Genobaud, also called Gennobaudes or Genebaud, dated to the 3rd century, was the first Frankish war-leader on record.^[1] Being defeated by the Romans, he crossed the Rhine with his Franks (whether all or some is not known) and begged public mercy from Maximian. Granted it, he was assigned lands in Lower Germany, probably Batavia, then vacant. He became a Roman client-king.^[2] Maximian was hoping to form a buffer state. He enlisted them in the army as frontier guards. Subsequently Franks from Batavia plundered Gaul south to Autun, which they sieged and sacked, whether under this Genobaud is not known.

The sources for this early Frankish leader are mainly confined to a single collection of 12 orations termed the Panegyrici Latini. They are not in any special order, but have been arranged as collected. Each was delivered to a high official of the Roman Empire on some special occasion. The chronologies have been more or less deciphered by scholarship. Each oration praises the deeds of subject, often stating events that are dateable. As the orator was unlikely to lie to his emperor or other superior officer, the Panegyrics are given the credibility of a record, whereas histories of individuals written in private from other sources are more liable to personal judgement.

Mention of the early Franks in some of the Panegyrici provides only fragmentary information about them. The later career of the Franks is well-documented by such writers as Gregory of Tours in The History of the Franks. Gregory, however, under "The Early Rulers of the Franks (Book II)," working from books available to him then, but lost now, begins with the invasion of Roman Germany by Franks under the 4th-century Genobaud with the assistance of Marcomer and Sunno. The last of the early war leaders and first independent king of the Franks was Clovis I, or Hlodowig, the original "(C)Louis." Book III goes on from his death. There were many more Clovises and then beginning with Charlemagne's son, Louises, as a single Europe became united into the Frankish empire.

Two panegyrics establish the identity of the 3rd-century Genobaud as Frankish: number X delivered in 289, and number XI delivered in 291. They have the same author, and some of the manuscripts identify him as Claudius Mamertinus, but the presence of another Claudius Mamertinus as author of a panegyric 75 years earlier makes this possibility less likely. Instead the author is usually listed as anonymous. X and XI are the order of presentation in the volume; overall they are the 2nd and 3rd composed. Mention of X in XI establishes a real-time sequence: X, XI.^[3]

X tells the basic story of Gennobaud, portraying him as a barbarian king doing the best he can to reach a settlement for his constituents in a difficult historical situation. The relationship between the Germanic-speaking people and the Romans had been troubled since its inception, when joint expeditions of Celts and Germans invaded northern Italy in the Roman Republic.

Just before the Roman civil war that created the Roman Empire, Julius Caesar undertook to solve the problem by conquering Gaul. Succeeding, he found that they were being seduced to rebellion by Germanic tribes who crossed the Rhine and attempted to establish states there. He was prevented from a permanent solution by his assassination at the start of the civil war. When it was finally done and Augustus reigned as the first emperor, the Romans fortified the south bank of the Rhine, and established two buffer states of Germanic speakers, Lower Germany, located about where the Netherlands are at the mouths of the Rhine, and Upper Germany upstream. Writers now began to refer the northerners as barbarians rather than Germans, which is what they are called in the Panegyrici.

In the middle of the 3rd century the military seized control of the government. They began by assassinating Severus Alexander, emperor 222-235. Considered incompetant by the soldiery, he relied on the advice of his mother, for which he was disrespected. In 234 the barbarians crossed the Rhine-Danube frontier. Hastening to the border, he cultivated an expectation among the men of shortly solving the barbarian problem. His mother, however, urged him to buy them off instead. In a rage, the soldiers killed both him and his mother.

The subsequent 50 years are known as the Crisis of the Third Century. The Senate and the various factions of the army supported approximately 26 emperors, only to have them voted down by murder after a short reign. The economy declined, as the government was unable to perform public business. The empire divided into three states: the Gallic Empire, the Palmyrene Empire, and what was left of the Roman Empire.

The method of trial and error sooner or later turned up some capable emperors, such as Aurelian. These were men of modest means who rose through the ranks for their ability and popularity. Aurelian served as top commander for five years, 270-275, during which time he defeated the splinter states, re-united the empire,^[4] and drove the barbarians north of the frontier once more. They consisted of the Goths, Vandals, Juthungi, Sarmatians, and Carpi, but not a word of Franks; however, they were on the east, while the early Franks were on the coast.

