ITALY AND HER INVADERS.
BOOK VI
.
CHAPTER IV.
ALBOIN IN ITALY.
Thus have we followed the fortunes of the Longobardi, or, as I shall now
for convenience call them, the Lombards, from their dim original on the shores
of the Baltic, till they stood on the crest of the Julian Alps, looking down
with lustful eyes on the land which had once been the Mistress of the World, but
which now lay all but defenceless before them.
We may briefly summarize all that can be ascertained of their social and
political condition on the day when, according to the Saga, the messengers of
Narses appeared in Alboin's banqueting hall, bearing the grapes and the oranges
of Italy. There is some difference of opinion as to the ethnological position
of the Lombards. One German scholar, who, by his life-long devotion to
philological study, claims our respectful attention, contends strongly for
their Low-German character, basing his argument, not only on the traditions
mentioned in the previous chapter, which connect them (in his opinion) with the
Danish peninsula, but also (which is more especially interesting to us) on the
extraordinary correspondence of Lombard words, customs and laws with those of
the Anglo-Saxons. Another and younger authority (following, it is time, in the
train of the venerable Jacob Grimm) says, in somewhat haughty tone, ‘That the
Lombards belonged to the West Germans, and to the High-German branch of that
people, no one can now any longer deny'. Both he and Grimm were led to this
conclusion chiefly by the High-German character of the Lombard names and the
few relics which have been preserved to us of the language. The gift of the
bridegroom to the bride, which was called in Low-German Morgen-gabe, is in the Lombard laws morgin-cap;
the Anglo-Saxon Alfwine is apparently the same name
as the Lombard Alboin; the judge who, in Gothic, is called sculdhaita,
is, among the Lombards, sculdhaizo; and so
with many other words. In all these the Lombard language seems to affect that
form which, according to Grimm's well-known law, marks the High-German (say the
Swabian or Bavarian) manner of speech, rather than the Low-German, which was
practised by Goths, Frisians and Angles.
Where such authorities differ, it would be presumptuous in the present
writer to express an opinion, but I may remark that to me the philological
facts seem modified to correspond in a remarkable degree with what we have
already learned from our authorities concerning the early history of the
people. We have in the Lombards, as I venture to think, a race originally of
Low- German origin, coming from the coasts and islands of the Baltic, and
closely akin to our own Anglo-Saxon forefathers. So far, the case seems clear;
and probably the Lombards spoke a pure Low-German dialect when they dwelt in Bardengau by the Elbe, and when they fought with the
Vandals. But then, by about the middle of the second century after Christ, they
gravitated towards the great Suevic confederation, and visited, in its train,
the lands on the Middle Danube, where (if I read their history aright) they
remained more or less persistently for nearly four hundred years.
This surely was a long enough time to give a Suevic, that is a Swabian
or High-German, character to their speech, sufficient time for them to change
their B's into P's, their G's into K's, and their T's into Z's, before they
emerged into the world of book-writing and bookreading men.
Of the dress and appearance of the Lombards at the time of their
invasion of Italy we have a most precious trace in the words of their great
historian, and here again that connection, so interesting to us, between them
and our own forefathers, comes into view.
“At Modicia,” says Paulus, “queen Theudelinda
built a palace for herself [about the year 600], in which she also caused some
representation to be made of the deeds of the Lombards. In this picture it is
clearly shown how at that time the Lombards cut the hair of their heads, and what
was their dress, and what their habit. For, in truth, they made bare the neck,
shaving it up to the back of the head, having their hair let down from the face
as far as the mouth, and parting it on either side from the forehead. But their
garments were loose and for the most part made of linen, such as the
Anglo-Saxons are wont to wear, adorned with borders woven in various colours.
Their boots were open almost to the extremity of the great toe, and kept
together by crossing boot-laces. Later on, however, they began to use hosen,
over which the riders drew waterproof leggings. But this fashion they copied
from the Romans.” Would that the chroniclers of the early Middle Ages would
more often have furnished us with details like these as to the dress and habits
of the people! They would have been more valuable than many pages of
controversy on the ‘Three Chapters', or even than the usual notes of miracles,
eclipses, and displays of Aurora Borealis, which are found in their annals.
