The nations were provoked to smile by the strange intelligence that the

command of the Roman armies was given to an eunuch. But the eunuch Narses

is ranked among the few who have rescued that unhappy name from the

contempt and hatred of mankind. A feeble, diminutive body[110] concealed

the soul of a statesman and a warrior. His youth had been employed in the

management of the loom and distaff, in the cares of the household, and

the service of female luxury; but while his hands were busy, he secretly

exercised the faculties of a vigorous and discerning mind. A stranger

to the schools and the camp, he studied in the palace to dissemble, to

flatter, and to persuade; and as soon as he approached the person of

the emperor, Justinian listened with surprise and pleasure to the manly

counsels of his chamberlain and private treasurer. The talents of Narses

were tried and improved in frequent embassies; he led an army into

Italy, acquired a practical knowledge of the war and the country, and

presumed to strive with the genius of Belisarius. Twelve years after his

return, the eunuch was chosen to achieve the conquest which had been left

imperfect by the first of the Roman generals. Instead of being dazzled

by vanity or emulation, he seriously declared, that unless he were armed

with an adequate force, he would never consent to risk his own glory and

that of his sovereign. Justinian granted to the favourite, what he might

have denied to the hero; the Gothic War was rekindled from its ashes, and

the preparations were not unworthy of the ancient majesty of the empire.

[Sidenote: [551-552 A.D.]]

The prudence of Narses impelled him to speedy and decisive action.

His powers were the last effort of the state: the cost of each day

accumulated the enormous account; and the nations, untrained to

discipline or fatigue, might be rashly provoked to turn their arms

against each other, or against their benefactor. The same considerations

might have tempered the ardour of Totila. But he was conscious that the

clergy and people of Italy aspired to a second revolution; he felt or

suspected the rapid progress of treason, and he resolved to risk the

Gothic kingdom on the chance of a day, in which the valiant would be

animated by instant danger, and the disaffected might be awed by mutual

ignorance. In his march from Ravenna, the Roman general chastised the

garrison of Rimini, traversed in a direct line the hills of Urbino, and

re-entered the Flaminian way, nine miles beyond the perforated rock,

an obstacle of art and nature which might have stopped or retarded his

progress. The Goths were assembled in the neighbourhood of Rome; they

advanced, without delay, to seek a superior enemy; and the two armies

approached each other at the distance of one hundred furlongs, between

Taginæ and the sepulchres of the Gauls.[111] The haughty message of

Narses was an offer, not of peace, but of pardon. The answer of the

Gothic king declared his resolution to die or conquer. “What day (said

the messenger) will you fix for the combat?” “The eighth day,” replied

Totila: but early the next morning he attempted to surprise a foe,

suspicious of deceit, and prepared for battle.

BATTLE OF TAGINÆ AND DEATH OF TOTILA (552 A.D.)

The first line of cavalry advanced with more courage than discretion, and

left behind them the infantry of the second line. They were soon engaged

between the horns of a crescent, into which the adverse wings had been

insensibly curved, and were saluted from either side by the volleys of

four thousand archers. Their ardour, and even their distress, drove them

forwards to a close and unequal conflict, in which they could only use

their lances against an enemy equally skilled in all the instruments of

war. A generous emulation inspired the Romans and their barbarian allies;

and Narses, who calmly viewed and directed their efforts, doubted to whom

he should adjudge the prize of superior bravery. The Gothic cavalry was

astonished and disordered, pressed and broken; and the line of infantry,

instead of presenting their spears, or opening their intervals, were

trampled under the feet of the flying horse. Six thousand of the Goths

were slaughtered, without mercy, in the field of Taginæ. Their prince,

with five attendants, was overtaken by Asbad, of the race of the Gepids.

“Spare the king of Italy,” cried a loud voice, and Asbad struck his

lance through the body of Totila. The blow was instantly revenged by the

faithful Goths; they transported their dying monarch seven miles beyond

the scene of his disgrace; and his last moments were not embittered by

the presence of an enemy. Compassion afforded him the shelter of an

obscure tomb; but the Romans were not satisfied of their victory, till

they beheld the corpse of the Gothic king. His hat, enriched with gems,

and his bloody robe, were presented to Justinian by the messengers of

triumph.[d]

And thus ended the career of the Teutonic hero Baduila--for we must

restore him his name in death--a man who, perhaps, more even than

Theodoric himself, deserves to be considered the type and embodiment of

all that was noblest in the Ostrogothic nation; and who, if he had filled

the place of Athalane, or even of Witiges, would assuredly have made

for himself a world-famous name in European history. If the Ostrogothic

kingdom of Italy might but have lived, Baduila would have held the same

high place in its annals which Englishmen accord to Alfred, Frenchmen to

Charlemagne, and Germans to the mighty Barbarossa.[c]

PROGRESS OF NARSES

[Illustration: A GOTHIC WARRIOR]

[Sidenote: [552 A.D.]]

The victorious eunuch pursued his march through Tuscany, accepted

the submission of the Goths, heard the acclamations, and often the

complaints, of the Italians, and encompassed the walls of Rome with the

remainder of his formidable host. Neither the fortifications of Hadrian’s

mole, nor of the port, could long delay the progress of the conqueror;

and Justinian once more received the keys of Rome, which, under his

reign, had been five times taken and recovered. But the deliverance of

Rome was the last calamity of the Roman people. The barbarian allies

of Narses too frequently confounded the privileges of peace and war;

the despair of the flying Goths found some consolation in sanguinary

revenge; and three hundred youths of the noblest families, who had been

sent as hostages beyond the Po, were inhumanly slain by the successor

of Totila. The fate of the senate suggests an awful lesson of the

vicissitude of human affairs. Of the senators whom Totila had banished

from their country, some were rescued by an officer of Belisarius, and

transported from Campania to Sicily; while others were too guilty to

confide in the clemency of Justinian, or too poor to provide horses

for their escape to the seashore. Their brethren languished five years

in a state of indigence and exile: the victory of Narses revived their

hopes; but their premature return to the metropolis was prevented by

the furious Goths; and all the fortresses of Campania were stained with

patrician blood. After a period of thirteen centuries, the institution

of Romulus expired; and if the nobles of Rome still assumed the title of

senators, few subsequent traces can be discovered of a public council, or

constitutional order. Ascend six hundred years, and contemplate the kings

of the earth soliciting an audience, as the slaves or freedmen of the

Roman senate!

[Sidenote: [552-553 A.D.]]

The Gothic War was yet alive. The bravest of the nation retired beyond

the Po; and Teias was unanimously chosen to succeed and revenge their

departed hero. The new king immediately sent ambassadors to implore, or

rather to purchase, the aid of the Franks, and nobly lavished for the

public safety the riches which had been deposited in the palace of Pavia.