There is another, more detailed source, which is not considered as reliable: the Historia Augusta. The Franks first appear in it in somewhat ambiguous circumstances in the reign of Gallienus (r. 253-268), 15 years, one of the longest-lasting of the crisis period. From 253 to 260 he ruled as junior emperor under his father, Valerian, Gallienus in the west, Valerian in the east.

In 260 his father had the rare distinction of being taken prisoner by the Persians. Taking advantage of the situation, the Franks chose this moment to invade Batavia in the Netherlands, crossing the Rhine from the north. It was already Germanic, had been so from the 1st century BC, when the Germanics were given it as vacant land. Those Germanics were completely integrated to Roman life as Lower Germany.

Gaul was being officered in fact by a Batavian, Postumus. He met the Franks at Empel, easily defeating them, but both he and they were somewhat tractable. Postumus planned to break from the Roman Empire to form the Gallic Empire, in which the Franks were willing to cooperate. The Historia Augusta relates that among his auxiliaries were units of Celts and Franks.^[5] Some were no doubt in the army earlier, but how early is not known.

In 269 Postumus also received the army's stamp of disapproval, but by this time another military genius was conspiring to pick up the pieces. The Historia Augusta says that Aurelian was tribune (commander) of the VIth Legion at Mainz when the Franks crossed the Rhine into Gaul yet again and began to devastate it.^[6] Aurelian went against them and won, killing 700 and capturing 300, whom they sold into slavery. The passage is the more credible because the author claims to be quoting Aurelian's letters, one of which details regulations for the men. He gives a more complete list of European peoples defeated (in addition to Middle Easterners): Goths, Alans, Roxolani, Sarmatians, Franks, Suebians, Vandals and Germans.

He fell victim to a plot hatched by his corrupt secretary, who fearing discovery forged a document purporting to list members of the Praetorian Guard slated for denouncement and execution, and they murdered him. The doomed Aurelian was followed by another capable but doomed emperor of the crisis, Probus, who ruled for six years, 276-282, before his assassination. He is remembered by the author of Panegyric VIII, who is anonymous now, lauding Constantius Chlorus (father of Constantine) for his recapture of Britain after it had been lost to another splinter state. In VIII, the Franks splash across an entire section.

Surprisingly this author has mainly good to say of a Frankish adventure, comparing the emperor to the Franks in boldness. His summary is along the lines of "fortune favors the brave." A "small force of captive Franks" is being held at the mouth of the Danube, where they are penned in by the extensive marshes of the natural terrain. Exhibiting incredibilis audacia et indigna felicitas, "incredible boldness and disproportionate luck" they disappear into the marshes and at the edge of the Black Sea manage to steal a fleet of small boats.^[7]

Necessarily exiting the Black Sea via the Bosphorus, they raided the coasts of Asia Minor and Greece, then Libya, finally capturing Syracuse. The tale asks the reader to believe that a small contingent of Franks slipped by some large cities, such as Byzantium, capturing the largest, Syracuse. Presumably the element of surprise exercised with boldness accounted for their unusual luck. They were not long in the Mediterranean but voyaged into the Ocean and disappeared, no longer of interest.

They behaved in this regard like mercenaries trapped in a foreign country breaking loose and escaping to their own country again, which implies the Franks lived on the Ocean and not on the Danube. The passage does not reveal their employers, but the Romans admired them for the exploit. Perhaps they were Roman mercenaries after all fighting to restore Roman rule to the Balkans. There is another source on the event. According to Zosimus^[8] the Franks had applied for admission to the empire and were assigned lands at the mouth of the Danube, which they were obliged to occupy. Some left there illegally to make the long voyage "home" (oikade). The passage does not say where home was.

The 3rd century crisis came to an end, finally, the last doomed emperor being Carinus (r. 283-285). He had ruled with his brother, Numerian (r. 283-284). After 50 years of succession by murder the army had developed a distaste for it. Carus (r. 282-283) succeeded Probus in 282 totally unwillingly. He had been informed by the Senate that he was now emperor, while Probus was being killed by his own men. Carus held a public court martial, swore to the men he had no hand in the emperor's death, and tried and executed the assassins.

Carus had wanted Constantius Chlorus as emperor, but he had no choice but to accept, and departed for the Persian Wars with his son Numerian leaving the west to Carinus. He had made them both co-emperors. In the east the will of the gods made itself apparent, it was believed, killing Carus with a lightening bolt. Numerian retreated. On the way back Numerian was discovered dead in his coach of unknown causes, his death being reported by the Praetorian Prefect, Arrius Aper. An inquest was held by all the officers. Aper was standing for emperor, but he fooled no one. The inquest appointed Diocletian as emperor instead. His first task was to deal with Carinus, who, it was said, abandoned the army for a life of profligacy at Rome. He was murdered there by his enemies.

