have to wait long. For whatever reason, maybe he was worried that he was no spring chicken himself and wanted to enjoy power for as long as possible, Gelimer turned Justinian’s emissaries away. He made his point even more firmly by blinding Hoamer, and moving Gelimer and his son into harsher confinement. When this news reached Justinian, he was not among the campers that are happy. His return letter took on a tone of hurt reasonableness, “We supposed that you would never go contrary to our advice when we wrote the former letter. But, since it pleases you to take possession of the royal power in the manner in which you have, get out of it whatever Heaven grants. But do send us Hilderic, and Hoamer who you have blinded, and his brother, to receive what comfort they can who have been robbed of kingdom and of sight. We shall not let the matter rest if you do not do this … the treaty with Gaiseric will not stand as an obstacle for us, for it is not to make war upon him who has succeeded to the kingdom of Gaiseric that we come, but to avenge Gaiseric with all our power.”

Justinian allowed Gelimer the option of transferring Hildereic to Constantinople, but in the same letter set up his caucus belli, he would be fighting to restore the lawful succession as laid down by the revered Gaiseric. There’s no mention of saving the Roman population from heretical overlords, nor of reclaiming territory that was rightfully Roman, just simple resolve to see that the right thing was done. In the face of that resolve, it’s not surprising that Gelimer refused to release Hilderic to Roman custody. If he did, it was more than likely that the next time Hilderic appeared in Africa, it would be at the head of an army. In his reply to the emperor, Gelimer argued that it was Hilderic who had been plotting against the rightful succession, and that he had had the consent of the Vandal elites in removing him. He couldn’t help throwing in a little bit of sass too, according to Procopius: “It is well for one to administer the kingly office which belongs to him and not to make the concerns of others his own … For you, meddling in others’ affairs is not just, and if you break the treaty and come against us, we shall oppose you with all our power.” Gelimer was probably counting on Justinian having too much on his plate already to deal with such relatively small potatoes. The letter irritated Justinian, and he moved to finalize peace with the Persians, so that those potatoes could be properly attended to.

Portrait commonly identified as Belisarius, from the same mosaic as the famous image of Justinian at San Vitale in Ravenna.

Most of Justinian’s advisors either agreed with Gelimer – that the Africa question was small potatoes and not worth pursuing, or believed that it would be too expensive to undertake, with a low chance of success. All of them were very aware of the disaster that had been Basiliscus’ expedition against the vandals in 468. The costs in blood and treasure had been monstrous, with nothing to show for the effort. No one wanted to be the one to pour cold water on the emperor’s idea, though, except John the Cappadocian. He warned Justinian off the idea, citing cost, distance, and the potential consequences of failure. But a bishop, who Procopius does not name, took Justinian aside and told him of a dream he’d had. In the dream God had told him to rebuke the emperor for being afraid to protect the Christians of Africa from tyrants. If he did move against the Arians, God would be on Justinian’s side. That did it. Belisarius was told to make himself ready to lead an army to Africa, and began to gather the men and supplies that would be required.

The bishop’s words seemed to be borne out by events. As preparations began, a revolt in Tripolitania. Justinian sent a small force to support the revolt, and the territory freed itself from Gelimer’s rule. Gelimer was unable to respond, as another revolt simultaneously broke out in Sardinia, led by the man sent to govern the island. Sardinia being larger and economically more important, Gelimer was obliged to dispatch 5,000 men commanded by his brother Tzazon to put down the insurrection.

The Sardinian uprising ended up being a mixed bag for the Romans. Justinian offered to send soldiers, and did send a commander to prepare for their arrival. But the leader of the revolt fancied himself an independent king, with no need of other war leaders. He would accept the fighting men, but not the commander, who he dismissed. Justiniian wouldn’t learn about that turn of events for some time, and so set aside four hundred men to send to Sardinia, apart from the main invasion force that Belisarius was preparing. The revolt ultimately didn’t have time to go anywhere, but was vital in distracting a sizeable portion of the Vandal’s fighting strength. Belisarius seemed to have what Napoleon identified as the most important trait of a military commander: luck.

