[Illustration: The Sluggard King Journeying----156]
In its beginning and in its end the line of the Merovingians is mediocre
and obscure. Its earliest ancestors, Meroveus, from whom it got its
name, and Clodion, the first, it is said, of the long-haired kings, a
characteristic title of the Frankish kings, are scarcely historical
personages; and it is under the qualification of sluggard kings that the
last Merovingians have a place in history. Clovis alone, amidst his
vices and his crimes, was sufficiently great and did sufficiently great
deeds to live forever in the course of ages; the greatest part of his
successors belong only to genealogy or chronology. In a moment of
self-abandonment and weariness, the great Napoleon once said, “What
trouble to take for half a page in universal history!” Histories far
more limited and modest than a universal history, not only have a right,
but are bound to shed their light only upon those men who have deserved
it by the eminence of their talents or the important results of their
passage through life; rarity only can claim to escape oblivion. And
save two or three, a little less insignificant or less hateful than the
rest, the Merovingian kings deserve only to be forgotten. From A.D. 511
to A.D. 752, that is, from the death of Clovis to the accession of the
Carlovingians, is two hundred and forty-one years, which was the
duration of the dynasty of the Merovingians. During this time there
reigned twenty-eight Merovingian kings, which reduces to eight years and
seven months the average reign of each, a short duration compared with
that of most of the royal dynasties. Five of these kings, Clotaire I.,
Clotaire II., Dagobert I., Thierry IV. and Childeric III., alone, at
different intervals, united under their power all the dominions
possessed by Clovis or his successors. The other kings of this line
reigned only over special kingdoms, formed by virtue of divers
partitions at the death of their general possessor. From A.D. 511 to
638 five such partitions took place. In 511, after the death of Clovis,
his dominions were divided amongst his four sons; Theodoric, or Thierry
I., was king of Metz; Clodomir, of Orleans; Childebert, of Paris;
Clotaire I., of Soissons. To each of these capitals fixed boundaries
were attached. In 558, in consequence of divers incidents brought about
naturally or by violence, Clotaire I. ended by possessing alone, during
three years, all the dominions of his fathers. At his death, in 561,
they were partitioned afresh amongst his four sons; Charibert was king
of Paris; Gontran of Orleans and Burgundy; Sigebert I., of Metz; and
Childeric, of Soissons. In 567, Charibert, king of Paris, died without
children, and a new partition left only three kingdoms, Austrasia,
Neustria, and Burgundy. Austrasia, in the east, extended over the two
banks of the Rhine, and comprised, side by side with Roman towns and
districts, populations that had remained Germanic. Neustria, in the
west, was essentially Gallo-Roman, though it comprised in the north the
old territory of the Salian Franks, on the borders of the Scheldt.
Burgundy was the old kingdom of the Burgundians, enlarged in the north
by some few counties. Paris, the residence of Clovis, was reserved and
undivided amongst the three kings, kept as a sort of neutral city into
which they could not enter without the common consent of all. In 613,
new incidents connected with family matters placed Clotaire II., son of
Chilperic, and heretofore king of Soissons, in possession of the three
kingdoms. He kept them united up to 628, and left them so to his son,
Dagobert I., who remained in possession of them up to 638. At his death
a new division of the Frankish dominions took place, no longer into
three but two kingdoms, Austrasia being one, and Neustria and Burgundy
the other. This was the definitive dismemberment of the great Frankish
dominion to the time of its last two Merovingian kings, Thierry IV. and
Childeric III., who were kings in name only, dragged from the cloister
as ghosts from the tomb to play a motionless part in the drama. For a
long time past the real power had been in the hands of that valiant
Austrasian family which was to furnish the dominions of Clovis with a
new dynasty and a greater king than Clovis.
Southern Gaul, that is to say, Aquitania, Vasconia, Narbonness, called
Septimania, and the two banks of the Rhone near its mouths, were not
comprised in these partitions of the Frankish dominions. Each of the
copartitioners assigned to themselves, to the south of the Garonne and on
the coasts of the Mediterranean, in that beautiful region of old Roman
Gaul, such and such a district or such and such a town, just as heirs-at-
law keep to themselves severally such and such a piece of furniture or
such and such a valuable jewel out of a rich property to which they
succeed, and which they divide amongst them. The peculiar situation of
those provinces at their distance from the Franks’ own settlements
contributed much towards the independence which Southern Gaul, and
especially Aquitania, was constantly striving and partly managed to
recover, amidst the extension and tempestuous fortunes of the Frankish
monarchy. It is easy to comprehend how these repeated partitions of a
mighty inheritance with so many successors, these dominions continually
changing both their limits and their masters, must have tended to
increase the already profound anarchy of Roman and Barbaric worlds thrown
pell-mell one upon the other, and fallen a prey, the Roman to the
disorganization of a lingering death, the barbaric to the fermentation of
a new existence striving for development under social conditions quite
different from those of its primitive life. Some historians have said
that, in spite of these perpetual dismemberments of the great Frankish
dominion, a real unity had always existed in the Frankish monarchy, and
regulated the destinies of its constituent peoples. They who say so show
themselves singularly easy to please in the matter of political unity and
international harmony. Amongst those various States, springing from a
common base and subdivided between the different members of one and the
same family, rivalries, enmities, hostile machinations, deeds of violence
and atrocity, struggles and wars soon became as frequent, as bloody, and
as obstinate as they have ever been amongst states and sovereigns as
unconnected as possible one with another. It will suffice to quote one
case which was not long in coming. In 424, scarcely thirteen years after
the death of Clovis and the partition of his dominions amongst his four
