The Historians' History of the World 07

On the death of Childebert, probably by poison, Austrasia fell to his eldest son Theudebert, aged only ten years; and Burgundy to his second, Thierry II, aged only nine. As Clotaire II, king of Neustria, was only eleven, the monarchy of the Franks was subject to three minors, or rather to the three mayors of the palace who governed in their name. In 612, Thierry II, with the aid of Clotaire, vanquished his brother Theudebert of Austrasia, whom he calmly put to death; the following year he suddenly died; his sons fell into the power of Clotaire, who was not likely to show much mercy to the offspring of his mother Fredegund’s enemy. Two of the sons he murdered; a third, whom he had held over the baptismal font, he consented to save; and Brunehild, their grandmother, who at the same time became his captive, he caused to expire in the most cruel torments. [He tied her to the heels of a wild horse.] By these bloody executions he was, in 613, at the head of the whole Frankish Empire in Germany and Gaul.

Some years before his death, he caused Dagobert, his elder son, to be crowned king of Austrasia; and after that event (628), Aquitaine fell to his second, Charibert; but in three years Charibert died, his infant son was murdered by Dagobert, and unity was once more restored to the monarchy. But Dagobert, like all the princes of his name during the last century and a half of its existence, was as feeble in body as he was cruel in heart; like them, through his early vices he was overtaken by old age in the prime of life. On his death in 638, his states were divided between his two infant sons. Austrasia fell to Sigebert III; Neustria and Burgundy to Clovis II. The former was governed by the mayor, Pepin, subsequently by Grimwald, the son of Pepin; the latter by Ercinwald. Both princes died about the usual age, between twenty and twenty-five.s

THE RISE OF PEPIN

The accession of the five-year-old Childebert II to the kingdom of Austrasia in 575 proved an excellent opportunity for the vassals to increase their power at the expense of the throne: and they elected a high palace official to assume the charge of rearing the young king and maintaining the peace.

It was not a new institution that the Austrasian nobles thus created. Since the house of the petty chief of Tournay had become the palace of the king of Gaul and his support a nursery of great officials and royal dignitaries, the antrustions, sometimes dispersed over the conquered territories, and again gathered around their prince, had preserved their relations with him and between themselves. The chief and his companions had grown great together, and men, become rich and powerful, continued to fill in the communal household the functions of seneskalk (seneschal), of mariskalk (marshal), and of

skanke (cupbearer); while he among the antrustions who exercised a general surveillance over the household, who took charge of the public welfare, and who sat in judgment over quarrels arising between vassals, was quite naturally the first officer of the palace, the intendant general of the crown domains, the prime minister, and the highest personage of the state after the king himself. We are not sure of the Germanic title of this official; it would seem that he was commonly called in the Teutonic language the herzog, the duke or leader par excellence

. The Gallo-Romans called him the major domus, “the greatest, the first of the house,” a qualification formerly given among the wealthy Romans to the freedman, or even the slave, who had authority over the other slaves and directed the management of the household.

Up to Childebert’s accession, this mayor of the palace had been the creature of the king and his representative before the vassals, but now the Austrasian nobility made him the representative of the vassals before the king and the overseer of royalty. In this there was a complete revolution.w

[638-670 A.D.]