Barbarians Dbq Research Paper

Barbarians have an impressive history despite the bloodshed left in their wake. They somehow went from a lone, nomadic clan to an allegiance of clans who conquered Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe in a very short amount of time. The Barbarians success was probably a result of their strategy and preparedness in war. First they had a specific chain of command for their army and a strategy for attacking that would make their numbers seem larger and surround their adversaries. Furthermore, they would not allow their adversary to rest while fighting and instead took turns to wear them out. The Barbarians were able to conquer the greatest amount of land in history. The question remains, however, with their amount of conquest, how savage were they? Despite the Barbarians’ positive influence to civilizations, their bloody, seemingly merciless conquests, outweigh the limited and sometimes even insignificant influences to other civilizations.
The Barbarians’ army was merciless even to their fellow soldiers. First of all, every male over the age of 14 was forced to “...undertake military duty” (Doc. B). All males had to join the army regardless of whether they believed in the cause or not. It seems cruel to force someone to experience all that bloodshed due to the amount of killing involved, the risk to their own life

There’s several accounts of up to 2 million reported deaths (Doc. E). During their Russian conquests, they left no survivors in one city and few in another. First of all, this goes back to their killing of innocent inhabitants. Additionally, this means they went through entire cities and deemed everyone useless. They also killed millions, certainly more than 2 million, in China. Before their conquest, there were 50 million citizens; after, there were 9 million citizens accounted for (Doc. I). Their actions are compared to genocide. They kill anyone in their path for no