The residue of the royal treasure was guarded by his brother Aligern at

Cumæ in Campania; but the strong castle which Totila had fortified, was

closely besieged by the arms of Narses. From the Alps to the foot of

Mount Vesuvius, the Gothic king, by rapid and secret marches, advanced to

the relief of his brother, eluded the vigilance of the Roman chiefs, and

pitched his camp on the banks of the Sarnus or Draco, which flows from

Nuceria into the bay of Naples. The river separated the two armies; sixty

days were consumed in distant and fruitless combats, and Teias maintained

this important post, till he was deserted by his fleet and the hope of

subsistence. With reluctant steps he ascended the Lactarian mount, where

the physicians of Rome, since the time of Galen, had sent their patients

for the benefit of the air and the milk. But the Goths soon embraced a

more generous resolution--to descend the hill, to dismiss their horses,

and to die in arms, and in the possession of freedom. The king marched

at their head, bearing in his right hand a lance, and an ample buckler

in his left: with the one he struck dead the foremost of the assailants;

with the other he received the weapons which every hand was ambitious

to aim against his life. After a combat of many hours, his left arm was

fatigued by the weight of twelve javelins which hung from his shield.

Without moving from his ground, or suspending his blows, the hero called

aloud on his attendants for a fresh buckler, but in the moment, while

his side was uncovered, it was pierced by a mortal dart. He fell, and

his head, exalted on a spear, proclaimed to the nations, that the Gothic

kingdom was no more.

But the example of his death served only to animate the companions

who had sworn to perish with their leader. They fought till darkness

descended on the earth. They reposed on their arms. The combat was

renewed with the return of light, and maintained with unabated vigour

till the evening of the second day. The repose of a second night, the

want of water and the loss of their bravest champions, determined the

surviving Goths to accept the fair capitulation which the prudence

of Narses was inclined to propose. They embraced the alternative of

residing in Italy as the subjects and soldiers of Justinian, or departing

with a portion of their private wealth, in search of some independent

country. Yet the oath of fidelity or exile was alike rejected by one

thousand Goths, who broke away before the treaty was signed, and boldly

effected their retreat to the walls of Pavia. The spirit, as well as the

situation, of Aligern, prompted him to imitate rather than to bewail

his brother; a strong and dexterous archer, he transpierced with a

single arrow the armour and breast of his antagonist; and his military

conduct defended Cumæ above a year against the forces of the Romans.

Their industry had scooped the Sibyl’s cave into a prodigious mine;

combustible materials were introduced to consume the temporary props:

the walls and gate of Cumæ sank into the cavern, but the ruins formed a

deep and inaccessible precipice. On the fragments of a rock, Aligern

stood alone and unshaken, till he calmly surveyed the hopeless condition

of his country, and judged it more honourable to be the friend of Narses

than the slave of the Franks. After the death of Teias, the Roman general

separated his troops to reduce the cities of Italy; Lucca sustained a

long and vigorous siege: and such was the humanity or the prudence of

Narses, that the repeated perfidy of the inhabitants could not provoke

him to exact the forfeit lives of their hostages. These hostages were

dismissed in safety, and their grateful zeal at length subdued the

obstinacy of their countrymen.

INTERFERENCE OF THE FRANKS

[Sidenote: [553-554 A.D.]]

Before Lucca had surrendered, Italy was overwhelmed by a new deluge of

barbarians. A feeble youth, the grandson of Clovis, reigned over the

Austrasians or Oriental Franks. The guardians of Theudebald entertained

with coldness and reluctance the magnificent promise of the Gothic

ambassadors. But the spirit of a martial people outstripped the timid

counsels of the court: two brothers, Leuthar[112] and Butilin, the

dukes of the Alamanni, stood forth as the leaders of the Italian war;

and seventy-five thousand Germans descended in the autumn from the

Rætian Alps into the plain of Milan. The vanguard of the Roman army was

stationed near the Po, under the conduct of Fulcaris [or Phulcaris] an

Herulian, who conceived that personal bravery was the sole duty and merit

of a commander. As he marched without order or precaution along the

Æmilian way, an ambuscade of Franks suddenly rose from the amphitheatre

of Parma: his troops were surprised and routed; but their leader refused

to fly, declaring to the last moment that death was less terrible than

the angry countenance of Narses. The death of Fulcaris, and the retreat

of the surviving chiefs, decided the fluctuating and rebellious temper of

the Goths; they flew to the standard of their deliverers, and admitted

them into the cities which still resisted the arms of the Roman general.

The conqueror of Italy opened a free passage to the irresistible torrent

of barbarians. They passed under the walls of Cesena, and answered by

threats and reproaches the advice of Aligern, that the Gothic treasures

could no longer repay the labour of an invasion.

Two thousand Franks were destroyed by the skill of Narses who sallied

from Rimini at the head of three hundred horse, to chastise the

licentious rapine of their march. On the confines of Samnium the two

brothers divided their forces. With the right wing, Butilin assumed

the spoil of Campania, Lucania, and Bruttium: with the left, Leuthar

accepted the plunder of Apulia and Calabria. They followed the coast of

the Mediterranean and the Adriatic, as far as Rhegium and Otranto, and

the extreme lands of Italy were the term of their destructive progress.

The Franks, who were Christians and Catholics, contented themselves with

simple pillage and occasional murder. But the churches, which their piety

had spared, were stripped by the sacrilegious hands of the Alamanni,

who sacrificed horses’ heads to their native deities of the woods and

rivers: they melted or profaned the consecrated vessels, and the ruins of

shrines and altars were stained with the blood of the faithful. Butilin

was actuated by ambition, and Leuthar by avarice. The former aspired to

restore the Gothic kingdom; the latter, after a promise to his brother

of speedy succours, returned by the same road to deposit his treasure

beyond the Alps. The strength of their armies was already wasted by the

change of climate and contagion of disease: the Germans revelled in the

vintage of Italy; and their own intemperance avenged, in some degree, the

miseries of a defenceless people.

BATTLE OF CAPUA, OR THE VULTURNUS (554 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [554 A.D.]]

At the entrance of the spring, the imperial troops, who had guarded

the cities, assembled, to the number of eighteen thousand men, in the

neighbourhood of Rome. Their winter hours had not been consumed in

idleness. By the command, and after the example, of Narses, they repeated

each day their military exercise on foot and on horseback, accustomed

their ear to obey the sound of the trumpet, and practised the steps and

evolutions of the Pyrrhic dance. From the straits of Sicily, Butilin,

with thirty thousand Franks and Alamanni, slowly moved towards Capua,

occupied with a wooden tower the bridge of Casilinum, covered his right

by the stream of the Vulturnus, and secured the rest of his encampment,

by a rampart of sharp stakes, and a circle of wagons, whose wheels were

buried in the earth. He impatiently awaited the return of Leuthar;

ignorant, alas! that his brother could never return, and that the chief

and his army had been swept away by a strange disease on the banks of

the lake Benacus, between Trent and Verona. The banners of Narses soon

approached the Vulturnus, and the eyes of Italy were anxiously fixed on

the event of this final contest. Perhaps the talents of the Roman general

were most conspicuous in the calm operations which precede the tumult

of a battle. His skilful movements intercepted the subsistence of the

barbarian, deprived him of the advantage of the bridge and river, and, in

the choice of the ground and moment of action, reduced him to comply with

the inclination of his enemy. On the morning of the important day, when

the ranks were already formed, a servant, for some trivial fault, was

killed by his master, one of the leaders of the Heruli. The justice or

passion of Narses was awakened; he summoned the offender to his presence,

and, without listening to his excuses, gave the signal to the minister

of death. If the cruel master had not infringed the laws of his nation,

this arbitrary execution was not less unjust, than it appears to have

been imprudent. The Heruli felt the indignity; they halted: but the Roman

general, without soothing their rage or awaiting their resolution, called

aloud as the trumpets sounded that unless they hastened to occupy their

place they would lose the honour of the victory. His troops were disposed

in a long front, the cavalry on the wings; in the centre, the heavy-armed

foot; the archers and slingers in the rear.

