Grimwald, King of the Lombards ( 662 – 671 ), and his young son and successor Garibald ( 671 ), were the last Arian kings in Europe.

The Lombards played on the pre-existing hostility between the Avars and the Byzantines, claiming that the latter were allied with the Gepids.

As a result, the Gepids ceased to exist as an independent people, and were partly absorbed by the Lombards and the Avars.

But the most important group, other than the Lombards, were the Saxons, of whom 20, 000 participated in the trek.

By the conditions accepted in the treaty, the Avars were to take possession of Pannonia and the Lombards were promised military support in Italy should the need arise ; also, for a period of 200 years the Lombards were to maintain the right to reclaim their former territories if the plan to conquer Italy failed, thus leaving Alboin with an alternative open.

The baths were destroyed by the Lombards in the 6th century, but they were rebuilt and enlarged when Abano became an autonomous comune in the 12th century and, again, in the late 14th century.

After their able leader Totila was killed at the Battle of Taginae, effective Ostrogothic resistance ended, and the remaining Goths were assimilated by the Lombards, another Germanic tribe, who invaded Italy and founded a Kingdom in the northern parts of the country in 567 AD.

The Lombards or Langobards (), were a Germanic tribe who from 568 to 774 ruled a Kingdom in Italy.

" From that moment onwards, the Winnili were known as the Longbeards ( Latinised as Langobardi, Italianised as Lombardi, and Anglicized as Lombards ).

Archaeological finds show that the Lombards were an agricultural people.

Marobod had made peace with the Romans, and that is why the Lombards were not part of the Germanic confederacy under Arminius at the Battle of Teutoburg Forest in AD 9.

Peace was made and the two tribes returned to their homes, which in the case of the Lombards were the lands of the lower Elbe.

The reasons why the Lombards disappear, as such, from Roman history from 166 – 489 could be that they dwelt so deep into Inner Germania that they were detectable only when they appeared on the Danubian banks again, or that the Lombards were also subjected into a bigger tribal union, most probably the Saxons.

However, the Codex Gothanus writes that the Lombards were subjected by the Saxons around 300, but rose up against the Saxons with their king Agelmund.

In Vurgundaib, the Lombards were stormed in camp by " Bulgars " ( probably Huns ) and were defeated ; King Agelmund was killed.

Remaining Heruls joined the Lombards and some of them sought refuge with the Gepids.

Of the German tribes that spread through Europe, the theorists identified that: the Burgundians, Franks, and Western Goths joined with the Gauls to make France ; the Lombards moved south and joined with the Italians ; The Jutes made Denmark ; The Angles made England ; The Flemings made Belgium ; other tribes made Holland.

The two joined in the revolt of the Lombards against Byzantine control of Apulia.

Melfi, however, soon joined other Apulian Lombards in a revolt against Byzantine rule, in which they were supported by William and the Normans.

Soon they were joined by the Lombards and Normans of Melfi under Arduin.

In western Europe Arianism, which had been taught by Ulfilas, the Arian missionary to the Germanic tribes, was dominant among the Goths and Lombards ( and, significantly for the late Empire, the Vandals ); but it ceased to be the mainstream belief by the 8th century.

By the beginning of the 8th century, these kingdoms had either been conquered by Nicene neighbors ( Ostrogoths, Vandals, Burgundians ) or their rulers had accepted Nicene Christianity ( Visigoths, Lombards ).

The High German consonant shift is thought to have originated around the 5th century either in Alemannia or among the Lombards ; before that the dialect spoken by Alemannic tribes was little different from that of other West Germanic peoples.

During his reign the Lombards ended their migrations by settling in Italy, the northern part of which Alboin conquered between 569 and 572.

As was customary among the Lombards, Alboin took the crown after an election by the tribe's freemen, who traditionally selected the king from the dead sovereign's clan.

