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487-568] who occupied the desolated Rugiland after the destruction of their empire by Odovacar in the year 487. Meanwhile during the troubles of their wanderings and continual wars the institution of a constant commander-in-chief in form of kingship seems to have taken the place of the Tacitean duke who was invested for every single war. From Rugiland they wandered into the land which was called "Feld" (in Hungary) but were subdued by the Heruli and forced to pay tribute. At that time they were probably landlords, leaving the land to subjected half-freemen (aldiones) for culture; we may suppose that they were at that time strongly influenced by their neighbours, the Bavarians, and it was then that they adopted Christianity in its Arian form. But not very long afterwards, during the Franco-Ostrogothic war in Gaul, the Lombards, under the reign of their king Tato of the family of Leth, shook off the yoke of the Heruli, who were allied with Theodoric, succeeded in beating them completely in a battle somewhere in the Hungarian plain, and entirely destroyed their realm. The Lombards now had the Gepidae on the south and the Danube on the west. Tato's nephew and successor, King Vacho, who had married one daughter to a Frankish king and another to Garibald, duke of Bavaria, considered himself friend and ally of the Roman Emperor.

When after the death of the last "Lethingian" king his guardian Audoin had mounted the throne, the Lombards crossed the Danube and, while the Ostrogothic land was in great confusion, occupied the south-west of Hungary, and also Noricum, the south of Styria, both belonging in name to the Roman Empire, but left to them for settlement by Justinian. In this way they were loosely federated with the Empire, which paid them subsidies, but was nevertheless troubled by their raids. They assisted Narses in his decisive expedition to Italy, bringing him 2500 warriors with 3000 armed followers, but the Byzantine soon sent them back after the deciding battle, seeing how dangerous they were to friend and foe through their fierceness and want of discipline. Meanwhile the Lombards and Gepidae, stirred up by the Roman Emperor, were engaged in constant battles and struggles. After Audoin's death his son and successor Alboin, well known to fable, concluded a league with the Avars, engaging himself to pay the tenth part of all cattle for their help in war and, in case of victory, to give up the land of the Gepidae to the Avars. The latter made their invasion from the north-east, the Lombards from the north-west. In the decisive battle Kunimund, king of the Gepidae, was slain by Alboin's hand, the king's daughter taken prisoner and made queen by Alboin. Part of the Gepidae took flight, another part surrendered to the Lombards; their realm existed no more, their land and the few who stayed behind fell under the government of the Avars, who were now the Lombards' most dangerous neighbours. But the Lombards renewed their confederacy with them, and left to them the land they had themselves occupied till then, intending to