The first Slavs came to the region, almost certainly from the north, soon after the departure of the Ostrogoths (471 CE), together with the Lombards and Herulis. Around 530, the Germanic Lombards settled in Pannonia. They had to fight against the Gepidi and the Slavs. From the beginning of the 6th century, the Lombards gradually took possessions in the region, eventually reaching Sirmium, the contemporary capital of the Gepid Kingdom.^[8] After a series of wars involving the Byzantines, the latter finally fell to the invasion of the nomadic Pannonian Avars led by Khagan Bayan I. Due to their fear of the powerful Avars, the Lombards also departed to Italy in 568, thereafter the whole basin came under the rule of the Avar Khaganate.