His conquests in Ripuaria brought Chlodovech into touch with new neighbours, the Burgundians to the south, and the confederacy of the Alamanni to the east, along the Main and Neckar. With the first named he entered into friendly relations, and married Chrotechildis (Clotilde), niece of King Gundobad, in 492. The princess, unlike her uncle and most of her tribe, was a devout Catholic, and much was destined to follow from her alliance with the pagan Frank. |Chlodovech’s wars with the Alamanni.| With the Alamanni the relations of Chlodovech were from the first hostile; in fact, when he brought his frontier up to the middle Rhine, he was constrained to take up an already existing feud between the Ripuarians and their eastern neighbours. For several years he was engaged in a struggle with this confederacy, who held the east bank of the Rhine from Coblenz upwards, the valleys of the Main and Neckar, and all the Black Forest. At last, in 496, he got the better of them in a decisive battle—apparently near Strasburg—and forced the main body of the confederacy to do him homage and acknowledge him as over-lord. An obstinate remnant retired over the Rhine, and took refuge in Rhaetia under the protection of the great Theodoric, but all the rest became Frankish vassals. As a result of this war the Alamanni were driven southward out of the Main valley, which was seized and settled by Ripuarian settlers, and became a Frankish country under the name of East Francia, or Franconia.
A suggestive legend and an important fact are connected with these campaigns of Chlodovech against the Alamanni. The ecclesiastic writers of the next century state that, in his decisive battle with the confederates, Chlodovech was driven back and almost routed. Then, recalling the words of his wife Chrotechildis, ‘who never ceased to persuade him that he should serve the true God,’ that the Lord was the Lord of Hosts and the arbiter of battles, he cried aloud, ‘O Christ Jesu, I crave as a suppliant Thy glorious aid; and if Thou grantest me victory over these enemies I will believe in Thee, and be baptized in Thy name.’ At once the Alamanni began to give back, and the king obtained a complete triumph.
Whether this was the manner of his conversion or not, it is at any rate certain that Chlodovech, on returning from his Alamannic campaign, had himself baptized at Rheims on Christmas Day, 496. His sister and 3000 of his warriors followed him to the font. Every reader of history knows the famous tale how Archbishop Remigius hailed the king with the words, ‘Bow thy neck Sigambrian, adore that which thou hast burnt, and burn that which thou hast adored.’ First among the converted Teutonic kings Chlodovech was received into the Catholic Church, and did not become an Arian like his neighbours. In this we may, no doubt, trace the influence of his orthodox queen Chrotechildis. |Conversion of Chlodovech, 496.| The consequences of his conversion to the orthodox faith were most important; he was the only Teutonic king who adopted the faith of his Roman subjects, and was therefore served by them, and more especially by their clergy, with a loyalty which no Goth, Vandal, or Burgundian prince could ever win. Not least among the causes of Chlodovech’s easy triumphs and of the permanence of his kingdom may be reckoned his adherence to Catholicism.
It cannot be said that the king’s conversion made any favourable change in his character or his conduct. He still remained the cruel, unscrupulous, treacherous tyrant that he had always been. It will be seen that his last recorded action was an elaborate incitement to parricide followed by a horrid murder. Yet he was granted a measure of success that was refused to kings of far better disposition and far stronger intellect, such as Theodoric the Ostrogoth, or Ataulf the Visigoth.
After their king’s conversion the Franks, both Salian and Ripuarian, hastened to follow him to the fold of the Church, and in a single generation the old Frankish paganism disappeared. But, as with king so with people, the change was almost entirely superficial; it is long before we trace the influence of any Christian graces on the ungodly and perfidious race of the Franks.
