Chapter II: Lombard Invasion to Liutprand’s Death (1)

[568-744 A.D.]

EARLY HISTORY OF THE LOMBARDS

The four invading nations, whose history has been already related, left no enduring memorial of their presence in Italy. The Visigoth, the Hun, the Vandal, the Ostrogoth, failed to connect their names with even a single province or a single city of the Imperial land. What these mighty nations had failed to effect, an obscure and savage horde from Pannonia successfully accomplished. Coming last of all across the ridge of the Alps, the Lombards found the venerable Mother of empires exhausted by all her previous conflicts, and unable to offer any longer even the passive resistance of despair. Hence it came to pass that where others had but come in like a devouring flood and then vanished away, the Lombard remained. Hence it has arisen that he has written his name for ever on that marvel of the munificence of nature “the waveless plain of Lombardy.”[b]

[Sidenote: [5-400 A.D.]]

Probably the most ancient mention of the Lombards (Langobardi) is to be found in Velleius Paterculus,[c] who speaks of them as dwelling west of the Elbe and only in the lower portion, where they were subdued by Tiberius with much difficulty in the year 5 A.D.; for it is with the conquest of the Chauci--that is to say, the Chauci Majores and Minores who lived on both sides of the lower Visurgis (Weser)--that he connects the expedition of Tiberius on the Albis (Elbe) and the union of the army with the Roman fleet which had entered that river. Probably in order to avoid the Roman army, individual bands of Lombards (and Hermunduri) had settled on the right bank of the Elbe, and were followed by others on the occasion of a later expedition of the Romans; this seems to have given rise to Strabo’s[d] erroneous remark, according to which the Hermunduri and Lombards both lived to the north of the Elbe and in the narrator’s time had all retreated to the right bank; for we have no other definite information concerning the former residence of the Lombards and Hermunduri on the right bank of the Elbe, whilst we find traces of the Lombards south of the river in far later times. The _Widsidh-song_ (in verse 49) mentions a people, the Headhobeardan, who, as their name proves, were identical with the Langobardi, and who, as they fought the Danes for the possession of Zealand, must have occupied a portion of the coast of the Baltic; and in v. 42 a tribe of the Myrginge, who according to Müller[e] might probably be considered as a section of those same Headhobeardan settled in Holstein on the Eider. Shortly after this the Lombards must have been subjected by Marboduus; for according to a mention by Tacitus,[f] in the year 17 A.D., when war broke out between the Marcomannian king and Arminius, “from the realm of Marboduus, both Semnones and Lombards” went over to the side of the Cherusci in the hope of regaining their old independence. The fall of Marboduus secured them the liberty for which they were striving and a few decades later they had attained to considerable power. When in the year 47 Arminius’ nephew Italicus, whom the Cherusci had begged of the Romans as king, was banished after a short reign, the Lombards forcibly reinstated him in his rights.

The next intelligence concerning our Lombards[114] was drawn by Petrus Patricius[h]. from Dion Cassius[i]; from this we see that in the year 165, at the beginning of the great Marcomannian War, a host of six thousand German warriors--amongst whom, besides Marcomannians (probably the organisers of the expedition), there were also Lombards--undertook a predatory excursion into Pannonia, where the cavalry suffered a complete defeat under Vindex and the infantry under Candidus, so that the conquered had promptly to sue for peace and then quietly to return to their homes.

THEIR WANDERINGS FROM THE ELBE TO THE DANUBE

Our authorities afford us scarcely any positive information concerning the departure of the Lombards from their possessions on the Lower Elbe; we are obliged to rely entirely on reasoning and conjecture. But the account in the _Origin_[j] that hunger compelled the Lombards to leave Scoringa, may have been based on truth, as its pressure seems to have played no unimportant part at the time of the national migrations, especially in view of the rapid increase of the German races. Nevertheless, it was only a small portion of the people who then left their homes; this may be assumed from the appearance of power maintained by those who remained in their mother-country (the Bardi on the left bank of the Elbe and in Holstein) as well as from the histories in which the extraordinarily small number of roving Lombards is often commented on. We have then no further positive knowledge of the Lombards till they appear in Rugia, that is to say, north of the Danube, opposite to the Roman province of Noricum, in which region they must have arrived about the year 490. The fifth king of the Lombards, Gudeoc, was reigning at this period. The first, Agelmund, who was the first to be raised on a shield, must, as the people had already been wandering for some time, be placed somewhere in the middle of the fourth century, if we count four rulers to a century. As the Lombards were still regarded as dwelling on the lower Elbe in the year 165 A.D., the migration probably took place in the course of the third century. It is probable that the Semnones and the Burgundiones immediately bordering on them had just gone to the southwest, incited by the migrations of the Goths in the middle of the second century A.D., and the Lombards invaded the district to the right of the Elbe which had been deserted; that the Lombards proceeded west of the Elbe, as F. Bluhme[k] & and Förstemann[l] have asserted, resting their theory on quite uncertain and in part very arbitrary etymology, is improbable, as land for colonisation could scarcely have been won there without fighting powerful tribes.

The tradition of the Lombard folk-lore seems to point to the country east of the Elbe, but the story is very doubtful. Bluhme transfers the home of the Lombards to Moringen in Northeim, and connects it with a settlement of the Lombards in Westphalia.

