was no longer by incursions limited to certain points, and sometimes
repelled with success, that the Germans harassed the Roman provinces; a
veritable deluge of divers nations forced, one upon another, from Asia,
into Europe, by wars and migration in mass, inundated the empire and
gave the decisive signal for its fall. St. Jerome did not exaggerate
when he wrote to Ageruchia: "Nations, countless in number and exceeding
fierce, have occupied all the Gauls; Quadians, Vandals, Sarmatians,
Alans, Gepidians, Herulians, Saxons, Burgundians, Allemannians,
Pannonians, and even Assyrians have laid waste all that there is between
the Alps and the Pyrenees, the ocean and the Rhine. Sad destiny of the
Commonwealth! Mayence, once a noble city, hath been taken and destroyed;
thousands of men were slaughtered in the church. Worms hath fallen after
a long siege. The inhabitants of Rheims, a powerful city, and those of
Amiens, Arras, Térouanne, at the extremity of Gaul, Tournay, Spires, and
Strasburg have been carried away to Germany. All hath been ravaged in
Aquitania (Novempopulania), Lyonness, and Narbonensis; the towns, save a
few, are dispeopled; the sword pursueth them abroad and famine at home.
I cannot speak without tears of Toulouse; if she be not reduced to equal
ruin, it is to the merits of her holy bishop Exuperus that she oweth
it."
Then took place throughout the Roman Empire, in the East as well as in
the West, in Asia and Africa as well as in Europe, the last grand
struggle between the Roman armies and barbaric nations. _Armies_ is the
proper term; for, to tell the truth, there was no longer a Roman nation,
and very seldom a Roman emperor with some little capacity for government
or war. The long continuance of despotism and slavery had enervated
equally the ruling power and the people; everything depended on the
soldiers and their generals. It was in Gaul that the struggle was most
obstinate and most promptly brought to a decisive issue, and the
confusion there was as great as the obstinacy. Barbaric peoplets served
in the ranks and barbaric leaders held the command of the Roman armies;
Stilicho was a Goth; Arbogastes and Mellobaudes were Franks; Ricimer was
a Suevian. The Roman generals, Bonifacius, Aetius, Ægidius, Syagrius, at
one time fought the barbarians, at another negotiated with such and such
of them, either to entice them to take service against other barbarians,
or to promote the objects of personal ambition; for the Roman generals
also, under the titles of patrician, consul, or proconsul, aspired to
and attained a sort of political independence, and contributed to the
dismemberment of the empire in the very act of defending it.
No later than A.D. 412 two German nations, the Visigoths and the
Burgundians, took their stand definitively in Gaul, and founded there
two new kingdoms: the Visigoths, under their kings Ataulph and Wallia,
in Aquitania and Narbonensis; the Burgundians, under their kings
Gundichaire and Gundioch, in Lyonnais, from the southern point of
Alsatia right into Provence, along the two banks of the Saône and the
left bank of the Rhone, and also in Switzerland. In 451 the arrival in
Gaul of the Huns and their king Attila--already famous, both king and
nation, for their wild habits, their fierce valor, and their successes
against the Eastern Empire--gravely complicated the situation. The
common interest of resistance against the most barbarous of barbarians,
and the renown and energy of Aetius, united, for the moment, the old and
new masters of Gaul; Romans, Gauls, Visigoths, Burgundians, Franks,
Alans, Saxons, and Britons formed the army led by Aetius against that of
Attila, who also had in his ranks Goths, Burgundians, Gepidians, Alans,
and beyond-Rhine Franks, gathered together and enlisted on his road. It
was a chaos and a conflict of barbarians, of every name and race,
disputing one with another, pell-mell, the remnants of the Roman Empire
torn asunder and in dissolution.
Attila had already arrived before Orleans, and was laying siege to it.
The bishop, St. Anianus, sustained awhile the courage of the besieged by
promising them aid from Aetius and his allies. The aid was slow to come;
and the bishop sent to Aetius a message: "If thou be not here this very
day, my son, it will be too late." Still Aetius came not. The people of
Orleans determined to surrender; the gates flew open; the Huns entered;
the plundering began without much disorder; "wagons were stationed to
receive the booty as it was taken from the houses, and the captives,
arranged in groups, were divided by lot between the victorious
chieftains." Suddenly a shout reëchoed through the streets: it was
Aetius, Theodoric, and Torismund, his son, who were coming with the
eagles of the Roman legions and with the banners of the Visigoths. A
fight took place between them and the Huns, at first on the banks of the
Loire, and then in the streets of the city. The people of Orleans joined
their liberators; the danger was great for the Huns, and Attila ordered
a retreat.
