CHLODOVECH AND THE FRANKS IN GAUL
481-511
The Franks in Northern Gaul—Their early conquests—State of Gaul in
481—Chlodovech conquers Northern Gaul, 486—He subdues the Alamanni,
495-6—Conversion of Chlodovech, 496—He conquers Aquitaine from the
Visigoths, 507—He unites all the Frankish Kingdoms, 511.
While Odoacer was still reigning in Italy, and Theodoric the Amal had
not yet left the Balkans, or the banks of the Danube, the foundations of
a great kingdom were being laid upon the Scheldt and the Meuse. Early in
the fifth century the confederacy of marsh-tribes on the Yssel and Lech
who had taken the common name of Franks, had moved southward into the
territory of the Empire, and found themselves new homes in the provinces
which the Romans called Belgica and Germania Inferior. For many years
the hold of the legions on this land had been growing weaker; and, long
ere it became a Frankish kingdom, it had been largely sprinkled with
Frankish colonists, whom the emperors had admitted as military settlers
on the waste lands within their border. In the lowlands of Toxandria,
which after-ages called Brabant and Guelders, there were no large cities
to be protected, no great fortresses to be maintained, and, while the
Romans still exerted themselves to hold Treveri and Colonia Agrippina
and Moguntiacum,[7] they allowed the plains more to the north and west
to slip out of their hands. [Sidenote: The Franks in Lower Germany.] By
the second quarter of the fifth century the Franks were firmly
established on the Scheldt and Meuse and lower Rhine, where the Roman
garrisons never reappeared after the usurper Constantine had carried off
the northern frontier legions to aid him in his attack on Italy (406).
By this time, too, Colonia Agrippina, first of the great Roman cities of
the Rhineland, seems to have already fallen into the hands of the
Franks. Between 430 and 450 they continued to push forward as far as the
Somme and the Moselle, and when, at the time of Attila’s great invasion
of Gaul, the last imperial garrisons in the Rhineland were exterminated,
and the last governors driven forth by the Huns from Treveri and
Moguntiacum and Mettis, it was the Franks who profited. After the Huns
had rolled back again to the East, Frankish kings, not Roman officials,
took possession of the ravaged land along the Moselle and Rhine, and the
surviving provincials had for the future to obey a Teutonic master near
home, not a governor despatched from distant Ravenna.
Footnote 7:
Trier, Köln, and Mainz.
The Franks were now divided into two main hordes; the Salians—who took
their name from Sala, the old name of the river Yssel—dwelt from the
Scheldt-mouth to the Somme, and from the Straits of Dover to the Meuse.
The Ripuarians, whose name is drawn from the fact that they inhabited
the bank (_ripa_) of the Rhine, lay along both sides of the great river
from its junction with the Lippe to its junction with the Lahn, and
extended as far east as the Meuse. Each of these two tribes was ruled by
many kings, all of whom claimed to descend from the house of the
Merovings, a line lost in obscurity, whose original head may, perhaps,
have been the chief who in the third century first taught union to the
various tribes who formed the Frankish confederacy.
The Franks were one of the more backward of the Teutonic races, in spite
of their long contact with Roman civilisation along the Rhine. Kings and
people were still heathens. They had not learnt like the Goths to wear
armour or fight on horseback, but went to war half-naked, armed only
with a barbed javelin, a sword, and a casting-axe or tomahawk, called
the Francisca after the name of its users. Unlike Goth and Vandal they
had not learnt the advantages of political union, but obeyed many petty
princes instead of one great lord. All Roman writers reproach them for a
perfidy which exceeded that of the other barbarians. The Saxons, we are
told, were cruel, the Alamanni drunken, the Alans rapacious, the Huns
unchaste, but the special sin of the Frank was treachery and perjury.
At the time of the deposition of Romulus Augustulus by Odoacer, the
Salian Franks held the old Roman towns of Cambrai, Arras, Tournay, and
Tongern, while the Ripuarians occupied Köln, Trier, Mainz, and Metz.
[Sidenote: Divisions of Gaul in 481.] South of the Ripuarians lay the
new Burgundian kingdom which Gundobad had founded in the valleys of the
Rhone and Saône. South of the Salians was a district of Roman Gaul which
had to the last acknowledged the supremacy of the ephemeral emperors of
the West, and kept itself free from barbarian invaders under the
patrician Ægidius. After his death in 463 his son Syagrius succeeded to
his power, and ruled at Suessiones (Soissons) over the whole Seine
valley, and the plain of central Gaul as far as Troyes and Orleans.