In proof Bluhme brings forward the fact that Ptolemæus[o] knew the Lombards as neighbours of the Sugambri; but he overlooks the circumstance that these Lombards lived to the south of the Sugambri on the Rhine, and consequently not in Westphalia. Bluhme and after him Platner then alleges that the populations of Westphalia present coincidences in the names of families, the administration of the land and the later development of the law, with the Lüneburg district of the Elbe and Lübeck as likewise the ancient Soest-Lübeck law on many points recalls the _Edictum Langobardorum_. But it must be considered as a mistake to let the coincidence of individual principles of law and administration serve as arguments in ethnographical researches. For it is a known fact that for example the law and administration of the Anglo-Saxons and Lombards on many points, apart from the cases when a direct transmission may be supposed, show a similar development; whilst on the other hand, the language proves that the former belonged to the Low Germans and the latter to the High Germans, and therefore were not closely related peoples. In all these questions it is quite impossible for us to make a certain decision; Bluhme worked almost without the necessary materials to go upon, and the Saxon element which later invaded Westphalia and the lower Elbe had first to be identified and allowed for.

[Sidenote: [400-491 A.D.]]

It may be asserted with a degree of certainty that the migrating Lombards first spread themselves over the present mark of Brandenburg, and were then forced to go southwest by the Slavs who were advancing from the east, and to seek refuge in Bohemia, a land well protected on all sides by natural boundaries. It was here, perhaps, that the first king Agelmund, as the legend says, was raised on a shield. Now that an historically authenticated succession of kings begins, tradition also commences to assume a firmer character, and to approach more and more closely to real history. On the whole the story of Agelmund and his successor Lamissio is as yet completely wrapped in obscurity, for that which is related concerning the two kings is not a popular legend based on history, but nothing more than a fictitious development of the primitive myth of Skeaf which Leo has described in a very detailed and thorough manner. The gist of this widespread and variously localised myth is that a hero of unknown descent, arising from the water, comes to the assistance of a country in a time of great distress; and the story was transferred to Lombard history because in northern Italy the common Latin word _lama_ (for _piscina_) was etymologically associated by the people with the name of Lamissio. These tales cannot be historically interpreted, and, for example, it would also be wrong to consider the battle with the Bulgarians recounted by Paulus[p] as an historical fact; but it is evident from this that the name of Bulgaria had not appeared before the end of the fifth century. We likewise learn nothing concerning the history of the Lombards under the next kings, Lethu and Hildeoc; under King Gudeoc, the fifth in succession, we find them again in the territory of the Rugii, where they had gone when the latter had been conquered and expelled by Odoacer in the years 487 and 488. This land of the Rugii extended, so far as we can gather from our scanty sources of information, somewhere between the modern Linz and Vienna, on the left bank of the Danube; the right bank of the river does not seem to have been included. Opposite lay Noricum, which at the same time was partly abandoned by Odoacer as untenable, and now, probably, immediately after the evacuation was occupied by the Boii established in Bohemia. The Lombards then had to content themselves with the far less inviting and more barren land of the Rugii--in all probability because they had formerly been established to the rear of Marcomannians, that is to say, in North Bohemia, and had proceeded southwards in their train.

THE LOMBARDS IN THE REGIONS OF THE DANUBE

[Sidenote: [491-508 A.D.]]

Unfortunately the history of the Lombard kingdom in Rugia is also shrouded in obscurity, inasmuch as our sources afford no positive information concerning it; for the story derived from the boastful Herulian account in Procopius,[m] according to which in the year 491 the Lombards had been tributary to the Heruli--which would have been during the sojourn in Rugia, as the Lombards first went there in 490 and are said to have lived there many years--must, according to Pallmann’s[n] convincing arguments, be regarded as a fiction. It may possibly be with truth that Procopius describes the Lombards as being already Arian Christians at this time, although the corrupted passages of the _Gothic War_ can scarcely be considered as confirmation. According to the _Origin_,[j] the Lombards under King Tato wandered from Rugia to the distant plain called “Feld” by the barbarians, by which is probably meant the plains between the Theiss and Danube, as is shown by the remarkable passage in the _Annales Einhardi_[q] of the year 796. Here the Lombards remained for a period of about three years until war broke out between them and the Herulians, with whom they had formerly been on peaceful and friendly terms. We are well informed as to this war, through the Herulian account in Procopius[m] and the Lombard account in the _Origin_; it is only to be regretted that legendary stories have intruded into both narratives. According to the former, the Herulians had only declared war out of sheer lust of doing and fighting; according to the _Origin_ the strife was kindled because the daughter of King Tato had murdered a Herulian ambassador. It is remarkable that neither of the two nations attributed it to the enemy, but considered themselves as the originators; we must therefore assume that both reports have some truth in them, that both nations, Herulians as well as Lombards, were responsible for the outbreak of war. Further particulars are obscured by legend, and can no longer be ascertained. Both statements agree in the statement that the Herulians were completely defeated, and for the greater part destroyed; and we are further informed that their king, Rodulf, lost his life in the battle.

It is difficult to determine at what time this event took place; it will not be possible to arrive at a definite conclusion in the matter. According to Procopius, the defeat took place three years after the accession of the emperor Anastasius; but from the _Origin_ we see that the sojourn in Rugia must have been far longer than it would be in this case; for in this period is included the entire reign of a king Claffo, and part of those of two kings, Gudeoc and Tato.