Faced with the possibility of annihilation, Alboin made an alliance in 566 with the Avars under Bayan I, at the expense of some tough conditions ; the Avars demanded a tenth of the Lombards ' cattle, half of the war booty, and on the war's conclusion all of the lands held by the Gepids.

Cunimund attempted to prevent the two armies joining up by moving against the Lombards and clashing with Alboin somewhere between the Tibiscus and Danube rivers.

Historians consider this the decisive factor in convincing Alboin to undertake a migration, even though there are indications that before the war with the Gepids a decision was maturing to leave for Italy, a country thousands of Lombards had seen in the 550s when hired by the Byzantines to fight in the Gothic War.

According to a controversial tradition reported by several medieval sources, Narses, out of spite for having been removed by Justinian's successor Justin II, called the Lombards to Italy.

This restoration of imperial rule was reversed by the conquest of the Lombards in 568.

The greater part of Italy would be lost to the invading Lombards three years after Justinian's death ( 568 ), the newly founded province of Spania was completely recovered by the Spanish Visigoths in 624 under the leadership of Suintila, and within a century and a half Africa would be forever lost for the empire to the Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphates during the Muslim conquests.

The first mention of the Lombards occurred between AD 9 and 16, by the Roman court historian Velleius Paterculus, who accompanied a Roman expedition as prefect of the cavalry.

It is, however, highly probable that when the bulk of the Lombards migrated, a considerable part remained behind and afterwards became absorbed by the Saxon tribes in the region, while the emigrants alone retained the name of Lombards.

Liutprand's successor Aistulf conquered Ravenna for the Lombards for the first time, but was subsequently defeated by the king of the Franks Pippin III, called by the Pope, and had to leave it.

The Lombards of southern Italy were thereafter in the anomalous position of holding land claimed by two empires: the Carolingian Empire to the north and west and the Byzantine Empire to the east.

Neil Christie considers 150, 000 to be a realistic size, a number which would make the Lombards a more numerous force than the Ostrogoths on the eve of their invasion of Italy.

The first phase Migration Period displacement from between CE 300 and 500 included relocation of the Goths ( Ostrogoths and Visigoths ), Vandals, Franks, various other Germanic people ( Burgundians, Lombards, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Suebi, Alemanni, Varangians and Normans ), Alans and numerous Slavic tribes.

A thousand years later, the numerous East Germanic tribes that claimed Scandinavian origins ( Lombards, Burgundians, Goths and Heruls ) rendered Scandinavia ( Scandza ) the name " womb of nations " in Jordanes ' Getica.

Seven large German-speaking tribes – the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals, Burgundians, Lombards, Saxons and Franks – moved west and took part in the Decline of the Roman Empire and transformation of the old Western Roman Empire.

In 569, some Saxons accompanied the Lombards into Italy under the leadership of Alboin and settled there.

The migrants who came first were Germanic tribes such as the Goths, Vandals, Angles, Saxons, Lombards, Suebi, Frisii and Franks ; they were later pushed westwards by the Huns, Avars, Slavs, Bulgars and Alans.

" Out of the people-shapes of the Carolingian Empire — the Saxons, Swabians, Franks, Visigoths, Lombards — arise suddenly the Germans, the French, the Spaniards, the Italians.

Until the decline of the Roman Empire, the Germanic tribes who had migrated there ( with the exceptions of the Saxons, Franks, and Lombards, see below ) had converted to Christianity.

The Franks, Lombards, Alamanni, Anglo-Saxons, Continental Saxons, and Frisians were Christianized between the 6th and the 10th century.

After campaigns against Lombards, Avars, Saxons, and Basques, the resulting Carolingian Empire stretched from the Pyrenees to Central Germany, from the North Sea to the Adriatic.

572, Invasion of Northern Italy by Lombards, Bavarians, Gepids and Saxons, Longbeards ( Lombards ) establish a Kingdom in Northern Italy ( capital Pavia ), Begin of End of Byzantine rule.

The most famous were those of the Franks, Saxons, Frisians and Lombards.