The Germans made their first advance in a sharp-pointed column, of

the form of a triangle or solid wedge. They pierced the feeble centre

of Narses, who received them with a smile into the fatal snare, and

directed his wings of cavalry insensibly to wheel on their flanks and

encompass the rear. The hosts of the Franks and Alamanni consisted of

infantry: a sword and buckler hung by their side, and they used as their

weapons of offence a weighty hatchet, and a hooked javelin, which were

only formidable in close combat, or at a short distance. The flower

of the Roman archers, on horseback and in complete armour, skirmished

without peril round this immovable phalanx; supplied by active speed

the deficiency of number; and aimed their arrows against a crowd of

barbarians, who, instead of a cuirass and helmet, were covered by a

loose garment of fur or linen. They paused, they trembled, their ranks

were confounded, and in the decisive moment the Heruli, preferring glory

to revenge, charged with rapid violence the head of the column. Their

leader, Sindual, and Aligern, the Gothic prince, deserved the prize of

superior valour; and their example incited the victorious troops to

achieve with swords and spears the destruction of the enemy. Butilin, and

the greatest part of his army, perished on the field of battle, in the

waters of the Vulturnus, or by the hands of the enraged peasants: but it

may seem incredible that a victory,[113] which no more than five of the

Alamanni survived, could be purchased with the loss of fourscore Romans.

Seven thousand Goths, the relics of the war, defended the fortress of

Campsa till the ensuing spring; and every messenger of Narses announced

the reduction of the Italian cities, whose names were corrupted by the

ignorance or vanity of the Greeks. After the battle of Casilinum, Narses

entered the capital; the arms and treasures of the Goths, the Franks, and

Alamanni, were displayed; his soldiers, with garlands in their hands,

chanted the praises of the conqueror; and Rome, for the last time, beheld

the semblance of a triumph.

END OF GOTHIC SWAY

[Sidenote: [553-568 A.D.]]

After a reign of sixty years, the throne of the Gothic kings was filled

by the exarchs of Ravenna, the representatives in peace and war of the

emperor of the Romans. Their jurisdiction was soon reduced to the limits

of a narrow province; but Narses himself, the first and most powerful

of the exarchs, administered about fifteen years the entire kingdom of

Italy. Like Belisarius, he had deserved the honours of envy, calumny,

and disgrace; but the favourite eunuch still enjoyed the confidence

of Justinian, or the leader of a victorious army awed and repressed

the ingratitude of a timid court. The fortifications were restored; a

duke was stationed for the defence and military command of each of the

principal cities; and the eye of Narses pervaded the ample prospect from

Calabria to the Alps. The remains of the Gothic nation evacuated the

country, or mingled with the people: the Franks, instead of revenging the

death of Butilin, abandoned, without a struggle, their Italian conquests;

and the rebellious Sindual, chief of the Heruli, was subdued, taken, and

hung on a lofty gallows by the inflexible justice of the exarch. The

civil state of Italy, after the agitation of a long tempest, was fixed

by a pragmatic sanction, which the emperor promulgated at the request of

the pope. Justinian introduced his own jurisprudence into the schools

and tribunals of the West: he ratified the acts of Theodoric and his

immediate successors, but every deed was rescinded and abolished, which

force had extorted, or fear had subscribed, under the usurpation of

Totila. A moderate theory was framed to reconcile the rights of property

with the safety of prescription, the claims of the state with the poverty

of the people, and the pardon of offences with the interest of virtue and

order of society.

Under the exarchs of Ravenna, Rome was shortly degraded to the second

rank. Yet the senators were gratified by the permission of visiting

their estates in Italy, and of approaching without obstacle the throne

of Constantinople; the regulation of weights and measures was delegated

to the pope and senate; and the salaries of lawyers and physicians, of

orators and grammarians, were destined to preserve or rekindle the light

of science in the ancient capital. Justinian might dictate benevolent

edicts, and Narses might second his wishes by the restoration of cities,

and more especially of churches. But the power of kings is most effectual

to destroy: and the twenty years of the Gothic War had consummated the

distress and depopulation of Italy.[d]

FOOTNOTES

[95] [Bury[b] here uses this spelling, as do most of the German writers,

while Hodgkin[c] prefers to retain “the _Odovakar_ of the contemporary

authorities in all its primeval ruggedness, instead of softening it down

with later historians (chiefly the Byzantine annalists) into the smooth

and slippery _Odoacer_.” In this work, however, the more familiar form

sanctified by long usage is continued.]

[96] So Gibbon,[d] but Hodgkin,[c] who puts the birth of Theodoric in

454, places the death of Attila a year before, while Bury[b] makes it the

same year.

[97] [These curious details are included in the account of Malchus.[f]]

[98] [This man who shared the great Theodoric’s name, and threatened his

power, while riding an unruly horse was borne against a spear hanging

before his tent door. The wound proved fatal, according to Evagrius,[g]

who tells the story.]

[99] [Tufa was his name; he first left Odoacer for Theodoric; then

deserted back again. Hodgkin compares his defection to Marshal Ney’s

going over to Napoleon when he returned in 1815. Later Tufa was killed in

a feud with another deserter from Theodoric, Frederic the Rugian.]

[100] [Hodgkin[c] doubts this story, which rests solely on the anonymous

Valesian Ms.[k]]

[101] [The story is told by Procopius.[j]]

[102] [This story is told in the _Dialogues_ of Pope Gregory. On the

legend Hodgkin[c] comments, “For that noble heart Hell itself could

scarcely reserve any sorer punishment than the consciousness of a life’s

labour wasted by one fierce outbreak of Berseker rage.” Procopius[j]

calls his treatment of Boethius and Symmachus “the first and last act of

injustice which he had committed against any of his subjects; and the

cause was his failure to look deeply enough into the evidence before he

gave his verdict.”]

[103] [“My conjecture,” says Hodgkin,[c] “is that there was some

formality of a popular election after the death of Athalaric in

compliance with which his mother and her colleague ascended the throne.”]

[104] [Hodgkin, regretting her misfortunes, calls Amalasuntha “a kind of

Gothic Minerva sprung from the Gothic Jove.”]

[105] [Bury[b] says,“Witiges put Theodatus to death,” Hodgkin[c] says

that he sent Optaris, from whom Theodatus had taken his bride, to

assassinate the fallen monarch.]

[106] [Henry Bradley[n] declares that this barbarian’s epithet should

rather be “the bison,” Gibbon’s translation as “standard-bearer” being

“linguistically impossible.”]

[107] [This king, Eraric, reigned only five months.]

[108] [It is quoted by Procopius.[j]]

[109] [Hodgkin[l] thinks that there is no necessity for doubting the

statement that only five hundred people remained.]

[110] [According to Hodgkin[c] he was seventy-five years old at this

time.]

[111] [Hodgkin,[c] discrediting Procopius here for many reasons, places

the battle near Scheggia.]

[112] [Hodgkin[c] thinks the name Leuthar should not be regarded as

equivalent to Lothair as Gibbon made it. Butilin is often spelt Buccelin.]

