United States or Madagascar ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
On the approach of a French army, Garribald and his daughter took refuge in the dominions of their ally; and the marriage was consummated in the palace of Verona. At the end of one year, it was dissolved by the death of Autharis: but the virtues of Theudelinda had endeared her to the nation, and she was permitted to bestow, with her hand, the sceptre of the Italian kingdom.
Their virtuous and loyal life within the boundaries of Alboin's conquests of which Paulus Diaconus says, that violence and treachery were unknown that no one oppressed, no one plundered that the traveller went where he would in perfect safety all this would be hid from the Pope by the plain fact, that they were continually enlarging their frontier toward Rome; that they had founded two half-independent Dukedoms of Beneventum and Spoleto, that Autharis had swept over South Italy, and ridden his horse into the sea at Reggio, to strike with his lance a column in the waves, and cry, 'Here ends the Lombard kingdom.
When the independent dukes agreed that Autharis should ascend the throne of his father, they endowed the regal office with a fair moiety of their respective domains.
At the public audience, the unknown stranger advanced to the throne, and informed Garribald that the ambassador was indeed the minister of state, but that he alone was the friend of Autharis, who had trusted him with the delicate commission of making a faithful report of the charms of his spouse.
Theodelinda, the Bavarian princess, she to whom Autharis had gone in disguise to her father's court, and only confessed himself at his departure, by rising in his stirrups, and burying his battle-axe in a tree stem with the cry, 'Thus smites Autharis the Lombard, this Theodelinda, I say, had married after his death Agilwulf his cousin, and made him king of the Lombards.
I should not be apprehensive of deviating from my subject, if it were in my power to delineate the private life of the conquerors of Italy; and I shall relate with pleasure the adventurous gallantry of Autharis, which breathes the true spirit of chivalry and romance.
By the command of her father she obeyed: Autharis received the cup in his turn, and, in restoring it to the princess, he secretly touched her hand, and drew his own finger over his face and lips.
Before the end of eighteen months, the throne was polluted by a second murder: Clepho was stabbed by the hand of a domestic; the regal office was suspended above ten years during the minority of his son Autharis; and Italy was divided and oppressed by a ducal aristocracy of thirty tyrants. When the nephew of Justinian ascended the throne, he proclaimed a new æra of happiness and glory.
In the second they were vanquished in a bloody battle, with more loss and dishonor than they had sustained since the foundation of their monarchy. Impatient for revenge, they returned a third time with accumulated force, and Autharis yielded to the fury of the torrent. The troops and treasures of the Lombards were distributed in the walled towns between the Alps and the Apennine.
The ambassadors were dismissed: no sooner did they reach the confines of Italy than Autharis, raising himself on his horse, darted his battle-axe against a tree with incomparable strength and dexterity. "Such," said he to the astonished Bavarians, "such are the strokes of the king of the Lombards."
Word Of The Day