It was the 14th of June, 451, and that day was for a long while
celebrated in the church of Orleans as the date of a signal deliverance.
The Huns retired toward Champagne, which they had already crossed at
their coming into Gaul; and when they were before Troyes, the bishop,
St. Lupus, repaired to Attila's camp, and besought him to spare a
defenceless city, which had neither walls nor garrison. "So be it,"
answered Attila; "but thou shalt come with me and see the Rhine; I
promise then to send thee back again." With mingled prudence and
superstition the barbarian meant to keep the holy man as a hostage. The
Huns arrived at the plains hard by Châlons-sur-Marne; Aetius and all his
allies had followed them; and Attila, perceiving that a battle was
inevitable, halted in a position for delivering it. The Gothic historian
Jornandès says that he consulted his priests, who answered that the Huns
would be beaten, but that _the general of the enemy_ would fall in the
fight. In this prophecy Attila saw predicted the death of Aetius, his
most formidable enemy; and the struggle commenced. There is no precise
information about the date; but "it was," says Jornandès, "a battle
which for atrocity, multitude, horror, and stubbornness has not the like
in the records of antiquity."
Historians vary in their exaggerations of the numbers engaged and
killed: according to some, three hundred thousand, according to others
one hundred and sixty-two thousand, were left on the field of battle.
Theodoric, king of the Visigoths, was killed. Some chroniclers name
Meroveus as king of the Franks, settled in Belgica, near Tongres, who
formed part of the army of Aetius. They even attribute to him a
brilliant attack made on the eve of the battle upon the Gepidians,
allies of the Huns, when ninety thousand men fell according to some, and
only fifteen thousand according to others. The numbers are purely
imaginary, and even the fact is doubtful. However, the battle of Châlons
drove the Huns out of Gaul, and was the last victory in Gaul, gained
still in the name of the Roman Empire, but in reality for the advantage
of the German nations which had already conquered it. Twenty-four years
afterward the very name of Roman Empire disappeared with Augustulus, the
last of the emperors of the West.
Thirty years after the battle of Châlons the Franks settled in Gaul were
not yet united as one nation; several tribes with this name, independent
one of another, were planted between the Rhine and the Somme; there were
some in the environs of Cologne, Calais, Cambrai, even beyond the Seine
and as far as Le Mans, on the confines of the Britons. This is one of
the reasons of the confusion that prevails in the ancient chronicles
about the chieftains or kings of these tribes, their names and dates,
and the extent and site of their possessions. Pharamond, Clodion,
Meroveus, and Childeric cannot be considered as kings of France and
placed at the beginning of her history. If they are met with in
connection with historical facts, fabulous legends or fanciful
traditions are mingled with them; Priam appears as a predecessor of
Pharamond; Clodion, who passes for having been the first to bear and
transmit to the Frankish kings the title of "long-haired," is
represented as the son, at one time of Pharamond, at another of another
chieftain named Théodemer; romantic adventures, spoilt by geographical
mistakes, adorn the life of Childeric.
All that can be distinctly affirmed is that, from A.D. 450 to 480, the
two principal Frankish tribes were those of the Salian Franks and the
Ripuarian Franks, settled, the latter in the east of Belgica, on the
banks of the Moselle and the Rhine; the former toward the west, between
the Meuse, the ocean, and the Somme. Meroveus, whose name was
perpetuated in his line, was one of the principal chieftains of the
Salian Franks; and his son Childeric, who resided at Tournai, where his
tomb was discovered in 1655, was the father of Clovis, who succeeded him
in 481, and with whom really commenced the kingdom and history of
France.
Clovis was fifteen or sixteen years old when he became king of the
Salian Franks of Tournai. Five years afterward his ruling passion,
ambition, exhibited itself, together with that mixture of boldness and
craft which was to characterize his whole life. He had two neighbors:
one, hostile to the Franks, the Roman patrician Syagrius, who was left
master at Soissons after the death of his father Ægidius, and whom
Gregory of Tours calls "king of the Romans"; the other, a
Salian-Frankish chieftain, just as Clovis was, and related to him,
Ragnacaire, who was settled at Cambrai. Clovis induced Ragnacaire to
join him in a campaign against Syagrius. They fought, and Syagrius was
driven to take refuge in Southern Gaul, with Alaric, king of the
Visigoths.