The invasion force grew by the day, drawn from all over, both in and outside the empire. Procopius gives us a detailed list of all the unit commanders. I won’t inflict that on you, there are enough names in this episode already. I will note that the army assembling at Constantinople included 10,000 foot soldiers and 5,000 cavalry, to be carried by an armada of 500 ships, handled by 30,000 sailors. Those were just the transports, the fleet was escorted and protected by a squadron of another 92 warships, dromons, which I mentioned in the episode on the battle of Cape Bon. These were single decked rowing ships, though they could sail if needed, and were built for speed.

If we take Procopius’ numbers at face value, this invasion was roughly half the size of Basiliscus’ earlier attempt, about 47,000 compared to the 100,000 he gave Basiliscus. Oddly, while modern historians have serious doubts about that 100,000, I haven’t seen a lot of pushback against the numbers given for Justinian’s invasion, probably because Procopius was actually present and involved in the work and so would have had a fairly realistic sense of the operation’s scale.

Now seems like an excellent time to update our image of a Roman army, and compare it to their soon to be foes. The heavy infantry legions of Julius Caesar had long ago been retired in favor of faster moving armies with greater cavalry contingents. The Huns’ invasions had forced further adaptations.. In addition to just hiring Hun and other steppe mercenaries, Roman soldiers began to be trained in mounted archery. Procopius doesn’t tell us what proportion of the Roman cavalry were mounted archers, but they were becoming increasingly common. He goes out of his way to assure his readers that the bowmen of Belisarius’ army were not the low-power unit that they, or a Warcraft player, might imagine, and in the process gives us a nice description of the arms and armament of such fighters:

“the bowmen of the present time go into battle wearing corslets and fitted out with greaves which extend up to the knee. From the right side hang their arrows, from the other the sword. And there are some who have a spear also attached to them and, at the shoulders, a sort of small shield without a grip, such as to cover the region of the face and neck. They are expert horsemen, and are able without difficulty to direct their bows to either side while riding at full speed, and to shoot an opponent whether in pursuit or in flight. They draw the bowstring along by the forehead about opposite the right ear, thereby charging the arrow with such an impetus as to kill whoever stands in the way, shield and corselet alike having no power to check its force.”

Two non-Roman cavalry units would also be instrumental in the coming fighting, Huns and Herules.

At the top of the pecking order were Belisarius’ hand-picked elite cavalry – his bodyguard, or retinue is probably a better word. These were known as the bucellarii, and were recruited and paid by the general personally. Belisarius was surrounded by somewhere between 1 and 2,000. It’s not clear whether the 5,000 cavalry included the bucellarii or not. These were not archers, but mounted shock troops, armed like the Vandals with spear, shield and sword, and by far the best armored of any of the Roman units, with chainmail all over and the practical but not terribly attractive dome shaped helmets that were pretty much ubiquitous across Europe. With their varied geographical origins and generally lower status, we can expect that the foot soldiers would have been a much more motley collection.

The army set out from Constantinople in June of 533, and were gently wafted by light winds, taking nearly a week just to cross the Sea of Marmara. The fleet made its way in short hops down the Anatolian coast before crossing to Methone, at the very southern tip of what we now call mainland Greece. Along the way Procopius tells us of a potentially disastrous incident, where it turned out that the hard tack that had been prepared for the journey had not been properly baked, and several hundred men were made sick. Procopius blamed the ever economizing John of Cappadocia, who had commandeered the furnace of a bathhouse to bake the bread. Apparently this would be cheaper than the usual ovens. I’m not sure I follow that, but I must resist the temptation to follow the white rabbit of late antique bread making, and move on. There were also problems of water storage and portability, but again, we move on.