sons, the second of them, Clodomir, king of Orleans, was killed in a war
against the Burgundians, leaving three sons, direct heirs of his kingdom,
subject to equal partition between them. Their grandmother, Clotilde,
kept them with her at Paris; and “their uncle Childebert (king of Paris),
seeing that his mother bestowed all her affection upon the sons of
Clodomir, grew jealous; so, fearing that by her favor they would get a
share in the kingdom, he sent secretly to his brother Clotaire (king of
Soissons), saying, ‘Our mother keepeth by her the sons of our brother,
and willeth to give them the kingdom of their father. Thou must needs,
therefore, cone speedily to Paris, and we must take counsel together as
to what shall be done with them; whether they shall be shorn and reduced
to the condition of commoners, or slain and leave their kingdom to be
shared equally between us.’ Clotaire, overcome with joy at these words,
came to Paris. Childebert had already spread abroad amongst the people
that the two kings were to join in raising the young children to the
throne. The two kings then sent a message to the queen, who at that time
dwelt in the same city, saying, ‘Send thou the children to us, that we
may place them on the throne.’ Clotilde, full of joy, and unwitting of
their craft, set meat and drink before the children, and then sent them
away, saying, ‘I shall seem not to have lost my son if I see ye succeed
him in his kingdom.’ The young princes were immediately seized, and
parted from their servants and governors; and the servants and the
children were kept in separate places. Then Childebert and Clotaire sent
to the queen their confidant Arcadius (one of the Arvernian senators),
with a pair of shears and a naked sword. When he came to Clotilde, he
showed her what he bare with him, and said to her, ‘Most glorious queen,
thy sons, our masters, desire to know thy will touching these children:
wilt thou that they live with shorn hair or that they be put to death?’
Clotilde, astounded at this address, and overcome with indignation,
answered at hazard, amidst the grief that overwhelmed her, and not
knowing what she would say, ‘If they be not set upon the throne I would
rather know that they were dead than shorn.’ But Areadius, caring little
for her despair or for what she might decide after more reflection,
returned in haste to the two kings, and said, ‘Finish ye your work, for
the queen, favoring your plans, willeth that ye accomplish them.’
Forthwith Clotaire taketh the eldest by the arm, dasheth him upon the
ground, and slayeth him without mercy with the thrust of a hunting-knife
beneath the arm-pit. At the cries raised by the child, his brother
casteth himself at the feet of Childebert, and clinging to his knees,
saith amidst his sobs, ‘Aid me, good father, that I die not like my
brother.’ Childebert, his visage bathed in tears, saith to Clotaire,
‘Dear brother, I crave thy mercy for his life; I will give thee
whatsoever thou wilt as the price of his soul; I pray thee, slay him
not.’ Then Clotaire, with menacing and furious mien, crieth out aloud,
‘Thrust him away, or thou diest in his stead: thou, the instigator of all
this work, art thou, then, so quick to be faithless?’ At these words
Childebert thrust away the child towards Clotaire, who seized him,
plunged a hunting-knife in his side, as he had in his brother’s, and slew
him. They then put to death the slaves and governors of the children.
After these murders Clotaire mounted his horse and departed, taking
little heed of his nephew’s death; and Childebert withdrew into the
outskirts of the city. Queen Clotilde had the corpses of the two
children placed in a coffin, and followed them, with a great parade of
chanting, and immense mourning, to the basilica of St. Pierre (now St.
Genevieve), where they were buried together. One was ten years old and
the other seven. The third, named Clodoald (who died about the year 560,
after having founded, near Paris, a monastery called after him St.
Cloud), could not be caught, and was saved by some gallant men. He,
disdaining a terrestrial kingdom, dedicated himself to the Lord, was
shorn by his own hand, and became a church-man: he devoted himself wholly
to good works, and died a priest. And the two kings divided equally
between them the kingdom of Clodomir.” (Gregory of Tours, _Histoire des
Francs,_ III. xviii.)
[Illustration: “Thrust him away, or thou diest in his stead.”----160]
The history of the most barbarous peoples and times assuredly offers no
example, in one and the same family, of an usurpation more perfidiously
and atrociously consummated. King Clodomir, the father of the two young
princes thus dethroned and murdered by their uncles, had, during his
reign, shown almost equal indifference and cruelty. In 523, during a war
which, in concert with his brothers Childebert and Clotaire, he had waged
against Sigismund, king of Burgundy, he had made prisoners of that king,
his wife, and their sons, and kept them shut up at Orleans. The year
after, the war was renewed with the Burgundians. “Clodomir resolved,”
says Gregory of Tours, “to put Sigismund to death. The blessed Avitus,
abbot of St. Mesrnin de Micy (an abbey about two leagues from Orleans), a
famous priest in those days, said to him on this occasion, ‘If, turning
thy thoughts towards God, thou change thy plan, and suffer not these folk
to be slain, God will be with thee, and thou wilt gain the victory; but
if thou slay them, thou thyself wilt be delivered into the hands of thine
enemies, and thou wilt undergo their fate; to thee and thy wife and thy
sons will happen that which thou wilt have done to Sigismund and his wife
and his sons.’ But Clodomir, taking no heed of this counsel, said, ‘It
were great folly to leave one enemy at home when I march out against
another; one attacking me behind and another in front, I should find
myself between two armies: victory will be surer and easier if I separate
one from the other; when the first is once dead, it will be less
difficult to get rid of the other also.’ Accordingly he put Sigismund to
death, together with his wife and his sons, ordered them to be thrown
into a well in the village of Coulmier, belonging to the territory of
Orleans, and set out for Burgundy. After his first success Clodomir fell
into an ambush and into the hands of his enemies, who cut off his head,
stuck it on the end of a pike and held it up aloft. Victory,
nevertheless, remained with the Franks; but scarcely had a year elapsed
when Queen Guntheuque, Clodomir’s widow, became the wife of his brother
Clotaire, and his two elder sons, Theobald and Gonthaire, fell beneath
their uncle’s hunting-knife.”