Politically the organization of the Lombard people was evidently rude
and barbarous. To use a phrase of the which has lately come into fashion among
German historians, the tendency of political life among them was centrifugal
rather than centripetal. The institution of kingship was imperfectly developed.
There does not appear to have been any single family, like the Amals among the
Ostrogoths or the Balthae among the Visigoths,
towering high above the other noble families, and claiming the veneration of
the people by the right of long descent. A king arises among them, and perhaps
succeeds in transmitting his royal power to one or two generations of his
descendants; but then there is a murder or a rebellion, and a member of an
entirely different clan succeeds to the throne. Nor, for many generations, do
any national leaders give proof of political genius or constructive
statesmanship. Mere lust and love of plunder appear to be the determining
motives of their ware. They produce no Alaric, with his consciousness of a
divine mission to penetrate to the Eternal City; no Ataulfus and no Theodoric, longing to preserve the remnants of Roman civilization by the
arms of the barbarian; no Gaiseric, able to stamp his own impress on the nation
from which he sprang, and to turn the foresters of Pannonia into the daring
mariners of Carthage. Everything about them, even for many years after they
have entered upon the sacred soil of Italy, speaks of mere savage delight in
bloodshed and the rudest forms of sensual indulgence; they are the anarchists
of the Volkerwanderung, whose delight is only in
destruction, and who seem incapable of culture. Yet this is the race from
which, in the fullness of time, under the transmuting power of the old Italian
civilization, were to spring Anselm and Lanfranc, Hildebrand and Dante Alighieri.
It is probable that the destructive ferocity of the invaders was partly
due to the heterogeneous character of their army. For not only the Lombards,
strictly so called, followed the standards of the son of Audoin. Twenty
thousand Saxons (perhaps from the region which was afterwards called Swabia),
mindful of their old alliance with the Lombards, came at Alboin's call to help
in the conquest of Italy, and brought their wives and children with them,
intending to make it their home1. Moreover in that motley host there were
Gepidae, who had lost their own national existence, but were willing to help
their victors to sack the cities of Italy; there were Bulgarians from the Lower
Danube, Sarmatians or, as we should say, Slaves from the plains of the Ukraine,
and a mass of men of various nationalities (perhaps including the remnants of
the Rugian and Herulian peoples), who called themselves after the provinces in
which they dwelt—the men of Pannonia, of Savia, and of Noricum. Two centuries
later, the names of these non-Lombard tribes were still preserved in some of
the villages of Italy. At the time which we are now considering, it is easy to
understand how the mixed character of the entering multitude may have added to the
horrors of the invasion. Each barbarous tribe among the Germans had, so to
speak, its own code of morality, as well as its own peculiar national vices;
but when they were all united for one great ravaging inroad into the rich lands
of the South, we can well believe that each tribe would contribute its worst
elements to the common stock of savagery; the cruelty of one, the treachery of
another, the lustfulness of a third, becoming the general character of all.
Among those loosely-connected nationalities, there were probably some
which were still actually heathen. The Lombards, however, appear to have
generally professed that Arian form of Christianity which, as we have seen, was
common to nearly all the Teutonic invaders of the Empire. Of the time and
manner of their conversion (if we may apply so noble a name to so slight and
superficial a change) we know nothing.
Their Arianism, though it was sufficiently pronounced to make a chasm
between them and the orthodox inhabitants of Italy, does not seem to have been
of a militant type, like the bitter Arianism of the Vandals. Apparently they
were not sufficiently in earnest about their faith to persecute its opponents;
but, whether they were Arians or heathens, the divergence of their religion
from that of the Roman provincials was excuse enough for sacking the churches,
carrying off the costly communion chalices, and slaying the priests at the
altar.
