Alemanni
The Alemanni or Alamanni were a confederation of Germanic tribes on the Upper Rhine River during the 1st millennium. They are first mentioned by Cassius Dio in the context of the campaign of Roman emperor Caracalla of 213 AD, the Alemanni captured the Agri Decumates in 260 AD, and later expanded into present-day Alsace and northern Switzerland, leading to the establishment of the Old High German language in those regions, which by the 8th century were collectively referred to as Alamannia.
In 496 AD, the Alemanni were conquered by the Frankish leader Clovis and incorporated into his dominions. Mentioned as still pagan allies of the Christian Franks, the Alemanni were gradually Christianized during the 7th century. The Lex Alamannorum is a record of their customary law during this period. Until the 8th century, Frankish suzerainty over Alemannia was mostly nominal. However, after an uprising by Theudebald, the Duke of Alamannia, Carloman executed the Alamannic nobility and installed Frankish dukes.
As the Carolingian Empire weakened in later years, the Alemannic counts became almost independent, and a struggle for supremacy took place between them and the Bishopric of Constance. The chief family in Alamannia was that of the counts of Raetia Curiensis, who were sometimes called margraves, and one of whom, Burchard II, established the Duchy of Swabia, which was recognized by Henry the Fowler in 919 AD and became a stem duchy of the Holy Roman Empire.
The area settled by the Alemanni corresponds roughly to the area where Alemannic German dialects remain spoken, including German Swabia and Baden, French Alsace, German-speaking Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Austrian Vorarlberg. The French-language name of Germany, Allemagne, is derived from their name, from Old French aleman, and from French was loaned into a number of other languages, including Middle English, which commonly used the term Almains for Germans. Likewise, the Arabic name for Germany is ألمانيا, the Turkish is Almanya, the Catalan is Alemanya, the Spanish is Alemania, the Portuguese is Alemanha, the Welsh is Yr Almaen and the Persian is آلمان.
Name
According to Gaius Asinius Quadratus, the name Alamanni means "all men". It indicates that they were a conglomeration drawn from various Germanic tribes. The Romans and the Greeks called them as such. This derivation was accepted by Edward Gibbon, in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and by the anonymous contributor of notes assembled from the papers of Nicolas Fréret, published in 1753.This etymology has remained the standard derivation of the name.
An alternative suggestion proposes derivation from *alah "sanctuary".
Walafrid Strabo in the ninth century remarked, in discussing the people of Switzerland and the surrounding regions, that only foreigners called them the Alemanni, but that they gave themselves the name of Suebi.
The Suebi are given the alternative name of Ziuwari in an Old High German gloss, interpreted by Jacob Grimm as Martem colentes. Annio da Viterbo a scholar and historian of the 15th century claimed the Alemanni had their name from the Hebrew language, as in Hebrew the river Rhine was translated into Mannum and the people who live at its shores were called Alemannus. This was refuted by Beatus Rhenanus, a humanist of the 16th century. Rhenanus argued the term Alemanni was meant for the whole Germanic people only in late antiquity and before it was only meant to designate the population of an island in the North Sea.
First appearance in historical record
Early Roman writers did not mention the Alemanni, and it is likely that they had not yet come to exist. In his Germania Tacitus does not mention the Alemanni. He uses the term Agri Decumates to describe the region between the Rhine, Main and Danube rivers. He says that it had once been the home of the Helvetians, who had moved westwards into Gaul in the time of Julius Caesar. The people living there in Caesar's time are not Germanic. Instead, "Reckless adventurers from Gaul, emboldened by want, occupied this land of questionable ownership. After a while, our frontier having been advanced, and our military positions pushed forward, it was regarded as a remote nook of our empire and a part of a Roman province."File:Alamannischi Girtelbschleg.jpg|thumb|Alemannic belt mountings, from a seventh-century grave in the grave field at Weingarten
The Alemanni were first mentioned by Cassius Dio describing the campaign of Caracalla in 213. At that time, they apparently dwelt in the basin of the Main, to the south of the Chatti.
Cassius Dio portrays the Alemanni as victims of this treacherous emperor. They had asked for his help, according to Dio, but instead he colonized their country, changed their place names, and executed their warriors under a pretext of coming to their aid. When he became ill, the Alemanni claimed to have put a hex on him. Caracalla, it was claimed, tried to counter this influence by invoking his ancestral spirits.