[113] Agathias[m] has produced a Greek epigram of six lines on this

victory of Narses, which is favourably compared to the battles

of Marathon and Platæa. The chief difference is indeed in their

consequences--so trivial in the former instance--so permanent and

glorious in the latter.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER II

LOMBARD INVASION TO LIUTPRAND’S DEATH

[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.

[Illustration: A LOMBARD WARRIOR]

[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.

[Illustration: A LOMBARD KING]

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).

[Illustration: A LOMBARD COSTUME]

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.

Many of the most wealthy Italians were slain or banished; the remainder

were divided among the strangers; and a tributary obligation was imposed

(under the name of hospitality), of paying to the Lombards a third

part of the fruits of the earth. Within less than seventy years, this

artificial system was abolished by a more simple and solid tenure. Either

the Roman landlord was expelled by his strong and insolent guest; or the

annual payment, a third of the produce, was exchanged by a more equitable

transaction for an adequate proportion of landed property. Under these

foreign masters, the business of agriculture, in the cultivation of corn,

vines, and olives, was exercised with degenerate skill and industry by

the labour of the slaves and natives. But the occupations of a pastoral

life were more pleasing to the idleness of the barbarians. In the rich

meadows of Venetia, they restored and improved the breed of horses for

which that province had once been illustrious.

THE REIGN AND WOOING OF AUTHARI

So rapid was the influence of climate and example, that the Lombards

of the fourth generation surveyed with curiosity and affright the

portraits of their savage forefathers. Their heads were shaven behind,

but the shaggy locks hung over their eyes and mouths, and a long beard

represented the name and character of the nation. Their dress consisted

of loose linen garments, after the fashion of the Anglo-Saxons, which

were decorated, in their opinion, with broad stripes of variegated

colours. The legs and feet were clothed in long hose, and open sandals;

and even in the security of peace a trusty sword was constantly girt to

their side. Yet this strange apparel, and horrid aspect, often concealed

a gentle and generous disposition: and as soon as the rage of battle

had subsided, the captives and subjects were sometimes surprised by

the humanity of the victor. The vices of the Lombards were the effect

of passion, of ignorance, of intoxication; their virtues are the

more laudable, as they were not affected by the hypocrisy of social

manners, nor imposed by the rigid constraint of laws and education. The

adventurous gallantry of Authari breathes the true spirit of chivalry

and romance. After the loss of his promised bride, a Merovingian

princess, he sought in marriage the daughter of the king of Bavaria; and

Garibald accepted the alliance of the Italian monarch. Impatient of the

slow progress of negotiation, the ardent lover escaped from his palace

and visited the court of Bavaria in the train of his own embassy. At

the public audience, the unknown stranger advanced to the throne, and

informed Garibald that the ambassador was indeed the minister of state,

but that he alone was the friend of Authari, who had trusted him with

the delicate commission of making a faithful report of the charms of his

spouse.

Theudelinda was summoned to undergo this important examination; and

after a pause of silent rapture, he hailed her as the queen of Italy,

and humbly requested that, according to the custom of the nation, she

would present a cup of wine to the first of her new subjects. By the

command of her father she obeyed: Authari received the cup in his turn,

and, in restoring it to the princess, he secretly touched her hand, and

drew his own finger over his face and lips. In the evening, Theudelinda

imparted to her nurse the indiscreet familiarity of the stranger, and was

comforted by the assurance that such boldness could proceed only from

the king, her husband, who, by his beauty and courage, appeared worthy

of her love. The ambassadors were dismissed; no sooner did they reach

the confines of Italy than Authari, raising himself on his horse, darted

his battle-axe against a tree with incomparable strength and dexterity.

“Such,” said he to the astonished Bavarians, “such are the strokes of the

king of the Lombards.” On the approach of a French army, Garibald and

his daughter took refuge in the dominions of their ally; and the marriage

was consummated in the palace of Verona. At the end of one year, it was

dissolved by the death of Authari (Sept. 5th, 590), but the virtues of

Theudelinda had endeared her to the nation, and she was permitted to

bestow, with her hand, the sceptre of the Italian kingdom.

LOMBARD GOVERNMENT AND LAW

From this fact, as well as from similar events, it is certain that

the Lombards possessed freedom to elect their sovereign, and sense

to decline the frequent use of that dangerous privilege. The public

revenue arose from the produce of land, and the profits of justice.

When the independent dukes agreed that Authari should ascend the throne

of his father, they endowed the regal office with a fair moiety of

their respective domains. The proudest nobles aspired to the honours

of servitude near the person of their prince: he rewarded the fidelity

of his vassals by the precarious gift of pensions and “benefices”; and

atoned for the injuries of war by the rich foundation of monasteries

and churches. In peace a judge, a leader in war, he never usurped the

powers of a sole and absolute legislator. The king of Italy convened

the national assemblies in the palace, or more probably in the fields

of Pavia: his great council was composed of the persons most eminent by

their birth and dignities; but the validity, as well as the execution, of

their decrees, depended on the approbation of the “faithful” people, the

“fortunate” army of the Lombards.

About fourscore years after the conquest of Italy, their traditional

customs were transcribed in Teutonic Latin, and ratified by the consent

of the prince and people: some new regulations were introduced, more

suitable to their present condition; the example of Rothari was imitated

by the wisest of his successors, and the laws of the Lombards have been

esteemed the least imperfect of the barbaric codes. Secure by their

courage in the possession of liberty, these rude and hasty legislators

were incapable of balancing the powers of the constitution, or of

discussing the nice theory of political government.

Such crimes as threatened the life of the sovereign, or the safety of the

state, were adjudged worthy of death; but their attention was principally

confined to the defence of the person and property of the subject.

According to the strange jurisprudence of the times, the guilt of blood

might be redeemed by a fine; yet the high price of nine hundred pieces

of gold declares a just sense of the value of a simple citizen. Less

atrocious injuries, a wound, a fracture, a blow, an opprobrious word,

were measured with scrupulous and almost ridiculous diligence; and the

prudence of the legislator encouraged the ignoble practice of bartering

honour and revenge for a pecuniary compensation.

The ignorance of the Lombards, in the state of paganism or Christianity,

gave implicit credit to the malice and mischief of witchcraft; but

the judges of the seventeenth century might have been instructed and

confounded by the wisdom of Rothari, who derides the absurd superstition,

and protects the wretched victims of popular or judicial cruelty. The

same spirit of a legislator, superior to his age and country, may be

ascribed to Liutprand, who condemns, while he tolerates, the impious and

inveterate abuse of duels, observing from his own experience, that the

juster cause had often been oppressed by successful violence.

Whatever merit may be discovered in the laws of the Lombards, they are

the genuine fruit of the reason of the barbarians, who never admitted

the bishops of Italy to a seat in their legislative councils. But

the succession of their kings is marked with virtue and ability; the

troubled series of their annals is adorned with fair intervals of peace,

order, and domestic happiness; and the Italians enjoyed a milder and

more equitable government than any of the other kingdoms which had been

founded on the ruins of the Western Empire.

THE DECAY OF ROME

[Sidenote: [590-671 A.D.]]