Clovis, not content with taking possession of Soissons, and anxious to
prevent any troublesome return, demanded of Alaric to send Syagrius back
to him, threatening war if the request were refused. The Goth, less
bellicose than the Frank, delivered up Syagrius to the envoys of Clovis,
who immediately had him secretly put to death, settled himself at
Soissons, and from thence set on foot, in the country between the Aisne
and the Loire, plundering and subjugating expeditions which speedily
increased his domains and his wealth, and extended far and wide his fame
as well as his ambition. The Franks who accompanied him were not long
before they also felt the growth of his power; like him they were
pagans, and the treasures of the Christian churches counted for a great
deal in the booty they had to divide. On one of their expeditions they
had taken in the church of Rheims, among other things, a vase "of
marvellous size and beauty."
The bishop of Rheims, St. Remi, was not quite a stranger to Clovis. Some
years before, when he had heard that the son of Childeric had become
king of the Franks of Tournai, he had written to congratulate him. "We
are informed," said he, "that thou hast undertaken the conduct of
affairs; it is no marvel that thou beginnest to be what thy fathers ever
were;" and, while taking care to put himself on good terms with the
young pagan chieftain, the bishop added to his felicitations some pious
Christian counsel, without letting any attempt at conversion be mixed up
with his moral exhortations. The bishop, informed of the removal of the
vase, sent to Clovis a messenger begging the return, if not of all his
church's ornaments, at any rate of that. "Follow us as far as Soissons,"
said Clovis to the messenger; "it is there the partition is to take
place of what we have captured; when the lots shall have given me the
vase, I will do what the bishop demands."
When Soissons was reached, and all the booty had been placed in the
midst of the host, the king said: "Valiant warriors, I pray you not to
refuse me, over and above my share, this vase here." At these words of
the king, those who were of sound mind among the assembly answered:
"Glorious king, everything we see here is thine, and we ourselves are
submissive to thy commands. Do thou as seemeth good to thee, for there
is none that can resist thy power." When they had thus spoken, a certain
Frank, light-minded, jealous, and vain, cried out aloud as he struck the
vase with his battle-axe, "Thou shalt have naught of all this save what
the lots shall truly give thee." At these words all were astounded; but
the king bore the insult with sweet patience, and, accepting the vase,
he gave it to the messenger, hiding his wound in the recesses of his
heart. At the end of a year he ordered all his host to assemble fully
equipped at the March parade, to have their arms inspected. After having
passed in review all the other warriors, he came to him who had struck
the vase. "None," said he, "hath brought hither arms so ill-kept as
thine; nor lance, nor sword, nor battle-axe are in condition for
service." And wresting from him his axe he flung it on the ground. The
man stooped down a little to pick it up, and forthwith the King, raising
with both hands his own battle-axe, drove it into his skull, saying,
"Thus didst thou to the vase of Soissons!" On the death of this fellow
he bade the rest begone, and by this act made himself greatly feared.
A bold and unexpected deed has always a great effect on men: with his
Frankish warriors, as well as with his Roman and Gothic foes, Clovis had
at command the instincts of patience and brutality in turn; he could
bear a mortification and take vengeance in due season. While prosecuting
his course of plunder and war in Eastern Belgica, on the banks of the
Meuse, Clovis was inspired with a wish to get married. He had heard tell
of a young girl, like himself of the Germanic royal line, Clotilde,
niece of Gondebaud, at that time king of the Burgundians. She was dubbed
beautiful, wise, and well-informed; but her situation was melancholy and
perilous. Ambition and fraternal hatred had devastated her family. Her
father, Chilperic, and her two brothers, had been put to death by her
uncle Gondebaud, who had caused her mother, Agrippina, to be thrown into
the Rhone, with a stone round her neck, and drowned. Two sisters alone
had survived this slaughter: the elder, Chrona, had taken religious
vows; the other, Clotilde, was living almost in exile at Geneva,
absorbed in works of piety and charity.
The principal historian of this epoch, Gregory of Tours, an almost
contemporary authority, for he was elected bishop sixty-two years after
the death of Clovis, says simply: "Clovis at once sent a deputation to
Gondebaud to ask Clotilde in marriage. Gondebaud, not daring to refuse,
put her into the hands of the envoys, who took her promptly to the King.
