Theudelinda, queen of the Lombardic ones
The kingdom of the Lombardic ones
More tardily than the Francs and the Visigoths, the Lombardic ones also found a kingdom. After the retirement of Huns, they migrate (of southernmost Denmark) towards the south. In way, they meet new Asian people goes from there towards the west, Avars, which will be defeated only by the Carolingians.
The Lombardic ones, like all the other Germanic people, seek refuge in the old Roman Empire. They settle of force mainly in septentrional Italy. Followers of the arianism and violent one, they are a constant danger to the papacy, which never lost the control of Italy central and southernmost, and which ends up making alliance against them with the Francs: the Carolingians cut down the Lombardic kingdom then.
The conquest of Italy
The Lombardic ones conquérent the near total of Italy of North to the Life S. They settled in Pannonia at the end of Ve S. In 568, constrained to pass the Alps to flee the frightening vicinity of Avars, they invaded the plain of the Po, whose conquest was completed into 572.
The kingdom created by the Lombardic ones was, more than one State, a mosaic of feudal principalities. In VIIIe S., king Liutprand and his successor, Aistolf, undertook to complete the conquest of Italy and to unify it under their domination. Rome was saved into 756 by Pepin the Short and in 774 by Charlemagne, which dethroned king Didier and proclaimed king of the Lombardic ones. Lombardic dynasties were maintained in Bénévent and Salerno until XIe S.