attack by enemy forces. In any case, his troops honored their king by burying him in a tomb in Cosenza. His burial place is said to have been at the confluence of the Busento and Crathis rivers. A horde of slaves were used to divert the water from the Busento, allowing them to dig a tomb large enough for Alaric, his horse, and all of the treasure amassed from his conquests in Rome. Once the tomb was completed, the river was returned to its bed and the tomb covered with water. Then, to ensure that no one would reveal this location to anyone, Alaric's troops killed all of the slaves. In the centuries after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, several towns in the Cosenza province, most notably Rossano, refused to acknowledge the new governments of the Ostrogoths. Instead, they used their good fortune of having strong city walls and small Roman garrisons to hold out for centuries as semi-independent enclaves of the still existent Eastern Roman Empire in Italy. For that reason, Cosenza was viewed as Byzantine territory until the invasion of the Germanic Lombards in the 560s. Norman, Hohenstaufen, and Angevin period Bitterly disputed between the Saracens and the Lombards, the town was destroyed, then rebuilt around 988; only to be ravaged again in the early eleventh century. In the attempt to escape the devastation, the population left the town and sheltered on the surrounding hills where they built some small hamlets (still denominated as, casali). By the first half of the eleventh century, Lombard Calabria became a feudal dukedom of the Normans, with Cosenza as the capital. The town soon rebelled against the rule of Roger Guiscard and was recaptured only after a long siege. Subsequently, under the Hohenstaufen rule, the town became the seat of the Court of Calabria (Curia Generale). Emperor Frederick II had a particular interest in the town: he promoted construction and economic activities, organising an important annual fair. Subsequently, Cosenza fought bitterly against the Angevin domination, supported by the clergy. While the uprising spread through the valley of the Crathis, the town was involved in the see-sawing fight between Angevins and the Crown of Aragon. In 1432, King Louis III of Anjou settled in the castle of Cosenza with his wife Margaret of Savoy. When he died untimely, in 1434, he was buried in the cathedral. Spanish domination In 1500, in