Even in the coarsest and harshest ages the soul of man does not
completely lose its instincts of justice and humanity. The bishops and
priests were not alone in crying out against such atrocities; the
barbarians themselves did not always remain indifferent spectators of
them, but sometimes took advantage of them to rouse the wrath and warlike
ardor of their comrades. “About the year 528, Theodoric, king of Metz,
the eldest son of Clovis, purposed to undertake a grand campaign on the
right bank of the Rhine against his neighbors the Thuringians, and
summoned the Franks to a meeting. ‘Bethink you,’ said he, that of old
time the Thuringians fell violently upon our ancestors, and did them much
harm. Our fathers, ye know, gave them hostages to obtain peace; but the
Thuringians put to death those hostages in divers ways, and once more
falling upon our relatives, took from them all they possessed. After
having hung children up, by the sinews of their thighs, on the branches
of trees, they put to a most cruel death more than two hundred young
girls, tying them by the legs to the necks of horses, which, driven by
pointed goads in different directions, tore the poor souls in pieces;
they laid others along the ruts of the roads, fixed them in the earth
with stakes, drove over them laden cars, and so left them, with their
bones all broken, as a meal for the birds and dogs. To this very day
doth Hermannfroi fail in his promise, and absolutely refuse to fulfil his
engagements: right is on our side; march we against them with the help of
God.’ Then the Franks, indignant at such atrocities, demanded with one
voice to be led into Thuringia. . . . Victory made them masters of
it, and they reduced the country under their dominion. . . . Whilst
the Frankish kings were still there, Theodoric would have slain his
brother Clotaire. Having put armed men in waiting, he had him fetched to
treat secretly of a certain matter. Then, having arranged, in a portion
of his house, a curtain from wall to wall, he posted his armed men behind
it; but, as the curtain was too short, it left their feet exposed.
Clotaire, having been warned of the snare, entered the house armed and
with a goodly company. Theodoric then perceived that he was discovered,
invented some story, and talked of this, that, and the other. At last,
not knowing how to get his treachery forgotten, he made Clotaire a
present of a large silvern dish. Clotaire wished him good by, thanked
him, and returned home. But Theodoric immediately complained to his own
folks that he had sacrificed his silvern dish to no purpose, and said to
his son Theodebert, ‘Go, find thy uncle, and pray him to give thee the
present I made him.’ Theodebert went, and got what he asked. In such
tricks did Theodoric excel.” (Gregory of Tours, III. vii.)
These Merovingian kings were as greedy and licentious as they were cruel.
Not only was pillage, in their estimation, the end and object of war, but
they pillaged even in the midst of peace and in their own dominions;
sometimes, after the Roman practice, by aggravation of taxes and fiscal
manoeuvres, at others after the barbaric fashion, by sudden attacks on
places and persons they knew to be rich. It often happened that they
pillaged a church, of which the bishop had vexed them by his protests,
either to swell their own personal treasury, or to make, soon afterwards,
offerings to another church of which they sought the favor. When some
great family event was at hand, they delighted in a coarse magnificence,
for which they provided at the expense of the populations of their
domains, or of the great officers of their courts, who did not fail to
indemnify themselves, thanks to public disorder, for the sacrifices
imposed upon them. At the end of the sixth century, Chilperic, king of
Neustria, had promised his daughter Rigonthe in marriage to Prince
Recared, son of Leuvigild, king of the Visigoths of Spain. “A grand
deputation of Goths came to Paris to fetch the Frankish princess. King
Chilperic ordered several families in the fiscal domains to be seized and
placed in cars. As a great number of them wept and were not willing to
go, he had them kept in prison that he might more easily force them to go
away with his daughter. It is said that several, in their despair, hung
themselves, fearing to be taken from their parents. Sons were separated
from fathers, daughters from mothers, and all departed with deep groans
and maledictions, and in Paris there reigned a desolation like that of
Egypt. Not a few, of superior birth, being forced to go away, even made
wills whereby they left their possessions to the churches, and demanded
that, so soon as the young girl should have entered Spain, their wills
should be opened just as if they were already in their graves. . . .
