Warriors of the Dark Ages - Jennifer Laing

Were the Huns, Goths, Vandals, Franks and Saxons as mindlessly violent as popular belief suggests? Or were they only too human, struggling for freedom and survival?Society was in turmoil – political instability and economic uncertainty divided loyalties in Europe. Entrepreneurs and opportunists were prepared to risk all in bids for power. Men such as Attila the Hun, Gaiseric the Vandal and Alaric the Goth pitted their wits against the leaders of the rapidly mutating Roman establishment in the fourth to sixth centuries.Studded with painstakingly researched anecdotes of scandal, court gossip, superstition and fanatical religious beliefs, Warriors of the Dark Ages takes a refreshing look at a complex story of pawns and manipulators, saints and sinners, which was resolved when people with very different values and outlooks learned to accept each other. The finale was uplifting – a tale of human conflict painfully moulded into a brilliant new future as modern Europe and its component states. Through the writings of ancient commentators, glimpse the love, hate, treachery and, at times, humour as prevalent in the European Dark Ages as they are today.