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Concept
Bagaudae
Summary
Bagaudae (also spelled bacaudae) were groups of peasant insurgents in the later Roman Empire who arose during the Crisis of the Third Century, and persisted until the very end of the Western Empire, particularly in the less-Romanised areas of Gallia and Hispania, where they were "exposed to the depredations of the late Roman state, and the great landowners and clerics who were its servants".
The invasions, military anarchy, and disorders of the third century provided a chaotic and ongoing degradation of the regional power structure within a declining Empire into which the bagaudae achieved some temporary and scattered successes, under the leadership of members of the underclass as well as former members of local ruling elites.
The name probably means "fighters" in Gaulish. C. E. V. Nixon assesses the bagaudae, from the official Imperial viewpoint, as "bands of brigands who roamed the countryside looting and pillaging". J. C. S. Léon interprets the most completely assembled documentation and identifies the bagaudae as impoverished local free peasants, reinforced by brigands, runaway slaves and deserters from the legions, who were trying to resist the ruthless labor exploitation of the late Roman proto-feudal colonus manorial and military systems, and all manner of punitive laws and levies in the marginal areas of the Empire.
After the bagaudae came to the full attention of the central authorities about AD 284, the re-establishment of the settled social order was swift and severe: the peasant insurgents were crushed in AD 286 by the Caesar Maximian and his subordinate Carausius under the aegis of the Augustus Diocletian. Their leaders are mentioned as Amandus and Aelianus, although E.M. Wightman, in her Gallia Belgica proposes that the two belonged to the local Gallo-Roman landowning class who then became "tyrants" and most likely rebelled against the grinding taxation and garnishing of their lands, harvests, and manpower by the predatory agents of the late Roman state (see frumentarii, publicani).
Official source
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