Amidst the arms of the Lombards, and under the despotism of the Greeks,

we again inquire into the fate of Rome, which had reached, about the

close of the sixth century, the lowest period of her depression. By the

removal of the seat of empire, and the successive loss of the provinces,

the sources of public and private opulence were exhausted; the lofty tree

under whose shade the nations of the earth had reposed, was deprived of

its leaves and branches, and the sapless trunk was left to wither on

the ground. The ministers of command, and the messengers of victory, no

longer met on the Appian or Flaminian way; and the hostile approach of

the Lombards was often felt, and continually feared. The inhabitants shut

or opened their gates with a trembling hand, beheld from the walls the

flames of their houses, and heard the lamentations of their brethren, who

were coupled together like dogs, and dragged away into distant slavery

beyond the sea and the mountains. The Campagna of Rome was speedily

reduced to the state of a dreary wilderness, in which the land is barren,

the waters are impure, and the air is infectious.

Curiosity and ambition no longer attracted the nations to the capital of

the world: but if chance or necessity directed the steps of a wandering

stranger, he contemplated with horror the vacancy and solitude of the

city, and might be tempted to ask, Where is the senate, and where are

the people? In a season of excessive rains, the Tiber swelled above its

banks, and rushed with irresistible violence into the valleys of the

Seven Hills. A pestilential disease arose from the stagnation of the

deluge, and so rapid was the contagion, that fourscore persons expired in

an hour, in the midst of a solemn procession which implored the mercy of

Heaven.

A society in which marriage is encouraged and industry prevails, soon

repairs the accidental losses of pestilence and war; but as the far

greater part of the Romans was condemned to hopeless indigence and

celibacy, the depopulation was constant and visible, and the gloomy

enthusiasts might expect the approaching failure of the human race. Yet

the number of citizens still exceeded the measure of subsistence: their

precarious food was supplied from the harvests of Sicily or Egypt; and

the frequent repetition of famine betrays the inattention of the emperor

to a distant province. The edifices of Rome were exposed to the same ruin

and decay; the mouldering fabrics were easily overthrown by inundations,

tempests, and earthquakes; and the monks, who had occupied the most

advantageous stations, exulted in their base triumph over the ruins of

antiquity.

It is commonly believed, that Pope Gregory I attacked the temples, and

mutilated the statues, of the city; that by the command of the barbarian,

the Palatine library was reduced to ashes; and that the history of

Livy was the peculiar mark of his absurd and mischievous fanaticism.

The writings of Gregory himself reveal his implacable aversion to the

monuments of classic genius: and he points his severest censure against

the profane learning of a bishop, who taught the art of grammar, studied

the Latin poets, and pronounced with the same voice the praises of

Jupiter and those of Christ. But the evidence of his destructive rage is

doubtful and recent; the temple of Peace, or the theatre of Marcellus,

have been demolished by the slow operation of ages, and a formal

proscription would have multiplied the copies of Virgil and Livy in the

countries which were not subject to the ecclesiastical dictator.

Like Thebes, or Babylon, or Carthage, the name of Rome might have been

erased from the earth, if the city had not been animated by a vital

principle, which again restored her to honour and dominion.[w]

THE LOMBARD KINGS (636-712 A.D.)

Theudelinda had chosen for her husband and co-ruler, the Thuringian duke

Agilulf who reigned from 590 to 615. Under these two the Arian Lombards

kept peace with the Catholic church, and Pope Gregory the Great, who is

more fully treated under the history of the papacy, deserves honour for

arranging the peace and preventing a conspiracy to massacre the Lombards

as the French were butchered on the day of the Sicilian Vespers.

Agilulf was followed by Adalwald (Adeloald), 615-624, and he by Ariwald

(Arioald), 624-636, who was followed by Rothari (636-652).[a]

From the time when Rothari established the Lombard monarchy by his

strong hand, to the reign of Liutprand, the first king who deliberately

conceived the design of uniting the whole of Italy under his sceptre,

the throne of Pavia passed through many vicissitudes, and the monarchy

could only maintain its authority with difficulty against the power of

the aspiring nobles, and of the dukes in particular. Rodwald, the son of

Rothari, having been assassinated, after a reign of barely six months

(652), by a Lombard whom he had grievously insulted, loyalty to the

memory of Queen Theudelinda led the nation to set her nephew Aribert,

the son of Gundwald of Asti, on the throne. The reign of this monarch

(653-661), the first Catholic king of the Lombards, is shrouded in

obscurity. According to the dispositions made by him on his death-bed,

his two youthful sons, Godebert and Perctarit, were to divide his

dominions, one fixing his capital at Pavia and the other at Milan. The

consequence of this ill-judged arrangement was a fratricidal civil war.

Both belligerents appealed for aid to Grimwald, duke of Benevento, and

thus gave this powerful and ambitious ruler the opportunity of placing

the crown on his own head (662-671). He entered Pavia as the ally of

Godebert; but seized the first favourable moment to murder the young

king. Thereupon Perctarit of Milan, the other brother, dreading a like

fate for himself, fled to the Avars, leaving his wife Rodelinda and his

infant son Cunincbert behind him.

Grimwald, who had married the daughter of Aribert, then ruled the

Lombard kingdom for ten years with vigour and prudence, and successfully

repelled the attacks of the Franks on the west and of the Greeks on the

east. When a Lombard duke, Lupus of Friuli by name, refused to swear

allegiance to him, he instigated the chagan of the Avars to make war

on the recalcitrant noble. The disloyal governor and the majority of

his comrades in arms fell in a four days’ battle against the barbarians

(663). The Avars, however, obstinately refused to evacuate the territory

which they had purchased with their blood. Grimwald was forced to muster

an army to coerce them, but he avoided giving battle and ultimately

succeeded by artifice in inducing his savage visitors to withdraw. In

order to secure himself against revolt and disloyalty for the future, he

conferred the most important dukedoms on his own adherents and friends,

taking care to bestow the municipal territories (_civitates_) upon

persons who were not native to the respective cities and so had no ties

to the soil. Accordingly Benevento fell to the share of his son Romwald;

Spoleto to his faithful comrade Transamund, on whom he also bestowed his

daughter in marriage; and the duchy of Friuli to Wechtari of Vicenza.

[Sidenote: [671-712 A.D.]]

Grimwald was nevertheless unable to secure the crown for his own line.

Death had barely closed the formidable monarch’s eyes before Perctarit

was conducted from the frontier to Pavia and proclaimed king amidst loud

rejoicings, while Garibald, Grimwald’s son, disappeared from the scene.

Of Perctarit’s subsequent reign (671-686), in which he associated his son

Cunincbert (686-700) with him in the government, we know nothing except

that he waged a protracted war with Alahis, duke of Trient, who had

rebelled against him. After the death of Perctarit the struggle took a

turn so unfavourable to the royal cause that Alahis, who in the meantime

had added the duchy of Brescia to that of Trient, marched into Pavia,

forced the king to take refuge on an island in Lake Como, and proclaimed

himself king. His reign was brief. Desertion and treachery weakened his

cause, and he fell in a decisive battle against Cunincbert not far from

Como. Cunincbert then took up his residence once more in the royal palace

at Pavia.

DECLINE OF THE LOMBARD KINGDOM

Under Cunincbert’s son Liutbert, who succeeded as a minor under the

guardianship of Duke Ansprand, the kingdom of Lombardy fell on evil days.

