So perished the Gothic kingdom, which had been erected by the genius of Theodoric, by the same fate which had smitten the pirate-realm of the Vandals seventeen years before. Both fell because the ruling race was too small to hold down the vast territory that it had overrun, unless it could combine frankly and freely with the conquered Roman population. [Sidenote: Causes of Gothic disasters.] But the fatal bar of Arianism lay in each case between masters and servants, and when the orthodox armies of Constantinople appeared, nothing could restrain the Africans and Italians from opening their gates to the invader. The Ostrogoths had been wise and tolerant, the Vandals cruel and persecuting, but the end was the same in each kingdom. It was only in the measure of the resistance that the difference between Goth and Vandal appeared. Sunk in coarse luxury, and enervated by the African sun, the Vandals fell in one year before a single army. The Ostrogoths, the noblest of the Teutons, made a splendid fight for seventeen years, beat off the great Belisarius himself, and only succumbed because the incessant fighting had drained off the whole manhood of the tribe. If Baduila could have mustered at Taginae the 100,000 men that Witiges had once led against Rome, he would never have been beaten. It is one of the saddest scenes in history when we see the well-ordered realm of Theodoric vanish away, and Italy is left an unpeopled desert, to be disputed between the savage Lombard, the faithless Frank, and the exarchs of distant Byzantium. The conquest of Italy by Narses was destined to have one further episode ere it was yet complete. When Teia’s fate was known, the ministers of the young Frankish king Theudebald of Metz launched a great army into the peninsula, under two Suabian dukes Chlothar and Buccelin. Their hosts pressed down the peninsula, following the one the western coast, the other the eastern. But Chlothar’s army was destroyed by famine and pestilence, and Buccelin’s was annihilated at Casilinum, in Campania, by Narses. Against the mass of Frankish foot-soldiers, with spear and battle-axe, Narses employed the same tactics as against the Gothic horse. A solid centre of dismounted Teutons, Lombards, and Heruli, kept the Frankish column in check, while wings of Roman archers and cuirassiers swung round the flanks of the invader, enveloped him, and destroyed him. Of 40,000 of Buccelin’s men it is said that not a hundred escaped, so far worse did they fare than the Goths had fared at Taginae in the previous year. [Sidenote: Desolation in Italy.] The Frankish ravages put the last finishing touch to the misery of Italy. Alike in the northern plain, in Picenum and Æmilia, and in the neighbourhood of Rome, the whole population had disappeared. Justinian and Narses had restored peace, but it was the best example ever seen of the adage, _solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant_.