The muster of this manifold horde of barbarians was completed in the
early spring of 568, and, on the second of April in that year, the day after
Easter Sunday, Alboin set forth. He marched (if local tradition may be
trusted), not precisely by the same road which Alaric had trodden before him,
by Laybach and the Pear-tree Pass, but went somewhat
higher up the valley of the Drave, near to the site of the modem city of
Villach, and crossed the Julian Alps by that which is now known as the Predil Pass. A high hill rises here, to the southward of
the road, which, at least from the eighth century onwards, has borne the name
of the King's Mountain, for thither, it is said, the Lombard leader climbed,
and from its height looked backward over the long train of his followers—the
horsemen, the slowly moving waggons, the dusty foot-soldiers; and then,
straining his eyes over the sea of hills to the south of him, he saw the
longed-for Italy.
The march of the invader through the province of Venetia seems to have
been practically unopposed. He reached the banks of the Piave and looked, it
may be, towards the lagoons on the south-eastern horizon, where the descendants
of the refugees from the wrath of Attila were leading their strange amphibious
lives between the Adriatic and the mainland. But no message either of peace or
war came to him from Torcello or Murano, and no
Patrician from Ravenna stood ready to dispute his passage of the Piave. Only Felix,
bishop of Tarvisium (Treviso), met the Lombard king and besought him to leave
untouched the property of his church. The easy success of the invasion thus far
had made Alboin generous. He granted the bishop's request, and ordered a
charter to be prepared (called in the grand Byzantine style a Pragmatic)
safeguarding all the rights and privileges of the church of Treviso.
Vicenza and Verona were conquered without difficulty, and now the whole
province of Venetia, with the exception of Padua, Monselice and Mantua (to which must be added of course the little settlement in the
Venetian lagoons), accepted the yoke of the invader.
It was probably while Alboin was spending the winter of 568-9 in one of
the conquered cities of Venetia, that he took measures for closing the door by
which he himself had entered Italy, against any future invader. With this
purpose in view he appointed his nephew Gisulf first duke of Forum Julii. This city, now called Cividale, was the chief place
of the district which still bears its name under a slightly altered form, that
beautiful land of Friuli, whose barrier Alps are so memorable a feature in the
northeastern horizon when we are looking forth from the palaces of Venice.
Gisulf, whom he selected as duke of this outpost-country, was not only nephew
of Alboin but also held the position of Master of the Horse in his uncle's
household, a title which in the Lombard language was expressed by the word Marpahis. But though already famous for his warlike deeds,
even he feared to undertake the onerous duty of guarding the passes of the
Julian Alps, unless he might choose his retainers from among the pick of the
Lombard army. To this condition Alboin assented, and some of the noblest and
bravest farae, or kinships, of the Lombards
were chosen to follow the standards of Gisulf and to settle under his
government in the plains of Friuli. He also asked for and obtained a large
number of the king's best brood-mares, that from them might spring the swift horses
of his border-cavalry. As our historian's own lineage was derived from these
Lombards of Friuli it is doubtless with a touch of family pride that he tells
us of the foundation of this aristocratic colony.
The progress of the Lombard invaders was steady and rapid. In 569 Alboin
overran the province 0f Liguria. Milan, so long the residence of the emperors,
the city of Ambrose and of Theodosius, opened her gates to him on September 3,
and all the cities of Liguria, and the neighbouring province of Alpes Cottiae, save Ticinum and those
which were situated on the sea-coast, followed her example. From the day of the
conquest of Milan, Alboin seems to have assumed the title of ‘Lord of Italy'
and from this event he dated the commencement of his reign.
As a rule we hear little of the resistance either of Byzantine garrisons
or of citizens loyal to the Empire in any of these cities of Upper Italy. Nor,
notwithstanding the general character for ferocity borne by the invaders, do we
hear any particulars as to deeds of cruelty wrought by them after the capture
of such cities. Possibly the very weakness of the garrisons and the panic
terror of the inhabitants, caused by the reports which they had heard of
Lombard barbarity, made the invaders' victory easy and inclined their hearts to
mercy.
The one marked exception to this facility of conquest was afforded by
the great city of Ticinum, or (to use the name which
it acquired under Lombard domination) Pavia. This city, so strongly placed in
the angle between the Ticino and the Po, was probably held by a numerous
imperial garrison, and resisted the barbarian attack for more than three years.
