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Updated: June 25, 2025
Alboin finding Rosamond, daughter of Cunimund, among the captives, took her to wife, and made himself sovereign of Pannonia; and, moved by his savage nature, caused the skull of Cunimund to be formed into a cup, from which, in memory of the victory, he drank.
'Remember, lord king, thy cruel oath, and cancel it; for there are Christian folk in the city. Alboin cancelled his oath, and the horse rose at once. So Alboin spared the people of Pavia, and entered the palace of old Dietrich the Ostrogoth, as king of Italy, as far as the gates of Rome and Ravenna. And what was his end? Such an end as he deserved; earned and worked out for himself.
Indeed, in all that terrible flood of disasters we hear of but one great city which offered even for a time a successful resistance. This was Pavia, naturally so strongly defended by the Po and the Ticino. Alboin established an army about it, and swore to massacre all its inhabitants since it alone had dared to resist him.
Of this army, the pay and the rewards were drawn from the conquered provinces; and the distribution, which was not effected till after the death of Alboin, is disgraced by the foul marks of injustice and rapine. Within less than seventy years, this artificial system was abolished by a more simple and solid tenure.
He comes upon them with a mighty host: but not of Romans alone. He has gathered the Teuton tribes; Herules, the descendants probably of Odoacer's confederates; Gepids, who have a long blood-feud against the Goths; and most terrible of all, Alboin with his five thousand more Burgundians, of whom you will hear enough hereafter.
The nation of the Gepidæ was dissolved; but, in the distribution of the captives, the slaves of the Avars were less fortunate than the companions of the Lombards, whose generosity adopted a valiant foe, and whose freedom was incompatible with cool and deliberate tyranny. One moiety of the spoil introduced into the camp of Alboin more wealth than a Barbarian could readily compute.
Albswinda and the Lombard treasure, the spoil of the cities of Italy, were sent with Peredeus to Constantinople. And it may be that it was in them Longinus hoped to find his political advantage; in this, however, he was deceived. It is true that a pause in the Lombard advance followed the death of Alboin, and that Cleph, his successor, was soon murdered.
The fair Rosamond was persuaded, or compelled, to acknowledge the rights of her victorious lover; and the daughter of Cunimund appeared to forgive those crimes which might be imputed to her own irresistible charms. The destruction of a mighty kingdom established the fame of Alboin.
Aldwin, Paul says, and Thorisend fought in the Asfeld, wherever that may be, and Alboin the Lombard prince slew Thorisend the Gepid prince, and the Gepidae were defeated with a great slaughter. Then young Alboin asked his father to let him sit at the table with him. No, he could not do that, by Lombard custom, till he has become son-at- arms to some neighbouring king.
Tacitus also mentions them in his Germany. From the Elbe they wandered to the Danube, and there encountered the Gepidæ, a branch of the Goths. The Lombards subdued this tribe, after a contest of thirty years. By this victory Alboin, the young Lombard King, rose to great power and fame. His beauty and renown were sung by German peasants even in the days of Charlemagne.
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