of desperate righting, they wrested from the empire [1] all the peninsula save some of the great cities, and set up in the country a monarchy which lasted almost exactly two centuries.
The rule of the Lombard princes was brought to an end by Charlemagne, the greatest of the Frankish rulers (see p. 405); but the blood of the invaders had by this time become intermingled with that of the former subjects of the Roman empire, so that throughout all that part of the peninsula which is still called Lombardy after them, the people at the present day reveal, in the light hair and fair features which distinguish them from the inhabitants of Southern Italy, their partly German origin.
The Anglo-Saxons in Britain.—We have already seen how in the time of Rome's distress the Angles and Saxons secured a foothold in Britain (see p. 344). The advance of the invaders here was stubbornly resisted by the half-Romanized Celts of the island. At the end of a century and a half of fighting, the German tribes had gained possession of only the eastern half of what is now England. On the conquered soil they set up eight or nine, or perhaps more, petty kingdoms. For the space of two hundred years there was an almost perpetual strife among these states for supremacy. Finally Egbert, king of the West Saxons, brought all the other states into a subject or tributary condition, and became the first king of the English, and the founder of the long line of Saxon monarchs (A.D. 827).
Teutonic Tribes outside the Empire.—We have now spoken of the most important of the Teutonic tribes that forced themselves within the limits of the Roman empire in the West, and that there, upon the ruins of the civilization they had overthrown, laid or helped to lay the foundations of the modern nations of Italy, Spain, France, and England. Beyond the boundaries of the old empire were still other tribes and clans of this same mighty
- ↑ Italy, it will be borne in mind, had but recently been delivered from the hands of the Ostrogoths by the lieutenants of the Eastern emperor (see p. 372).