Therefore the time given by Procopius, “three years after,” must be regarded as an empty phrase; this also applies to the notice in the _Origin_, according to which the war with the Herulians began three years after the occupation of the plains of Feld, and which must be judged in the same manner, especially as no importance can be attached to the chronological tables in the first part of the _Origin_. On the other hand, it is certain that after their defeat the Herulians left their old seats, and before passing into Roman territory settled first in Rugia and then amongst the Gepids; as Procopius asserts that these wanderings occupied only a short time, we shall not be wrong in placing them within three to four years at the most, and thus referring the battle to about the year 508.[115] A letter of the king of the Ostrogoths, Theodoric, has been used as a point of reckoning: it was sent to the kings of the Heruli, Warni, and Thuringii, when Clovis was threatening the Visigoths with war, and probably belonged to about the year 501; from this it may be concluded that the kingdom of the Herulians on the Danube was at this time still existing in its full integrity, and that the memorable battle can only have taken place some time afterwards.

It is noteworthy that the principal means Theodoric uses to incite these kings to support the Visigoths is the endeavour to increase their fear of the Franks, of whom the kingdom of the Visigoths was in dread, nor could they see the development of the power of Clovis without some anxiety. This points to the more or less close neighbourhood of the Franks; otherwise the danger would not have been so great or so imminent. Lippert[r] has shown that the Thuringii and Warni must have been established directly on the frontiers of the Frank Empire towards central Germany; the Heruli to whose princes this letter was sent, must have been settled near the Frankish borders.

Without doubt they are to be identified with the Heruli, who undertook numerous expeditions to the Rhine, to Gaul, and even to Spain, and are to be distinguished from the Heruli of the Danube; their seats are also to be placed on various points of the German and Dutch north coast, as well as in the Cimbric Chersonesus. In this respect it is well to notice that Sidonius Apollinaris[s] mentions an embassy of these Heruli to the Visigothic king Euric, and Cassiodorus[t] mentions a letter reminding the Herulian king of the favours received by Euric; through this embassy friendly relations were established between the two peoples.

WARS WITH THE GEPIDS

[Sidenote: [508-548 A.D.]]

With that victory begins the most brilliant epoch of the history of the Lombards. It was followed by the invasion of the Lombards from the southeast into the territory of the Herulians, and they compelled the latter to seek refuge in Rugia. As Procopius[m] states, hunger, and probably the advance of the Lombards in these regions, obliged the vanquished to migrate again, until they at last found protection with the powerful Gepids, who were of kindred race. On the occasion of this advance of the Lombards, the subjection of the Suavi also took place, which the _Origin_[j] fixes under King Wacho the successor of Tato.

The name of Wacho became famous, and the Lombards very desirable confederates; thus in the spring of 539 the Ostrogoth king Witiges sought to obtain their help against the Byzantines, but was refused as the Lombards had already formed an alliance with the Byzantines. An alliance seems also to have existed with the Thuringii, for the first wife of Wacho, Radegund, was the daughter of the Thuringian king Bisinus. Then Wacho married Ostrogotha, the daughter of the Gepidean king, which makes it very probable that the Lombard kingdom bordered on the Gepidean, as our statement concerning the position of the plain “Feld” confirms. The two daughters he had by her were again married to Frankish kings, namely Wisigarda to King Theudebert (534-548), Walderada to Theudebald (548-555), then also to Clotaire I (561, who, compelled by the clergy, resigned her to the Bavarian duke Garibald). In connection with this and also later alliances, is the plan of Theudebert to overthrow the Byzantine Empire by the help of the Lombards and Gepids during the war in Italy, against Totila.

A third wife of Wacho was Salinga, who bore him a son, Waltari. The latter reigned after his father’s death, according to the _Origin_ for seven years, but as he was a minor he was under the guardianship of a Lombard of noble birth named Audoin, who afterwards succeeded him as king. Shortly after the accession of Audoin, the Lombards passed over into Pannonia, which had been given to them by the emperor Justinian, who had first taken it from the Goths, as Procopius states. It cannot have been a voluntary cession. Justinian had to evacuate the country because he was no longer in a position to protect it against the Lombard invasion. By the sums of money he gave to the Lombards he doubtless hoped to buy peace for the sorely tried provinces, just as the Gepids and others had been restrained from devastating the Roman province by gifts of gold.

[Sidenote: [548-555 A.D.]]

Not long after the occupation of Pannonia--according to Procopius apparently in 548--war broke out between the Gepids and Lombards. The incitements of the emperor Justinian may be considered as the chief motive; it was in his interest to destroy the friendship of the two peoples who threatened to become dangerous to the empire. The ever increasing desire of the Lombards to gain possession of the important town of Sirmium in lower Pannonia which was occupied by the Gepids, and above all, the hostile feelings which had been raised between the two peoples by disputes at the Lombard court concerning the succession (disputes which began in Wacho’s time) came to his assistance.

We are informed as to these interesting proceedings by Procopius and the _Origin_. Procopius[m] relates as follows: “King Wacho had a cousin who by law ought to have succeeded him on his death; but in order to procure the crown for his son he had Risiulf banished from the land under a false accusation.”

Risiulf with his two sons, one named Hildichis, and a small number of his adherents fled to the Warni, and at the instigation of Wacho was murdered by them; Hildichis’ brother succumbed to an illness, whilst he himself fled and took up his residence with a Slavonian tribe, and then in the time of King Audoin, when war broke out between the Lombards and Gepids, he gave himself up to the latter who also promised to procure for him the royal crown of the Lombards. According to the _Origin_[j] Wacho, son of Winigis and nephew of King Tato, expelled him from the throne. Tato’s son, the rightful heir to the throne, named Hildichis, who sought to assert his rights, was suppressed and obliged to take refuge with the Gepids who from the time of his arrival showed great hatred for the Lombards. Both reports are incomplete but supplement one another well. The event was doubtless this, that Wacho overthrew his uncle Tato, then, when he had become king, banished Tato’s son Risiulf (his cousin) and the latter’s son (Hildichis) from the country, as he wished to insure the crown for his own son Waltari, whilst, not the law, as Procopius erroneously says, but his descent and the love of the people would have won the government for the heirs of the deposed king Tato.

