11.25.05
King Albion The Lombards Varese Italian Lakes
King Albion The Lombards Varese Italian Lakes
King Alboin, king of the Lombard’s, and conqueror of northern Italy, succeeded his father Audoin about in the year 565. The Lombard’s were at that time settled in the plain of eastern Austria and Slovenia. In alliance with the Avars, an Asiatic people who had invaded central Europe, Alboin defeated the Lombard’s’ hereditary enemies, the Gepidae, a powerful enemy on his eastern frontier, he killed their new king Cunimund. Legends tell us that he fashioned the skull of King Cunimund into a drinking-cup. To toast his wedding to Rosamund the daughter of King Cunimund.
The Eurasian Avars were a nomadic people of Eurasia who migrated into central and Eastern Europe in the 6th century. In April, 568, on the a invitation of Narses, who was irritated by the treatment he had received from the emperor Justin II, King Alboin invaded Italy. Taking with him the women and children of the tribe and all their possessions, along with 20,000 Saxon allies and the subject tribe of the Gepidae, he crossed the great plain at the head of the Adriatic into Italy.
King Albion’s overran Venetia and the wide district which we now call Lombardy, he took Milan in 569, meeting with little resistance till he came to the city of Pavia, which for three years resisted and kept the Lombard’s at bay. Once conquered the Lombard’s named Pavia their capital. Refugees fleeing from them go on to found Venice.
When the Lombard’s met with resistance, retribution was swift and barbaric beyond anything Italy had experienced before. The bishops, who were virtually the leaders of the late antique Roman cities, fled, or collaborated with the barbarians for better treatment of their people. During the siege of Pavia, King Alboin was also engaged in other parts of Italy, and at Pavia’s capitulation he was then master of all Lombardy, Piedmont and Tuscany, as well as of the regions which afterwards went by the name of the duchies of Spoleto and Benevento.
In 572, King Alboin fell victim to the revenge of his wife Rosamund, the daughter of the king of the Gepidae, whose skull Alboin had turned into a drinking cup, which at times he forced Rosamund to drink from. Rosamund had him assassinated by his chamberlain Peredeo, She then fled to the protection of the Byzantine representative at Ravenna.
In these few years the Lombard’s established themselves in the north of Italy, but they had little practice in governing large provinces. Lombard dukes’ were established in all the strongholds and passes, and this arrangement became increasingly characteristic of the Lombard settlement. Their power extended across the Apennines into Liguria and Tuscany, and southwards to the outlying Lombard dukedoms of Spoleto and Benevento. After his death and the short reign of his successor Cleph the Lombard’s remained for more than ten years without a king, ruled by the various dukes.
Italian Lakes Tourist Information Guides – Tourism in Varese.