When King Chilperic gave up his daughter to the ambassadors of the Goths,
he presented them with vast treasures. Her mother (Queen Fredegonde)
added thereto so great a quantity of gold and silver and valuable
vestments, that, at the sight thereof, the king thought he must have
nought remaining. The queen, perceiving his emotion, turned to the
Franks, and said to them, ‘Think not, warriors, that there is here aught
of the treasures of former kings. All that ye see is taken from mine own
possessions, for my most glorious king hath made me many gifts. Thereto
have I added of the fruits of mine own toil, and a great part proceedeth
from the revenues I have drawn, either in kind or in money, from the
houses that have been ceded unto me. Ye yourselves have given me riches,
and ye see here a portion thereof; but there is here nought of the public
treasure.’ And the king was deceived into believing her words. Such was
the multitude of golden and silvern articles and other precious things
that it took fifty wagons to hold them. The Franks, on their part, made
many offerings; some gave gold, others silver, sundry gave horses, but
most of them vestments. At last the young girl, with many tears and
kisses, said farewell. As she was passing through the gate an axle of
her carriage broke, and all cried out alacic! which was interpreted by
some as a presage. She departed from Paris, and at eight miles’ distance
front the city she had her tents pitched. During the night fifty men
arose, and, having taken a hundred of the best horses and as many golden
bits and bridles, and two large silvern dishes, fled away, and took
refuge with king Childebert. During the whole journey whoever could
escape fled away with all that he could lay hands on. It was required
also of all the towns that were traversed on the way, that they should
make great preparations to defray expenses, for the king forbade any
contribution from the treasury: all the charges were met by extraordinary
taxes levied on the poor.” (Gregory of Tours, VI. xlv.)
“Close upon this tyrannical magnificence came unexpected sorrows, and
close upon these outrages remorse. The youngest son of King Chilperic,
Dagobert by name, fell ill. He was a little better, when his elder
brother Chlodebert was attacked with the same symptoms. His mother
Fredegonde, seeing him in danger of death, and touched by tardy
repentance, said to the king, ‘Long hath divine mercy borne with our
misdeeds; it hath warned us by fever, and other maladies, and we have not
mended our ways, and now we are losing our sons; now the tears of the
poor, the lamentations of widows, and the sighs of orphans are causing
them to perish, and leaving us no hope of laying by for any one. We heap
up riches and know not for whom. Our treasures, all laden with plunder
and curses, are like to remain without possessors. Our cellars are they
not bursting with wine, and our granaries with corn? Our coffers were
they not full to the brim with gold and silver and precious stones and
necklaces and other imperial ornaments? And yet that which was our most
beautiful possession we are losing! Come then, if thou wilt, and let us
burn all these wicked lists; let our treasury be content with what was
sufficient for thy father Clotaire.’ Having thus spoken, and beating her
breast, the queen had brought to her the rolls, which Mark had consigned
to her of each of the cities that belonged to her, and cast them into the
fire. Then, turning again to the king, ‘What!’ she cried, ‘dost thou
hesitate? Do thou even as I; if we lose our dear children, at least
escape we everlasting punishment.’ Then the king, moved with
compunction, threw into the fire all the lists, and, when they were
burned, sent people to stay the levy of those imposts. And afterwards
their youngest child died, worn out with lingering illness. Overwhelmed
with grief, they bare him from their house at Braine to Paris, and had
him buried in the basilica of St. Denis. As for Chlodebert, they placed
him on a litter, carried him to the basilica of St. Medard at Soissons,
and, laying him before the tomb of the saint, offered vows for his
recovery; but in the middle of the night, enfeebled and exhausted, he
gave up the ghost. They buried him in the basilica of the holy martyrs
Crispin and Crispinian. Then King Chilperic showed great largess to the
churches and the monasteries and the poor.” (Gregory of Tours, V.
xxxv.)
It is doubtful whether the maternal grief of Fredegonde were quite so
pious and so strictly in accordance with morality as it has been
represented by Gregory of Tours; but she was, without doubt, passionately
sincere. Rash actions and violent passions are the characteristics of
barbaric natures; the interest or impression of the moment holds sway
over them, and causes forgetfulness of every moral law as well as of
every wise calculation. These two characteristics show themselves in the
extreme license displayed in the private life of the Merovingian kings:
on becoming Christians, not only did they not impose upon themselves any
of the Christian rules in respect of conjugal relations, but the greater
number of them did not renounce polygamy, and more than one holy bishop,
at the very time that he reprobated it, was obliged to tolerate it.
“King Clotaire I. had to wife Ingonde, and her only did he love, when she
made to him the following request: ‘My lord,’ said she, ‘hath made of his
handmaid what seemed to him good; and now, to crown his favors, let my
lord deign to hear what his handmaid demandeth. I pray you be graciously
pleased to find for my sister Aregonde, your slave, a man both capable
and rich, so that I be rather exalted than abased thereby, and be enabled
to serve you still more faithfully.’ At these words Clotaire, who was
but too voluptuously disposed by nature, conceived a fancy for Aregonde,
betook himself to the country-house where she dwelt, and united her to
him in marriage. When the union had taken place he returned to Ingonde,
and said to her, ‘I have labored to procure for thee the favor thou didst
so sweetly demand, and, on looking for a man of wealth and capability
worthy to be united to thy sister, I could find no better than myself;
know, therefore, that I have taken her to wife, and I trow that it will
not displease thee.’ What seemeth good in my master’s eyes, that let him
do,’ replied Ingonde: ‘only let thy servant abide still in the king’s
grace.’”
