Puzzle No. 23: Chain

On 9 August 378 CE, near Adrianople in Thrace (modern Edirne, Turkey), the eastern emperor Valens led the Roman field army against Gothic forces under Fritigern, a coalition of Therving and Greuthung Goths together with Alans and others who had crossed the Danube fleeing the Huns and then revolted against Roman mistreatment. Misjudging the enemy's strength and attacking before his western co-emperor arrived, Valens suffered a catastrophic defeat; perhaps two-thirds of the eastern army was destroyed and Valens himself was killed, his body never recovered. The contemporary historian Ammianus Marcellinus compared the slaughter to Cannae. The defeat exposed Roman vulnerability to the peoples beyond the frontier, forced the settlement of Goths inside imperial territory as semi-autonomous federates, and is frequently treated as a milestone in the chain of events leading to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. Adrianople signalled a lasting shift in the military balance between Rome and the Germanic peoples massing along its borders, and it foreshadowed the barbarian incursions of the following century.

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Before Battle of Adrianople: Goths annihilate the Eastern Roman army

After Battle of Adrianople: Goths annihilate the Eastern Roman army

After Battle of Adrianople: Goths annihilate the Eastern Roman army

After Battle of Adrianople: Goths annihilate the Eastern Roman army

After Battle of Adrianople: Goths annihilate the Eastern Roman army

After Battle of Adrianople: Goths annihilate the Eastern Roman army

After Battle of Adrianople: Goths annihilate the Eastern Roman army

After Battle of Adrianople: Goths annihilate the Eastern Roman army

After Battle of Adrianople: Goths annihilate the Eastern Roman army

After Battle of Adrianople: Goths annihilate the Eastern Roman army