Gothic War (535–554)
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The Gothic War between the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine Empire) during the reign of Emperor Justinian I and the Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy took place from 535 to 554 in the Italian peninsula, Dalmatia, Sardinia, Sicily, and Corsica. It was one of the last of the many Gothic wars against the Byzantine Empire. The war had its roots in Justinian's ambition to recover the provinces of the former Western Roman Empire, which had been lost to invading barbarian tribes during the Migration Period.
The war followed the Byzantine reconquest of the diocese of Africa from the Vandals. Historians commonly divide the war into two phases. The first phase starts in 535 with the reconquest of Italy by the Byzantines with Belisarius as the commander-in-chief and ends with the fall of the Ostrogothic capital Ravenna in 540. The second phase, which lasted from 540/541 to 553, featured a Gothic revival under Totila that was suppressed only after a long struggle by the Byzantine general Narses. The Byzantines also had to repel an invasion in 554 by the Franks and Alamanni.
In 554, Justinian promulgated a pragmatic sanction that prescribed Italy's new government. Several cities in northern Italy held out against Constantinople until 562. By the end of the war, Italy had been devastated and depopulated. It was seen as a pyrrhic victory for the Byzantines, who were unable to resist an invasion by the Lombards in 568, resulting in Constantinople permanently losing control of large parts of the Italian peninsula.