Diocletian, a professional soldier of humble origin, had the insight to see what was wrong with the army and to correct it. It having become clear that one emperor could not manage the huge empire, the Senate had created co-emperors, one for the east and one for the west, as well as two imperial ranks, the senior the Augustus and the junior the Caesar. Diocletian expanded the partnership into a tetrarchy of four emperors, a team of two each for the east and west.^[9] Each member was given 1/4 of the empire to rule. In theory one team contained one Augustus and one Caesar, but it depended on the circumstances.

Diocletian also divided the military from the civilian administration. He divided the 50 or so provinces into 100 new provinces. The senate was removed from the succession process.^[10] From then on the tetrarchy managed itself more or less independently, picking its own successors. It did not last forever, of course, being replaced later by Constantine, the first Christian emperor. The ideology had changed, and with it the manners.

The tetrarchy was not fully in place until 293. Between 284 and 293 Diocletian had his hands full trying to stop the disintegration of the empire. When Probus had been murdered, the population had lost all confidence in the government. A peasant revolt began, who were called the Bagaudae (Gallic for "fighters." Not to be confused with the Bagaudae revolt of the 4th century.) By 284 it was clear they would have to be suppressed. In his capacity as Augustus, Diocletian elevated Maximian to Caesar and assigned the rebellion to him.^[11] He suppressed the revolt by 286 and was ready for new honors. It is at this point that the events described in Panegyric X begin.

Maximian as Caesar superseded the other officers in Gaul, notably Carausius, commander of Roman Belgium. The commander himself was Belgian, a country, probably Celtic in origin, a sister population to the Gauls. Some writers refer to them as Gallic. Speakers of Gallic and speakers of Belgic could understand one another. Events subsequent to the suppression of the Bagaudae suggest that some animosity still existed between Romans and Belgians, and that a certain cameraderie existed among the Celts, or at least that is what Maximian feared and concluded.

Maximian promoted Carausius to admiral, gave him a fleet, and commanded him to suppress the piracy of the Saxons and Franks in the English Channel. The Saxons are known to have inhabited the shores of north Germany. If the location of the Franks followed suit they ought to have lived on the shore of the North Sea from the Rhine to the borders of the Saxons.

Much of this was already Lower Germany, probably not then Frankish. The barbarian names of the Panegyric are mainly the confederacy names: Franks, Saxons, Alamanns, rather than the Germanic tribal names related by Caesar and the historians of a former day. Alamanni means in fact "all the men," where Mannus, the mythological primal German, as everyone who has read Tacitus knows, was the son of Tuisto, the German god (etymology uncertain, but possibly related to Deutsch/Dutch, where the Dutch occupy the original Frankish lands.)

Carausius stopped the piracy but Maximian noticed that he did not return the money or the slaves or turn it over to imperial authorities. After an order to do so was ignored, Maximian assumed the worst, a collaboration of Carausius with the pirates, and sentenced him to death in absentia. He was probably not wrong as Carausius created another splinter empire of Britain, Belgium, Lower Germany, and barbarian mercenaries from beyond the Rhine, including, no doubt Franks and Saxons.

Maximian had no idea all this was happening. In late 285 or summer of 286^[12] "all the barbarian peoples" launched a coordinated attack on Gaul across the Rhine. They struck communities progressively southward, plundering, capturing, and burning.

The two panegyrics do not explicitly say that they acted by command of Carausius. If they did not, one might assume an uncoordinated common cause attack taking advantage of a new weakness. However, if Carausius did not have enough power to manage them, he is probably unikely to have been able to manage a revolt. The Franks for one struck through Belgium, Carausius' home country. Nixon and Rodgers support the managed revolt based on Carausius' piratical operations with the Franks and Saxons. Maximian later called Carausius a pirate.^[13]

By coincidence, or by the Roman view of destiny, the timing of the Germanic attack could not have been worse. Shortly (same day or near it) they reached the targeted provincial capital of Trier. It so happened that Diocletian had planned to honor Maximian on that day, promoting him to Augustus and swearing him in as one of the two consuls the Senate still elected yearly.^[14] In the permanent fort of a capital city with both emperors present there must have been many legions of men present, one legion being about 5000 men. Some of these would have been drawn up as cohorts on parade in the central plaza, witnessing the proceedings before the headquarters building. No sooner had Maximian sworn the oath of allegiance than a commotion arose near the gates of Trier and messengers arrived to tell of the barbarian attack.