Risiulf was murdered in his flight. Hildichis fled to the Gepids at a time when the discord between them and the Lombards had already reached a high point, and, it seems, by his presence precipitated the outbreak of war. His hope that the Gepids would help him to regain his rights was not fulfilled.

As the Lombards did not feel themselves a match for the Gepids, they had sent ambassadors to Justinian to beg for help which was granted, not in consideration of former agreements which the emperor seldom observed, but because the Byzantine principle was to stand by the weaker side that the stronger might be the more completely destroyed. The Gepids who demanded support or, at least, neutrality, on the grounds of a former treaty promising them Roman help in case of war, were refused, and a Roman army consisting of some ten thousand horsemen and fifteen hundred Herulian warriors advanced against them. Before they met, the imperial troops destroyed a division of three thousand Herulians, who were allies of the Gepids, and compelled them to conclude a separate peace with the Lombards. As a security for the newly formed friendly relations Audoin summoned the king of the Gepids, Thorisind, to surrender Hildichis; meanwhile the latter had escaped and for a long time wandered as an adventurer through various lands.

The first war of the Lombards and Gepids was soon followed by another (549), which also found a speedy ending without any decision being arrived at.

According to Procopius a panic seems to have seized both armies before the battle and put them to disorderly flight. The kings, therefore, again met and concluded a two years’ armistice; at the close of that time hostilities began again. This time also Justinian placed himself on the side of the Lombards--he broke the treaty formed shortly before with the Gepids and sent troops to the field, a division of which was under the command of Amalafrid; only the latter and his soldiers reached the Lombards; the other troops remained in Ulpiana at the imperial command, evidently for the purpose of quelling disturbances there. Nevertheless the Lombards succeeded in invading the Gepidean territory and in completely beating their adversaries; the seat of war was probably Sirmium. Procopius places this battle in the seventeenth year of the war, probably July, 551. It is very probably the same which Paulus[p] describes and during which Alboin, Audoin’s son, unhorsed the son of the Gepidean king, Torismond, in single combat. The terrible defeat compelled the Gepids to seek peace, which was granted them through the mediation of Justinian.

As conditions the Lombards and the emperor demanded the surrender of Hildichis; for after his flight from the Gepids in 548,--after he had first wandered about Italy with Byzantine troops, had then lived amongst a Slav people, and as leader of a troop had served in the imperial palace guard in Constantinople,--he had lately returned to them that he might again assert his claims to the Lombard throne. But as the Gepids were determined not to violate the laws of hospitality and for the same reason the Lombards would not surrender Ostrogothus who had sought refuge with them, after Thorisind had expelled him from his rightful throne, and whose surrender was now demanded in return, Hildichis was not given up; soon after the two princes, not without the connivance of the king, were assassinated (552), that there might be no more occasion for the rupture of the peace just concluded.

Before the outbreak of the war, Audoin at the request of Justinian sent twenty-five hundred picked Lombard warriors as well as three thousand troops to Italy to the army of Narses; with them they went through the famous campaign against Totila, but, owing to their licentiousness after the decisive battle at Taginæ (autumn, 552), they were richly rewarded and sent home under an escort.

The peace concluded with the Gepids lasted as long as Audoin and Thorisind lived; but when they both died and Alboin was ruler of the Lombards (555), while Cunimund had become king of the Gepids, the enmity restrained with difficulty burst out again with redoubled violence.

ALBOIN ANNIHILATES THE GEPID POWER

[Sidenote: [555-567 A.D.]]

According to the tradition, the _Origin_ relates that after the battle in which he had become so famous, Alboin went directly into the hostile country to King Thorisind, to fetch the arms according to ancient custom; on this visit he for the first time saw the lovely Rosamund, the youngest daughter of the late king Cunimund, with whom he fell passionately in love (551).

But political considerations now obliged him to take Clotosuinda, daughter of the Frank king Clotaire I, to wife; when she died his thoughts turned once more to the love of his youth, and as she would not follow him voluntarily he had her brought to his kingdom by force.

Cunimund demanded his daughter back as he did not approve of the union with the hated Lombard: finally war broke out. At first the Lombards had the advantage, but were defeated in the end, when the Gepids succeeded in winning over the emperor Justinus II (Nov. 14, 565); the result was the release of Rosamund. To avenge the defeat and to free himself from oppression, Alboin now sought allies on all sides; he found them at last in the powerful and universally dreaded Avars (settled east of the Pruth on the Black Sea), who only consented to help after long pleading and on very heavy conditions; the Lombards were to give the tenth part of their cattle, and to promise after the victory was obtained to give up half the booty and renounce the whole district of the Gepids. That these demands were granted shows better than any direct proofs in what need the Lombards then were. When Cunimund heard of this formidable alliance, he turned to the emperor Justinus to ask the latter to send him auxiliary troops in accordance with the treaty; he also promised to yield Sirmium, and the land this side of the Drave to the Eastern Roman Empire. Justinus did not at once directly refuse the request, but he wilfully made every kind of delay in sending the troops and finally kept them back, not only for the reason given by Menander, but probably because he did not wish to compromise himself and allow the formidable power of the Avars and Lombards, which was superior to that of the Byzantines and Gepids together, to rule his empire. Therefore, he remained a neutral and idle spectator of the unequal strife; he seems to have taken advantage of a favourable opportunity to win possession of the town of Sirmium, as at the fall of the kingdom of the Gepids it appears as already among the Byzantine possessions. The war was opened by the simultaneous invasion of the kingdom of the Gepids by the allies from two sides.