Clovis at sight of her was transported with joy, and married her." But
to this short account other chroniclers, among them Frédégaire, who
wrote a commentary upon and a continuation of Gregory of Tours' work,
added details which deserve reproduction, first as a picture of manners,
next for the better understanding of history. "As he was not allowed to
see Clotilde," says Frédégaire, "Clovis charged a certain Roman, named
Aurelian, to use all his wit to come nigh her. Aurelian repaired alone
to the spot, clothed in rags and with his wallet upon his back, like a
mendicant. To insure confidence in himself he took with him the ring of
Clovis. On his arrival at Geneva, Clotilde received him as a pilgrim
charitably, and while she was washing his feet Aurelian, bending toward
her, said, under his breath, 'Lady, I have great matters to announce to
thee if thou deign to permit me secret revelation.' She, consenting,
replied, 'Say on.' 'Clovis, king of the Franks,' said he, 'hath sent me
to thee: if it be the will of God, he would fain raise thee to his high
rank by marriage; and that thou mayest be certified thereof, he sendeth
thee this ring.' She accepted the ring with great joy, and said to
Aurelian, 'Take for recompense of thy pains these hundred sous in gold
and this ring of mine. Return promptly to thy lord; if he would fain
unite me to him by marriage, let him send without delay messengers to
demand me of my uncle Gondebaud, and let the messengers who shall come
take me away in haste, so soon as they shall have obtained permission;
if they haste not I fear lest a certain sage, one Aridius, may return
from Constantinople, and, if he arrive beforehand, all this matter will
by his counsel come to naught.'
"Aurelian returned in the same disguise under which he had come. On
approaching the territory of Orleans, and at no great distance from his
house, he had taken as travelling companion a certain poor mendicant, by
whom he, having fallen asleep from sheer fatigue, and thinking himself
safe, was robbed of his wallet and the hundred sous in gold that it
contained. On awakening, Aurelian was sorely vexed, ran swiftly home,
and sent his servants in all directions in search of the mendicant who
had stolen his wallet. He was found and brought to Aurelian, who, after
drubbing him soundly for three days, let him go his way. He afterward
told Clovis all that had passed and what Clotilde suggested. Clovis,
pleased with his success and with Clotilde's notion, at once sent a
deputation to Gondebaud to demand his niece in marriage. Gondebaud, not
daring to refuse, and flattered at the idea of making a friend of
Clovis, promised to give her to him. Then the deputation, having offered
the denier and the sou, according to the custom of the Franks, espoused
Clotilde in the name of Clovis, and demanded that she be given up to
them to be married.
"Without any delay the council was assembled at Châlons, and
preparations made for the nuptials. The Franks, having arrived with all
speed, received her from the hands of Gondebaud, put her into a covered
carriage, and escorted her to Clovis, together with much treasure. She,
however, having already learned that Aridius was on his way back, said
to the Frankish lords, 'If ye would take me into the presence of your
lord, let me descend from this carriage, mount me on horseback, and get
you hence as fast as ye may; for never in this carriage shall I reach
the presence of your lord.'
"Aridius, in fact, returned very speedily from Marseilles, and
Gondebaud, on seeing him, said to him, 'Thou knowest that we have made
friends with the Franks, and that I have given my niece to Clovis to
wife.' 'This,' answered Aridius, 'is no bond of friendship, but the
beginning of perpetual strife. Thou shouldst have remembered, my lord,
that thou didst slay Clotilde's father, thy brother Chilperic, that thou
didst drown her mother, and that thou didst cut off her brothers' heads
and cast their bodies into a well. If Clotilde become powerful she will
avenge the wrongs of her relatives. Send thou forthwith a troop in
chase, and have her brought back to thee. It will be easier for thee to
bear the wrath of one person than to be perpetually at strife, thyself
and thine, with all the Franks.' And Gondebaud did send forthwith a
troop in chase to fetch back Clotilde with the carriage and all the
treasure; but she, on approaching Villers, where Clovis was waiting for
her, in the territory of the Troyes, and before passing the Burgundian
frontier, urged them who escorted her to disperse right and left over a
space of twelve leagues in the country whence she was departing, to
plunder and burn; and that having been done with the permission of
Clovis, she cried aloud, 'I thank thee, God omnipotent, for that I see
the commencement of vengeance for my parents and my brethren!'"
The majority of the learned have regarded this account of Frédégaire as
a romantic fable, and have declined to give it a place in history. M.
