Thurisind
Thurisind was king of the Gepids, an East Germanic Gothic people, from c. 548 to 560. He was the penultimate Gepid king, and succeeded King Elemund by staging a coup d'état and forcing the king's son into exile. Thurisind's kingdom, known as Gepidia, was located in Central Europe and had its centre in Sirmium, a former Roman city on the Sava River.
His reign was marked by multiple wars with the Lombards, a Germanic people who had arrived in the former Roman province of Pannonia under the leadership of their king, Audoin. Thurisind also had to face the hostility of the Byzantine Empire, which was resentful of the Gepid takeover of Sirmium and anxious to diminish Gepid power in the Pannonian Basin, a plain covering most of modern Hungary and partly including the bordering states. The Byzantines' plans to reduce the Gepids' power took effect when Audoin decisively defeated Thurisind in 551 or 552. The Byzantine Emperor Justinian forced a peace accord on both leaders so that equilibrium in the Pannonian Basin could be sustained.
Thurisind lost his eldest son, Turismod, in the Battle of Asfeld, during which the prince was killed by Alboin, son of Audoin. In about 560, Thurisind died and was succeeded by his remaining son Cunimund, who was killed by Alboin in 567. Cunimund's death marked the end of the Gepid Kingdom and the beginning of the conquest of their territories by the Lombards' allies, the Avars, a nomadic people migrating from the Eurasian Steppe.
Early sources
Of the four early medieval sources relevant to Thurisind that survive, the only one providing independent evidence of the king, accounts of Justinian's wars, and a detailed account of the relations between Gepids and Lombards and their kings is De Bellis, the most important work of Procopius. Considered the greatest historian of the 6th century, Procopius was a Greek writer born in Caesarea in Palestine in 527. The Lombard–Gepid wars are well described in Procopius' work, as the conflict played an important part in the Byzantine plans to invade Italy by a land route.Less relevant is the other 6th-century source, Jordanes' Romana. Of Gothic ancestry, Jordanes served as a notarius for a Byzantine Master of the Soldiers before entering into the ranks of the Catholic clergy and writing his two surviving books, the Romana and the Getica. The latter is a summary of Gothic history, while the lesser known Romana is an abridged account of Roman history written in 551 or 552. According to James O'Donnell, the two works share a pessimistic view of human life in which all secular accomplishments are insignificant compared to religious goals. Jordanes does not explicitly mention Thurisind in the Romana, but speaks of the third Lombard–Gepid War, in which Thurisind participated, in the last passages of the work.
Paul the Deacon was the most important Italian writer of the 8th century. Born in the 720s or 730s, he came from a noble Lombard family from Friuli. He entered the clergy early, and eventually became a monk of the monastery of Monte Cassino. His most famous work is the Historia Langobardorum, a history of the Lombard nation. Written after 787, it is a continuation of his previous major historical work, the Historia Romana, which was based on the Breviarium of Eutropius, with six books added describing historical events up to Justinian's empire. Both of these works mention Thurisind and the third Lombard–Gepid War, which represent the only overlap between the Historia Langobardorum and the Historia Romana. Both books also mention the duel between the kings' sons, an event which is absent in Procopius' writing and is thought to have originated through oral tradition. Similarly, the meeting between Thurisind and Audoin's son at the former's court derives from an oral source.
Rise to power
The Gepids were a major Germanic people in what is now eastern Hungary, western Romania, and northern Serbia. Although the details of his early life are not known, Thurisind is believed to have risen to power in about 548. After the death of Elemund, the previous king, he seized the throne in a coup d'état and forced Elemund's son Ostrogotha into exile. Ostrogotha and his followers found refuge among the Gepids' neighbours and enemies, the Lombards, another Germanic people who had just settled in the western part of the Pannonian Basin. The Gepids had inhabited parts of the basin since the 3rd century. They reached prominence in the 5th century when, under King Ardaric, they played a key role in destroying the Hunnic Empire. Ardaric and his people benefited more than anybody else from this victory, gaining the former Roman province of Dacia.In 504 the Gepids' power was significantly reduced by the Ostrogoths, who cut short their expansion into the Danubian plains. The Gepids restricted themselves to the eastern part of the Pannonian Basin; this was to form the core of Thurisind's dominions, just as it had under the previous Gepid kings. By the early 6th century, the Gepid nobility converted to Arian Christianity, while most of the Gepids remained pagans.
According to the scholar István Boná, Thurisind's rise to power is a typical example of the conflicts among the leading families for the kingship that plagued Gepidia in the 6th century and made it difficult to maintain the succession within the king's family. To contain these obstacles Thurisind made Turismod, his oldest son, commander of the Gepid forces in Sirmium, an important position that made Turismod the king's heir apparent. After Turismod died, his younger brother Cunimund became commander in Sirmium and thus heir apparent.