Cunimund first marched against the Lombards to prevent their union with the Avars; but he was beaten by his adversaries in a bloody battle and his army almost completely destroyed. He himself fell in the battle by Alboin’s hand, as his brother Torismond had done many years before; his daughter Rosamund with many others fell as prisoners into the power of the Lombards, and their king now made her his wife without any fear of the paternal opposition.

The booty was immeasurable; nevertheless, the bishop Trasaric and the grandson of the fallen king Reptila succeeded in bringing the royal treasure to Constantinople in safety.

But by this defeat the kingdom of the Gepids was completely destroyed; for what the Lombards did not bring under their sway, fell beneath the harsh yoke of the Avars; and in presumptuous tones the Byzantines rejoiced over the quick destruction of their dangerous foes.[u]

ALBOIN PLANS TO INVADE ITALY

[Sidenote: [565-569 A.D.]]

The destruction of a mighty kingdom established the fame of Alboin. In the days of Charlemagne, the Bavarians, the Saxons, and the other tribes of the Teutonic language, still repeated the songs which described the heroic virtues, the valour, liberality, and fortune of the king of the Lombards. But his ambition was yet unsatisfied; and the conqueror of the Gepids turned his eyes from the Danube to the richer banks of the Po and the Tiber. Fifteen years had not elapsed since his subjects, the confederates of Narses, had visited the pleasant climate of Italy; the mountains, the rivers, the highways, were familiar to their memory; the report of their success, perhaps the view of their spoils, had kindled in the rising generation the flame of emulation and enterprise. Their hopes were encouraged by the spirit and eloquence of Alboin; and it is affirmed that he spoke to their senses, by producing at the royal feast the fairest and most exquisite fruits that grew spontaneously in the garden of the world.

No sooner had he erected his standard, than the native strength of the Lombards was multiplied by the adventurous youth of Germany and Scythia. The robust peasantry of Noricum and Pannonia had resumed the manners of barbarians; and the names of the Gepids, Bulgarians, Sarmatians (or Slavs), and Bavarians, may be distinctly traced in the provinces of Italy. Of the Saxons, the old allies of the Lombards, twenty thousand warriors, with their wives and children, accepted the invitation of Alboin. Their bravery contributed to his success; but the accession or the absence of their numbers was not sensibly felt in the magnitude of his host. Every mode of religion was freely practised by its respective votaries. The king of the Lombards had been educated in the Arian heresy; but the Catholics, in their public worship, were allowed to pray for his conversion; while the more stubborn barbarians sacrificed a she-goat, or perhaps a captive, to the gods of their fathers. The Lombards and their confederates were united by their common attachment to a chief, who excelled in all the virtues and vices of a savage hero; and the vigilance of Alboin provided an ample magazine of offensive and defensive arms for the use of the expedition. The portable wealth of the Lombards attended the march (April 2nd, 568); their lands they cheerfully relinquished to the Avars, on the solemn promise, which was made and accepted without a smile, that if they failed in the conquest of Italy, these voluntary exiles should be reinstated in their former possessions.

THE END OF NARSES

They might have failed, if Narses had been the antagonist of the Lombards; and the veteran warriors, the associates of his Gothic victory, would have encountered with reluctance an enemy whom they dreaded and esteemed. But the weakness of the Byzantine court was subservient to the barbarian cause; and it was for the ruin of Italy that the emperor once listened to the complaints of his subjects. The virtues of Narses were stained with avarice; and in his provincial reign of fifteen years he accumulated a treasure of gold and silver which surpassed the modesty of a private fortune. His government was oppressive or unpopular, and the general discontent was expressed with freedom by the deputies of Rome. Before the throne of Justin they boldly declared, that their Gothic servitude had been more tolerable than the despotism of a Greek eunuch; and that, unless their tyrant were instantly removed, they would consult their own happiness in the choice of a master. The apprehension of a revolt was urged by the voice of envy and detraction, which had so recently triumphed over the merit of Belisarius.

A new exarch, Longinus, was appointed (565) to supersede the conqueror of Italy; and the base motives of his recall were revealed in the insulting mandate of the empress Sophia, “that he should leave to men the exercise of arms, and return to his proper station among the maidens of the palace, where a distaff should be again placed in the hand of the eunuch.”

“I will spin her such a thread as she shall not easily unravel!” is said to have been the reply which indignation and conscious virtue extorted from the hero. Instead of attending, a slave and a victim, at the gate of the Byzantine palace, he retired to Naples, from whence (if any credit is due to the belief of the times) Narses invited the Lombards to chastise the ingratitude of the prince and people.[116] But the passions of the people are furious and changeable; and the Romans soon recollected the merits, or dreaded the resentment, of their victorious general. By the mediation of the pope, who undertook a special pilgrimage to Naples, their repentance was accepted; and Narses, assuming a milder aspect and a more dutiful language, consented to fix his residence in the Capitol. His death (572 or 573), though in the extreme period of old age, was unseasonable and premature, since his genius alone could have repaired the last and fatal error of his life. The reality, or the suspicion, of a conspiracy disarmed and disunited the Italians. The soldiers resented the disgrace, and bewailed the loss of their general. They were ignorant of their new exarch; and Longinus was himself ignorant of the state of the army and the province. In the preceding years Italy had been desolated by pestilence and famine; and a disaffected people ascribed the calamities of nature to the guilt or folly of their rulers.

