There was one more German migration into Italy, that of the Lombards, who entered the country from Pannonia. in 567. They settled in the valley of the Po. in the region which has been named for them. Lombardy. Their rule extended at one time throughout the Peninsula, except over the Exarehate of Ravenna (q.v.) and Rome. Their influence upon Italian life was lasting he Wyse, although their kingdom was overthrown as a political power by Pepin and Charles the Great. they remained in their Italian home, a permanent factor in the population. See ITALY; 1,0 Al BARDS.
These were all true migrations. not simply military invasions, the whole people in each ease moving over the country with all their goods, and transferring their abodes. Each one of these Germanic kingdoms left a permanent impression upon the life and institutions of the country in which it was established, although as a formal political institution each gave way to others. With the Runs, whose movement westward had set the Visigoths in motion, it was different. They had no affinities with the Aryan groups and were regarded with horror• and detestation by all of the European peoples alike. They were not home-seekers, but natural nomads, who lived by fighting and by plunder. They threatened the Danube frontier of the Empire for many years. and in 449 their King, Attila (q.v.), led his own tribes, with a miscellaneous contingent of Ger man adventurers, across to Northern Gaul, where a heavy blow was aimed at the weakened rem nant of Roman power. The invasion was checked
by a union of Visigothic and Imperial forces un der Ailtius and Theodorie (qq.v.) in a great hat tle near ChAlons-sur-Marne (451). Attila founded a State that was more than an armed camp, and his power went to pieces at his death, in 455. From that time the Huns disappeared as an organized power, leaving no influence behind.. as did the abler and more stable Germans.
The conquest of Gaul by the Franks (q.v.) beginning in 486 differed from the other German folk-wanderings in that it was effected primarily by true military campaigns from a strategic base. The Franks had their original homes along the Gallic border, and they made a regular military invasion of Gaul, effecting a thorough conquest before making a settlement in the country. This gave the Frankish kingdom a more lasting foun dation than those which were established by the migration of comparatively small bodies into the midst of alien populations, with a higher degree of civilization. There remains but to mention the migrations of the Teutonic tribes living on the Sea coast about the mouths of the Elbe and the Weser, and northward, whose pirate forces in the fifth and sixth centuries invaded Britain and made the beginning of England. See ANGLES; ANGLO-SAXONS ; JUTES.