Amalasuintha, the daughter of Theodoric the Great and regent queen of Italy, had a strong relationship with Constantinople, and diplomatic ground had been laid with her ahead of time. With her blessing, Belisarius’ fleet landed in Sicily, at Catania initially before moving down to Syracuse. Rather endearingly, Procopius inserts himself into the narrative at this point. Upon arrival in Syracuse, our narrator unexpectedly met an old acquaintance, whose domestic (slave) had just arrived back from Carthage. This man told Procopius about the departure of the Vandal army for Sardinia, and that no one among the Vandals was aware of the Eastern fleet’s approach. How that could possibly be true is a little bit of a riddle to me; almost 600 ships, not moving at exactly what you might call lightning speed, and it goes completely unreported to the Vandal king? Passing over that, Procopius obviously brought these two to meet Belisarius and tell it all to him. He was also able to say that Gelimer was staying in a town in Byzacena, a four day journey from any coastline. If they moved quickly, the Romans could have more than enough time to set up a beachhead and organize themselves before the vandals mustered a response. The initiative belonged to the Romans, and fortune favored Belisarius. He Shanghaied the slave as the fleet set sail. Here was clearly a valuable source of intelligence, and Procopius was left to shout his apologies to his old friend from the ship’s deck, and promise to return the domestic as soon as possible.

Two day’s sailing and a stop at Malta brought them to the African coast. The fleet anchored off a promontory called Caput Vada, about halfway down that north-south section of Tunisia’s coastline. This is where I plug the website, darkagespod.com, and the instagram account, @darkagespod, because those are the places where I put maps.

Caput Vada was about five days’ travel from Carthage, for a single traveler. For an army of fifteen thousand, it would take a bit longer. Some initial unpleasantness ensued when some foragers collected food from the locals, as was after all their usual job description. But these weren’t usual times, as General Belisarius made clear. He had the soldiers whipped, and made it clear that the local population was Roman. They were among their own people, here to liberate them from a foreign ruler, and so they would buy their food, just like they would if they were at home. Belisarius was clearly thinking about hearts and minds. He was very aware of the divisions between Vandal and Roman African, and very aware that he had an advantage in the PR department. But he was also aware that that advantage could be lost very easily if his men abused the populace or acted like just another conquering force.

Belisarius’ strategy was born out when he sent a detachment to the nearest settlement, a town called Syllectus, about a day’s ride to the north. These men entered the town alongside country folk bringing in their produce – the town had no wall, Gaiseric had seen to that, and the soldiers encountered no resistance when they made themselves known to the residents. They announced the army’s arrival and received enthusiastic promises of cooperation from the priest and other leading men, along with keys to the public buildings. This was going better than could have been expected. Higher-level officials made themselves known as well, the man in charge of the official communications – I guess we can call him the postmaster though it seems incorrect – deserted his post and turned over all the horses in his care to the Romans.

Belisarius buttonholed one of the messengers who worked for this man and gave him a letter to be distributed to all the Vandal’s local magistrates. This was no war of conquest or aggression, the letter said, but a war of liberation. The Romans had not come to make war on the Vandals, only on the usurping king Gelimer. Peace and freedom could be had by any who abandoned their illegitimate king and joined with the Romans in overthrowing him. The letter, as reported by Procopius, was a bit light on the details of what exactly would happen after that, but it didn;t matter anyway. The messenger decided he liked all his body parts where they were, and showed the letter to no one.

When the main body of the army arrived at Syllectus, they behaved themselves as well as Belisarius could have wished, and the town opened up to him like a flower. The market was made available, and he could concentrate on arranging his armies for the march to Carthage.

Forgive me, but I do need to go into some detail about the deployment of Belisarius’ troops because it will be important. A hand picked force of 300 cavalrymen were sent ahead to scout the road, under the command of one John the Armenian, while on the left Belisarius placed his Hunnish cavalry, to serve as a screen against any Vandal attack coming from the east. Each of these stood away from the main body, at least two miles distant by the general’s order. The right flank was protected by the sea as they moved north, and the fleet followed and kept in close contact with the army.

The campaign to win hearts and minds paid off all along the army’s route, as each city greeted the Romans with open arms, Leptis, Hadrumetum, and Grasse, in quick succession, day by day.

