Gaiseric (Genseric) (ca. 390–477) king of
the Vandals
Little is known of Gaiseric, also known in history as
Genseric, who was apparently born about a.d. 390.
Some sources state that he was the illegitimate son of
Godigesel, the leader of the Vandals during their inva-
sion of the Iberian Peninsula (now modern Spain and
Portugal), and the brother of Gunderic, the Vandal king
and military leader. Historian Poultney Bigelow, writes:
“Genseric, the first Prussian Kaiser of Europe, was born
about four centuries after Christ in that swamp and sand
district of Brandenburg where now stands the palace of
Potsdam. History is silent on many details of his life and
we must therefore venture a guess now and then after the
manner of our scientific colleagues. We select Potsdam
as the birthplace of Genseric because of its strategic po-
sition between the Baltic and the Elbe, at the centre of
waterways admirably suited to commerce or piracy, and
therefore marked by Providence as the residence of Prus-
sian or Vandal kings.”
In 428, Gaiseric succeeded his brother Gunderic as
leader of the Vandals. The following year, when Boni-
facius, the Roman governor of (North) Africa, revolted
against Rome, he asked the Vandals for military assis-
tance. Gaiseric instead saw an opportunity for the Van-
dals to win land and treasure. He led the tribe, with an
estimated 15,000 troops, from Spain into Africa, where
they took advantage of Bonifacius’s weakness and pro-
ceeded to loot and rob the treasures of Roman Africa
in Mauritania and Numidia. Bonifacius tried to hold
back the Vandal assault, but he and his supporters were
defeated at the city of Hippo Regius in Numidia (431),
and Bonifacius fled back to Rome; he would be defeated
in 432 at Ravenna by the Roman army under Flavius
aetius. Their march through Africa unimpeded, the
Vandals moved onto Carthage, captured that city on 19
October 439. Now in control of a strategic center and
an important port and trading city, Gaiseric proceeded
to make Carthage his new capital, the hub of a military
empire from which his Vandal ships raided cities around
the Mediterranean, including Sicily, Corsica, and areas
of southern Europe.
In 455, the widowed Roman empress Licinia Eu-
doxia (422–462) sent a message to Gaiseric asking for
his assistance in fighting Petronius Maximus, who had
taken the throne of her murdered husband, the Roman
emperor Valentinian III. The Byzantine writer and his-
torian Malchus wrote of this period:Around this time, the empress Eudoxia, the
widow of the emperor Valentinian and the
daughter of the emperor Theodosius and Eudo-
cia, remained unhappily at Rome and, enraged
at the tyrant Maximus because of the murder