Vandal Conquest of North AfricaNorth Africa · 429–439“The keepers of the atlas wrote this one down so the fire would not forget it.”In 429 a whole Germanic people — the Vandals, eighty thousand with their wagons, the largest crossing of the strait the ancient world records — ferried from Spain to Africa and walked east along the coast toward the richest provinces Rome had left. A decade later their king Gaiseric took Carthage without a fight, on a day the city was at the races.