Clotaire I. had, as has been already remarked, four sons: the eldest,
Charibert, king of Paris, had to wife Ingoberge, “who had in her service
two young persons, daughters of a poor work-man; one of them, named
Marcovieve, had donned the religious dress, the other was called
Meroflede, and the king loved both of them exceedingly. They were
daughters, as has been said, of a worker in wool. Ingoberge, jealous of
the affection borne to them by the king, had their father put to work
inside the palace, hoping that the king, on seeing him in such condition,
would conceive a distaste for his daughters; and, whilst the man was at
his work, she sent for the king.
“Charibert, thinking he was going to see some novelty, saw only the
workman afar off at work on his wool. He forsook Ingoberge, and took to
wife Meroflede. He had also (to wife) another young girl named
Theudoehilde, whose father was a shepherd, a mere tender of sheep, and
had by her, it is said, a son who, on issuing from his mother’s womb, was
carried straight-way to the grave.” Charibert afterwards espoused
Marcovive, sister of Meroflede; and for that cause both were
excommunicated by St. Germain, bishop of Paris.
Chilperic, fourth son of Clotaire I. and king of Soissons, “though he had
already several wives, asked the hand of Galsuinthe, eldest daughter of
Athanagild, king of Spain. She arrived at Soissons and was united to him
in marriage; and she received strong evidences of love, for she had
brought with her vast treasures. But his love for Fredegonde, one of the
principal women about Chilperic, occasioned fierce disputes between them.
As Galsuinthe had to complain to the king of continual insult and of not
sharing with him the dignity of his rank, she asked him in return for the
treasures which she had brought, and which she was ready to give up to
him, to send her back free to her own country. Chilperic, artfully
dissimulating, appeased her with soothing words; and then had her
strangled by a slave, and she was found dead in her bed. When he had
mourned for her death, he espoused Fredegonde after an interval of a few
days.” (Gregory of Tours, IV. xxvi., xxviii.)
Amidst such passions and such morals, treason, murder and poisoning were
the familiar processes of ambition, covetousness, hatred, vengeance, and
fear. Eight kings or royal heirs of the Merovingian line died of brutal
murder or secret assassination, to say nothing of innumerable crimes of
the same kind committed in their circle, and left unpunished, save by
similar crimes. Nevertheless, justice is due to the very worst times and
the very worst governments; and it must be recorded that, whilst sharing
in many of the vices of their age and race, especially their extreme
license of morals, three of Clovis’s successors, Theodebert, king of
Austrasia (from 534 to 548), Gontran, king of Burgundy (from 561 to 598),
and Dogobert I., who united under his own sway the whole Frankish
monarchy (from 622 to 688), were less violent, less cruel, less
iniquitous, and less grossly ignorant or blind than the majority of the
Merovingians.
“Theodebert,” says Gregory of Tours, “when confirmed in his kingdom,
showed himself full of greatness and goodness; he ruled with justice,
honoring the bishops, doing good to the churches, helping the poor, and
distributing in many directions numerous benefits with a very charitable
and very liberal hand. He generously remitted to the churches of
Auvergne all the tribute they were wont to pay into his treasury.” (III.
xxv.)
Gontran, king of Burgundy, in spite of many shocking and unprincipled
deeds, at one time of violence, at another of weakness, displayed, during
his reign of thirty-three years, an inclination towards moderation and
peace, in striking contrast with the measureless pretensions and
outrageous conduct of the other Frankish kings his contemporaries,
especially King Chilperic his brother. The treaty concluded by Gontran,
on the 38th of November, 587, at Andelot, near Langres, with his young
nephew Childebert, king of Metz, and Queen Brunehant, his mother,
contains dispositions, or, more correctly speaking, words, which breathe
a sincere but timid desire to render justice to all, to put an end to the
vindictive or retrospective quarrels and spoliations which were
incessantly harassing the Gallo-Frankish community, and to build up peace
between the two kings on the foundation of mutual respect for the rights
of their lieges. “It is established,” says this treaty, “that whatsoever
the kings have given to the churches or to their lieges, or with God’s
help shall hereafter will to give to them lawfully, shall be irrevocable
acquired; as also that none of the lieges, in one kingdom or the other,
shall have to suffer damage in respect of whatsoever belongeth to him,
either by law or by virtue of a decree, but shall be permitted to recover
and possess things due to him. . . . And as the aforesaid kings have
allied themselves, in the name of God, by a pure and sincere affection,
it hath been agreed that at no time shall passage through one kingdom be
refused to the Leudes (lieges--great vassals) of the other kingdom who
shall desire to traverse them on public or private affairs. It is
likewise agreed that neither of the two kings shall solicit the Leudes of
the other or receive them if they offer themselves; and if, peradventure,
any of these Leudes shall think it necessary, in consequence of some
fault, to take refuge with the other king, he shall be absolved according
to the nature of his fault and given back. It hath seemed good also to
add to the present treaty that whichever, if either, of the parties
happen to violate it, under any pretext and at any time whatsoever, it
shall lose all advantages, present or prospective, therefrom; and they
shall be for the profit of that party which shall have faithfully
observed the aforesaid conventions, and which shall be relieved in all
points from the obligations of its oath.” (Gregory of Tours, IX. xx.)
It may be doubted whether between Gontran and Childebert the promises in
the treaty were always scrupulously fulfilled; but they have a stamp of
serious and sincere intention foreign to the habitual relations between
the other Merovingian kings.