Alboin pitched his camp on the western side of the city and turned the siege
into a blockade. Exasperated by its long and stubborn resistance, the king
vowed that when he had taken it, he would put every one of the inhabitants to
the sword. But when at length, doubtless owing to the pressure of hunger, the
citizens surrendered, the cruel vow was recalled, owing to one of those strange
occurrences in which Alboin, like Attila before him, read a marvel and a
portent. The Lombard king in all his pride was riding in at the eastern gate of
the city, the gate of St. John, when suddenly his horse fell in the middle of
the gateway. Neither the spurs of his rider nor the spears with which he was
abundantly beaten by the king's retinue availed to make him rise. Then one of
the Lombard soldiers cried aloud, ‘Remember, my lord the king! what manner of
vow thou hast vowed. Break that cruel promise and thou shalt enter the town.
For of a truth it is a Christian people that dwells in this city'. Alboin
accepted his follower's counsel, recalled his vow and promised that none of the
inhabitants should be harmed. Then the horse arose, and he rode on through the
streets of the famine-stricken city to the palace built by the great Theodoric,
where he took up his abode. The people, hearing of the cancelled vow, flocked
to the palace to utter their joyful acclamations. Life, even under the savage
Lombard, was sweet, and food was delightful after the years of hunger, and they
let into their hearts a hope of better days to come after so many miseries
which they had endured.
The city which had been able to make so long a defence was evidently
worth holding. Pavia became, though perhaps not at once, the capital of the
Lombard monarchy and the place of deposit of the royal hoard.
The three years from 569 to 572 were by no means exclusively occupied
with the siege of Pavia. Alboin probably left the conduct of that operation to
one of his trusted officers, while he himself with the mass of his followers
wandered, ravaging and conquering, over northern and central Italy. We lack any
precise chronological statement of his career, but we may conjecture that in
the year 570 he completed (with a few exceptions, afterwards to be noted) the
conquest of the valley of the Po, and that in 571 he crossed the Apennines and
began the conquest of Tuscia and Umbria, of the
Aemilian and Flaminian provinces. In the same year, as is generally believed,
others of the Lombards pushed down through central to southern Italy, and by
their conquests laid the foundation of the two great Lombard duchies of Spoleto
and Benevento.
It was of great assistance to the cause of the invaders that they early
obtained possession of Bologna, of Forum Cornelii (or
Imola), and of the great fortress which guarded the tunnelpass of Furlo. This latter fortress they burned to the ground, doubtless in order to
prevent its again falling into the hands of the Imperialists and blocking the
communication between north and south. If the reader will turn back to the
previous pages of this history, in which the wars between the Ostrogoths and
the Empire were recorded, he will see of what capital importance to the
invading nation was the possession of these strongholds which guarded the great
Flaminian Way, the main artery of traffic between the two centres of Imperial
authority, Rome and Ravenna. It might seem as if communication between these
two cities, except by sea, must have been henceforth entirely suspended: but
the strong town of Perugia on its rocky perch still held out for the Emperor,
and probably by means of this city, through difficult mountain roads, his
faithful servants may have travelled between the two capitals.
To enumerate the conquests of the Lombards in these years would be to
give a mere list of the chief cities of northern and central Italy. It will be
more. the purpose to give the names of the principal cities which were yet held
by the Empire. In Venetia, as already said, Padua and Monselice were still Imperial. Mantua fell to the Lombards, probably in the lifetime of
Alboin, though we have no precise details of its capture and though it was soon
reconquered by the Empire. In the valley of the Po, Cremona and Piacenza were
still ‘Roman': on the western coast, Genoa and probably several other cities of
the Riviera: on the eastern, Ravenna and the five cities which formed the
Pentapolis (Rimini, Pesaro, Fano, Sinigaglia and
Ancona); in central Italy, Perugia; in Latium, Rome itself and a certain, not
very large, extent of territory round it; in southern Italy, Naples, Salerno,
Paestum, and nearly all the towns of the province of Bruttii.
