The Hunns having penetrated into Dacia, were left masters of it until the year 453, when Ardaric, King of the Gepidæ, a people previously conquered by Attila and the Hunns, revolted against them, in consequence of Attila’s death. His son and successor, Ellach, marched against them, but being defeated and slain, the Hunns were driven back into Scythia, and the Gepidæ remained masters of all Dacia. They entered into a sort of alliance with the Romans, who agreed to pay them a pension. In 550, their first quarrels with their neighbours, the Lombards, took place; and being sometimes assisted by the Emperor Justinian, they carried on frequent hostilities against them, for the space of eight years, at the end of which both nations resolved to decide the fate of the war by one great battle. The Lombards, under their King Alboin, had previously formed an alliance with the Avars, a people of Scythian extraction; and, assisted by them, they marched to action. Both sides fought with equal valor; but at last victory declared in favour of the Lombards, who, pursuing the Gepidæ, made a great slaughter among them. The Gepidæ, either destroyed, dispersed, or subdued, never after had a king of their own, and ceased to be a nation. Alboin’s achievements in Dacia attracted the notice of Narses, sent by Justinian to conquer Italy: he made offers to him, and finally engaged him to join the expedition with all his forces. The Lombards thus abandoned their possessions in Dacia and Pannonia to their friends and neighbours the Avars. These, also known by the name of White-Hunns, remained in them until their own destruction by the Franks and Bulgarians. In the 7th century, being joined by other barbarous tribes, they pushed their incursions as far as the gates of Constantinople, where they were so completely defeated by the Emperor Heraclius, that they could not recover the blow: it was the original cause of their rapid decline. Towards the close of the same century, a nation, known under the names of Slaves and Bulgarians, came from the interior of Russia to that part of Mæsia, which has since been called Bulgaria. Soon after a great number of Slaves, headed by their chief Krumo, crossed the Danube, and settled in Dacia, where they have since been known under the name of _Wallachs_. Opinion varies with respect to the origin of this name. Some historians pretend that the Slaves distinguished by it the Romans of Mæsia; whilst others maintain that they meant by it a people who led a pastoral life, and had given it to the inhabitants of Mæsia, most of whom were shepherds; and that a great number of these, having joined the Slaves in Dacia, the name by degrees became a general one amongst its inhabitants. The modern Wallachians, however, exclude it altogether from their language, and call themselves “Rumunn” or Romans, giving to their country the name of Roman-land, “Tsara-Rumaneska.”