THE LOMBARDS ENTER ITALY

[Sidenote: [569-573 A.D.]]

Whatever might be the grounds of his security, Alboin neither expected nor encountered a Roman army in the field. He ascended the Julian Alps and looked down with contempt and desire on the fruitful plains to which his victory communicated the perpetual appellation of Lombardy. A faithful chieftain and a select band were stationed at Forum Julii, the modern Friuli, to guard the passes of the mountains. The Lombards respected the strength of Pavia, and listened to the prayers of the Trevisans: their slow and heavy multitudes proceeded to occupy the palace and city of Verona; and Milan, now rising from her ashes, was invested by the powers of Alboin (September 3, 569).

Terror preceded his march; he found everywhere, or he left, a dreary solitude;[117] and the pusillanimous Italians presumed, without a trial, that the stranger was invincible. Escaping to lakes, or rocks, or morasses, the affrighted crowds concealed some fragments of their wealth, and delayed the moment of their servitude. Paulinus, the patriarch of Aquileia, removed his treasures, sacred and profane, to the isle of Grado, and his successors were adopted by the infant republic of Venice, which was continually enriched by the public calamities. Honoratus, who filled the chair of St. Ambrose, had credulously accepted the faithless offers of a capitulation; and the archbishop, with the clergy and nobles of Milan, were driven by the perfidy of Alboin to seek a refuge in the less accessible ramparts of Genoa. Along the maritime coast, the courage of the inhabitants was supported by the facility of supply, the hopes of relief, and the power of escape; but from the Trentine hills to the gates of Ravenna and Rome, the inland regions of Italy became, without a battle or a siege, the lasting patrimony of the Lombards. The submission of the people invited the barbarian to assume the character of a lawful sovereign, and the helpless exarch was confined to the office of announcing to the emperor Justin, the rapid and irretrievable loss of his provinces and cities.

One city which had been diligently fortified by the Goths, resisted the arms of a new invader; and while Italy was subdued by the flying detachments of the Lombards, the royal camp was fixed above three years before the western gate of Ticinum, or Pavia. The same courage which obtains the esteem of a civilised enemy, provokes the fury of a savage, and the impatient besieger had bound himself by a tremendous oath, that age, and sex, and dignity, should be confounded in a general massacre. The aid of famine at length enabled him to execute his bloody vow; but as Alboin entered the gate, his horse stumbled, fell, and could not be raised from the ground. One of his attendants was prompted by compassion, or piety, to interpret this miraculous sign as the wrath of heaven: the conqueror paused and relented; he sheathed his sword, and, peacefully reposing himself in the palace of Theodoric, proclaimed to the trembling multitude, that they should live and obey. Delighted with the situation of a city, which was endeared to his pride by the difficulty of the purchase, the prince of the Lombards disdained the ancient glories of Milan; and Pavia, during some ages, was respected as the capital of the kingdom of Italy.

THE END OF ALBOIN (573 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [573 A.D.]]

The reign of the founder was splendid and transient; and before he could regulate his new conquests, Alboin fell a sacrifice to domestic treason and female revenge. In a palace near Verona, which had not been erected for the barbarians, he feasted the companions of his arms; intoxication was the reward of valour, and the king himself was tempted by appetite, or vanity, to exceed the ordinary measure of his intemperance. After draining many capacious bowls of Rætian or Falernian wine, he called for the skull of Cunimund [the late Gepid king, his wife’s father], the noblest and most precious ornament of his sideboard. This cup of victory[118] was accepted with horrid applause by the circle of the Lombard chiefs.

“Fill it again with wine,” exclaimed the inhuman conqueror, “fill it to the brim; carry this goblet to the queen, and request in my name that she would rejoice with her father.” In an agony of grief and rage, Rosamund had strength to utter, “Let the will of my lord be obeyed,” and, touching it with her lips, pronounced a silent imprecation, that the insult should be washed away in the blood of Alboin.

Some indulgence might be due to the resentment of a daughter, if she had not already violated the duties of a wife. Implacable in her enmity, or inconstant in her love, the queen of Italy had stooped from the throne to the arms of a subject; and Helmichis, the king’s armour-bearer, was the secret minister of her pleasure and revenge. Against the proposal of the murder he could no longer urge the scruples of fidelity or gratitude; but Helmichis trembled when he revolved the danger, as well as the guilt, when he recollected the matchless strength and intrepidity of a warrior whom he had so often attended in the field of battle. He pressed and obtained that one of the bravest champions of the Lombards should be associated to the enterprise; but no more than a promise of secrecy could be drawn from the gallant Peredeo; and the mode of seduction employed by Rosamund betrays her shameless insensibility both to honour and love. She supplied the place of one of her female attendants, who was beloved by Peredeo, and contrived some excuse for darkness and silence, till she could inform her companion that he had enjoyed the queen of the Lombards, and that his own death, or the death of Alboin, must be the consequence of such treasonable adultery. In this alternative, he chose rather to be the accomplice than the victim of Rosamund, whose undaunted spirit was incapable of fear or remorse. She expected, and soon found, a favourable moment, when the king, oppressed with wine, had retired from the table to his afternoon slumbers. His faithless spouse was anxious for his health and repose; the gates of the palace were shut, the arms removed, the attendants dismissed, and Rosamund, after lulling him to rest by her tender caresses, unbolted the chamber door and urged the reluctant conspirators to the deed.

