The Conquest of a Continent; or, The Expansion of Races in America. Grant Madison

main body of the Gothic nation was split in two in 375 A.D. by the invasion of the Huns, a Tatar people from Central Asia. Those who took refuge in the west, in South Germany and Gaul, were called Visigoths. A part of the Visigoths, however, fled across the Danube, devastated the provinces of the Byzantine Empire and slew the reigning emperor, Valens, in 378 A.D.

      The eastern branch, or Ostrogoths, were conquered by the Huns and remained in Dacia. Later, after Attila's death and the disruption of his empire, the Ostrogoths, under the great Theodoric, invaded Italy and came near to building a unified Italian nation nearly fourteen hundred years ago.

      The Visigoths, who had been long in contact with Roman civilization, occupied Gaul. When Attila crossed the Rhine in 451 A.D. they fought on the side of the Romans at Chalons, one of the decisive battles of history, and their king, the Visigothic Theodoric, fell in the battle. The Ostrogoths, on the other hand, were the best troops of the Hunnish host.

      The Visigoths entered Spain in 412 A.D. Their allies, the Suevi, conquered and ruled Galicia and the provinces on the Atlantic which now constitute Portugal. The invasion of Spain by the Visigoths resulted in the expulsion of a closely related Teutonic people, the Vandals, who, with their allies, a remnant of the Alans, crossed over into Africa in 428 A.D. On the site of Carthage the Vandals erected a kingdom which lasted a hundred years. They ruled the African coast westward to the Atlantic, conquered and settled in Corsica and under their king, Genseric, sacked Rome in 455 A.D.

      These Vandals, originally from Sweden, first appear in history on the Baltic coast, thence they passed down through Central Europe and westward into France and thence into Spain, where they settled and remained until they were driven into Africa. They may have left behind some of their blood to mingle with the later-coming Germanic tribes in Spain. It is possible also, though not probable, that to them are due some of the blond characters still found in the Atlas Mountains. As a race, however, their disappearance is complete.

      The Visigoths maintained their control in Spain until 711 A.D. when the Mohammedan Arabs crossed the Straits of Gibraltar and completely defeated the Visigothic armies. Why the power of this people collapsed so suddenly and completely is one of the mysteries of history, but after the great seven days' battle on the Guadalquivir in which their king, Roderick, was slain, the whole peninsula was easily conquered by the Arabs. At this time, it is true, the blood of the Visigoths had been greatly mixed with that of the subject races, resulting perhaps in a weakening of their fighting power.

      One of the reasons for the easy conquest of the Visigoths by the Moors lay in the hatred for them as Arians by the old Orthodox Catholic population who regarded their conquerors as heretics, and the assistance rendered by the Jews whom the Visigoths had treated harshly and who are reputed to have induced the Moors to make their invasion.

      A remnant of the Visigoths fled northerly into southern Gaul, which was called Gothia Septimania. There the name Visigoths was corrupted into Vigot or Bigot, which was a term of reproach used by the orthodox natives.

      It is important to note that the relations between the populations of the Roman Empire and the invading Teutonic Nordics were greatly affected by the fact that the latter were the followers of the schismatic monk Arius who, about 350 A.D., converted the Goths to a Unitarian form of Christianity. The denial of the Trinity by the Barbarians roused a fierce hatred among their subject peoples. Ostrogoths and Visigoths, Vandals and Alans, Burgundians and Lombards, all were Arians. The Franks alone among the Barbarians were converted directly to Orthodox Christianity. This greatly facilitated their conquest of Gaul. In consequence, France for more than a thousand years was regarded as the eldest son of the church.

      Down to our time, the aristocracy of Spain, and more especially that of Portugal, shows a marked inheritance of blondness coming down largely from Visigothic and Suevic ancestry. The province of Galicia still retains very appreciable marks of Gothic blood, especially in a high percentage of light-colored eyes.

      The Visigoths left behind them in Spain a legacy of names which now are regarded as most typically Spanish, as for instance Rodrigo, Alfonso, Alvarez, Guzman, and Velasquez. In the same manner we find a Nordic legacy of names reaching from Italy into France even where little Nordic blood is left. In other words, while blood dies out, names persist.

      At the time of Spanish greatness the predominant blood in the peninsula was still Gothic,[3] and the adventurers who went overseas and were lost to the race were of this blood. In Portugal, the one great poet, Camoens,[4] and in Spain Cervantes, who was his contemporary, were descendants of the old Gothic nobility and had marked Nordic characteristics, as had the Cid Campeador. The case was the same in Italy[5] at this period. The great men were from the northern part of the peninsula. Dante, Michaelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, and virtually all of the leading men of the Renaissance were blond Nordics. Columbus himself, supposed to have come from Genoa, is described as having blue eyes and fair hair. In southern France, in the so-called Gothic Septimania and in the country around Toulouse, the home of the Troubadours, Gothic names abound.[6] A similar condition prevails throughout France. French names are Gothic, Frankish, or Burgundian today, though disguised by their spelling, as, for example, Joffre from Gotfrid. In the opinion of Count deLapouge, France as late as the settlement of America was more Nordic than is the Germany of today.

      The main body of the Visigoths who survived the conquest by the Arabs took refuge in the northwestern part of Spain where they maintained some small kingdoms which ultimately coalesced and became the nucleus of a Christian Spain, which in the course of a seven-hundred-year crusade gradually reconquered the peninsula and finally expelled the Moors in 1492.

      The Arabs who conquered Spain, and the Islamized Persians and Moors, had a wonderful period of intellectual expansion during the seventh and following centuries. This amazing outburst of genius, which preserved for us much of the science and learning of the Greeks, came to an end when the Mediterranean Mohammedans began mixing their blood with that of their Negro slaves. Mohammedanism has always appealed to the lower races, especially the Negro, because when they became followers of the Prophet they were admitted to social and racial equality with the superior race. This and the lure of the Negro women ruined the Arab race. Today, all through Africa and Egypt and in parts of Arabia, the so-called Arabs are often Negroid in appearance. In this case polygamy was a racial curse because the richer and abler men had the most slave women and left a larger progeny of half-breed children than did their poorer countrymen.

      The exact reverse happened in the case of the Turks, who were originally Alpines from Central Asia strongly mixed with Mongol. They conquered Asia Minor and the nations of Southeast Europe up to and including Hungary. Everywhere they seized the most beautiful women and, being polygamists, the ablest Turks had the most children by the finest women of the subject countries. Thus the Turks bred up as the Arabs bred down. To this day the Turks are the superior race in Asia Minor and have eliminated, at least from the ruling classes, practically all the physical traces of their Asiatic origin.

      The women of the Caucasus, especially the Circassians and Georgians, who retain some remnants of the Nordic Alans, have always been noted for their physical beauty. They were in great demand in Turkish Harems.

      Incidentally the Kurds are, or rather were, Nordic and it is interesting to note that Saladin, of Crusading fame, was a Kurd.

      Concerning other Teutonic Nordics, we need mention only those whose blood enters largely into modern nations. Of these, one of the most interesting peoples were the Burgundians, who settled on the western bank of the upper Rhine in what is now Alsace, and in Burgundian France and French-speaking Switzerland. They were a very promising and flourishing nation until their overthrow in the middle of the fifth century by Attila and his Huns, a tragedy which supplies the subject matter of the Niebelungenlied. Appollonius Sidonius refers to the Burgundians as being seven feet high; while this is an obvious exaggeration, it is interesting to note that in the old Burgundian provinces we find the tallest stature in France today.

      When the Lombards first