And Narses, who had employed
the Lombards in the last campaign against Totila, was said to have
revenged himself by inviting them into Italy to possess it.
The accusation rests upon no good authority, and is altogether
unlikely when we remember how great a part of his life had been
devoted to the incorportion of Italy within the empire. But there is
this much truth in it we may perhaps think; that had the great eunuch
been left in command, Alboin would not have dared to come on, and if
he had dared, would have found an army and an Italy ready to fling him
back into his darkness.
IX
THE CITADEL OF THE EMPIRE IN ITALY
THE LOMBARD INVASION
It was upon the second day of April 568, upon the Monday within the
octave of Easter, that Alboin set out to cross the Julian Alps, to
descend upon an Italy which even the great Narses had not been able,
in the short sixteen years of peace he had secured her, to recover
from the utter exhaustion of a generation of war. No army awaited him,
no attempt was made to crush his rude and barbarous army in the
marches, he was unopposed, save that the bishop of Treviso begged him
to spare the property of his church, and presently the whole province
of Venetia, with the exception of Padua, Mantua, and Monselice, was in
his hands.
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