After the disappearance of the last Western Emperor, Syagrius had no
over-lord, but was so much his own master that the Franks called him
‘king of the Romans,’ though he himself took no title but that of
patrician. South of the realm of Syagrius lay the Visigothic kingdom of
Euric, a vast state extending from the Loire to Gibraltar, and from the
Bay of Biscay to the Maritime Alps. Its king dwelt at Toulouse, and the
Gaulish rather than the Spanish half of his dominion was considered the
more important. Indeed his rule in Spain was still incomplete, as the
Suevi held its north-western corner, the land which we now call Galicia
and north Portugal, and the Basques maintained their independence in the
western Pyrenees.
In the third quarter of the fifth century the most important of the
Frankish chiefs of the Merovingian line was a prince of the Salians,
named Childerich, who dwelt at Tournay, and ruled in the valley of the
upper Scheldt. He died in 481, leaving his throne to his
sixteen-year-old son and heir, a prince named Chlodovech or Chlodwig,
who was destined to found the great Frankish kingdom, by extinguishing
the other Frankish principalities, and conquering southern and central
Gaul.
Such an event seemed most unlikely at the time of Chlodovech’s
accession, when the dominant power in the land was that of the fierce
and able king Euric the Visigoth. It was Euric who had brought the
Visigothic kingdom up to its largest extent, by driving the Sueves into
a corner of Spain, conquering the last Roman provinces in central Gaul,
and receiving Provence from the hands of Odoacer, king of Italy. He was
the first Visigothic king to publish a code of laws, and would have left
a good name in history but for his assassination of his brother
Theodoric, and his persecutions of the Catholics. Though not such an
oppressor as the Vandals Gaiseric and Hunneric, he had made himself
hated by refusing to allow the election of Catholic bishops, and by
closing or handing over to his favourites, the Arians, many of the
churches of the orthodox. Euric died in 485, just as Chlodovech was
about to commence his conquering career in northern Gaul, a career which
the Visigoth would probably have checked if a longer life had been
granted him. He was succeeded by his son Alaric, a boy of only sixteen
or seventeen years.
It was in the very year of Euric’s death that Chlodovech, now aged
twenty-one, set out on the first of his warlike expeditions. In company
with his kinsman Ragnachar, king of Cambrai, he invaded the realm of the
Roman patrician Syagrius. The Gaulish troops were unable to resist the
onset of the Franks, and their leader, after a short struggle, abandoned
his home, and fled for safety to the court of Alaric the Visigoth. The
councillors of Alaric, either wishing to gratify their Teutonic
neighbours, or fearing the event of a war while their king was yet so
young, threw the patrician into bonds, and sent him back to Chlodovech,
who promptly put him to death. [Sidenote: Chlodovech conquers Syagrius,
486.] The Seine valley and the great towns of Soissons, Paris, Rouen,
and Rheims now fell into the hands of the Frankish king, and, in the
course of the next three years, he extended his power up to the Loire
and boundary of Armorica, where the Romano-Celts of the extreme west
still succeeded in holding out. Chlodovech took all the spoils for
himself, none fell to his neighbours, the other kings of the Salian
Franks. It was these princes who were next to feel the force of his arm.
He picked quarrels with his kinsmen the kings of Cambrai and Térouanne,
the one for not helping him against Syagrius, the other for claiming
part of the spoil of the Roman, and slew them both, the one by
treachery, the other in open battle. The remaining Merovingian princes
of the Belgic plains soon shared their fate; then Chlodovech pressed
eastward against the Ripuarian Franks, and conquered the Thoringi, their
chief tribe, in the year 491. In a short time he had won all the
Frankish kingdoms save that of his ally Sigebert the Lame, king of Köln.
He remorselessly slew every prince of Meroving blood who fell into his
hands, and did his best to exterminate all the rival lines. When he
could find no more to kill, he is said to have made open lamentation
that he was left alone in the world, and that the royal house of the
Franks was threatened with extinction; he then bade any kinsman who
might yet survive come to him without fear. But it was cruelty, not
remorse, that moved him, for his only object was to catch and slay any
Meroving who might yet survive.
