The new Lombard king was Authari, the son of that Clepho whose murder had left the throne vacant in 573. So greatly was the need of providing for the maintenance of the central power felt, that the dukes not only did him homage, and ceded him the royal city of Pavia, but promised him a half of all the lands that were in their hands as a royal domain to maintain him, his _comitatus_, and his officers. We may doubt if the promise was very exactly kept. Nor did all the dukes unite in the election. The first act of king Authari had to be to subdue and expel duke Droctulf, who had called in the Romans, and fortified himself in Brescello to defend the middle valley of the Po against the king. [Sidenote: Wars of Authari, 583-90.] For the whole of his reign Authari was involved in recurring struggles with the Franks, whose young and warlike king, Childebert II., the son of Brunhildis, was set on resuming the schemes of his cousin Theudebert for conquering Italy. The seven years’ reign of Authari was mainly occupied in warding off Frankish attacks on Italy; Guntram and Childebert, stirred up by Smaragdus, the exarch of Ravenna, threatened three or four times to cross the Alps, and twice actually invaded Lombardy. The more dangerous assault was in 590, when two great armies advanced simultaneously, the one from Burgundy over the Cenis against Milan, the other from Austrasia over the Brenner against Trent and Verona. Both forced their way to their goal, and did much damage to the Lombards, but they failed to meet with each other, or with the Roman troops which the exarch had promised to bring to their aid. Famine and pestilence thinned their ranks, and they could not reach the Lombard king, who had shut himself up in the impregnable Pavia. At last they returned each to their own land, without profiting in the least by their great expedition.[31] Footnote 31: See p. 170. In the intervals between the Frankish invasions Authari had done something to consolidate the Lombard power in north Italy, by capturing the great lagoon-fortress of Commacchio, whose seizure cut the communication between Padua and Ravenna. At about the same time Faroald, duke of Spoleto, took Classis, the seaport of Ravenna, and completely destroyed the city, whose only surviving remnant, the solitary church of St. Apollinare in Classe, stands up in such forlorn grandeur in the Ravennese marshes. Authari is said to have pushed one plundering expedition through Benevento into Bruttium, to have ridden to the extreme south point of the Italian peninsula, and to have touched with his spear a sea-swept pillar near Reggio, crying, ‘Here shall be the boundary of the kingdom of the Lombards.’ A vain boast, if it was ever made, for Bruttium was not destined to fall at any time into Lombard hands.