The Lombards have made several raids against the Franks in Gaul in 569, 571, and 574.

Cantabria had regained its independence from the rule of the Visigoths following the collapse of the Roman Empire.

Liuvigild invades Cantabria in 574, destroying its two principal towns: the City of Cantabria, believed to have been near modern Logroño, and …

Liuvigild makes his elder son, Hermenegild, duke of Narbonne and Recared, his younger son, duke of Toledo, as he tries to consolidate his power; but rebellious nobles cause him to quell insurgencies in Toledo and …

...Évora with severe punishments in 574.

Pope John III dies on July 7, 574, during the stormy times of the Lombard invasion, for which reason practically all the records of his reign have been destroyed.

The kingdom of the Lombards, called by Romans Regnum Langobardorum and by the Lombards themselves simply Langbardaland, is in need of a uniform law, in order to make a single nation of the Germanic peoples (Lombards, Gepids, and Heruli) that had entered Italy under Alboin.

The laws, however, do not secure their political unity.

The territorial splits of the duchies, caused by individual factions, restrain the attempted consolidations of the king.

Cleph reigns for eighteen months before meeting the same fate as his predecessor, and in 574 the Lombards break up into local duchies, with no king at all.

The Lombard monarchy ceases to exist, and various dukes divide the Lombard territories.

Constantinople seems to have been partially responsible for this too; the empire does not have the military capacity to drive the invaders back, and it is easier for the Greeks to divide the Lombard leadership and buy some of them into the imperial camp.

Faroald and Zotto had in 570 conquered lands of the central and southern Apennines to create …

…the Lombard Duchy of Spoleto, which is ruled by Faroald, and …

…the Duchy of Benevento, which is ruled by Zotto.

As these duchies are geographically cut off from the kingdom in the north by the imperial territories that range from Adriatic to Tyrrhenian Seas—the Rome-to-Ravenna corridor kept open by the Empire—this exacerbates the problem of Lombard unity.

...Amaya (in northern Burgos), massacring many of their inhabitants and capturing the southern part of their kingdom.

The Creation of the Duchy of Cantabria

Following his conquests, Liuvigild establishes the Visigothic Duchy of Cantabria, a frontier province (limes)designed to contain both the Cantabri and their neighbors, the Vascones.

While the exact boundaries of this buffer region remain unclear, it likely encompasses parts of northern Castile and La Rioja.

However, north of this defensive line, the Cantabri continue to live independently until the Arab invasion in the 8th century.

Legacy and Cultural Traditions

According to popular tradition, refugees from the City of Cantabria later found the Monastery of Our Lady of Codésin Navarre, preserving the memory of their lost homeland.

Áedán mac Gabráin, following the death of his uncle Conall mac Comgaill, becomes king of Dalriada, or Dál Riata, a kingdom of uncertain origins comprising modern Argyll, Scotland, and County Antrim, Ireland, from about 574 onward.

He is one among several kings in Dál Riata and many in northern Britain and Ireland.