The fall of the Western Roman Empire could probably be best described as a slow unravelling. Over decades their frontiers got harder and harder to hold leading to the employment of mercenaries with no loyalty to Rome. Gold from the provinces ran dry, and generals recognised that as long as they had an army they could be emperors. By the time Rome was sacked in 410, the old order was already a shell of its former glory. When the boy-emperor Romulus Augustulus was deposed in 476, it wasn’t a colla