Raginbert, the son of Godebert, a scion of the royal house, who had risen

in the reign of Cunincbert to the rank of Duke of Turin, now advanced

pretensions to the throne. Ansprand and his ally, Rothari of Bergamo,

were defeated on the field of Novara, where the fortunes of Italy have

so often been decided. Raginbert did not long survive his victory; but

his son Aribert maintained his claims and won a second victory over the

opposite party at Pavia. Ansprand escaped to the island in Lake Como

where Cunincbert had formerly found refuge; the young king fell into the

hands of the victors. Rothari withdrew to his own duchy of Bergamo, but

expiated his short-lived dream of sovereignty (for he had aspired to the

throne himself) by an untimely death in prison at Turin. The ill-starred

Liutbert was murdered in his bath about the same time, and Ansprand was

forced to leave his last refuge on Italian soil and flee across the Alps.

Aribert now reigned at Pavia without a rival (701-712). But strenuously

as he strove to curb the power of the dukes and to win popularity by the

justice of his administration, he was unable to maintain his sovereignty.

For eight years Ansprand had waited in vain at the court of the duke of

Bavaria for the aid he desired. In the ninth it was granted. He entered

upper Italy at the head of an imposing force “to set upon his own head

the crown he had not been able to keep for his ward.” Aribert, though

not defeated in the field, lost heart and absconded to Pavia. A mutiny

arose in the army in consequence, the king’s life seemed to be in danger,

and he resolved upon flight. He tried to swim the Ticino, but the weight

of the gold he had taken with him dragged him down and he was drowned.

The reins of government were then assumed (712) by Ansprand, “a man of

conspicuous valour and rare wisdom.” He had only three months to enjoy

the good fortune for which he had striven so long; but on his death-bed

he had the joy of seeing his son Liutprand raised to the throne and

acknowledged king in a solemn assembly of the people.[x]

REIGN OF LIUTPRAND (712-744 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [712-724 A.D.]]

Between the 6th and 13th of June, 712, which is the date, as nearly as we

can fix it, when Flavius Liutprand came to the throne, he was, according

to all records, in the prime of his manhood. He took to wife a Bavarian

princess, Guntrud, the child of Theudibert, who bore him a daughter,

their only offspring. The exact time of his marriage is not known. It

took place not long after Aribert of the Cottian Alps made his donation

to the Roman church; the year in which Gregory II became pope. If this

circumstance is taken in connection with the fact that between 715-716

the Bavarian duke, Theodo I (Theudibert’s father), undertook a journey to

Rome, highly important to the clerical interests of Bavaria, it cannot be

doubted that this duke, whose house had so long been allied in friendship

with Liutprand, must have tarried in Pavia to see the king, and that at

this interview the further tie of a marriage alliance was first discussed.

The intimate relations between the Bavarians and Lombards lasted up

to a late period; they were at one time neighbours in Pannonia, and

earlier still there are authenticated accounts of their being related

as is shown by the close resemblance in their customs and speech. Most

of our information drawn from the earliest Bavarian chronicles, we owe

to Paulus,[p] the historian of the Lombards. Even before these latter

wandered into Italy the marriage of Walderada, widow of Theudebald

of Austrasia and daughter of the Lombard Wacho, had taken place with

Garibald, the first duke of Bavaria, under whose reign that country

became in fact a dependency of France.

The earlier theory that the Bavarians were once among the Alboin peoples

has, it is true, been energetically opposed, but, as the author of this

history believes, without grounds. Even as far back as the three kings

in Italy, Authari took to wife a Bavarian princess, the much-chronicled

Theudelinda, who gave to the kingdom a new dynasty,--if such a word can

be used in speaking of the Lombard--and to a certain extent, a new faith.

Many traces are to be found of the subsequent intercourse between the two

races, but a close and really important connection did not, so far as can

be discovered from the scanty sources of information at our disposal,

occur until the time of King Ansprand.

Theodo I had divided his country into five parts, of which he kept

one for himself, assigning the remaining four divisions to his four

sons--Theudibert, Grimwald, Tassilo II, and Theodobald. Rudhart’s

supposition was that Theudibert, with whom the Lombards came almost

exclusively into touch, kept the south division, adjoining Liutprand’s

kingdom, together with the see of Salzburg.

After Theodobald’s early death his inheritance fell to his surviving

brothers; and the same was the case with Theodo’s land after his death in

717 or in 722.

In the year 724 Theudibert also died. He seems to have exercised a kind

of supremacy over his brother. He left behind him a son, Hucpert,

brother-in-law to Liutprand; when, as presently happened, Grimwald wished

to make himself supreme ruler in Bavaria, and to overthrow Hucpert, he

turned to his neighbours over the border for help. He received it, and it

was on this occasion that Liutprand built some forts on the Etsch (Adige).

LIUTPRAND AND MARTEL

[Sidenote: [534-725 A.D.]]

The wanderings of the Bavarian dukes had given another powerful

neighbour, Charles Martel, the ruler of the Franks, the opportunity

of interfering with them. There are proofs that friendly intercourse

existed between the Franks and the Lombards, even before the latter

migrated to Italy. Theudebert I, one of the few descendants of Clovis

who has left an honourable name in history, was wedded to Wisigarda, a

daughter of King Wacho, whose second daughter, Walderada, was the first

wife of Theudebald, the illegitimate son of the successor of Theudebert.

All friendly relations between these two peoples ceased with Alboin,

who, before he married the notorious Rosamund, took to wife a daughter

of Clotair I, named either Clotosuinda or Flutswinda, and after his

time we find them opposed and hostile to one another. At first during

the years 568, 571, 572, 574, and 575, there were only insignificant

battles, brought about by the incursions of the Lombard tribes who

were not yet settled in the Frankish territory. More serious, and not

exactly conducive to fame or success for the Franks, were the wars which

Childebert II, in pursuance of an agreement made by him with the East

Roman emperor, himself conducted against Authari down to the year 590. It

was only under Agilulf that peace was actually secured in 591.

In 605, in connection with the marriage of King Adalwald with a daughter

of Theudebert II, a bond of “everlasting peace between the Franks and

Lombards” was sworn to. We are also told by Paulus that King Grimwald

almost completely annihilated a Frankish host, which had passed from

Provence into upper Italy, but no exact date is furnished. It was only

when under the strong rule of the first Carlovingians on the one hand

and of Liutprand on the other, when order was to some extent restored

in both kingdoms, that the two rulers once more approached one another

with a view to the discussion of a foreign policy. In 725 Charles Martel

undertook his first campaign, in order to put the Bavarians in mind of

their long-forgotten dependence on the Franks. There are no chronicles

which tell us whether or not Liutprand then came into communication with

his great contemporary. But it is certain that a good understanding

existed between them in the years which followed, a friendship which only

grew closer with time. This is proved chiefly by the fact that Charles

Martel, in his thirties, sent his youthful son Pepin (born 714 or 715)

to the Lombard king that the king might cut off his hair “according to

the custom.” This Liutprand did, assuming by this act the place of second

father to the young man, afterwards sending him home, enriched by many

presents. According to two later chroniclers Charles had then already

concluded an alliance with Liutprand, an assertion which the historian

has rather deduced from later occurrences, than based upon any exact

knowledge of the actual facts.

When the Saracens again invaded Gaul, and had pushed on into Provence,

Charles sent envoys bearing presents to Liutprand, and asked him for

assistance, which was granted. The report of a Lombard army in the

neighbourhood was sufficient to induce the “unbelievers,” who had

reached the valley of Susa, to retreat, and to the abandonment of Arles

(Arelate).

