Gesalech

Gesalech (* before 502; † 511 on the Durance ) was king of the Visigoths from 507 to 511.

Live and act

origin

Gesalech was an illegitimate son of Alaric II. He was able to assert himself as his father's successor because his younger half-brother Amalaric (502-531), the only son of Alaric II from his marriage to a daughter of Theodoric the Great , King of the Ostrogoths , was still a minor.

Beginning of rule

Gesalech came to power after his father fell in the lost battle of Vouillé against the Franks in 507 . Though he obtained power as his father's heir, an act of electoral activity seems to have taken place during his elevation that had more than just formal significance. This is to be interpreted as a revival of the Visigoth suffrage; when Gesalech's father Alaric was raised in 484, there had been no real election of a king, but only a "confirmation" of the succession by those entitled to vote.

Gesalech was a weak king. After the crushing defeat of his father, he fled to Barcelona in the Hispanic part of his empire, which was not threatened by the Franks. He could not prevent the victorious Franks from conquering most of the Gallic territory of the Visigoths. This sealed the collapse of the Tolosan Empire of the Visigoths, named after the capital Tolosa ( Toulouse ) .

Relationship to Theodoric the Great

Theodoric the Great initially recognized Gesalech as the rightful King of the Visigoths. An Ostrogothic army occupied Septimania , a coastal strip northeast of the Pyrenees, which was the only remnant of the former Visigothic dominion in Gaul to be preserved in the Visigoth Empire. Then the Ostrogoths advanced as far as Barcelona, ​​where the Visigoths were already opposed to Gesalech. Gesalech was overthrown and driven out by the Ostrogoths; he fled to North Africa to the kingdom of Thrasamund , the king of the Vandals . Theodoric the Great took over the rule of the Visigoths on the Iberian Peninsula and in Septimania; he ruled there as king in his own name, not as guardian of Alaric's underage son Amalaric. The administration of the Visigothic Empire was carried out by representatives from Theodoric.

Stay in North Africa and death

Thrasamund was an opponent of Theodoric; therefore he not only granted Gesalech asylum, but provided him with money and thus enabled him to try to regain the power he had lost. Gesalech went to southern Gaul, where he gathered followers and then dared an attack on the Ostrogoths in Hispania. The company failed; Gesalech's troops were defeated before Barcelona by Theodoric's general Ibba , whereupon he fled to Gaul. He wanted to get to the empire of the Burgundians to find asylum there, but he was killed while fleeing on the Durance .

literature

• Herwig Wolfram : The Goths: from the beginning to the middle of the sixth century . Draft of a historical ethnography. CH Beck, 1990, ISBN 978-3-406-33733-8 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Herwig Wolfram: The Goths: from the beginning to the middle of the sixth century. Draft of a historical ethnography . 1990, p. 246 .
2. ^ Dietrich Claude : Nobility, Church and Kingship in the Visigoth Empire . Sigmaringen 1971, p. 47 and note 1.

predecessor	Office	successor
Alaric II	Visigoth kings 507–511	Theodoric the Great