On the first alarm the warrior started from his couch. His sword, which he attempted to draw, had been fastened to the scabbard by the hand of Rosamund; and a small stool, his only weapon, could not long protect him from the spears of the assassins. The daughter of Cunimund smiled in his fall; his body was buried under the staircase of the palace, and the grateful posterity of the Lombards revered the tomb and the memory of their victorious leader.

The ambitious Rosamund aspired to reign in the name of her lover. The city and palace of Verona were awed by her power, and a faithful band of her native Gepids was prepared to applaud the revenge and to second the wishes of their sovereign. But the Lombard chiefs, who fled in the first moments of consternation and disorder, had resumed their courage and collected their powers; and the nation, instead of submitting to her reign, demanded, with unanimous cries, that justice should be executed on the guilty spouse and the murderers of their king. She sought a refuge among the enemies of her country, and a criminal who deserved the abhorrence of mankind was protected by the selfish policy of the exarch. With her daughter, the heiress of the Lombard throne, her two lovers, her trusty Gepids, and the spoils of the palace of Verona, Rosamund descended the Adige and the Po, and was transported by a Greek vessel to the safe harbour of Ravenna. Longinus beheld with delight the charms and the treasures of the widow of Alboin: her situation and her past conduct might justify the most licentious proposals; and she readily listened to the passion of a minister who, even in the decline of the empire, was respected as the equal of kings. The death of a jealous lover was an easy and grateful sacrifice; and as Helmichis issued from the bath, he received the deadly potion from the hand of his mistress. The taste of the liquor, its speedy operation, and his experience of the character of Rosamund convinced him that he was poisoned. He pointed his dagger to her breast, compelled her to drain the remainder of the cup, and expired in a few minutes, with the consolation that she could not survive to enjoy the fruits of her wickedness. The daughter of Alboin and Rosamund, with the richest spoils of the Lombards, was embarked for Constantinople. The surprising strength of Peredeo amused and terrified the imperial court; his blindness and revenge exhibited an imperfect copy of the adventures of Samson. By the free suffrage of the nation, in the assembly of Pavia, Cleph, one of their noblest chiefs, was elected as the successor of Alboin. Before the end of eighteen months the throne was polluted by a second murder,--Cleph was stabbed by the hand of a domestic. The regal office was suspended above ten years, during the minority of his son Authari, and Italy was divided and oppressed by a ducal aristocracy of thirty tyrants.[w]

[Sidenote: [573-590 A.D.]]

Hard as was the rule of these “guests,” they took only a third of the produce of the country, while the Visigoths had taken two-thirds, and the Burgundians nearly as much. Then the 26,000 Saxons, weary of the presumption of their Lombard allies, decided to evacuate Italy for Gaul. On their first visit to Dauphiné, the Roman general Mummolus drove them back with slaughter. About a year later the Saxons tried again at harvest time. Mummolus allowed them to pass through only on payment of a heavy toll. The Saxons went back to their old home; but the Swabians had moved in, and being driven to bay, slew almost all the host.

The Lombards had soon drifted round Rome; and in 574, under Cleph, had the city besieged. The emperor Justin sent a corn fleet to save the city from starvation; and in 575 sent an army under his son-in-law Braduarius, who lost both the battle and his life.

Still in 579 the popes are crying eastward for help. In 578 the new emperor, Tiberius II, sent money to buy a little respite. Meanwhile, between 568 and 575, the Lombards had five times gone raiding into Gaul. Twice the brave Mummolus threw them back. In 584 the Austrasians, bribed by the emperor Maurice, invaded Italy under their young leader Childebert, and the Lombards were forced to pay them to leave the country. This convinced the Lombards that their ducal oligarchy was a failure; and they made a king of Cleph’s son Authari, giving him the prenomen of Flavius, which thereafter all the Lombard kings retained.[a]

Under the standard of their new king, the conquerors of Italy withstood three successive invasions, one of which was led by Childebert himself, the last of the Merovingian race who descended from the Alps. The first expedition was defeated by the jealous animosity of the Franks and Alamanni. In the second they were vanquished in a bloody battle, with more loss and dishonour than they had sustained since the foundation of their monarchy. Impatient for revenge, they returned a third time with accumulated force, and Authari yielded to the fury of the torrent. The troops and treasures of the Lombards were distributed in the walled towns between the Alps and the Apennine. A nation, less sensible of danger than of fatigue and delay, soon murmured against the folly of their twenty commanders; and the hot vapours of an Italian sun infected with disease those tramontane bodies which had already suffered the vicissitudes of intemperance and famine. The powers that were inadequate to the conquest were more than sufficient for the desolation of the country; nor could the trembling natives distinguish between their enemies and their deliverers. If the junction of the Merovingian and imperial forces had been effected in the neighbourhood of Milan, perhaps they might have subverted the throne of the Lombards; but the Franks awaited six days the signal of a flaming village, and the arms of the Greeks were idly employed in the reduction of Modena and Parma, which were torn from them after the retreat of their transalpine allies. The victorious Authari asserted his claim to the dominion of Italy. At the foot of the Rætian Alps, he subdued the resistance, and rifled the hidden treasures, of a sequestered island in the lake of Comum. At the extreme point of Calabria he touched with his spear a column on the seashore of Rhegium, proclaiming that ancient landmark to stand the immovable boundary of his kingdom.