LIUTPRAND AND THE ITALIAN POWERS

[Sidenote: [731-744 A.D.]]

The expeditions to Bavaria and France are the only ones Liutprand

undertook outside of Italy. Even within the peninsula his predecessors

had not left him very much to do. The change of rulers repeatedly

enforced in the second half of the seventh and the beginning of the

eighth century was, of course, anything but advantageous to the

aggrandisement of the Lombard royal house. The leading forces in the

country, the dukes, whose power dated from the earliest monarchical times

in Italy, made what use they could of the internecine discord to assert

their own authority.

At the extreme point of independence of the crown stood the Beneventine

dukes, who from time immemorial had maintained a unique position in

the south, being indeed recognised by constitutional law as almost

independent of the kingly power. They traced back their origin to royal

blood, to Duke Gisulf of Friuli, a brother of Alboin.

In 731 Liutprand found an opportunity to interfere in Beneventine

affairs. He came in person to Benevento, and took away with him his

grand-nephew who was not of age, whilst in his place he installed his

nephew Gregory, leaving him peacefully established before he returned.

Gregory, after a reign of about seven years, met his death by violence

in 738. By this time the opponents in south Lombardy had chosen a duke

for themselves in the person of the otherwise unknown Gottschalk.

Whether he had any connection and if so, of what kind, with the native

princely house is not to be learned from any of the records. According

to Paulus[p] he ruled for three years, 738 or 739 to 742. In the last

year, as Liutprand having completely subjugated Spoleto betook himself

to an expedition against Benevento, Gottschalk was attacked by the

Beneventines, who were hostile to him, and killed. Thus Liutprand on

his arrival found his way clear, and placed his great-nephew, now grown

to man’s estate, upon the ducal throne as Gisulf II. He then returned

to Pavia, and from that time had no occasion to interfere further in

Benevento. In Spoleto a similar state of things was the consequence of

similar circumstances.

[Sidenote: [719-744 A.D.]]

The Friulian princes owe their distinguished position to the province

which Alboin “lent to his cousin Gisulf, his _marpahis_,” and which was

occupied by the flower of the Lombard warriors, and more particularly

owing to the circumstance that it formed the frontier which was so much

exposed to the attacks of the Avars. After the frightful defeat, which

Gisulf had once sustained from the Avars, the Lombards bore themselves

manfully under constantly recurring attacks; the sons and successors of

the first dukes, Taso and Cacco, succeeding in extending their territory

as far as what was afterwards called the Windisch boundary-land, the Slav

inhabitants of which paid tribute to Friuli up to the time of the duke

Ratchis. A second great defeat which Duke Ferdulf suffered at the turn of

the seventh century seemed to have no further consequences.

Not long after Ferdulf’s death, which was followed by a short

interregnum, Pemmo, father of two kings of widely different characters,

King Ratchis and Aistulf, received the dukedom from Aribert II. His reign

seems to have been a long one, extending over forty years--that is, far

into the time of Liutprand. His first endeavour was to heal the wounds

which Ferdulf’s rashness had inflicted upon his country. By a victory

in the neighbourhood of Villach he succeeded in sending home a newly

arrived tribe of Slavs (Avars) after they had been severely punished. He

concluded a peace with his enemy, who from that time forward cherished

a salutary respect for the Friulian arms. In later years, however, by

his conflict with Callistus, patriarch of Aquileia, he drew on himself

the serious displeasure of the king which eventually led to the loss

of his dukedom. Till then, the patriarchs, not being secure in their

own dominions from the enmity of the East Romans, had always resided at

Cormona, but Callistus, who was a “very elegant nobleman” and moreover a

particular favourite of Liutprand, who had assisted him to the attainment

of his dignity, found the residence of his predecessors in authority

too undistinguished, and decided to remove to Friuli, which appeared to

him far more suitable. Unfortunately, there already resided here, with

the consent of the dukes, the bishop of the neighbouring Tulia Carnica,

whose see was at that time held by Amator. The ambitious, high-spirited

patriarch drove him, without ceremony, from his own house, and coolly

took possession of it. Pemmo, who witnessed this proceeding, but with

great disfavour, was not prepared to allow such a thing to happen in his

own town. He arrested Callistus, whose life was for some time in danger,

kept him in prison, and “let him eat the bread of sorrow.” When Liutprand

was informed of the oppression of one of his protégés he took energetic

measures, deposed the reigning duke and installed in his stead, Ratchis,

the duke’s elder son.

Soon after his appointment, he undertook a successful expedition to

devastate the Slav population in Carinthia, with the intention of

giving them a warning against any invasion of his territory. With this

our information concerning the history of Friuli during the reign of

Liutprand comes to an end.

LIUTPRAND, THE POPE, AND CONSTANTINOPLE

[Sidenote: [712-728 A.D.]]

When Liutprand came to the throne, Peter Constantine was pope at Rome

(708-715) and appeared to have no relations with the Lombard king. The

first hint of any communication between the two powers relates to a

donation of ecclesiastical properties from the Cottian Alps, which King

Aribert II had once made to Pope John VII (705-707) and which Liutprand,

on his accession, now confirmed to Constantine I, after whose death

the gift was revoked, but finally, on the request of Gregory II, again

renewed.

Somewhere about this year (717-718) may be dated the first split between

the East Romans and the Lombards, and indeed it was the Beneventines

who were responsible for the first hostilities. It appears that

Constantinople possessed a not inconsiderable district in the heart

of the Benevento territory, a duchy which comprised among other towns

Naples, Amalfi, Sorrento, Misenum, Puteoli, and Cumæ. In a time of peace,

Romwald II seized upon the last-named town which was fortified and

therefore of some importance. Gregory II, who at this time, previous to

the dispute about iconoclasm, was well disposed towards the Byzantines,

interposed with argument, threats of displeasure, and demands for

restitution, but in vain. Finally he induced the Greek duke, John of

Naples, to intervene, which was from the first his obvious duty. John

marched into Cumæ in the dead of night and took possession of the place;

three hundred Lombards, among them one Gastald, met their death, and five

hundred were led captive to Naples. As a reward Gregory gave John of

Naples 70 pounds in gold, which he had promised him if he would undertake

the business.

Liutprand was not personally affected by this proceeding, as Benevento

had at that time nothing to do with the Lombard kingdom and existed as an

independent duchy.

Since the open outbreak of the quarrel about the images, (as described

previously under the history of Leo the Isaurian and more fully under the

papacy), however, he showed himself inimical first to the extension of

the emperor’s possessions in Italy, and in pursuance of the same policy,

to Rome as well, which nominally at least was still under imperial rule.

The sides taken in the conflicts which followed, although varying from

time to time, may be given briefly as follows: On one side Liutprand

against East Rome--the lawful emperor and he never being on friendly

terms; on the other the pope--an unequivocal enemy to the emperor ever

since the image quarrel, but none the less no sincere ally of the Lombard

king, whose ever-extending power he worked in every way to counteract,

whilst keeping on the alert lest his machinations to this end should

advance the Byzantine interests. He also, when occasion offered, called

in the aid of the Beneventine and Spoletine dukes.

