The previous part is here: https://bartoll.se/2023/11/history-matrix-part42/
All parts of this series can be found here: https://bartoll.se/world-playbook-quickstart/
In 554 AD, during the spring, the Frankish and Gothic/Alamanni army led by Buccelin had marched north and due to starvation and the harsh weather, their numbers had been reduced to roughly 30,000 men. By October they were confronted by the Byzantine army with only 18,000 men at Casilinum (on the banks of the river Volturno.) The Byzantine general Narses sent a cavalry force to destroy the supply wagons of the Franks. After successfully demoralizing the Franks, Narses repeated the strategy employed at Tahginae in 552 by outflanking the Frankish army before using a frontal assault. The Franks and the Alamanni were annihilated, which ended the Gothic War of 535–554. Narses then garrisoned an army of 16,000 men in Italy. According to records, the recovery of the Italian Peninsula had cost the empire about 300,000 pounds of gold.
In Spain, Byzantine forces under Liberius seized Granada (Andalusia) and occupied the old province of Baetica. To complete the consolidation of reconquered regions of Southern Spain, Justinian called old war-general Belisarius out of retirement.
In 555 AD, the Roman Empire, now known as the Byzantine Empire, under Justinian I had reached its height. Justinian I had reconquered many former territories of the Western Roman Empire, including Italy, Dalmatia, northern Africa and Southern Hispania.
In Britain, King Erb of Gwent, in Southern Wales, died. His kingdom was divided into Gwent and Ergyng.
In Persia, the Lazic war continued as the Byzantine army under Bessas was forced to retreat out of Archaeopolis (Georgia.)
Later, King Gubazes II of Lazica was invited to observe the siege of a Persian-held fortress. After his inspection, he was murdered by the Byzantine military staff after accusing them of incompetence.
In 556 AD, King Chlothar I of the Franks suppressed a growing revolt of the Saxons and Thuringii in Saxony (Germany.) For several years to come, he exacted a tribute of 500 cows every year.
In Persia, a Byzantine force under Justin recaptured Archaeopolis (modern Georgia) and the Persians were defeated at the besieged town of Phasis. As a result, the Sasanian/Persian King Khosrau I opened peace negotiations with Justinian I.
In 557 AD, the Avars, an alliance of several groups of Eurasian nomads, arrived in the northern region of the Caucasus, between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. They sent envoys to the Byzantines in Lazica (modern Georgia.) Like the Huns, the Avars were the former elite of a central Asian federation, which has been forced to flee westwards.
In 558 AD, the Avars and the Slavs occupied the Hungarian Plain on the Balkans. The threat of Avar domination prompted the Lombards to migrate to Italy.
By December 13th, King Chlothar I reunited the Frankish Kingdom after his brother Childebert I had recently died, becoming sole ruler of the Franks by December 23 when he was crowned King. The dates here are important, as this coronation was performed by the support of the Roman Catholic Church, who had changed all holy and important dates to fit their Satanic religion disguised as Christianity.
Also, on the same date, December 23, the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés (a Roman Catholic church) was dedicated by Germain, the bishop of Paris.
In 559 AD, the Avars raided Thracia and Macedonia, but were driven back near Constantinople by a Byzantine force under Belisarius.
In Britain, Glappa succeeded his father Ida as king of Bernicia (North East England.) During his rule, Anglian settlers expanded their territory in what is now southeastern Scotland.
In 561 AD, history repeated itself when King Chlothar I (“the Old”) died at Compiègne at age 64. The Merovingian Frankish dynasty was continued by his four sons (Charibert I, Guntram, Sigebert I and Chilperic I,) who divide the Frankish Kingdom and ruled from the capitals at Paris, Orléans, Reims and Soissons, respectively.
In 562 AD, after six years of negotiation, Emperor Justinian I signed a peace treaty with the Persian Empire, ending the Lazic war. The status quo was restored, with Lazica (modern Georgia) in Byzantine hands. King Khosrau I was thus forced to recognize Lazica as a Byzantine vassal state and had to pay an annual tribute of 5,000 pounds of gold each year.