It will be seen that practically, with the single exception of Perugia,
all the places of which the Empire retained possession were either on the
sea-coast (like Genoa and Ancona), or surrounded by water (like Mantua), or
accessible by a navigable river (like Cremona and Piacenza). On the other hand,
the Lombards, an inland people, accustomed to traverse the high Alpine passes
of Pannonia and Noricum, held the central ridge of the Apennines, from whence
they swooped down at their pleasure upon the weakly garrisoned fortresses of Tuscia and Liguria. The invasion was thus—strange as the
comparison would have seemed to the priests and ‘Levites' of the Roman
church—analogous to that which had occurred more than two thousand years before
at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, when, under the leadership of Joshua,
a nation, not less dreaded than the Lombards, came from over Jordan to occupy
the high table-land of central Palestine, and to wage a war of generations with
the more highly civilized inhabitants of the maritime plain, the citizens of
the Philistine Pentapolis and the Canaanites of the Zidonian strand.
The victories of Alboin and his horde were doubtless somewhat aided by
the terrible physical calamities which about this time afflicted Italy.
Already, before the recall of Narses (probably about the year 566), a fearful
pestilence had raged, chiefly in the province of Liguria. Its special symptom
was the appearance on the patient of boils, about the size of a nut, the
formation of which was followed by fever and intolerable heat, generally ending
on the third day in the death of the sufferer. The Lombard historian draws a
dismal picture of flocks deserted in the pastures, of farm-houses, once teeming
with peasant life, abandoned to silence or only tenanted by troops of dogs: of
parents left unburied by their children, and children by their parents. If some
one, mindful of the ancient kindness between them, devoted himself to the
burial of his neighbour, he would most probably himself fall to the ground
plague-stricken and remain unburied. The harvests in vain expected the reaper's
sickle : the purple clusters hung on the vine till winter drew nigh. An awful
silence brooded over the fields where the shepherd's whistle and the sportsman's
eager tread were alike unheard. And yet more dreadful than the silence were the
sounds of a ghostly trumpet, the mysterious tramp of unseen multitudes which
were heard at night by the solitary rustics who lay awaiting their doom1. This
pestilence, as Paulus expressly tells us, was one cause of Alboin's easy
victories : and another was the famine which raged in 570, following a year of
extreme plenty in 569. This plenty was itself the result—so it was
considered—of an abundant snowfall during the previous winter which had given
the plains of Italy the semblance of the snow-fields of the Alps.
The career of Alboin had been brilliant and successful; in its savage
style not unworthy to be ranked with the career of Alaric or of Attila, but it
was destined to an even speedier ending than theirs. There were perhaps
unextinguished jealousies and rivalries of the barbarian races under his
command, which may have contributed to the fatal result, but the sagas of his
nation—in which women had already played a leading part—attributed his death
solely to the rage of an insulted woman. And thus the story was told:—
On a certain day (probably in the spring of 572) the king sat at the
banquet in his palace hall at Verona. Having drunk too freely of the wine-cup
he bade bring forth the goblet which was fashioned out of the skull of king
Cunimund; that same goblet, adorned with goodly pearls which near two centuries
later the Lombard historian saw on a day of feasting exhibited by king Ratchis to his guests. He bade the cup-bearer carry this
goblet (fashioned as it was out of her own father's skull) to queen Rosamund
and invite her to drink merrily with her sire. The queen, it would seem, obeyed
with no outward manifestation of repugnance, but in her heart she determined on
a terrible revenge. With this intent she sought the aid of Helmechis the scilpor or armour-bearer of the king, and his
foster-brother. She promised him her hand, she held out to him the dazzling
prospect of the Lombard crown, and Helmechis entered into her treacherous
designs. Only he stipulated that Peredeo, the
chamberlain, should be made an accomplice in the plot. Doubtless Peredeo’s help was indispensable to its successful
execution, but also there may have been some reluctance on the part of
Helmechis to strike the actual death-stroke against his foster-brother, and for
this reason he may have desired to enlist the strong arm of Peredeo in the service of the infuriated queen. The chamberlain, however, when Rosamund
sought to enlist his services in her scheme of revenge, refused to be partaker
of so great wickedness. But he did not warn his master of the danger impending
over him, and the queen, taking advantage of an intrigue between Peredeo and one of her waiting-women, by the sacrifice of
her own honour, forced the unwilling chamberlain into a position in which he
must either join the plot or be denounced to Alboin as the seducer of his wife. Peredeo chose the former alternative, and from that
moment the success of the conspirators was assured. When Alboin had retired for
his noon-tide slumber, a great silence was made all round his bedchamber; the
tramping sentinels were, as we may suppose, removed by order of the
chamberlain; and on some pretence or other the arms which hung in the room were
taken away. Then, as Helmechis had counselled, the queen brought in Peredeo himself to strike the fatal blow. Suddenly aroused
from slumber, Alboin stretched forth his hand to grasp the sword which always
hung at his bed's head, but this by the cunning of the conspirators had been so
tightly tied to its sheath that he could not draw it. He snatched up a
footstool and for some time valiantly defended himself, but fell at last under
the strokes of the assassins.