The conflict was initiated by Liutprand at a time highly favourable

to his main desire which, there can be no doubt, was that all Italy

should be united into one kingdom under a Lombard king,--namely in the

year 726, when by his energetic attack upon the iconodules in his own

territory, the emperor had raised about him an atmosphere of bitterness

and insurrection, had especially made a lasting enemy of the bishop in

Rome who was regarded by western Europe as the head of the Christian

church and was by no means in a position to combat the rebellions in his

Italian provinces, or to keep his unwilling vassals under his empire. All

these circumstances combined to help Liutprand in his enterprise--the

extension of his own power at the cost of that of the empire. No one

could have understood better how to turn the mistakes made in Rome and

Constantinople to account.

[Illustration: COAT OF MAIL OF A KING IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY]

About 726 the Lombards possessed themselves of the fortified town of

Narnia (Narni), which at that time belonged to Eastern Rome. After that

Liutprand himself marched at the head of the united forces of his kingdom

(_generali motione facta_) upon Ravenna, the centre of the Byzantine

power in Italy. After a siege lasting many days he succeeded at least in

taking Classis, the port of Ravenna, which he destroyed, after sacking it

with great profit to himself.

[Sidenote: [728-741 A.D.]]

The emperor, instead of yielding to Gregory II, at least in appearance,

and so securing his assistance in resisting the encroachments made by

Liutprand, still further widened the gulf between the pope and himself

by his stubborn and ungracious demeanour. The consequences were not

slow to follow. Even if the many attempts against his life and position

described in the biography of the pope are rather imaginary (and due to

the dread felt in Rome of Leo III) than attacks which actually occurred,

they nevertheless give us the right idea of the temper in Rome at that

time; there is no doubt that the appointment of a new pope favoured by

the emperor and who might be removed to Constantinople, was contemplated

in Italy. The fact of a later successful understanding between the two,

such as Gregorovius[aa] and Schlosser[bb] would have us accept, has no

authenticated probability. In 728-729 Liutprand and Eutychius were still

acting in concert against the pope and his friends; and the imperial

edict of 728, wherein “all images of angels, saints, and martyrs were

proscribed under penalties” shows no inclination towards reconciliation.

Whether the Lombards, who defended the pope at the Ponte Salario against

the forces of Eutychius and the exarch Paulus, which were approaching to

depose him from the papal chair, acted under instructions from Liutprand,

or from Transamund II, duke of Spoleto, or on their own initiative, we

cannot discover from the _Vita Gregorii_,[z] which contains the record.

Accordingly whilst a state of great confusion and warfare prevailed both

in the east and west of Italy, as well as in the district surrounding

Naples, Liutprand continued his victorious career.

To favour the Greeks was not his idea, so long as the pope gave him no

offence; moreover he had a certain awe of the church, and of its head,

which he never uprooted from his inner nature. Besides, his situation,

independent of both sides and therefore alternately feared and courted

by both, was the best possible for facilitating the execution of his

ambitious and far-reaching projects.

In September of the year 727 till September 728 he addressed himself to

a neighbourhood quite dangerously in the vicinity of Rome, seizing the

town of Sutrium (Sutri), which, like the strip of country between the

dukedoms of Spoleto and Tuscany was not yet incorporated with the Lombard

kingdom. By dint of much persuasion and still more gold, he consented

140 days later to return this piece of territory, and leave the pope in

possession, “the first presentation of a town to the church”--“the first

germ of the pontifical state outside the walls of Rome.”

The following year after the subjection already mentioned, of Spoleto

and Benevento, he followed Eutychius against Rome, and encamped on the

Neronian meadows to the great dismay of the inhabitants. Nevertheless the

matter was conducted to a peaceable issue. After a touching conference

with Gregory II the Lombard king not only commenced no hostilities,

but showed all possible respect to the papal throne, at the same time

cautioning the pope to place himself on a better footing with Eutychius,

and his (Liutprand’s) other allies. For this reason the idea of a serious

alliance having existed between Liutprand and the emperor cannot be

entertained.

Not long after, on the 11th of February, 731, Gregory II died. Under the

rule of his successor, Gregory III, an enthusiastic image-worshipper,

whose life in the _Liber Pontificalis_[z] is very scantily and

unsatisfactorily told, “the Roman district was brought under the control

of the accursed Lombards, under the king Liutprand himself,” a sentence

which must not, of course, be taken literally, and which unfortunately

stands without further explanation.

Probably the decade in which Gregory III sat on the stool of St.

Peter, was the period during which these events took place which are

only related by Paulus Diaconus.[p] To give an even moderately correct

chronology of the sequence of events would be a hopeless endeavour. The

battles against the East Romans which are here mentioned, are confined

to those in the exarchate of Ravenna. Wherever the king himself led the

fight, he always came off victor (according to Paulus), whilst in his

absence the Lombards sustained many rebuffs. In the last year of Gregory

III the complications between Rome and Liutprand assumed a very serious

aspect, the intervention of the pope in Lombard affairs, which were

purely secular, costing him dear.

It now appears to have been only by lavish expenditure that he was able

to establish a friendly understanding. The fortress Gallese, north of

Nepi on the Tiber, till now the object of so much desire, was resigned

by Spoleto to the Ducatus Romanus, _i.e._, nominally to the East Roman

kingdom, but in reality to the Patrimonium Petri. We have definite

information that a formal treaty followed between the pope on the one

side and the dukes of Spoleto and Benevento on the other, with the

express purpose of restoring and protecting the autonomous rights of the

dukes and safe-guarding both the eastern and western possessions of the

pope from the clutches of Liutprand.

When, therefore, in 738, the king commenced a campaign in the Roman

district in which the neighbourhood, particularly the church property

in it, was not spared, the two dukes refused to answer the summons of

Liutprand to follow and take part in the spoliation. Thereupon Liutprand

abandoned the idea of Rome, and marched next against the insurrectionary

duke of Spoleto through the devastated territory of Campania. Transamund

did not venture to make any stand against him, but fled in the direction

of Rome to Gregory III. Hilderic was promoted by the king to be duke in

his stead, and assumed control, probably during June, 739. Liutprand next

appealed urgently to the pope for the surrender of the insurrectionary

vassals, but, as might have been expected, without success, Patricius the

East Roman, and Duke Stephanus the commander of the troops in the Roman

duchy both setting themselves in keen opposition to Liutprand’s desires.

The latter avenged himself by seizing four towns. After accomplishing

this as well as a siege of the Holy City, he returned in August, 739,

to Pavia. A letter, the second written by Gregory III in 739 to Charles

Martel, which has been preserved, gives a description of the poverty

and anxiety in the Papal dominions, and is a veritable masterpiece of

the meanest perfidy, in which he adjures Charles Martel by the keys of

the Holy Sepulchre, which he had presented to him, to lend his help and

strength against the dreaded Liutprand.

Scarcely had the king withdrawn when Transamund II, aided by the troops

of the Roman duchy which were left with him in the confidence that he

would regain the towns lost to the Romans, applied himself to re-assuming

the sovereign power. The entire Roman military force invaded the dukedom

of Spoleto in two columns, one town after another surrendered after a

short resistance, and in December, 739, Transamund entered his capital

in state; Hilderic being removed by murder. “And at this time there

was a great disquietude among the Lombardians, as the Beneventines and

Spoletines allied themselves with the Romans.”