EXTENT OF LOMBARD SWAY

[Sidenote: [568-774 A.D.]]

During a period of two hundred years, Italy was unequally divided between the kingdom of the Lombards and the exarchate of Ravenna. The offices and professions, which the jealousy of Constantine had separated, were united by the indulgence of Justinian; and eighteen successive exarchs were invested, in the decline of the empire, with the full remains of civil, of military, and even of ecclesiastical power. Their immediate jurisdiction, which was afterwards consecrated as the patrimony of St. Peter, extended over the modern Romagna, the marshes or valleys of Ferrara and Commachio; five maritime cities from Rimini to Ancona, and a second inland Pentapolis, between the Adriatic coast and the hills of the Apennine. Three subordinate provinces, of Rome, of Venice, and of Naples, which were divided by hostile lands from the palace of Ravenna, acknowledged, both in peace and war, the supremacy of the exarch. The duchy of Rome appears to have included the Tuscan, Sabine, and Latian conquests of the first four hundred years of the city, and the limits may be distinctly traced along the coast from Civita Vecchia, to Tarracina, and with the course of the Tiber from Ameria and Narni to the port of Ostia. The numerous islands from Grado to Chiozza, composed the infant dominion of Venice; but the more accessible towns on the continent were overthrown by the Lombards, who beheld with impotent fury a new capital rising from the waves. The power of the dukes of Naples was circumscribed by the bay and the adjacent isles, by the hostile territory of Capua, and by the Roman colony of Amalfi, whose industrious citizens, by the invention of the mariner’s compass, have unveiled the face of the globe. The three islands of Sardinia, Corsica, and Sicily, still adhered to the empire; and the acquisition of the farther Calabria removed the landmark of Authari from the shore of Rhegium to the isthmus of Consentia. In Sardinia, the savage mountaineers preserved the liberty and religion of their ancestors; but the husbandmen of Sicily were chained to their rich and cultivated soil. Rome was oppressed by the iron sceptre of the exarchs, and a Greek, perhaps a eunuch, insulted with impunity the ruins of the Capitol. But Naples soon acquired the privilege of electing her own dukes; the independence of Amalfi was the fruit of commerce; and the voluntary attachment of Venice was finally ennobled by an equal alliance with the Eastern Empire. On the map of Italy, the measure of the exarchate occupies a very inadequate space, but it included an ample proportion of wealth, industry, and population.

The most faithful and valuable subjects escaped from the barbarian yoke; and the banners of Pavia and Verona, of Milan and Padua, were displayed in their respective quarters by the new inhabitants of Ravenna. The remainder of Italy was possessed by the Lombards; and from Pavia, the royal seat, their kingdom was extended to the east, the north, and the west, as far as the confines of the Avars, the Bavarians, and the Franks of Austrasia and Burgundy. In the language of modern geography, it is now represented by the Terra Firma of the Venetian republic, Tyrol, the Milanese, Piedmont, the coast of Genoa, Mantua, Parma, and Modena, the grand duchy of Tuscany, and a large portion of the ecclesiastical state from Perugia to the Adriatic. The dukes, and at length the princes, of Benevento survived the monarchy, and propagated the name of the Lombards. From Capua to Tarentum they reigned near five hundred years.

In comparing the proportion of the victorious and the vanquished people, the change of language will afford the most probable inference. According to this standard it will appear, that the Lombards of Italy, and the Visigoths of Spain, were less numerous than the Franks or Burgundians; and the conquerors of Gaul must yield, in their turn, to the multitude of Saxons and Angles who almost eradicated the idioms of Britain. The modern Italian has been insensibly formed by the mixture of nations: the awkwardness of the barbarians in the nice management of declensions and conjugations, reduced them to the use of articles and auxiliary verbs; and many new ideas have been expressed by Teutonic appellations. Yet the principal stock of technical and familiar words is found to be of Latin derivation; and if we were sufficiently conversant with the obsolete, the rustic, and the municipal dialects of ancient Italy, we should trace the origin of many terms which might, perhaps, be rejected by the classic purity of Rome.

A numerous army constitutes but a small nation, and the powers of the Lombards were soon diminished by the retreat of the twenty thousand Saxons. When Alboin descended from the Alps, he invested his nephew, the first duke of Friuli, with the command of the province and the people; but the prudent Gisulf would have declined the dangerous office, unless he had been permitted to choose, among the nobles of the Lombards, a sufficient number of families to form a perpetual colony of soldiers and subjects. In the progress of conquest, the same option could not be granted to the dukes of Brescia or Bergamo, of Pavia or Turin, of Spoleto or Benevento; but each of these, and each of their colleagues, settled in his appointed district with a band of followers who resorted to his standard in war and his tribunal in peace. Their attachment was free and honourable: resigning the gifts and benefits which they had accepted, they might emigrate with their families into the jurisdiction of another duke; but their absence from the kingdom was punished with death, as a crime of military desertion.

The posterity of the first conquerors struck a deeper root into the soil, which, by every motive of interest and honour, they were bound to defend. A Lombard was born the soldier of his king and his duke; and the civil assemblies of the nation displayed the banners, and assumed the appellation of a regular army. Of this army, the pay and the rewards were drawn from the conquered provinces; and the distribution, which was not effected till after the death of Alboin, is disgraced by the foul marks of injustice and rapine.