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The authority of the Salian kings over their fierce warriors was held by a precarious tenure. The loyalty which distinguished the Franks in later times had not yet arisen in their minds, and they did not scruple to send the corrupter of their wives and daughters into ignominious exile. Childeric took refuge with Bissinus (or Bassinus), king of the Thuringians, a people dwelling on the river Unstrut. It was then that the Franks, according to the somewhat improbable account of Gregory,o unanimously chose Ægidius for their king, and actually submitted to his rule for the space of eight years. At the end of that period, returning affection for their native prince, the mere love of change, or the machinations of a party, induced the Franks to recall Childeric from exile, or, at all events, to allow him to return.

Whatever may have been the cause of his restoration, it does not appear to have been the consequence of an improvement in his morals. The period of his exile had been characteristically employed in the seduction of Basina, the wife of his hospitable protector at the Thuringian court. This royal lady, whose character may perhaps do something to diminish the guilt of Childeric in our eyes, was unwilling to be left behind on the restoration of her lover to his native country. Scarcely had he re-established his authority when he was unexpectedly followed by Basina, whom he immediately married. The offspring of this questionable alliance was Clovis, who was born in the year 466 A.D. The remainder of Childeric’s reign was chiefly spent in a struggle with the Visigoths, in which Franks and Romans, under their respective leaders Childeric and Ægidius, were amicably united against the common foe.

We hasten to the reign of Clovis,[120] who, during a rule of about thirty years, not only united the various tribes of Franks under one powerful dynasty, and founded a kingdom in Gaul on a broad and enduring basis, but made his throne the centre of union to by far the greater portion of the whole German race.

THE REIGN OF CLOVIS

[481-486 A.D.]

When Clovis succeeded his father as king of the Salians, at the early age of fifteen, the extent of his territory and the number of his subjects were, as we know, extremely small; at his death, he left to his successors a kingdom more extensive than that of modern France.

The influence of the grateful partiality discernible in the works of Catholic historians and chroniclers towards “the eldest son of the church,” who secured for them the victory over heathens on the one side, and heretics on the other, prevents us from looking to them for an unbiassed estimate of his character. Many of his crimes appeared to be committed in the cause of Catholicity itself, and these they could hardly see in their proper light. Pagans and Arians would have painted him in different colours; and had any of their works come down to us, we might have sought the truth between the positive of partiality and the negative of hatred. But fortunately, while the chroniclers praise his actions in the highest terms, they tell us what those actions were, and thus compel us to form a very different judgment from their own. It would not be easy to extract from the pages of his greatest admirers the slightest evidence of his possessing any qualities but those which are necessary to a conqueror. In the hands of providence he was an instrument of the greatest good to the country he subdued, inasmuch as he freed it from the curse of division into petty states, and furthered the spread of Christianity in the very heart of Europe. But of any word or action that could make us admire or love the man, there is not a single trace in history. His undeniable courage is debased by a degree of cruelty unusual even in his times; and his consummate skill and prudence, which did more to raise him to his high position than even his military qualities, are rendered odious by the forms they take of unscrupulous falsehood, meanness, cunning, and hypocrisy.

It will add to the perspicuity of our brief narrative of the conquests of Clovis, if we pause for a moment to consider the extent and situation of the different portions into which Gaul was divided at his accession.

There were in all six independent states: (1) that of the Salians; (2) that of the Ripuarians; (3) that of the Visigoths; (4) that of the Burgundiones; (5) the kingdom of Syagrius; and (6) Armorica (by which the whole sea coast between Seine and Loire was then signified). Of the first two we have already spoken. The Visigoths held the whole of southern Gaul. It is important to bear these geographical divisions in mind, because they coincide with the successive Frankish conquests made under Clovis and his sons.

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