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.)
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.