Meanwhile, Gelimer finally was made aware of the Roman landing. He was at Hermione, a town in the interior whose exact location is disputed, probably engaged in some way with one of the Moorish petty kingdoms in the area. When he heard the news, Gelimer sent a message to his brother Ammatus, in command in Carthage, and ordered him to kill Hilderic and the other prisoners. Once that was done, Ammatus gathered the troops he had and prepared for battle. Gelimer had a plan to catch Belisarius in a trap.

Outside Carthage, the approach narrowed at a spot called Ad Decimum, which lay between some low hills and the bay on which lay Carthage’s famous harbor. On the other side of the hills was a broad salt pan, which offered no water or fodder whatever. Gelimer hoped to time his arrival with Ammatus’ muster and catch Belisarius in the narrow passage.

Gelimer had brought up his army quickly, and was shadowing the Romans at some distance, successfully evading detection. To add to the Romans’ trouble, Gelimer detached a force of 2,000 under his nephew Gibamundus to cross the salt pans and hills to take the Romans in the flank.

The Romans became aware of their Vandal shadow when they reached Grasse and a scouting party encountered the Vandal’s advance guard. The news made the Roman soldiers nervous, and they became more so as they lost contact with their naval force. They had to cross the foot of Cape Bon, while the fleet of course was obligated to sail around it. Belisarius gave orders that his navy was not to attempt to force the Carthaginian harbor, but rather to stand off some distance and wait for his signal.

All indications are that the Vandal army had remained entirely a cavalry force, as we heard in the confrontation with Cabaon, and were used to close combat with sword, spear, and shield. The size of the force Gelimer commanded is by necessity less certain than the Romans’. Procopius offers 80,000, which would make Belisarius’ jovial approach to this whole enterprise seem wildly irresponsible. Historians of Procopius’ bent were prone to inflating the size of the enemy armies, in order to emphasize their heroes’ achievements. Most modern historians significantly downgrade the Vandal numbers. Their estimates fall between 20 and 40 thousand, with most estimates under 30 thousand. Even so, Belisarius’ 15,000 were outnumbered, maybe as much as two to one. His confidence was mostly based on the friendliness of the Roman population and the better, more standardized training and discipline of Roman soldiers.

You may have noticed that Gelimer’s plan was effectively a three pronged attack, and would depend very much on timing, and on catching the Romans by surprise. And if you’ve been listening to history podcasts for a while, you’ll also have noticed that these things very rarely go as planned.

The battle of Ad Decimum, map by Cplakidas, Wikimedia commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Battle_of_Ad_Decimum_-_First_phase.svg

In this case the combination of poor timing and Belisarius’ preparations sank Gelimer’s plan from the beginning. Ammatus scrambled to get into position at Decimum, and arrived too early. Procopius estimates that he jumped the gun by about a quarter of a day. On top of that, in his haste, he set his muster point at the destination, rather than gathering his men outside the city and marching en masse, significantly fewer men were immediately available to him than would normally have been. Some few were in position, the rest strung out along the road in groups of 20 or 30. To put a more charitable gloss on the situation, historian J.B. Bury suggested that Ammatus had come ahead with a few men to survey the ground, and was unlucky enough to run into John and his 300 bucellarii.

Without hesitation, the Roman cavalry attacked. The vandals put up what resistance they could, with Ammatus killing 12 before he fell. Once their commander was killed, the Vandals broke and fled back toward Carthage. The men coming up the road turned tail at the sight of their fleeing compatriots. John and his force did exactly what cavalry are good at, and rode down the routing soldiers. Thanks to the high proportion of cavalry, a relatively large number made it back inside the walls of Carthage. Nonetheless Procopius wrote “there was so great a slaughter of Vandals in the course of the seventy stadia that those who beheld it would have supposed that it was the work of an enemy twenty thousand strong.” A stadion,, by the way, was an eighth of a Roman mile, 70 stadia would be about 8 miles/13 kilometers.

At the same time, Gibamundus’ 2000 crossed the salt flats and met the Hun forces that Belisarius had set as flanking guards. In this case the reputation of the Huns preceded them, and the Vandals put up only token resistance before routing and being killed or scattered entirely.

