Bagaudae refers to the insurgent movements against the Romans, which took place in Gaul and Hispania between the 3rd and the 5th century. These revolts were carried out by peasants, slaves and people who were disgruntled with the Roman taxes.

1. What were the bagaudae?
Bagaudae refers to the insurgent movements against the Romans, which took place in Gaul
and Hispania between the 3rd and the 5th century. These revolts were carried out by
peasants, slaves and people who were disgruntled with the Roman taxes. The word bagauda
has a double etymology meaning, on the one hand, “thief” or “rebel” in Latin, on the other
hand, “warrior” or “tumultuous assembly” in Celtic.
Who were the bagaudae?
The Bagaudae were groups of insurgent free peasants, tenant farmers, freed slaves and
slaves who appeared during the Crisis of the 3rd Century, in the less Romanized zones of
Gaul and Hispania and revolted against the landowners. This social revolt was a
phenomenon of peasant nature. In the anonymous book Querolus there is a passage where
lifestyle among the territories controlled by the bagaudae is described as a society located
in Armorica in the 5th century.
The Roman geographical area of Armorica.
This bagaudae society was ruled by laws that were not imposed by the Roman authority,
which shows the rejection to any Roman norm. Their life was not anarchic, but it presented
some actions which seem to be the expropriation of lands and equality. Their armies’
organization was based in a primitive division between the infantry, formed by peasants and
a cavalry formed by shepherds.
Bagaudae was a strong reaction of the less Romanized areas because of their low
integration in the structures of the Roman Empire. Their objectives were to separate from
the Roman Empire and build their own independent State. They rejected the high taxes and
the administrative corruption and fought against the concentration of private property on
the landowners and the increase of imperial authoritarianism.

2. Bagaudae movement during the Low Roman
Empire 3rd
-4th
centuries).
Since the year 235 BC, a large period of “military anarchy” started. Fights of the military
leaders for power ended with the balance that Augustus’ Pax Romana represented. The
balance between expansionism and the resistance against the Barbarian invasions, the
expenses for the war and the State’s resources, production and consumption, the
countryside and the cities, the Senate power and the monarchists broke down.
Map of the invasions of the Germanic peoples.
The end of the wars against other peoples provoked socio-economic problems due to the
end of the slavery model of workforce. The economic crisis in Hispania provoked three
socio-economic changes:
● Change in the property distribution. The landowner class (honestiores) started
concentrating all the lands, where they lived and where the tenant farmer workforce
predominated, replacing the slavery workforce.
● During the Lower Empire, craftsmanship and trade decreased, cities started declining
and ruralization began: producers tried to be self-sufficient, barter spread and
monetary economy disappear.
● Class struggle, as a result of the extreme inequality between honestiores, formed by
senators, the high clergymen and the Barbarian chiefs and, on the other side,
humiliores, formed by peasants, craftsmen and tenant farmers.
Under the Pax Romana, precedent movements of the Bagaudae took place: the Third
Servile War, led by Spartacus or the revolution of Maternus, who deserted the Gaul army
and led slaves and peasants who attacked villages in Aquitania and the North of Hispania in
the 2nd century.

3. Spartacus, made by Denis Foyatier (1830)
Bagaudae movement (3rd
-4th
centuries)
There are two phases in the bagaudae, which developed in the regions of Gaul and
Hispania:
● 3rd century, in the Gallic province of Lugdunensis.
● 5th century, in the Hispanic province of Tarraconensis.
The bagaudae developed in the less Romanized provinces of the Roman Empire.
➔ First bagaudae movement (3rd century)
They started in 284, when Diocletian reached the throne.
Laureate bust of Diocletian.

4. Taking advantage of the political instability originated due to a struggle for power and the
German and Frankish invasions, an army formed by peasants, commanded by Aelianus and
Amandus rebelled against the Roman power. The emperor sent the army, led by Caesar
Maximianus, to end with the uprising and restore order. These events developed in the
region located in the Tractus Armoricanus, between the estuary of river Loire and that of the
Seine. Between 435 and 440, the bagauda of Tibatton extended and provoked the
separation of the Tractus Armoricanus, Aquitania and Belgium, but they were defeated by
Hun army. Later, a doctor called Eudoxius started a new revolt, but he was vanquished by
the Huns as well.
➔ Second Bagaudae movement (5th century)
In Hispania, the bagaudae movement took place in the Tarraconensis province
between 441 and 454. The objectives of the Hispanic bagaudae were the big villas and the
lands of the bishops. Hydatius, a historian bishop in the Roman province of Gallaecia,
explains that Asturius, master of the militia, was sent to fight against the bagaudae in
Tarraconensis in 441. However, he did not have much success, although he killed a great
number of bagaudae, because he was replaced by the Hispanic Merobaudes in 443.
Merobaudes defeated the bagaudae in Araciel, near Pamplona. In 449, Basilio, leading a
party of bagaudae, killed some Barbarians under the Roman military service in the church of
Tarazona, where the bishop of the city, Leon, was hurt and later died because of the
wounds. This complicated the situation, because the Church and the Barbarians intervened
in the conflict. The same year, Basilio, together with the Sueve king Rechiarius, attacked
the city of Zaragoza, sacked Lleida and took captives.
Statue of Rechiar, Suebi king of Galicia.
Some years later, the region of Braga was also agitated by the bagaudae movements. The
Visigothic king Theodoric II sent his brother Frederic to fight against the bagaudae, who
finally defeated them in 454 or, according to other sources, he could not defeat them, but

5. the bagaudae extended to the north-west, where they sacked the Conventus
Bracaraugustanus in Galicia. Since that moment, there is no more information about the
bagaudae.
Theodoric II.
The interest of Rome and later the Visigoths to repress the bagaudae shows the importance
of the problem during the middle of the 5th century.
What was the role of the bagaudae in the final
crisis of the Roman Empire?
The bagaudae movement was one of the many factors that contributed to the instability of
the Roman Empire during the 5th century, together with the invasion of three Germanic
peoples of the Peninsula: the Suevi, the Vandals and the Alans, who took advantage of the
increasing difficulties the Romans had to defend the Empire. These peoples settled down in
almost all the Peninsula, except the Tarraconensis, which was kept under the imperial
control: the Suevi settled down in the North West (Gallaecia); the Vandals Asdingi settled
down in Gallaecia and were defeated by the Suevi; the Vandals Silingi settled down in the
South (Baetica) and the Alans settled down in Lusitania and Carthaginensis. The Romans
asked the Visigoths for help to expel the Suevi, Alans and Vandals and to stop the bagaudae
as well as other revolts that questioned their order. For that, Emperor Honorius signed a
treaty with the Visigoths and, as a reward for their help, they could settle down in the South
of Gaul.

6. Hispania in 418 AD.
The Visigoths arrived in the Peninsula in 416, defeated the Vandals Asdingi and the Alans,
expelled the Vandals Silingi to the North of Africa, confined the Suevi in Gallaecia and
established their capital city in Toulouse. The Visigoths’ intervention in Hispania was well
received by the Hispano-Roman elites, because they imposed order and suffocated the
bagaudae attacks. With the fall of the Roman Empire in 476, the Visigothic kingdom reached
independence and they controlled a vast territory including the Sout h of Gaul and most of
Hispania.
Visigothic Kingdom in 500 AD.

7. SOURCES
http://clio.rediris.es/n32/bagaudas/bagaudas.htm
http://www.enciclopedia-aragonesa.com/voz.asp?voz_id=1750
http://www.slideshare.net/papefons/visigothic-kingdom-416711?ref=http://history-
spain.blogspot.com.es/2014/10/presentation-of-visigothic-kingdom.html