The Ten Kingdoms in the Dark Ages.
IN A. D. 493, the Herulian kingdom of Italy was uprooted, and replaced by the kingdom of the Ostrogoths; in A. D. 533, September, to 534, the kingdom of the Vandals in Africa was annihilated, by the army of Justinian under Belisarius; and in A. D. 538, the kingdom of the Ostrogoths in Italy was destroyed, also by Belisarius and the army of Justinian. But as these events are directly connected with the establishment of the Papacy, we reserve the history of them until we come to that of the Papacy, in Dan. 7: 24, 25. We left the Lombards in possession of Noricum and Pannonia. "But the spirit of rapine soon tempted them beyond these ample limits; they wandered along the coast of the Hadriatic as far as Dyrrachium, and presumed, with familiar rudeness, to enter the towns and houses of their Roman allies, and to seize the captives who had escaped from their audacious hands. These acts of hostility, the sallies, as it might be pretended, of some loose adventurers, were disowned by the nation, and excused by the emperor [Justinian]; but the arms of the Lombards were more seriously engaged by a contest of thirty years [A. D. 536-566], which was terminated only by the extirpation of the Gepidæ."—Dec. and Fall, chap. 42, par. 2. "The destruction of a mighty kingdom established the fame of Alboin. . . But his ambition was yet unsatisfied; and the conqueror of the Gepidæ turned his eye [A. D. 567] 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 Avars]. The robust peasantry of Noricum and Pannonia had resumed the manners of Barbarians; and the names of the Gepidæ, Bulgarians, Sarmatians, and Bavarians, may be distinctly traced in the provinces of Italy. Of the Saxons, the old allies of the Lombards, 20,000 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 members was not sensibly felt in the magnitude of his host. . . . 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; 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." "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 [A. D. 568-570] 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 five months after his departure from Pannonia. Terror preceded his march; he found everywhere, or he left, a dreary solitude; 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 the wealth, and delayed the moment of their servitude. . . . 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 [of Ravenna] 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 civilized enemy, provoked 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 of 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 victorious Autharis [A. D. 584-590] asserted his claim to the dominion of Italy. At the foot of the Rhætian 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 sea-shore of Rhegium, proclaiming that ancient landmark to stand the immovable boundary of his kingdom." With the exception of the possessions of the Exarchate of Ravenna, and some cities on the coast, "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 Beneventum, survived the monarchy, and propagated the name of the Lombards. From Capua to Tarentum, they reigned near five hundred years over the greatest part of the present [1776] kingdom of Naples."—Id., chap. 45, par. 5, 7, 14, 15. So widespread was the Lombard rule that Lombardy "was indeed for a time the name for Italy itself," and from that time to this the history of the Lombards is but the history of Italy, and Lombardy is still "the name of the finest province" of that country, which, itself, might almost be called the key of history.