Gaiseric Leads the Vandals into North Africa

After decades of turmoil in Gaul and Hispania, the Vandal king Gaiseric looked south. Africa—a chain from Tingis and Septem across Mauretania to the rich Byzacena—offered land for followers and leverage against Rome. In 429, ships loaded with fighters and families crossed from Baetica into Tingitania, breasting the narrow strait where Hercules’ pillars framed blue water and hard choices [13].

The landing was not a raid. It was migration with teeth. Columns moved east along the coast, taking towns, recruiting allies, and testing Roman garrisons. The creak of wagons joined the clink of armor. Roman commanders in Carthage and Hippo Regius scrambled to assemble defenses while sending panicked letters to Ravenna: Africa was not a frontier; it was the treasury’s heartbeat [13][15][16].

Gaiseric exploited divisions among Roman elites and the distracted Western court. Ravenna’s marsh‑surrounded palace managed crises on multiple fronts: Visigothic pressure in Gaul, politics in Italy, and now an African emergency. Reinforcements were meager. Negotiations flickered, but Gaiseric’s plan did not hinge on imperial permission. He marched east, probing rivers and roads, learning how slowly Rome could move.

Along the Tell, villages watched dust plumes announce Vandal columns. The deep green of olive groves gave way to columns of smoke. At Hippo Regius, Bishop Augustine would die during a siege in 430, a symbol of the old order passing under new pressure. The Vandals’ advance revealed a strategic truth: if Rome could neither block the straits nor field a strong African army, then the richest provinces in the West were vulnerable to an organized migrant‑army [13][15].

The Senate in Rome listened for news over the murmur of the Tiber. Carthage’s customs dues underwrote armies, fleets, and the bribes that kept federates loyal. Without them, the balance of payments for force would tilt hard toward collapse. Gaiseric knew this. His men wore captured cloaks and carried shields repainted in their colors. The sound of their approach was the future of Western finance rattling across Roman roads.

By the early 430s, the Vandals had carved a path toward Carthage. The Western court faced a choice it hated: sue for terms that conceded gains, or fight without means. It tried both, in turn. Gaiseric thanked them by continuing his march.