Mention was but just now made of two women--two queens--Fredegonde and
Brunehaut, who, at the Merovingian epoch, played important parts in the
history of the country. They were of very different origin and
condition; and, after fortunes which were for a long while analogous,
they ended very differently. Fredegonde was the daughter of poor
peasants in the neighborhood of Montdidier in Picardy, and at an early
age joined the train of Queen Audovere, the first wife of King Chilperic.
She was beautiful, dexterous, ambitious, and bold; and she attracted the
attention, and before long awakened the passion of the king. She pursued
with ardor and without scruple her unexpected fortune. Queen Audovere
was her first obstacle and her first victim; and on the pretext of a
spiritual relationship which rendered her marriage with Chilperic
illegal, was repudiated and banished to a convent. But Fredegonde’s hour
had not yet come; for Chilperic espoused Galsuinthe, daughter of the
Visigothic king, Athanagild, whose youngest daughter, Brunehaut, had just
married Chilperic’s brother, Sigebert, king of Austrasia. It has already
been said that before long Galsuinthe was found strangled in her bed, and
that Chilperic espoused Fredegonde. An undying hatred from that time
arose between her and Brunehaut, who had to avenge her sister. A war,
incessantly renewed, between the kings of Austrasia and Neustria
followed. Sigebert succeeded in beating Chilperic, but, in 575, in the
midst of his victory, he was suddenly assassinated in his tent by two
emissaries of Fredegonde. His army disbanded; and his widow, Brunehaut,
fell into the hands of Chilperic. The right of asylum belonging to the
cathedral of Paris saved her life, but she was sent away to Rouen.
There, at this very time, on a mission from his father, happened to be
Merovee, son of Chilperic, and the repudiated Queen Audovere; he saw
Brunehaut in her beauty, her attractiveness and her trouble; he was
smitten with her and married her privately, and Praetextatus, bishop of
Rouen, had the imprudent courage to seal their union. Fredegonde seized
with avidity upon this occasion for persecuting her rival and destroying
her step-son, heir to the throne of Chilperic. The Austrasians, who had
preserved the child Childebert, son of their murdered king, demanded back
with threats their queen Brunehaut. She was surrendered to them; but
Fredegonde did not let go her other prey, Merovice. First imprisoned,
then shorn and shut up in a monastery, afterwards a fugitive and secretly
urged on to attempt a rising against his father, he was so affrightened
at his perils, that he got a faithful servant to strike him dead, that he
might not fall into the hands of his hostile step-mother. Chilperic had
remaining another son, Clovis, issue, as Merovee was, of Queen Audovere.
He was accused of having caused by his sorceries the death of the three
children lost about this time by Fredegonde; and was, in his turn,
imprisoned and before long poniarded. His mother Audovere was strangled
in her convent. Fredegonde sought in these deaths, advantageous for her
own children, some sort of horrible consolation for her sorrows as a
mother. But the sum of crimes was not yet complete. In 584 King
Chilperic, on returning from the chase and in the act of dismounting, was
struck two mortal blows by a man who took to rapid flight, and a cry was
raised all around of “Treason! ‘tis the hand of the Austrasian Childebert
against our lord the king!” The care taken to have the cry raised was
proof of its falsity; it was the hand of Fredegonde herself, anxious lest
Chilperic should discover the guilty connection existing between her and
an officer of her household, Landry, who became subsequently mayor of the
palace of Neustria. Chilperic left a son, a few months old, named.
Clotaire, of whom his mother Fredegonde became the sovereign guardian.
She employed, at one time in defending him against his enemies, at
another in endangering him by her plots, her hatreds and her assaults,
the last thirteen years of her life. She was a true type of the
strong-willed, artful, and perverse woman in barbarous times; she started
low down in the scale and rose very high without a corresponding
elevation of soul; she was audacious and perfidious, as perfect in
deception as in effrontery, proceeding to atrocities either from cool
calculation or a spirit of revenge, abandoned to all kinds of passion,
and, for gratification of them, shrinking from no sort of crime.
However, she died quietly at Paris, in 597 or 598, powerful and dreaded,
and leaving on the throne of Neustria her son Clotaire II., who, fifteen
years later, was to become sole king of all the Frankish dominions.