After subduing the Alamanni, Chlodovech’s next war was with the people of his wife’s uncle, Gundobad, the king of Burgundy. He made a secret agreement with Godegisl, Gundobad’s younger brother, to invade and divide the Burgundian realm. While the treacherous brother raised war in Helvetia, where he possessed an appanage, the king of the Franks attacked Gundobad from the front, and invaded the valley of the Saône. It appeared as if here, as well as in the lands farther north, Chlodovech would sweep all before him. The Burgundian king was beaten and driven out of Dijon, Lyons, and Valence into Avignon, the southernmost fortress of his realm, while his brother was made king by the Frank, and became his vassal. But, in the next year, Gundobad recovered all he had lost, slew Godegisl at Vienne, and drove the Franks out of Burgundy with such success that Chlodovech ere long made peace with him (501).
But the next campaign of the Frankish king was one of far greater importance and success. He was set on trying his fortune against the young king of the Visigoths, whose personal weakness and unpopularity with his Roman subjects tempted him to an invasion of Aquitaine. It would seem that Chlodovech carefully chose as a casus belli the Arian persecutions of Alaric, who, like his father Euric, was a bad master to his Catholic subjects. |Chlodovech conquers Aquitaine, 507.| A first quarrel in 504 was composed by the great Theodoric, who, as father-in-law of the Visigoth and brother-in-law of the Frank, could appeal with authority to each of the rivals. But in 507 Chlodovech declared war on the Visigoths. ‘I cannot bear,’ he said, ‘that those Arians should hold any part of Gaul. With God’s aid we will go against them, and subdue their land beneath our sway.’ Knowing the strength of the Visigothic realm, Chlodovech allied to himself for the struggle his old enemy Gundobad the Burgundian, and Sigebert of Köln, the last surviving Ripuarian king.
Advancing from Paris Chlodovech crossed the Loire, and met the Visigoths and their king on the Campus Vocladensis, the plain of Vouglé, near Poictiers. Whether from cowardice, or from distrust of his own generalship, Alaric held back from fighting, but his army forced him to give battle. He attacked the Franks, was utterly defeated, and fell with the greater part of his men. So crushed were the Visigoths by the disaster that Chlodovech was able to overrun all the provinces between the Loire and the Garonne without striking another blow. He entered Bordeaux in triumph, and there spent the winter. Next spring he marched against Toulouse, the Gothic capital, and took it, and with it the great hoard of the Visigothic kings, including many of the Roman trophies that Alaric and Ataulf had carried off from Italy a hundred years before. Meanwhile, Chlodovech’s Burgundian allies overran Provence, and captured all its cities save Arles. To add to the troubles of the Visigoths they were distracted by civil strife; one party recognised as king Amalric, the infant son of Alaric, by Theodoric’s daughter, his lawful queen; the other elected Gesalic, a bastard son of Alaric, who had fortified himself in Narbonne and Barcelona. But the Franks and Burgundians drove Gesalic over the Pyrenees, and it appeared as if there was about to be an end of all Visigothic power north of those mountains.
Meanwhile, Chlodovech returned from Toulouse to Tours, where he found awaiting him ambassadors from the Emperor Anastasius, who saluted him by their master’s command with the titles of proconsul and patrician, and presented him with a diadem and purple robe. Anastasius sought by these honours to win an ally against Theodoric the Ostrogoth, with whom he had lately quarrelled. Chlodovech accepted them with alacrity, because of the prestige they gave him in the eyes of his Roman subjects, who saw his power over them formally legalised by the grant of the Emperor.
This was the culminating scene of Chlodovech’s life; for, in the next year, fortune turned somewhat against him. The great Theodoric interfered in the Gothic War as the guardian and protector of his grandson, Amalric. His armies routed the united Franks and Burgundians near Arles, where they are said to have slain 30,000 men. They then reconquered Narbonne and all the Mediterranean coast as far as Spain. Chlodovech’s conquests were thus restricted to the land west of the Cevennes, but still comprised the greater bulk of Visigothic Gaul, with the three great cities of Poictiers, Bordeaux, and Toulouse (510). Only the Narbonensis and Provence were saved from him by Theodoric, who now chased away the usurper Gesalic, and ruled all Spain and south Gaul till his grandson Amalric came of age.