Vandal Kingdom

The Vandal Kingdom was the Germanic realm the Vandals and Alans built in North Africa under the Vandalic warlord Gaiseric, lasting ninety-nine years from 435 to 534. Some eighty thousand crossed from Hispania in 429, and when Rome saw they could not be beaten it ceded Numidia and Mauretania in 435; four years later the Vandals seized Carthage, the richest city of the western empire, and from it took Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica and Mallorca. North Africa had fed Rome with grain and taxes, so its loss shook the dying Western Empire, and the sack of Rome in 455 fixed the Vandals in memory as destroyers. Two great Roman fleets failed against them in the 460s. The kingdom kept Roman administration, Arian churches and Vandal armies side by side until the Eastern Empire struck: Belisarius landed in 533, broke Gelimer at Ad Decimum and Tricamarum, and in 534 Carthage was Roman again.