There does not seem to be in the story of the capture of Rome by the Vandals any justification for the charge of wilful and objectless destruction of public buildings which is implied in the word "vandalism."
In the south this campaign marked real progress, not mere objectless plunder, for it was followed by the reconquest of great districts in Prigord and the Agenais, which had been lost to England since the r3th century.
The kingdom was in the desperate state described in the last melancholy pages of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, when life and property were nowhere safe from the objectless ferocity of feudal tyrants when every shire was full of castles and every castle filled with devils and evil men, and the people murmured that Christ and his saints slept.