But I fear that you will be rather tired of all these different nations to whom I am introducing you. Their comings seem very confusing. It is difficult to remember which came before another and where they went and what they did. The biggest things done were, I suppose, first—though not first of all in point of time—that wonderful pilgrimage of the Vandals. That is perhaps the strangest story of all. Secondly, the invasion of the Visigoths, establishing their kingdom temporarily in South Gaul and more permanently in Spain, was really more important, because it was more lasting in the form that it gave to the great story. And then, thirdly, this Frankish dominion in Gaul is of great interest to us. It is the beginning of modern France.
But they are very puzzling—the comings and the vanishings. A friend of mine gave me what we call a memoria technica, to help me, and you, in remembering the order in which the different nations of the barbarians came in from the east. You know what a memoria technica is: some words easy to remember which recall to our minds something that we find difficult to remember. These words, as he gave them to me, are: "Visiting friends' houses very often frankly laborious."
Do you see what that means? I am afraid he must have found himself rather bored, at times, when his friends were doing their best to entertain him. He does not seem to have been as grateful as he should have been. But the suggestion of the words is as follows: "Visiting" is for Visigoths, who were the first to come west, in any force; then "friends" is for Franks—they came very early in the story of the barbarian invasions, but they came in much greater number later, as is indicated by the later "frankly." "Houses" is for those Huns, defeated at Chalons, "very," for the Vandals, "often" for the Ostrogoths, and "laborious" for the Lombards.
THE IRON CROWN OF THE LOMBARDS.
The iron part of this crown, supposed to have been forged from one of the
nails of the Cross, is the narrow circlet embedded in its interior.
It is not quite perfect, because some of them came and came again at different times. I believe that the Franks were really the first of all to break through the Roman wall of Empire; but on the whole it roughly represents the order of their coming. It is easily remembered and is a great help.
Let us see now what it was that these latest comers, the Lombards, did, and who they were.
They were a tribe that lived up north of the Visigoths and east of the Saxons and they were called Longo-bardi, long beards. They came last of all the Germanic tribes, for it is not till 568 that we hear of them in Italy, though they had drifted southward and had settled along the North of the Danube long before. But though the latest, they seem also to have been the rudest and least advanced of these tribes. They never became Romanised, as the others did, never learned any civilisation from the civilised people whom they conquered. But they came in great force and made their conquering way right down to the Tiber. They settled then and formed a kingdom in the North of Italy, more or less where Lombardy now is. They were still so powerful some two centuries later that we find them taking Ravenna, which was within the boundaries of the Eastern Empire and was a place of great importance with a fine harbour.
It was the increasing power and savage rapacity of the Lombards which led to an incident that was of the very greatest importance in the story. The Pope—and notice this particularly, for it is the very first time that we have had occasion to name him in our story—the Pope begged for help, against the Lombards, of the King of the Franks. And this assistance was given him, at first by Pepin and afterwards by Charlemagne—the greatest of all the Frankish kings—and the result of that assistance was that Charlemagne was triumphantly victorious and in 774 took to himself the title of King of the Lombards. The real result was that the Kingdom of Lombardy, in any independent sense, was at an end.