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The conquest of Italy by Narses was destined to have one further episode ere it was yet complete. When Teia’s fate was known, the ministers of the young Frankish king Theudebald of Metz launched a great army into the peninsula, under two Suabian dukes Chlothar and Buccelin. Their hosts pressed down the peninsula, following the one the western coast, the other the eastern. But Chlothar’s army was destroyed by famine and pestilence, and Buccelin’s was annihilated at Casilinum, in Campania, by Narses. Against the mass of Frankish foot-soldiers, with spear and battle-axe, Narses employed the same tactics as against the Gothic horse. A solid centre of dismounted Teutons, Lombards, and Heruli, kept the Frankish column in check, while wings of Roman archers and cuirassiers swung round the flanks of the invader, enveloped him, and destroyed him. Of 40,000 of Buccelin’s men it is said that not a hundred escaped, so far worse did they fare than the Goths had fared at Taginae in the previous year. |Desolation in Italy.| The Frankish ravages put the last finishing touch to the misery of Italy. Alike in the northern plain, in Picenum and Æmilia, and in the neighbourhood of Rome, the whole population had disappeared. Justinian and Narses had restored peace, but it was the best example ever seen of the adage, solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant.