The story of this claimant's adventures is, perhaps, the most romantic
of all our heroes, but unfortunately it is one of the most unreliable.
The Mezerays and other ancient writers, however, give the tale as
authentic, and as they recount it so it is detailed here; fact and
fiction being difficult in such cases to disentangle.
This pretender is styled in history Gondebaud, and would appear to have
had some real claims to a royal origin, his mother having educated him
from his earliest infancy as the king's son, and carefully preserved
from the desecrating shears his flowing locks--a mark of regal birth
amongst the ancient Franks.
Clotaire the First, who was then reigning at Soissons, refused to
accept the imputed parentage, and the woman accordingly fled with the
child to Paris, to claim the protection of Childebert, the king's
brother, who was reigning there. Childebert, not having any male
children of his own, took a liking to the boy, and was desirous of
adopting him as his nephew, and educating him at his court; but when
the putative father heard this he was greatly incensed, and wrote to
his brother to send Gondebaud to him, as he would take care of him,
adding that it was false to call him his son, which he was not; that
educating him as a king's son was giving the boy honours to which he
was not entitled, and might hereafter afford him an opportunity of
deceiving the world. Clotaire's care was the more necessary as
illegitimacy did not, amongst the ancient Franks, debar the offspring's
right to the crown.
The king of Soissons having obtained possession of his supposed son,
had his head shaved and sent him into a monastery. Dying, however, in
561, his eldest son, Cherebert, who succeeded him, took compassion upon
Gondebaud, and, during the whole of his reign, treated him with
fraternal kindness. Cherebert dying in 570, the crown passed to
Sigobert, who ordered our hero to come to his court. He at once
obeyed, was seized, his flowing locks again severed from his head, and
he once more imprisoned in a monastery. Finding means of escape, the
unfortunate youth fled into Italy, and made his way to the camp of
Narses, the Emperor Justinian's famous general.
By Narses, Gondebaud was kindly received and promised succour; but just
at the moment when he seemed on the point of being enabled to take the
field against his presumed relatives, his protector died, and he was
left once more a friendless wanderer. In the meantime, the Emperor
Justinian had also died, and his successors, Justin the Second and
Sophia, determined to give the remains of their renowned warrior,
Narses, a superb funeral. Our claimant availed himself of the
opportunity to make his court to the imperial couple, and travelled
with the body to Constantinople, where he was extremely well received,
his handsome figure and courtier-like manner obtaining him no little
favour from the empress.
Gondebaud dwelt at the Constantinopolitan court during the reigns of
Justin the Second and his successor Tiberius. With Maurice, general
and subsequently successor of the latter, he served in several
campaigns against the Persians, and apparently with credit. He would
probably have ended his days honourably in the Eastern Empire had not a
certain conspirator, Boson, tempted him to return to France with the
information that his supposed brother Sigobert had been treacherously
murdered; that the two infamous queens, Brunechild and Fredegonde, had
completely disorganized the country with their crimes and quarrels;
adding, that the time was ripe for his return, the people being only
too desirous of submitting to his rule, and that the two kings who now
divided the country between them, being childless, would not offer any
great opposition to his claims. Deceived by these specious arguments,
Gondebaud, after a sojourn of twenty years in the Orient, returned to
France, taking with him good equipments and a large sum of money,
advanced by his friend the Emperor Tiberius.
Landing at Marseilles, he was received by the bishop of that city with
great honours, and the news of his arrival having spread abroad,
coupled with the rumour that he was accompanied by enormous wealth, the
result of having discovered the supposed hoard of Narses, caused large
numbers of people, including many of high rank, to come to his camp to
pay homage. In addition to their expectation of bountiful gifts from
his hands, his visitors found Gondebaud good-looking, and apparently
worthy of the warlike reputation he had obtained from having served
under Narses and Maurice. The Duke of Toulouse and other independent
nobles proffered their alliance; so that after all his tussles with
fortune our hero seemed at last nearly certain of a kingdom. But at
this critical moment the traitor Boson turned against him, and, seizing
his treasures, compelled Gondebaud to fly, and take refuge in an
impregnable island at the mouth of the Rhone.
After having thus endured the ups and downs of fickle fortune, this
claimant, in hopes of ingratiating himself with the Franks, and at the
suggestion of his ally Childebert, king of Metz, took upon himself the
pseudo name of Clotaire, thus more distinctly marking his claim to the
throne of his putative father Clotaire the First. But all the arts of
the pretender were unavailable to obtain the assistance or recognition
of Gontran, king of Orleans, who took up arms in defence of the real
heir to the throne, the veritable Clotaire the Second, a child of
tender years, and who, despite the fact that Gondebaud's forces were
commanded by the best generals of the country, by fight or stratagem
gradually deprived him of all his treasures, allies, and, finally, of
his life. For the pretender's chief adherents finding that Gontran was
determined to resist him to the uttermost, and probably seeing little
prospect of his ultimately obtaining any permanent power in the
country, determined to abandon Gondebaud to his fate; he was, however,
so strongly fortified, and so well provided with every necessary of war
in his stronghold, that his foes found the only method of dislodging
him was by stratagem.
Gontran accordingly got Queen Brunechild, the mother of his adopted
heir, Childebert, to write to our hero, under the pretence of her being
secretly in his interest, and advise him to remove with all his
treasure to Bordeaux, where he would have the command of both land and
sea. Duped by this woman, the unfortunate claimant forsook his refuge,
and put himself _en route_ for Bordeaux. On the road he fell in with
an ambuscade of the enemy's, which succeeded in stripping him of all
the treasure he had accumulated, but did not prevent him arriving at
his destination.
Bordeaux sustained a siege of some weeks on the pretender's account,
but during the whole of that time traitors in and out of the city were
bargaining for his betrayal. At last, his chief men, thinking to
ransom their lives with his, persuaded the pseudo Clotaire to go
outside the city to confer with the foe as to the terms of peace, and
as soon as he was without the walls they closed the gates upon him,
leaving him to his fate. He was seized by the besiegers and dragged on
to a hillock outside their camp, where he was flung down by one of
their commanders; and as the unhappy man was still rolling, the traitor
Boson beat out his brains with a battle-axe. Thus perished this
luckless pretender to the throne of the Franks, whether a son or not of
Clotaire the First, equally unfortunate.