His conquests in Ripuaria brought Chlodovech into touch with new
neighbours, the Burgundians to the south, and the confederacy of the
Alamanni to the east, along the Main and Neckar. With the first named he
entered into friendly relations, and married Chrotechildis (Clotilde),
niece of King Gundobad, in 492. The princess, unlike her uncle and most
of her tribe, was a devout Catholic, and much was destined to follow
from her alliance with the pagan Frank. [Sidenote: Chlodovech’s wars
with the Alamanni.] With the Alamanni the relations of Chlodovech were
from the first hostile; in fact, when he brought his frontier up to the
middle Rhine, he was constrained to take up an already existing feud
between the Ripuarians and their eastern neighbours. For several years
he was engaged in a struggle with this confederacy, who held the east
bank of the Rhine from Coblenz upwards, the valleys of the Main and
Neckar, and all the Black Forest. At last, in 496, he got the better of
them in a decisive battle—apparently near Strasburg—and forced the main
body of the confederacy to do him homage and acknowledge him as
over-lord. An obstinate remnant retired over the Rhine, and took refuge
in Rhaetia under the protection of the great Theodoric, but all the rest
became Frankish vassals. As a result of this war the Alamanni were
driven southward out of the Main valley, which was seized and settled by
Ripuarian settlers, and became a Frankish country under the name of East
Francia, or Franconia.
A suggestive legend and an important fact are connected with these
campaigns of Chlodovech against the Alamanni. The ecclesiastic writers
of the next century state that, in his decisive battle with the
confederates, Chlodovech was driven back and almost routed. Then,
recalling the words of his wife Chrotechildis, ‘who never ceased to
persuade him that he should serve the true God,’ that the Lord was the
Lord of Hosts and the arbiter of battles, he cried aloud, ‘O Christ
Jesu, I crave as a suppliant Thy glorious aid; and if Thou grantest me
victory over these enemies I will believe in Thee, and be baptized in
Thy name.’ At once the Alamanni began to give back, and the king
obtained a complete triumph.
Whether this was the manner of his conversion or not, it is at any rate
certain that Chlodovech, on returning from his Alamannic campaign, had
himself baptized at Rheims on Christmas Day, 496. His sister and 3000 of
his warriors followed him to the font. Every reader of history knows the
famous tale how Archbishop Remigius hailed the king with the words, ‘Bow
thy neck Sigambrian, adore that which thou hast burnt, and burn that
which thou hast adored.’ First among the converted Teutonic kings
Chlodovech was received into the Catholic Church, and did not become an
Arian like his neighbours. In this we may, no doubt, trace the influence
of his orthodox queen Chrotechildis. [Sidenote: Conversion of
Chlodovech, 496.] The consequences of his conversion to the orthodox
faith were most important; he was the only Teutonic king who adopted the
faith of his Roman subjects, and was therefore served by them, and more
especially by their clergy, with a loyalty which no Goth, Vandal, or
Burgundian prince could ever win. Not least among the causes of
Chlodovech’s easy triumphs and of the permanence of his kingdom may be
reckoned his adherence to Catholicism.
It cannot be said that the king’s conversion made any favourable change
in his character or his conduct. He still remained the cruel,
unscrupulous, treacherous tyrant that he had always been. It will be
seen that his last recorded action was an elaborate incitement to
parricide followed by a horrid murder. Yet he was granted a measure of
success that was refused to kings of far better disposition and far
stronger intellect, such as Theodoric the Ostrogoth, or Ataulf the
Visigoth.
After their king’s conversion the Franks, both Salian and Ripuarian,
hastened to follow him to the fold of the Church, and in a single
generation the old Frankish paganism disappeared. But, as with king so
with people, the change was almost entirely superficial; it is long
before we trace the influence of any Christian graces on the ungodly and
perfidious race of the Franks.
After subduing the Alamanni, Chlodovech’s next war was with the people
of his wife’s uncle, Gundobad, the king of Burgundy. He made a secret
agreement with Godegisl, Gundobad’s younger brother, to invade and
divide the Burgundian realm. While the treacherous brother raised war in
Helvetia, where he possessed an appanage, the king of the Franks
attacked Gundobad from the front, and invaded the valley of the Saône.
It appeared as if here, as well as in the lands farther north,
Chlodovech would sweep all before him. The Burgundian king was beaten
and driven out of Dijon, Lyons, and Valence into Avignon, the
southernmost fortress of his realm, while his brother was made king by
the Frank, and became his vassal. But, in the next year, Gundobad
recovered all he had lost, slew Godegisl at Vienne, and drove the Franks
out of Burgundy with such success that Chlodovech ere long made peace
with him (501).