“Thus,” says Paulus, “did that most warlike and courageous man, who had
earned so great fame in war by the slaughter of multitudes of his foes, fall
like a Nithing in his chamber by the stratagem of a
miserable woman. His body, amid the abundant tears and lamentations of the
Lombards, was buried under a certain flight of stairs which joined hard to the
palace. He was tall of stature and his body was well knit for all warlike
deeds. Now this tomb of his was opened in our own days by Giselpert,
who had been duke of Verona, and who took away his sword and all the adornments
that he found therein. Wherefore he was wont to boast with his accustomed
folly, when he was surrounded by ignorant persons, that he had seen Alboin.”
The hopes which Helmechis had entertained that he might be chosen king
of the Lombards proved utterly vain. Instead of that elevation, he and the
partners of his crime soon found that they must save themselves by flight from
the vengeance of the kingless people. A secret message was conveyed to the
Patrician Longinus, at Ravenna, who sent a ship to facilitate their escape.
Helmechis and Rosamund, now husband and wife, went on board the Byzantine
vessel, taking with them all the royal treasure and Albswinda,
the daughter of Alboin by his first wife, a Frankish princess. Longinus, who,
though the representative of the majesty of the Empire in Italy, achieved
nothing for the defence of the peninsula that has been deemed worthy of notice
by historians, showed himself an eager accomplice in the schemes of murderers
and adulterers. He suggested to Rosamund that she should rid herself of her
newly- wedded husband and marry him. To the Gepid princess the temptation to
become ‘Lady of Ravenna' presented irresistible attractions; while to the
Patrician the barbarian hoard, as well as the wicked loveliness of the
barbarian bride, was doubtless an object of desire. When Helmechis was
reclining in the frigidarium after enjoying the luxury of a Roman bath, his
wife presented him with a goblet filled, as she averred, with some healthful
potion. He drank half of the draught: then knowing himself to be poisoned, he
stood over Rosamund with a drawn sword and compelled her to drink the
remainder. Thus did the two guilty lovers die together, and the tragedy of
Alboin's murder, which had begun with a cup of death at Verona, ended with a
yet deadlier death-cup at Ravenna.
Albswinda was sent by the Patrician with the great Lombard hoard to Constantinople. There
may have been some thought of keeping the daughter of Alboin as a hostage for
the good behaviour of her father's people, but her name does not meet us in any
subsequent negotiations, and she henceforth disappears from history.
There was a legend (for the truth of which our historian does not vouch)
that Peredeo also was carried captive to
Constantinople, and there, in the amphitheatre, slew a lion of marvellous size
in the presence of the Emperor. Fearing lest a man of such great personal
strength should work some damage to ‘the royal cities,' the cowardly Emperor
ordered him to be blinded. In the course of time he managed to provide himself
with two sharp knives, and having secreted these in the sleeves of his mantle,
he visited the palace and asked for an interview with the Augustus, asserting
that he had some important secret to communicate. He was not, however, as he
had hoped, admitted to the actual presence of the Emperor, but two counsellors,
high in rank, came to learn his secret. As soon as he felt that they were
before him, he went close up to them, as if to whisper his portentous news, and
then at once struck right and left such fatal blows, that the two counsellors
fell dead upon the spot. “Thus, like Samson, he avenged his own cruel wrong,
and for his two eyes of which he had been bereft, deprived the Emperor of two
of his most useful counsellors.” Like Samson also, if there be any truth in the
story, the revenge of Peredeo was, no doubt, fatal to
its author.
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