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 chap, xliii] OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 449 the Alemanrti, stood forth as the leaders of the Italian war ; and seventy-five thousand Germans descended in the autumn from the Rhsetian Alps into the plain of Milan. The vanguard of the Roman army was stationed near the Po, under the con- duct of Fulcaris, a bold Herulian, who rashly conceived that personal bravery was the sole duty and merit of a commander. As he marched without order or precaution along the iEmilian way, an ambuscade of Franks suddenly rose from the amphi- theatre of Parma ; his troops were surprised and routed ; but their leader refused to fly, declaring to the last moment that death was less terrible than the angry countenance of Narses. 81 The death of Fulcaris, and the retreat of the surviving chiefs, decided the fluctuating and rebellious temper of the Goths ; they flew to the standard of their deliverers, and admitted them into the cities which still resisted the arms of the Roman general. The conqueror of Italy opened a free passage to the irresistible torrent of Barbarians. They passed under the walls of Cesena, and answered by threats and reproaches the advice of Aligern 82 that the Gothic treasures could no longer repay the labour of an invasion. Two thousand Franks were destroyed by the skill and valour of Narses himself, who sallied from Rimini at the head of three hundred horse, to chastise the licentious rapine of their march. On the confines of Samnium the two brothers divided their forces. With the right wing, Buccelin assumed the spoil of Campania, Lucania, and Brut- tiuni ; with the left, Lothaire accepted the plunder of Apulia and Calabria. They followed the coast of the Mediterranean and the Hadriatic, as far as Rhegium and Otranto, and the extreme lands of Italy were the term of their destructive pro- gress. The Franks, who were Christians and Catholics, con- tented themselves with simple pillage and occasional murder. But the churches, which their piety had spared, were stripped by the sacrilegious hands of the Alemanni, who sacrificed horses' heads to their native deities of the woods and rivers ; 83 they 81 [Agathias says, the speech of Narses.] 82 [Who after the capitulation of Cumse was appointed governor of Cesena.] 83 Agathias notices their superstition in a philosophic tone (1. i. p. 18 [c. 7]). At Zug, in Switzerland, idolatry still prevailed in the year 613 : St. Columban and St. Gall were the Apostles of that rude country ; and the latter founded an hermitage, which has swelled into an ecclesiastical principality apd a populous city, the seat of freedom and commerce. vol. iv. — 29