But the next campaign of the Frankish king was one of far greater
importance and success. He was set on trying his fortune against the
young king of the Visigoths, whose personal weakness and unpopularity
with his Roman subjects tempted him to an invasion of Aquitaine. It
would seem that Chlodovech carefully chose as a _casus belli_ the Arian
persecutions of Alaric, who, like his father Euric, was a bad master to
his Catholic subjects. [Sidenote: Chlodovech conquers Aquitaine, 507.] A
first quarrel in 504 was composed by the great Theodoric, who, as
father-in-law of the Visigoth and brother-in-law of the Frank, could
appeal with authority to each of the rivals. But in 507 Chlodovech
declared war on the Visigoths. ‘I cannot bear,’ he said, ‘that those
Arians should hold any part of Gaul. With God’s aid we will go against
them, and subdue their land beneath our sway.’ Knowing the strength of
the Visigothic realm, Chlodovech allied to himself for the struggle his
old enemy Gundobad the Burgundian, and Sigebert of Köln, the last
surviving Ripuarian king.
Advancing from Paris Chlodovech crossed the Loire, and met the Visigoths
and their king on the Campus Vocladensis, the plain of Vouglé, near
Poictiers. Whether from cowardice, or from distrust of his own
generalship, Alaric held back from fighting, but his army forced him to
give battle. He attacked the Franks, was utterly defeated, and fell with
the greater part of his men. So crushed were the Visigoths by the
disaster that Chlodovech was able to overrun all the provinces between
the Loire and the Garonne without striking another blow. He entered
Bordeaux in triumph, and there spent the winter. Next spring he marched
against Toulouse, the Gothic capital, and took it, and with it the great
hoard of the Visigothic kings, including many of the Roman trophies that
Alaric and Ataulf had carried off from Italy a hundred years before.
Meanwhile, Chlodovech’s Burgundian allies overran Provence, and captured
all its cities save Arles. To add to the troubles of the Visigoths they
were distracted by civil strife; one party recognised as king Amalric,
the infant son of Alaric, by Theodoric’s daughter, his lawful queen; the
other elected Gesalic, a bastard son of Alaric, who had fortified
himself in Narbonne and Barcelona. But the Franks and Burgundians drove
Gesalic over the Pyrenees, and it appeared as if there was about to be
an end of all Visigothic power north of those mountains.
Meanwhile, Chlodovech returned from Toulouse to Tours, where he found
awaiting him ambassadors from the Emperor Anastasius, who saluted him by
their master’s command with the titles of proconsul and patrician, and
presented him with a diadem and purple robe. Anastasius sought by these
honours to win an ally against Theodoric the Ostrogoth, with whom he had
lately quarrelled. Chlodovech accepted them with alacrity, because of
the prestige they gave him in the eyes of his Roman subjects, who saw
his power over them formally legalised by the grant of the Emperor.
This was the culminating scene of Chlodovech’s life; for, in the next
year, fortune turned somewhat against him. The great Theodoric
interfered in the Gothic War as the guardian and protector of his
grandson, Amalric. His armies routed the united Franks and Burgundians
near Arles, where they are said to have slain 30,000 men. They then
reconquered Narbonne and all the Mediterranean coast as far as Spain.
Chlodovech’s conquests were thus restricted to the land west of the
Cevennes, but still comprised the greater bulk of Visigothic Gaul, with
the three great cities of Poictiers, Bordeaux, and Toulouse (510). Only
the Narbonensis and Provence were saved from him by Theodoric, who now
chased away the usurper Gesalic, and ruled all Spain and south Gaul till
his grandson Amalric came of age.
Checked on the south by the great Ostrogoth, Chlodovech turned north to
round off his dominions by the acquisition of the last independent
Frankish state. Sigebert of Köln was now very old, and his ambitious son
Chloderich was persuaded by Chlodovech not only to dethrone, but to slay
his father. When he had seized the kingdom Chlodovech affected great
wrath and indignation against him, procured his death at the hands of
assassins, and then annexed his kingdom. [Sidenote: Chlodovech king of
all the Franks, 510.] All the Frankish states were now united under one
hand, but Chlodovech did not long survive this last success, though,
according to the strange words of his admirer, Bishop Gregory of Tours,
‘The Lord cast his enemies under his power day after day, and increased
his kingdom, because he walked with a right heart before Him, and did
that which was pleasing in His sight!’
In 511 this sanguinary ruffian, murderer, and traitor died, just after
he had presided at Orleans over a synod of thirty-two Gaulish bishops
who were anxious to repress Arianism, and gladly called in the secular
arm of their orthodox lord to their aid. Chlodovech was morally far the
worst of all the Teutonic founders of kingdoms: even Gaiseric the Vandal
compares favourably with him. Yet his work alone was destined to stand,
not so much from his own abilities, though these were considerable
enough, as from the happy chance which put his successors in religious
sympathy with their subjects, and preserved the young kingdom, during
the following generation, from any conflict with such powerful foes as
those who were destined to overthrow the monarchies of the Ostrogoths,
the Visigoths, and the Vandals.
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