Deathblow to Western Roman Empire?

Not enough manpower or clout to get away with that. Without Africa the WRE doesn't have the monopoly on force to pull off such a maneuver. Plus it alienates the elites in Gaul and Pannonia who would then chose the Barbarians over the government in order to safeguard their lands.

As well, it likely would be very difficult to do. Elites were already shifting to private militias and other forces to protect their land, in a very crude and primitive form of the landed aristocracy that was to come. They would fight back, and while they could be beaten, its another unnecessary distraction for the armed forces of the West.
Problem is that the empire's control over Gaul is extremely loose anyway.It is far more important to consolidate over what you can get definite control over rather than care how places that you have very little control over feels.In other words,you can't get shit done if your house is on fire.Before Majorian,and after him as well,the empire's connection to Gaul was basically cut.The entirety of Hispania was lost to the Barbarians.What is important is to get a loyal,sustainable military force.
 
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Deleted member 67076

Problem is that the empire's control over Gaul is extremely loose anyway.It is far more important to consolidate over what you can get definite control over rather than care how places that you have very little control over.In other words,you can't get shit done if your house is on fire.Before Majorian,and after him as well,the empire's connection to Gaul was basically cut.The entirety of Hispania was lost to the Barbarians.What is important is to get a loyal,sustainable military force.
Which you get from African, (some Italian) and Hispanian money, for the most part. But remember, even Odoacer didn't remove land from the nobility when he had total control; he used public land to settle the various Germanic troops all throughout Italy, and it was enough to satisfy them. Besides, Majorian and other later emperors did manage to get the nobles to pay taxes given everyone knew how big the crisis was. .

I mean I do agree, Gaul is tenuous at best, but the people at the time still thought they could enforce control in Gaul (outside of the Foedetari controlled zones). Eventually there will be a shift once peace is back and people realize that.
 

Sulemain

Banned
Slaughter the Italian elite and confiscate their wealth.The main problem was that the Italian elite wasn't paying any taxes but were occupying huge tracks of farmland in Italy.

The problem with that plan is that said wealthy elite form the majority of the commanders of the most Roman parts of your army.
 

Sulemain

Banned
This all brings up the amusing counter-factual of a surviving Roman Empire out of Africa resembling, in terms of territory, an expanded version of Carthage before the First Punic War.
 
The problem with that plan is that said wealthy elite form the majority of the commanders of the most Roman parts of your army.
Not according to what I've heard.Most aristocrats of this era no longer lead armies.If anything,a large part if the officer corps seems to be filled with people like Ricimer from what I've heard.
 
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Its just incredibly ineffective. Even if you could pull it off, there are far better ways to raise funds than "kill them all". Inevitably, you have to give those lands to somebody to manage, and this new wealthy landowning class is going to remember what happened to their predecessors and plan accordingly.

Even during the height of the empire, Augustus nearly got lynched for merely confiscating the lands of the wealthy. The only reason the triumvjrs were able to launch the proscriptions was because they had the only army in town. That's less a sure thing when some well connected aristocrats could call on ambitious Germanic warlords, an ambitious Roman governor like Avitus, some friends in the government, or the eastern Roman emperor, to prevent their wholesale slaughter.
 
Best way to save the WRE is to put in place a dynasty of Romanized Nicene Germans. They'd be seen as "one of us" by the German members of the military and be Romanized enough to preserve some Roman institutions. You could have this work pretty late as long as you have the right guy with the right army in place. You just need someone in place who's Nicene rather than the Goths early on enough before Roman institutions have decayed too badly and you'd end up with a more Roman version of the Carolinian Empire/HRE where the ruling class can still be assimilated.
 
Best way to save the WRE is to put in place a dynasty of Romanized Nicene Germans. They'd be seen as "one of us" by the German members of the military and be Romanized enough to preserve some Roman institutions. You could have this work pretty late as long as you have the right guy with the right army in place. You just need someone in place who's Nicene rather than the Goths early on enough before Roman institutions have decayed too badly and you'd end up with a more Roman version of the Carolinian Empire/HRE where the ruling class can still be assimilated.

Perhaps if Arbogastes wins the Battle of the Frigidus in 394. Then you might get an Empire relying on Frankish mercenaries rather than Gothic ones, and the Franks might go for Nicene Christianity rather than Arian.
 
Best way to save the WRE is to put in place a dynasty of Romanized Nicene Germans. They'd be seen as "one of us" by the German members of the military and be Romanized enough to preserve some Roman institutions. You could have this work pretty late as long as you have the right guy with the right army in place. You just need someone in place who's Nicene rather than the Goths early on enough before Roman institutions have decayed too badly and you'd end up with a more Roman version of the Carolinian Empire/HRE where the ruling class can still be assimilated.
Isn't Stilicho the guy you are looking for?
 