First war with the Lombards
On becoming king in 548, Thurisind immediately found himself in a difficult situation. Sometime during 546–548, the Byzantine Empire had conspired to convince the Lombards under Audoin to move into Pannonia, a former Roman province bordering the Danube river. Justinian hoped this would keep open the land route from the Balkans to Italy while containing the Gepids, who he considered a serious menace to Byzantine interests on the Balkan frontier. The Gothic War between the Ostrogoths and the Byzantines had been raging on the Italian peninsula since 535; Justinian wanted to be able to rush troops to Italy if they were needed.According to the contemporary Procopius in the De Bello Gothico, Justinian resented the takeover by the Gepids of the formerly Roman city of Sirmium in 537, which may have been voluntarily surrendered by the Ostrogoths to create difficulties for the Byzantines. The Ostrogoths were also occupied with the war in Italy and sought to retain their possessions in the peninsula. Sirmium's takeover was followed in 539 by a bloody confrontation between the Gepids and the Byzantines that had cost the latter the life of Calluc, their Master of the Soldiers, and also the loss to the Gepids of Dacia ripensis and Singidunum. Because of this, Justinian ended the alliance that had bonded the Gepids and Byzantines, and had ceased paying tributes to the Gepids, finding an enemy to set them against in the Lombards.
The build-up towards a war involving Lombards, Gepids, and Byzantines started possibly in 548 or 549, with Audoin and Thurisind each sending an embassy to Justinian's court at Constantinople, in attempts to obtain military support from Justinian or at least, in the case of Thurisind, to get a pledge of neutrality. To sway Justinian, Thurisind's envoys reminded him of their long tradition of alliance and promised to fight against Byzantium's enemies. However, the emperor sided with the Lombards; he made them formal allies and promised to provide troops against the Gepids. From Justinian's perspective, this war was of major importance in the larger context of the Gothic War, because possession of Pannonia was strategically necessary to keep open land communications between Italy and the Balkans.
Historians debate as to when the conflict started. Proposed dates for the first war are either 547 or 549. At the same time as the two peoples took the field, a 10,000-strong Byzantine horse army under the command of John, the magister militum of Illyricum, marched against the Gepids. Before John's arrival, Thurisind offered a truce to Audoin that was accepted. As a result, when the Byzantines arrived, the war had already ended, but not before they had clashed with the Gepids' Herulian allies. To seal the truce, Audoin demanded that Thurisind should give up Ildigis, a pretender to the Lombard crown who lived as a guest at his court. Thurisind refused, but he did force Ildigis to leave the Gepids and search for another refuge.
Second Lombard–Gepid War and tensions with Justinian
| "So the Gepaedes and the Lombards advanced in full force against each other, both being fully prepared for war. And the commanders were, on the side of the Gepaedes, Thurisind, and on that of the Lombards, Auduin ... But that fright which is called panic suddenly fell upon both armies and carried the men all backward in a flight which had no real cause, only the commanders being left where they were with a small number of men." |
| Procopius De Bello Gothico, Book IV, Ch. 18 |
In either 549 or 550, the Gepids and Lombards again marched against each other but, according to Procopius, both armies panicked and no battle took place. As a result, a new war was avoided and Thurisind accepted Audoin's request for a two-year truce. According to István Boná, the panic may be linked to a natural phenomenon: a lunar eclipse took place on June 25/26, 549.
Confronted by an openly hostile Byzantine Empire, and faced with the eventuality that the war with the Lombards would be renewed at the truce's expiration, Thurisind searched for new allies as a way to pressure Justinian. He found assistance from the Kutrigurs, who he ferried across the Danube into the Byzantine Illyricum in 550 or 551, before the truce expired and probably before the Gepids were ready to precipitate a new conflict. In retrospect, it may be they arrived too late instead of too early, if the agreement had been made with the Second Lombard–Gepid War in mind.
Faced with the Kutrigur invasion, Justinian activated his alliance against the invaders, mobilizing the neighbouring Utigurs, who in turn asked for help from the allied Crimean Tetraxites. The latter invaded the Kutrigur homeland, taking advantage of the fact that many warriors were employed at that moment in the Balkans. Informed of the attack, the Kutrigurs were forced to leave the Balkans to defend their homeland on the north-western shore of the Black Sea.
Thurisind protected and promoted another enemy of Byzantium, the Sclaveni. As with the Kutrigurs, Thurisind used his control of the Danube to ferry Slavic raiders to and from Byzantine territory, and obtained payment from them in the process.