Brunehaut had no occasion for crimes to become a queen, and, in spite of
those she committed, and in spite of her out-bursts and the moral
irregularities of her long life, she bore, amidst her passion and her
power, a stamp of courageous frankness and intellectual greatness which
places her far above the savage who was her rival. Fredegonde was an
upstart, of barbaric race and habits, a stranger to every idea and every
design not connected with her own personal interest and successes; and
she was as brutally selfish in the case of her natural passions as in the
exercise of a power acquired and maintained by a mixture of artifice and
violence. Brunehaut was a princess of that race of Gothic kings who, in
Southern Gaul and in Spain, had understood and admired the Roman
civilization, and had striven to transfer the remains of it to the
newly-formed fabric of their own dominions. She, transplanted to a home
amongst the Franks of Austrasia, the least Roman of all the barbarians,
preserved there the ideas and tastes of the Visigoths of Spain, who had
become almost Gallo-Romans; she clung stoutly to the efficacious exercise
of the royal authority; she took a practical interest in the public
works, highways, bridges, monuments, and the progress of material
civilization; the Roman roads in a short time received and for a long
while kept in Anstrasia the name of Brunehaut’s causeways; there used to
he shown, in a forest near Bourges, Brunehaut’s castle, Brunehaut’s tower
at Etampes, Brunehaut’s stone near Tournay, and Brunehaut’s fort near
Cahors. In the royal domains and wheresoever she went she showed
abundant charity to the poor, and many ages after her death the people of
those districts still spoke of Brunehaut’s alms. She liked and protected
men of letters, rare and mediocre indeed at that time, but the only
beings, such as they were, with a notion of seeking and giving any kind
of intellectual enjoyment; and they in turn took pleasure in celebrating
her name and her deserts. The most renowned of all during that age,
Fortunatus, bishop of Poitiers, dedicated nearly all his little poems to
two queens; one, Brunehaut, plunging amidst all the struggles and
pleasures of the world, the other St. Radegonde, sometime wife of
Clotaire I., who had fled in all haste from a throne, to bury herself at
Poitiers, in the convent she had founded there. To compensate, Brunehaut
was detested by the majority of the Austrasian chiefs, those Leudes,
landowners and warriors, whose sturdy and turbulent independence she was
continually fighting against. She supported against them, with
indomitable courage, the royal officers, the servants of the palace, her
agents, and frequently her favorites. One of these, Lupus, a Roman by
origin, and Duke of Champagne, “was being constantly insulted and
plundered by his enemies, especially by Ursion Bertfried. At last, they,
having agreed to slay him, marched against him with an army. At the
sight, Brunehaut, compassionating the evil case of one of her lieges
unjustly persecuted, assumed quite a manly courage, and threw herself
amongst the hostile battalions, crying, “‘Stay, warriors; refrain from
this wicked deed; persecute not the innocent; engage not, for a single
man’s sake, in a battle which will desolate the country!’ ‘Back, woman,’
said Ursion to her; ‘let it suffice thee to have ruled under thy
husband’s sway; now ‘tis thy son who reigns, and his kingdom is under our
protection, not thine. Back! if thou wouldest not that the hoofs of our
horses trample thee under as the dust of the ground!’ After the dispute
had lasted some time in this strain, the queen, by her address, at last
prevented the battle from taking place.” (Gregory of Tours, VI. iv.) It
was but a momentary success for Brunehaut; and the last words of Ursion
contained a sad presage of the death awaiting her. Intoxicated with
power, pride, hate, and revenge, she entered more violently every day
into strife not only with the Austrasian laic chieftains, but with some
of the principal bishops of Austrasia and Burgundy, among the rest with
St. Didier, bishop of Vienne, who, at her instigation, was brutally
murdered, and with the great Irish missionary St. Columba, who would not
sanction by his blessing the fruits of the royal irregularities. In 614,
after thirty-nine years of wars, plots, murders, and political and
personal vicissitudes, from the death of her husband Sigebert I., and
under the reigns of her son Theodebert, and her grandsons Theodebert II.
and Thierry II., Queen Brunehaut, at the age of eighty years, fell into
the hands of her mortal enemy, Clotaire II., son of Fredegonde, now sole
king of the Franks. After having grossly insulted her, he had her
paraded, seated on a camel, in front of his whole army, and then ordered
her to be tied by the hair, one foot, and one arm to the tail of an
unbroken horse, that carried her away, and dashed her in pieces as he
galloped and kicked, beneath the eyes of the ferocious spectators.
[Illustration: The Execution of Brunehaut----175]
After the execution of Brunehaut and the death of Clotaire II., the
history of the Franks becomes a little less dark and less bloody. Not
that murders and great irregularities, in the court and amongst the
people, disappear altogether. Dagobert I., for instance, the successor
of Clotaire II., and grandson of Chilperic and Fredegonde, had no
scruple, under the pressure of self-interest, in committing an iniquitous
and barbarous act. After having consented to leave to his younger
brother Charibert the kingdom of Aquitania, he retook it by force in 631,
at the death of Charibert, seizing at the same time his treasures, and
causing or permitting to be murdered his young nephew Chilperic, rightful
heir of his father. About the same time Dagobert had assigned amongst
the Bavarians, subjects of his beyond the Rhine, an asylum to nine
thousand Bulgarians, who had been driven with their wives and children
from Pannonia. Not knowing, afterwards, where to put or how to feed
these refugees, he ordered them all to be massacred in one night; and
scarcely seven hundred of them succeeded in escaping by flight. The
private morals of Dagobert were not more scrupulous than his public acts.
“A slave to incontinence as King Solomon was,” says his biographer
Fredegaire, “he had three queens and a host of concubines.” Given up to
extravagance and pomp, it pleased him to imitate the magnificence of the
imperial court at Constantinople, and at one time he laid hands for that
purpose, upon the possessions of certain of his “leudes” or of certain
churches; at another he gave to his favorite church, the Abbey of St.