The Huns need more credit as a problem that in combination with other problems, made things worse for the Romans. Not only were they themselves a quite powerful and dangerous enemy, they caused such chaos, and movement of barbarians, and in addition to that the Romans came to grant favors to barbarians to help face the Huns, that it made things quite worse.

So looking at the Roman enemies you had Huns, Sassanids, various more powerful than before barbarian tribes, and a Roman army that was increasingly relying on barbarians, some of which loyal, but some with mixed loyalties, willing to follow their king or own interest over the roman one. And then you had the more lasting (but not necessarily permanent if both parts continued to last. Perhaps a figure would end up reuniting both parts in time) division than before that became somewhat institutionalized, and less cooperation among the west and east.

Add to that some bad luck, timing, lack of the right leadership, at the right time and it was a perfect storm.
 
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Isn't Stilicho the guy you are looking for?
Stilicho wasn't really that German. He may (its not certain) have had a Vandal father but his mother was of Roman nobility, he was raised a Roman, went through Roman civil and military institutions, and had no real role as a leader of any germans. He was an ordinary Roman bureaucrat/general, his Germanic ancestry was only brought up when it was used in an attempt to slander him. To the germans he was a Roman, nothing more.
 
Stilicho wasn't really that German. He may (its not certain) have had a Vandal father but his mother was of Roman nobility, he was raised a Roman, went through Roman civil and military institutions, and had no real role as a leader of any germans. He was an ordinary Roman bureaucrat/general, his Germanic ancestry was only brought up when it was used in an attempt to slander him. To the germans he was a Roman, nothing more.
Which makes him a Romanized Germanic Nicene.
To my knowledge,he was extremely popular with the Germanic component of the army,but remarkably less to the purely Roman part.
 
Which makes him a Romanized Germanic Nicene.
To my knowledge,he was extremely popular with the Germanic component of the army,but remarkably less to the purely Roman part.
It doesn't make him a romanized German. His mother was of Roman nobility, with important enough connections to fast track him right into the emperors inner circle.
 
With a POD of a successful recapture of N Africa, I think it's possible that Emperor Majorian remains in power for quite some time longer. He would in this case probably move to subdue the barbarians in Spain and southern Gaul giving them a stark choice: integrate into the empire and Romanize, or be killed to the last of them. Then, moving north through the rest of Gaul, pretty much the same thing.

I think this is a bit over-optimistic. The Romans hadn't been able to keep the Germans out in 405 when the strategic situation was much more favourable to them, or to properly subdue them under Constantius. A victory in Africa would probably allow the Empire to survive, but a reconquest of Gaul is unlikely, especially in such a short timescale.

The Roman social structure too badly needed a thorough overhaul as it by itself was the source of innumerable problems. Complete separation of the civilian administration from the military would mean that no one person holding all the power in a province as well as taking away the powers of the general to pay the salaries of the troops under his command and paying the salaries directly by the government itself. Ensuring that the military positions were occupied by military personnel only not some spoiled scions of senators who didn't even know how to command a small detachment properly let alone leading an army in combat. Same for the civilian administration. Actually the Senate had had to be done away with at the earliest moment because instead of making any meaningful contribution to the state, the Senators were engaged in nothing but warming up their own pockets. And tax reforms forcing the filthy rich Senators to pay some taxes to the government and extracting as much money as possible from them must be in the cards.

I think you're being unfair on the Senate -- it was, after all, Senatorial commanders who won Rome's empire, and professional commanders who lost it. In many ways, using Senators for major commands was arguably a plus, since it meant that the armies were all in the hands of men whose career structure involved regular stints at the capital, making it easier for the Emperor to keep an eye on them, monitor them for disloyalty, and cultivate personal relationships with them. Career soldiers who might never once visit Rome were much harder to keep track of.

I agree with you about making the Senators pay their taxes, though. In fact, I might even say that that was one of the top two things that needed to be done, alongside taking Africa. Even if confined to Italy, a WRE which could effectively raise taxes from its landowners would probably have been able to at least defend itself, even if more ambitious schemes of reconquest would require the wealth of Africa to fund them.
 
The problem was not, that the roman armies were led by amateurs. The senators were as much amateurs as the equestrians. The equestrian career of the principate included not more time for military offices than the senatorial career.

The problem was, that the roman emperors never forced the senators and equestrians to invest more time and become fulltime buerocrats/militarians.

The few vir militaris, who served voluntarily without the usual interuption were leading te bigger armies anyways. So NO! The major roman armies were usually not led by amateurs. This is a myth.

But it would have been beneficial to have more of these dedicated guys.
 
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