Letter 14: Maurice, to our beloved son King Childebert, greetings.

Maurice, to our beloved son King Childebert, greetings. We have dispatched the first installment of the promised subsidy with the bearers of this letter; they carry gold and a formal instrument confirming the amounts and the schedule for subsequent payments. We ask you to acknowledge receipt. Our generals in Italy have been informed of the coordinated campaign and have been instructed to time their operations to support yours. The commander of our forces in the Exarchate [the Roman administrative center at Ravenna] has specific instructions that your ambassador Grippo will convey verbally, as we prefer not to commit military details to letters that must travel such distances. We raise one concern for your consideration. The Lombard kings are not always of one mind, and there are factions within the Lombard leadership that prefer accommodation to further war. There may be a diplomatic path that achieves our objectives without the full cost of a major campaign, if approached at the right moment. We do not ask you to defer your military preparations — maintain them — but we ask that you remain open to the possibility that a negotiated settlement, backed by the evident threat of force, might produce the result we both want. The Lombards who hold Italy in fear of a combined Frankish-Roman campaign may be more pliable at the negotiating table than the same Lombards facing only one power at a time. Given at Constantinople