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===The Vandal Kingdom of North Africa===

As Gaiseric and the Vandals were facing potential doom at the hands of the Romans and their Visigoth allies, an individual entered the scene who helped change the course of history for the Vandals, Rome, and the entire Mediterranean world of late antiquity. A Roman general named Boniface had managed to establish his own defacto kingdom in the region of what is today Tunisia. Seeing that Boniface presented a problem for the already disintegrating Roman Empire, the Emperor Valentinian III (ruled AD 425-455) recalled the general to Rome. Boniface refused the order and then defeated a Roman army sent to rein him in, but when the recalcitrant general learned that the emperor was sending a Goth army, he made the historically important decision of inviting the entire Vandal nation to North Africa. Knowing that his options were severely limited in Spain, Gaiseric accepted Boniface’s offer, leading 80,000 Vandals and Alans across the Strait of Gibraltar in May 429.<ref> Bury, p. 118</ref>

The alliance between Boniface and Gaiseric did not last very long. Boniface attempted to make a new deal with the Romans in order to remove the Vandals from North Africa. The result was a series of bloody battles between Boniface’s forces and the Vandals that took place from 430 until 432. Boniface was vanquished and the Vandals established hegemony over North Africa as a result. With Boniface out of the way, the Vandals were free to turn their rage on the local population, which was largely the result of religious differences. Although the Vandals professed to be Christians, they were followers of Arianism, which was a non-Trinitarian sect. According to Gregory of Tours, the Vandal King Hunneric (ruled AD 477-484) was especially brutal towards Catholics, forcing “saints to suffer many tortures, first the rack, then the flames, then the pincers and after all that death itself.”<ref> Gregory of Tours, II.3</ref>