THE FRANKISH KINGDOMS. 575.
Of these four brothers, Charibert died young, in 567. He is only remembered because his daughter Bertha married Ethelbert, the king of Kent, and was, twenty years later, the protector of the mission of St. Augustine. Charibert’s lands on the Seine and Loire were parted among his three brothers, Guntram and Chilperich each taking the part that lay nearest to his own frontier, while their distant Ripuarian brother, Sigibert, had Tours, Poictiers, and Bordeaux, separated from his other dominions by the whole breadth of Burgundy.
The tale of the wars and tumults which the three surviving sons of Chlothar I. raised against each other is a long recital of objectless strife and treachery. The uneasiest spirit of the three was the wicked Chilperich, ‘the Nero and Herod of his time,’ as Gregory of Tours very rightly styles him. The usual fraternal hatred of the Merovings was embittered between him and Sigibert by an additional grievance. While Sigibert was away beyond the Rhine striving with the wild Avars, who had pushed their incursions along the Danube into Bavaria and Suabia, his brother, the king of Soissons, invaded Ripuaria, and tried to seize it for himself. Sigibert returned in haste, and succeeded in driving Chilperich back beyond the Meuse, and preserving his eastern border.
This would have been cause enough for revenge, but a worse was to follow. Chilperich and Sigibert had married two sisters, the daughters of the Visigothic king, Athanagild. Galswintha was the spouse of Chilperich, Brunhildis of Sigibert. They were princesses famed all over the Western world for their beauty and abilities no less than for the enormous dowries which their father had bestowed upon them. |Murder of Galswintha, 567.| Before his marriage Chilperich had kept a perfect harem of concubines, though on the arrival of Galswintha he had for the moment banished them. But Fredegundis, the chief among his former favourites, retained such an empire over him that after a few months he openly brought her back to the palace, and insulted the queen by her presence. When Galswintha indignantly declared that she should return to her father, the wicked king had her murdered, and publicly married Fredegundis within a few days (567).
Brunhildis, the sister of the murdered queen, and the spouse of Chilperich’s elder brother the king of Ripuaria, devoted the rest of her life to the task of avenging Galswintha’s death on the king of Soissons and his paramour. She was a strong-willed, fearless, able woman, and her influence over her husband was unbounded. For forty years the houses of Sigibert and Chilperich and their unhappy subjects were destined to shed their blood on the battle-field that the slaughter of Galswintha might be atoned for.
It is in these wars that the final partition of the Frankish realm into its two permanent divisions took shape, and that new names for these divisions came into use. The Ripuarian realm of king Sigibert, from the borders of Bavaria and Thuringia as far as the Meuse and Scheldt, is for the future known as Austrasia—the Eastern kingdom; Chilperich’s less purely Teutonic realm, from the Meuse and Scheldt as far as the Loire, gets the name of Neustria, the New kingdom, or the New West kingdom, as others interpret it.[[24]]
[24]. Neustria, Neuster, Neustrasia, Neutrasia, Niwistria are all found as forms of the name. It is disputed whether it means merely the realm of the ‘New Franks’ in Gaul as opposed to the ‘Old Franks’ on Meuse and Rhine, or whether New and West are compressed together in the word. The Annals of Metz say, ‘Occidentales Franci qui Niwistrii dicuntur.’ Its boundaries were the Scheldt, the Silva Carbonaria about Namur and Mons, and the Upper Meuse. Verdun is the westernmost Austrasian town; Langres the northernmost Burgundian town.
The beginning of the wars of Neustria and Austrasia follows immediately on the death of Galswintha. As the avenger of blood, king Sigibert entered his brother’s kingdom, and drove him westward. But the hostilities were suspended by a great Lombard invasion of Gaul. The new conquerors of Italy had passed the Alps, and thrown themselves upon the Frankish realm. Guntram of Burgundy, whose kingdom bore the brunt of the assault, prevailed upon his brothers to cease their struggles and unite to cast out the Lombards from Provence and the Rhone valley. By his decision Chilperich gave up as weregeld for his wife’s murder, her dowry and five Aquitanian cities, which had been bestowed upon her at the marriage. These were made over to Brunhildis, who took them, but nevertheless bided her time for a fuller revenge (568).
Four years of Lombard wars kept the Frankish kings engaged on their southern borders, and they were at last successful in forcing the invaders beyond the Alps, in a series of campaigns in which the chief glory was gained by the Romano-Gallic duke, Eunius Mummolus, who led the armies of Guntram of Burgundy. |Wars of Sigibert and Chilperich, 573-75.| But in 573 the civil war between Sigibert and Chilperich burst forth again. It spread at once over the whole of the Frankish realm; for Chilperich attacked his brother’s dominions in Aquitaine, while Sigibert pressed on beyond Meuse and Scheldt. There followed two years of fierce fighting, attended by the most barbarous wasting of the land. Chilperich’s sons burnt every open town between Tours and Limoges; Sigibert’s troops from beyond the Rhine devastated the valley of the Meuse. The Austrasians had the better in the struggle, and Chilperich sued for peace, offering large territorial concessions. But it was his life and not his lands that Brunhildis wanted. Her husband was induced to decline his brother’s proposals, and pushed his victorious arms into the heart of Neustria, after a battle in which Chilperich’s son and heir, Theudebert, was slain. The king of the West abandoned his capital, and fled north to hide himself and his wife behind the walls of Tournay. Most of the Neustrian counts came to do homage to Sigibert at Paris, and when he had chased his brother behind the Scheldt, the Austrasian had himself lifted on the shield, according to old Frankish custom, and saluted as King of all the Franks at Vitry, near Arras. |Murder of Sigibert, 575.| He sent for his wife and children to Paris to share in his triumph, and determined to end the war by the siege of Tournay. But, when all Gaul seemed at his command, two murderers, hired by queen Fredegundis, came before him with a pretended message, and stabbed him while he listened to their words (575).
The death of Sigibert changed the whole aspect of affairs in Gaul, and raised his assassin from the depth of despair to the height of fortune. The Austrasian army dispersed when its commander was slain, and the Neustrian counts flocked to Tournay to do homage again to Chilperich. Queen Brunhildis, who lay at Paris with Sigibert’s infant son and heir Childebert, was seized and imprisoned by the partisans of the Neustrian king. Her little four-year-old son only escaped from his uncle’s clutches by being let down in a basket from his mother’s prison window, and received by a faithful adherent, who rode away with him to Metz. If Chilperich had laid hands on the boy, the Austrasian royal house would have been ended in the promptest way.