Denis, “so many precious stones, articles of value, and domains in
various places, that all the world,” says Fredegaire, “was stricken with
admiration.” But, despite of these excesses and scandals, Dagobert was
the most wisely energetic, the least cruel in feeling, the most prudent
in enterprise, and the most capable of governing with some little
regularity and effectiveness, of all the kings furnished, since Clovis,
by the Merovingian race. He had, on ascending the throne, this immense
advantage, that the three Frankish dominions, Austrasia, Neustria, and
Burgundy were re-united under his sway; and at the death of his brother
Charibert, he added thereto Aquitania. The unity of the vast Frankish
monarchy was thus re-established, and Dagobert retained it by his
moderation at home and abroad. He was brave, and he made war on
occasion; but, he did not permit himself to be dragged into it either by
his own passions or by the unlimited taste of his lieges for adventure
and plunder. He found, on this point, salutary warnings in the history
of his predecessors. It was very often the Franks themselves, the royal
“leudes,” who plunged their kings into civil or foreign wars. In 530,
two sons of Clovis, Childebert and Clotaire, arranged to attack Burgundy
and its king Godomar. They asked aid of their brother Theodoric, who
refused to join them. However, the Franks who formed his party said, “If
thou refuse to march into Burgundy with thy brethren, we give thee up,
and prefer to follow them.” But Theodoric, considering that the
Arvernians had been faithless to him, said to the Franks, “Follow me, and
I will lead you into a country where ye shall seize of gold and silver as
much as ye can desire, and whence ye shall take away flocks and slaves
and vestments in abundance!” The Franks, overcome by these words,
promised to do whatsoever he should desire. So Theodoric entered
Auvergne with his army, and wrought devastation and ruin in the province.
“In 555, Clotaire I. had made an expedition against the Saxons, who
demanded peace; but the Frankish warriors would not hear of it. ‘Cease,
I pray you,’ said Clotaire to them, ‘to be evil-minded against these men;
they speak us fair; let us not go and attack them, for fear we bring down
upon us the anger of God.’ But the Franks would not listen to him. The
Saxons again came with offerings of vestments, flocks, even all their
possessions, saying, ‘Take all this, together with half our country;
leave us but our wives and little children; only let there be no war
between us.’ But the Franks again refused all terms. ‘Hold, I adjure
you,’ said Clotaire again to them; ‘we have not right on our side; if ye
be thoroughly minded to enter upon a war in which ye may find your loss,
as for me, I will not follow ye.’ Then the Franks, enraged against
Clotaire, threw themselves upon him, tore his tent to pieces as they
heaped reproaches upon him, and bore him away by force, determined to
kill him if he hesitated to march with them. So Clotaire, in spite of
himself, departed with them. But when they joined battle they were cut
to pieces by their adversaries, and on both sides so many fell that it
was impossible to estimate or count the number of the dead. Then
Clotaire with shame demanded peace of the Saxons, saying that it was not
of his own will that he had attacked them; and, having obtained it,
returned to his own dominions.” (Gregory of Tours, III. xi., xii.; IV.
xiv.)
King Dagobert was not thus under the yoke of his “leudes.” Either by his
own energy, or by surrounding himself with wise and influential
counsellors, such as Pepin of Landen, mayor of the palace of Austrasia,
St. Arnoul, bishop of Metz, St. Eligius, bishop of Noyon, and St.
Andoenus, bishop of Rouen, he applied himself to and succeeded in
assuring to himself, in the exercise of his power, a pretty large measure
of independence and popularity. At the beginning of his reign he held,
in Austrasia and Burgundy, a sort of administrative and judicial
inspection, halting at the principal towns, listening to complaints, and
checking, sometimes with a rigor arbitrary indeed, but approved of by the
people, the violence and irregularities of the grandees. At Langres,
Dijon, St. Jean-de, Losne, Chalons-sur-Saline, Auxerre, Autun, and Sens,
“he rendered justice,” says Fredegaire, “to rich and poor alike, without
any charges, and without any respect of persons, taking little sleep and
little food, caring only so to act that all should withdraw from his
presence full of joy and admiration.” Nor did he confine himself to this
unceremonious exercise of the royal authority. Some of his predecessors,
and amongst them Childebert I., Clotaire I., and Clotaire II., had caused
to be drawn up, in Latin and by scholars, digests more or less complete
of the laws and customs handed down by tradition, amongst certain of the
Germanic peoples established on Roman soil, notably the laws of the
Salian Franks and Ripuarian Franks; and Dagobert ordered a continuation
of these first legislative labors amongst the newborn nations. It was,
apparently, in his reign that a digest was made of the laws of the
Allemannians and Bavarians. He had also some taste for the arts, and the
pious talents displayed by Saints Eloi and Ouen in goldsmith’s-work and
sculpture, applied to the service of religion or the decoration of
churches, received from him the support of the royal favor and
munificence. Dagobert was neither a great warrior nor a great
legislator, and there is nothing to make him recognized as a great mind
or a great character. His private life, too, was scandalous; and
extortions were a sad feature of its close. Nevertheless his authority
was maintained in his dominions, his reputation spread far and wide, and
the name of great King Dagobert was his abiding title in the memory of
the people. Taken all in all, he was, next to Clovis, the most
distinguished of Frankish kings, and the last really king in the line of
the Merovingians. After him, from 638 to 732, twelve princes of this
line, one named Sigebert, two Clovis, two Childeric, one Clotaire, two
Dagobert, one Childebert, one Chilperic, and two Throdoric or Thierry,
bore, in Neustria, Austrasia, and Burgundy, or in the three kingdoms
united, the title of king, without deserving in history more than room
for their names. There was already heard the rumbling of great events to
come around the Frankish dominion; and in the very womb of this dominion
was being formed a new race of kings more able to bear, in accordance
with the spirit and wants of their times, the burden of power.