Later in the year, the once retired and famous general Belisarius stood trial for corruption in Constantinople. He was found guilty and sent to prison.
In Europe, the Avars attacked Regensburg (Germany) but was repelled by king Sigebert I. In light of the new threat and for strategic reasons, King Sigebert moved his capital from Reims to Metz.
In 563 AD, Emperor Justinian I pardoned Belisarius and ordered his release from prison. Belisarius regained his properties and honors, and he was permitted to live in obscurity on a veterans’ pension.
In Constantinople, present-day Istanbul, after the previous earthquake a few years earlier, the new Hagia Sophia was finished at a cost of 20,000 pounds of gold. With its numerous chapels and shrines, octagonal dome and mosaics, it became the center and most visible monument of Eastern Orthodoxy.
In the summer of 565 AD, a war erupted between Alboin, the king of the Lombards, and King Cunimund, the leader of the Gepids.
In Constantinople on November 15, Justin II succeeded his long-ruling uncle Justinian I as emperor of the Byzantine Empire. Justin II began his reign by refusing subsidies to the Avars, who recently had conducted several large-scale raids through the Balkan Peninsula.
In Britain, by August 22, according to legends, the Irish monk Saint Columba reported seeing the Loch Ness Monster at the River Ness and allegedly saved the life of a Pict.
In 566 AD, a Byzantine army under command of Baduarius assisted the Gepids in their war against the Lombards. The Byzantines won the first battle in the lower Danube, but the Gepid King Cunimund refused to hand back the fortress city of Sirmium (modern Serbia) as he had promised.
As a result, and also faced with an almost empty treasury, Emperor Justin II ended the treaty with the Gepids. Meanwhile, King Alboin of the Lombards made a costly alliance with the Avars under Bayan I.
In 567 AD, the Lombard–Gepid War ended with a Lombard-Avar victory, and the total annihilation of the outnumbered Gepids who after their greediness no longer had the support of the Byzantine Empire.
In 568 AD, by early spring, the Lombards led by King Alboin, crossed the Julian Alps and invaded northern Italy. Withered Byzantine forces were overrun and residents of the Italian countryside fled to the south.
The Byzantines abandoned present-day Lombardy and Tuscany to establish a frontier in the hills south of Ravenna. Bavarians, Sarmatians, Saxons and Taifali, joined the Lombard invasion. As they advanced, the void left behind them on the Balkan Peninsula was filled by Avars, Bulgars and Slavs.
In 569 AD, the Lombards conquered Forum Iulii and Milan.
Meanwhile, the Nubian kingdom of Alodia along the Nile River was converted to Christianity by Byzantine missionaries.
In 570 AD, Ctesiphon, located on the eastern bank of the Tigris and capital of the Sassanid Persian Empire, became the largest city in the world, taking the lead from Constantinople.
In Arabia, Muhammad, the Islamic prophet, was born in Mecca (today’s Saudi Arabia.)
In 571 AD, the new Visigoth King Liuvigild invaded the Byzantine province of Spania (modern Andalusia,) and seized the city of Córdoba.
In Britain, Wuffa became the first king of East Anglia, as recorded in the Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies.
In 572 AD, feeling the decline of his empire, Emperor Justin II refused to pay the annual tribute to Persian King Khosrau I, putting an end to the 50-year peace treaty established only ten years earlier. Justin then proceeded to send a Byzantine army into Persian territory, besieging the fortress city of Nisibis (modern Turkey.)
In Europe, King Alboin of the Lombards captured Ticinum (Pavia.) The city was of strategic importance, located at the rivers Po and Ticino, and became the new capital of the Kingdom of the Lombards.
By June 28, Alboin was assassinated at Verona in his palace, at the instigation of his wife Rosamund (daughter of the Gepid king Cunimund,) and her henchman, Helmechis (the king’s squire.) Both fled to seek Byzantine protection in Ravenna. Alboin was succeeded by Cleph (not related by blood.)