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The decline of the Roman Empire begun with what had been called the Crisis of the Third Century (235-284 AD). It was a military and economic crisis.

The economy of the empire started to decline. Roman coins had been debased for many years. The gold or silver content of the coins was continually decreased, which devalued them. The coins reached a point in which they had as little as 5% of precious metal and had no value. This created hyperinflation and a breakdown of trade as money was useless as a means of exchange. It also led to a decline of the urban economy and a decrease in the urban population because the cities produced manufactures for long-distance trade. Many urban people migrated to the countryside and became servile labour for the owners of large landed estates whose production had switched to production for local barter, rather than exports for the cities. Constantine I resolved the problem of inflation. He scrapped the silver coins, accumulated large amounts of gold and create a new and stronger gold coin. This benefited those who could afford gold coins. The poor had to continue to use copper tokens which had been introduced during the crisis and were still vulnerable to inflation. Thus the empire never fully recovered from this crisis.

On the military front, there were continuous raids and invasions across the vast frontiers of the empire which got the Roman army overstretched. This led to rebellions by local legions and 39 attempts at usurpation or short lived usurpations of the title of emperor in various part of the empire by military commanders. On one occasion a part of the empire (Britain, Gaul and, for a while, Spain) broke away from the main empire for 14 years. This situation created both political and military disruption within the empire which further damaged trade. The usurpers also issued their own coins which contributed to coin oversupply and, thus, hyperinflation. Devastating raids in northern Gaul by the Franks and Alemanni from across the border of the frontier of the river Rhine shattered the economy of this area.

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