In retribution, Caracalla then led the Legio II Traiana Fortis against the Alemanni, who lost and were pacified for a time. The legion was as a result honoured with the name Germanica. The fourth-century fictional Historia Augusta, Life of Antoninus Caracalla, relates that Caracalla then assumed the name Alemannicus, at which Helvius Pertinax jested that he should really be called Geticus Maximus, because in the year before he had murdered his brother, Geta.
Through much of his short reign, Caracalla was known for unpredictable and arbitrary operations launched by surprise after a pretext of peace negotiations. If he had any reasons of state for such actions, they remained unknown to his contemporaries. Whether or not the Alemanni had been previously neutral, they were certainly further influenced by Caracalla to become thereafter notoriously implacable enemies of Rome.
This mutually antagonistic relationship is perhaps the reason why the Roman writers persisted in calling the Alemanni "barbari," meaning "savages." The archaeology, however, shows that they were largely Romanized, lived in Roman-style houses and used Roman artefacts, the Alemannic women having adopted the Roman fashion of the tunica even earlier than the men.
Most of the Alemanni were probably at the time, in fact, resident in or close to the borders of Germania Superior. Although Dio is the earliest writer to mention them, Ammianus Marcellinus used the name to refer to Germans on the Limes Germanicus in the time of Trajan's governorship of the province shortly after it was formed, around 98–99 AD. At that time, the entire frontier was being fortified for the first time. Trees from the earliest fortifications found in Germania Inferior are dated by dendrochronology to 99–100 AD.
Ammianus relates that much later the Emperor Julian undertook a punitive expedition against the Alemanni, who by then were in Alsace, and crossed the Main, entering the forest, where the trails were blocked by felled trees. As winter was upon them, they reoccupied a
"fortification which was founded on the soil of the Alemanni that Trajan wished to be called with his own name".
In this context, the use of Alemanni is possibly an anachronism, but it reveals that Ammianus believed they were the same people, which is consistent with the location of the Alemanni of Caracalla's campaigns.
Conflicts with the Roman Empire
The Alemanni were continually engaged in conflicts with the Roman Empire in the third and fourth centuries. They launched a major invasion of Gaul and northern Italy in 268 when the Romans were forced to denude much of their German frontier of troops in response to a massive invasion of the Goths from the east. Their raids throughout the three parts of Gaul were traumatic: Gregory of Tours mentions their destructive force at the time of Valerian and Gallienus, when the Alemanni assembled under their "king", whom he calls Chrocus, who acted "by the advice, it is said, of his wicked mother, and overran the whole of the Gauls, and destroyed from their foundations all the temples which had been built in ancient times. And coming to Clermont he set on fire, overthrew and destroyed that shrine which they call Vasso Galatae in the Gallic tongue," martyring many Christians. Thus sixth-century Gallo-Romans of Gregory's class, surrounded by the ruins of Roman temples and public buildings, attributed the destruction they saw to the plundering raids of the Alemanni.In the early summer of 268, the Emperor Gallienus halted their advance into Italy but then had to deal with the Goths. When the Gothic campaign ended in Roman victory at the Battle of Naissus in September, Gallienus's successor Claudius Gothicus turned north to deal with the Alemanni, who were swarming over all Italy north of the Po River.
After efforts to secure a peaceful withdrawal failed, Claudius forced the Alemanni to battle at the Battle of Lake Benacus in November. The Alemanni were routed, forced back into Germany, and did not threaten Roman territory for many years afterwards.
Their most famous battle against Rome took place in Argentoratum, in 357, where they were defeated by Julian, later Emperor of Rome, and their king Chnodomarius was taken prisoner to Rome.
On January 2, 366, the Alemanni yet again crossed the frozen Rhine in large numbers, to invade the Gallic provinces, this time being defeated by Valentinian. In the great mixed invasion of 406, the Alemanni appear to have crossed the Rhine river a final time, conquering and then settling what is today Alsace and a large part of the Swiss Plateau. The crossing is described in Wallace Breem's historical novel Eagle in the Snow. The Chronicle of Fredegar gives the account. At Alba Augusta the devastation was so complete, that the Christian bishop retired to Viviers, but in Gregory's account at Mende in Lozère, also deep in the heart of Gaul, bishop Privatus was forced to sacrifice to idols in the very cave where he was later venerated. It is thought this detail may be a generic literary ploy to epitomize the horrors of barbarian violence.