Fauriel, one of the most learned associates of the Academy of
Inscriptions, has given much the same opinion, but he nevertheless
adds: "Whatever may be their authorship, the fables in question are
historic in the sense that they relate to real facts of which they are a
poetical expression, a romantic development, conceived with the idea of
popularizing the Frankish kings among the Gallo-Roman subjects." It
cannot, however, be admitted that a desire to popularize the Frankish
kings is a sufficient and truth-like explanation of these tales of the
Gallo-Roman chroniclers, or that they are no more than "a poetical
expression, a romantic development" of the real facts briefly noted by
Gregory of Tours; the tales have a graver origin and contain more truth
than would be presumed from some of the anecdotes and sayings mixed up
with them. In the condition of minds and parties in Gaul at the end of
the fifth century the marriage of Clovis and Clotilde was, for the
public of the period, for the barbarians and for the Gallo-Romans, a
great matter. Clovis and the Franks were still pagans; Gondebaud and the
Burgundians were Christians, but Arians; Clotilde was a Catholic
Christian. To which of the two, Catholics or Arians, would Clovis ally
himself? To whom, Arian, pagan, or Catholic, would Clotilde be married?
Assuredly the bishops, priests, and all the Gallo-Roman clergy, for the
most part Catholics, desired to see Clovis, that young and audacious
Frankish chieftain, take to wife a Catholic rather than an Arian or a
pagan, and hoped to convert the pagan Clovis to Christianity much more
easily than an Arian to orthodoxy. The question between Catholic
orthodoxy and Arianism was, at that time, a vital question for
Christianity in its entirety, and St. Athanasius was not wrong in
attributing to it supreme importance. It may be presumed that the
Catholic clergy, the bishop of Rheims, or the bishop of Langres was no
stranger to the repeated praises which turned the thoughts of the
Frankish King toward the Burgundian princess, and the idea of their
marriage once set afloat, the Catholics, priesthood or laity, labored
undoubtedly to push it forward, while the Burgundian Arians exerted
themselves to prevent it.
Thus there took place between opposing influences, religious and
national, a most animated struggle. No astonishment can be felt, then,
at the obstacles the marriage encountered, at the complications mingled
with it, and at the indirect means employed on both sides to cause its
success or failure. The account of Frédégaire is but a picture of this
struggle and its incidents, a little amplified or altered by imagination
or the credulity of the period; but the essential features of the
picture, the disguise of Aurelian, the hurry of Clotilde, the prudent
recollection of Aridius, Gondebaud's alternations of fear and violence,
and Clotilde's vindictive passion when she is once out of danger--there
is nothing in all this out of keeping with the manners of the time or
the position of the actors. Let it be added that Aurelian and Aridius
are real personages who are met with elsewhere in history, and whose
parts as played on the occasion of Clotilde's marriage are in harmony
with the other traces that remain of their lives.
The consequences of the marriage justified before long the importance
which had on all sides been attached to it. Clotilde had a son; she was
anxious to have him baptized, and urged her husband to consent. "The
gods you worship," said she, "are naught, and can do naught for
themselves or others; they are of wood or stone or metal." Clovis
resisted, saying: "It is by the command of our gods that all things are
created and brought forth. It is plain that your God hath no power;
there is no proof even that he is of the race of the gods." But Clotilde
prevailed; and she had her son baptized solemnly, hoping that the
striking nature of the ceremony might win to the faith the father whom
her words and prayers had been powerless to touch. The child soon died,
and Clovis bitterly reproached the Queen, saying: "Had the child been
dedicated to my gods he would be alive; he was baptized in the name of
your God, and he could not live." Clotilde defended her God and prayed.
She had a second son who was also baptized, and fell sick. "It cannot be
otherwise with him than with his brother," said Clovis; "baptized in the
name of your Christ, he is going to die." But the child was cured, and
lived; and Clovis was pacified and less incredulous of Christ.
An event then came to pass which affected him still more than the
sickness or cure of his children.
In 496 the Alemannians, a Germanic confederation like the Franks, who
also had been, for some time past, assailing the Roman Empire on the
banks of the Rhine or the frontiers of Switzerland, crossed the river
and invaded the settlements of the Franks on the left bank. Clovis went
to the aid of his confederation and attacked the Alemannians at Tolbiac,
near Cologne. He had with him Aurelian, who had been his messenger to
Clotilde, whom he had made duke of Melun, and who commanded the forces
of Sens. The battle was going ill; the Franks were wavering and Clovis
was anxious. Before setting out he had, according to Frédégaire,
promised his wife that if he were victorious he would turn Christian.