Knowing nothing of those engagements, Belisarius pitched camp about half a day’s distance from Decimum, fully fortified as was Standard Operating Procedure. There he decided to divide his forces. He left the infantry, along with his wife and baggage in camp, and took the cavalry ahead to skirmish with the vandals and gauge their strength. He sent federate troops ahead, where they found the remnants of the engagement between John and Ammatus. Before they had time to process the find, the main Vandal force appeared in the distance. Gelimer’s force chased off the federate troops, and seemed ready to make the Roman’s earlier successes irrelevant. The turning of the tide came, according to Procopius, when Gelimer found the body of his brother Ammatus on the field.

“I am unable to say what happened to Gelimer that having victory in his hands he willingly gave it up to the enemy, unless on ought also refer foolish actions to God … for if … he had made pursuit immediately, I do not think even Belisarius could have withstood him … or if … he had ridden straight to Carthage, he would have easily killed John [the Armenian]’s men, who were wandering about the plain stripping the dead … Instead he descended from the hill at a walk, and when he reached the level ground and saw the corpse of his brother, he turned to lamentations, and caring for his burial, he blunted the edge of his opportunity – an opportunity which he was not able to grasp again.”

Belisarius rallied and rebuked the men who had fled, and after hearing what had happened, set off immediately with his full force toward Gelimer’s position. The Vandals had already lost cohesion, and were driven off by the reinforced Roman cavalry charge. Fighting and pursuit continued until nightfall, and by the end, most of the vandals were either dead or fled westward, toward Numidia. Gelimer himself escaped with them. The battle seems to have been barely a battle at all. When the crunch time came, when main force met main force, Procopius barely described it. The Vandals, having lost their edge through long years of wealth and relatively unchallenging fights with the Moors, were broken immediately when the Roman rubber met the road. It’s hard even to credit the victory to Belisarius’ tactical acumen. Procopius wonders that the two prelude encounters, with John’s scouts and the Hun flanking guards, came out so neatly in the Romans’ favor, and credits this either to the workings of divine guidance or superhuman foresight on the part of Belisarius. Really, though, Procopius is only revealing his civilian education and lack real military experience, since under the circumstances that arrangement of outriders was utterly standard.

The Romans reunited with John’s force and the Hun outriders and spent the night in Decimum, preparing to approach Carthage the next day. Belisarius, though outwardly confident, had no way of knowing what kind of reception awaited them inside its walls, and conferred with each of his commanders to ensure that discipline would be maintained.

He needn’t have worried.

The Carthaginians threw open the gates and welcomed the Romans as liberators, just as Belisarius himself had predicted. The real genius of the general’s campaign lay in his relationship with the locals, presenting the invasion as a war of liberation rather than conquest. Here, too, we must admit that much of the work had already been done for him by his adversaries. The Vandal experiment had failed. Imposing an outside elite on the established culture left the kingdom vulnerable. It’s a little surprising actually that in seventy years there had been so little assimilation. Whatever incentives had been offered for conversion to Arianism, however many Libyans may have been tempted by them, or had sought to advance themselves by allying with the occupiers, it was not enough to dull the resentments of the native population. That, I think, more than any of the outraged writings of local churchmen like Victor of Vita or other Catholic polemicists, speaks to the ultimate brutality and insensitivity of the Vandal State. Gaiseric had been a brilliant leader, and deserved his reputation as statesman and war leader, but the state he set up was still based on the barbarian image of kings as war leaders and not much more. And he was let down badly by his succession plan, and by the successors that that plan threw up. For the successor kingdoms of the Western empire to succeed, new models would need to develop.

There is still more to say about the Vandal war; Gelimer is not yet dead, for example, and the wide and fair garden path down which Belisarius has been traipsing may turn out to have a few thorns after all. But we’ll leave the mopping up and the new realities for North Africa until next time.

This time, all that’s left is to thank you all for listening and for rating and reviewing and leaving comments on episodes or Facebook or Instagram. As always special gratitude to monthly contributors Paul, Scott, Jesse, Brendan, Alex, Dusty, and Jon. Have a lovely time, all. Until the next time, take care.

Hello and welcome to the Dark Ages Podcast. This is episode 40. The Vandal War.