August 9, 378 AD · Balkans (Thrace) Theater
August 9, 378 AD
Two years after the Goths were admitted across the Danube as refugees and then driven to revolt by Roman mistreatment, the Eastern emperor Valens attacked Fritigern's Gothic host outside Adrianople without waiting for reinforcements. Gothic cavalry, returning unexpectedly, smashed into the Roman flank; the legions were surrounded and annihilated on the field. Valens himself was killed, his body never recovered.
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