According to the author, Maximian had no sooner taken the oath obliging him to defend the city when he had to defend it. Dropping the toga praetexta, ceremonial garb of his new duties, he threw on a cuirass and picked up a spear, taking command of two of the cohorts that must have been standing by for the ceremony. Ordinarily a cohort was commanded at the rank of centurion, the commander being called a pilus. The cohorts were numbered in order of precedence in the line of battle. The commander of the first cohort was the primipilus ("first spear"). The pili commanded from horseback on which the preferred weapon was a spear.^[15]

Apparently the emperor had no time for formalities. He grabbed a few cohorts, so to speak, and set off double time for the gates. The author points out that he could have taken the whole army, which must therefore have been present at Trier, but preferred the smaller units for their speed. The relief force must, in other words, have been commanded by a mobile headquarters group, presumably including the customary officers with the emperor.

The gates of the city flew open and the Germanics saw before them about 1000 veterans charging straight at them in good order, with the emperor before them, whom, however, they did not recognize. Here the text becomes slightly confusing. The emperor runs so fast his men cannot keep up with him, and so it is he who does most of the killing, as he always gets there first. One suspects a fish story. Apparently the emperor had Olympic running capabilities so that he personally killed all the enemy.^[16]

A little later he comments disingenuously the emperor was required to transition "from the tribunal to the field of battle, from the curule seat to horseback." Apparently the headquarters unit rode, rather than ran, and no doubt had some cavalry to help them. However, Maximian's desire to be in front rather than behind was in fact unusual. The barbarian line was ragged, as the emperor was able to attack groups piecemeal, which can be explained as a result of surprise.^[17]

Victorious, Maximian divided the army into small units of pursuit and sent them after any report of plundering by Germanics. Shocked, the entire mass of barbarians was soon running northwards for their lives. The Romans gave no quarter. It so happened that it was a drought season and the Rhine was fordable by foot, and so the surviving barbarians were able to cross. They were shortly followed by the Romans, who were just as successful to the north of the Rhine as they were south of it.^[18]

The Romans could easily have added Germany to the empire,^[19] but Maximian knew his limits. Augustus had excluded that course of action and the policy was respected since then. If Germany was not to be annexed or depopulated he had to become merciful. He fell back on the standard policy of creating puppet kings. If a regime begged for mercy and was willing to return all plunder and slaves, and to swear allegiance to the Roman People and Senate, Maximian would either return their lands or find new lands for them. Usually the applicant pleaded his cause before the Senate, receiving either provisional clemency or execution, but at this stage the emperors were functioning independently, so battlefield clemency was common. The other main option was to escape to Carausius in Britain, where he ruled from London. The Romans had given their fleet to the rebel, so they could not get to Britain in the face of the Germanic and Belgian sailors. Carausius hung on for a while yet.

It is at this time that Genobaud surrenders pleading with Maximian to obtain the standard terms.

only the subjection of Genobaud is mentioned. In the Panegyric of 291, however, the Franci are first mentioned by a contemporary Roman source. The description in the Pangeyric of 291 fits well with the earlier description of Genobaud, which is why he is considered a Frank. Perhaps he was a leader of the Chamavi, but this is not certain.

Little is known about Genobaud. Germanic raids around the area of modern-day Trier had provoked a Roman counteroffensive, which took place between 287 and 289 under emperor Maximian. Maximian crossed the Rhine multiple times to confront the attackers. In this context, the submission of Genobaud is mentioned. He concluded a treaty with Rome and recognized Roman supremacy. In return, he was recognized by the Romans with the position of petty king.

• Helmut Castritius: Gennobaudes. In: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde (RGA). 2. Auflage. Band 11, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1998, ISBN 3-11-015832-9, p. 77–79, esp. p. 77f.
• Eugen Ewig: Die Franken und Rom (3.–5. Jahrhundert). Versuch einer Übersicht. In: Rheinische Vierteljahrsblätter. Band 71, 2007, p. 1–42.
• Erich Zöllner: Geschichte der Franken bis zur Mitte des sechsten Jahrhunderts. Auf der Grundlage des Werkes von Ludwig Schmidt unter Mitwirkung von Joachim Werner neu bearbeitet. Beck, München 1970, ISBN 3-406-02211-1.
• Nixon, C.E.V.; Rodgers, Barbara Saylor (1994). In Praise of Later Roman Emperors: The Panegyrici Latini. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-08326-1