THE FRANK CONFEDERACY.—CLOVIS, THE FOUNDER OF THE FRANK MONARCHY.
A great deal of labor and ingenuity has been wasted in futile endeavors to trace the origin of a distinct Frank nation; however, after exhausting every possible means of research, and every probable and improbable suggestion of fancy, the most rational writers are now agreed in looking upon the supposed existence of a distinct Frank nation as a myth,[71] and in believing that the name of Franks or Freemen was assumed, most probably about the middle of the third century after Christ, by a league of several Germanic nations, of whom the most important were the Sigambrians and the Catti. The former constituted, with the Bructeri, the Chamavians, the Chattuarii, and perhaps also part of the Batavians, the lower branch of the confederacy; towards the end of the third century their settlements extended along the eastern bank of the Rhine, from the Lippe down to the mouth of the great German river; they occupied also the island of the Batavians, and the land between the Rhine and Meuse, and down to the Scheld. From the settlement of the Sigambrians on the Yssel or Sala, this branch of the confederacy received the name of the Salian[72] Franks. The Catti, the Ambsivarians, and some other tribes, (including perhaps even the Hermunduri, or Thuringians?) constituted the upper branch of the confederacy.
The upper Franks extended their settlements from the lands between the Mein and Lippe gradually along both banks of the Rhine, from Mayence to Cologne; and, although repeatedly driven back by the Romans, they ultimately retained possession of the left bank of the river; whence they were also called Riparian or Ripuarian Franks (from the Latin ripa, bank, shore).
The Franks repeatedly invaded Gaul, more particularly in the reigns of Valerian[73] (253-260), and of Gallienus (260-268); and though the Romans boast of numerous victories achieved at the time against them, under the leadership of Posthumus, the general of Valerian, but who afterwards usurped the empire in Gaul,[74] yet it is certain that the Franks not only carried their devastations from the Rhine to the foot of the Pyrenees, but numbers of them actually crossed these mountains, and ravaged Spain during twelve years; when they had exhausted that unfortunate country, they seized on some vessels in the ports of Spain, and crossed over to the coast of Africa, where their sudden appearance created the utmost consternation. The Emperor Probus defeated the Franks in 277, and transported a colony of them to the sea-coast of Pontus, where he established them with a view of strengthening the frontier against the inroads of the Alani. But impelled by their unconquerable love of country and freedom, they seized on a number of vessels in one of the harbors of the Euxine, sailed boldly through the Bosphorus and the Hellespont, and, cruising along the coast of the Mediterranean, made frequent descents upon the coasts of Asia, Greece, and Africa, and actually took and sacked the opulent city of Syracuse, in the island of Sicily; whence they proceeded to the Columns of Hercules, where they made their way into the Atlantic, and coasting round Spain and Gaul, reached the British Channel, sailed through it, and landed ultimately in safety, and richly laden with spoil, on the Batavian shore.
In 287, the Menapian Carausius, who usurped the imperial purple in Britain, granted to the Franks the island of the Batavians, and the land between Meuse and Scheld. Constantius (293), and Constantine (313), expelled them from these provinces; the Ripuarians also felt the heavy hand of Constantine, and of his son Crispus; the latter expelled them for a time from the left bank of the Rhine. But Julian found both the Salians and the Ripuarians in their old places; and, though successful against both (357 and 358), contented himself with the partial expulsion of the Ripuarians and the Chamavians, leaving the Sigambrians in quiet possession of the island of the Batavians, and the extensive district of Brabant, which they had occupied, on condition that they should henceforth hold themselves subjects and auxiliaries of the Roman empire. However, the expelled tribes soon made their reappearance on the banks of the Rhine, and, at the end of the fourth century, the Franks had regained complete possession of their old quarters.
Stilicho, the great minister and general of the contemptible Honorius, made it one of the first acts of his administration to secure the alliance of the warlike Franks against the enemies of Rome (395). He succeeded so well, it would appear, that the Franks actually handed over to the discretion of his justice, one of their kings or dukes,[75] Marcomir, who was accused of having violated the faith of treaties; the accused prince was exiled to Tuscany, his brother Sunno, who attempted to avenge the insult which he deemed had been put upon the nation by this degradation of the dignity of one of its chiefs, met with a harsher fate at the hands of his own countrymen: he was slain by them; and the princes whom Stilicho had appointed, were cheerfully acknowledged. The fact that Stilicho himself was of German (Vandalian) extraction, may account in some degree for this extraordinary subserviency of the Franks to the will and wishes of the master of the Western Empire. On this occasion, the Franks had engaged to protect the province of Gaul against invasion from the side of Germany. An opportunity of proving their sincerity and fidelity to Rome, or perhaps rather to the great minister who had made the treaty of alliance with them, offered in the year 406, when the confederated nations of the Vandals, the Alani, the Suevi, and the Burgundians, were moving in a body to the Rhine with the intention of invading Gaul; and most honestly and valiantly indeed did the Franks acquit themselves of the duty undertaken by them. It so happened that the Vandals were the first to make their appearance on the bank of the river; proudly relying on their numbers they attempted to force the passage, without awaiting the coming up of the other confederated nations. They paid the penalty of their rashness; twenty thousand of them were slain, among them their king, Godigisclus; and the opportune arrival of the Alani, whose squadrons trampled down the infantry of the Franks, alone saved the nation of the Vandals from total destruction. Attacked by the combined forces of the confederates, the Franks were at last compelled to give way. On the 31st December, 406, the Suevi, the Alani, the Vandals, and the Burgundians, crossed the frozen Rhine without further opposition, and thus entered the defenceless provinces of Gaul, where the Burgundians formed a lasting settlement, the other nations of the confederacy proceeding subsequently further on to Spain and Lusitania.
History leaves us in the dark as to the period when the Franks first submitted to the sway of hereditary princes; but this much seems certain, that it must have been long before the time of Pharamond; and also that their long-haired kings[76] did not derive the name of Merovingians, from Meroveus, the grandson of Pharamond, but either from some more ancient Meroveus; or perhaps from Merve, the name which the Meuse receives after its union with the Waal (an arm of the Rhine); or from the same name of a castle near Dortrecht, supposed to have been the family seat of the Frankian kings.
It would appear that Pharamond, the son of Marcomir, was elevated on the buckler,[77] about 410, and that his son Clodion succeeded him in 428. It is somewhat doubtful whether these two kings held sway over the Ripuarians as well as over the Salians, or even over all the nations which constituted the league of the latter. Clodion had his residence at Dispargum (Duisborch?[78]), in Brabant, somewhere between Louvain and Brussels. Soon after his accession, this prince invaded Belgic Gaul, took Tournay and Cambray, and advanced as far as the river Somme. He was surprised and defeated in the plains of Artois, by Ætius, the general of the Western empire (430); but that astute politician deemed it the wiser course to secure the friendship of the powerful leader of the warlike Franks, and therefore conceded to him free possession of the conquered province. Clodion died about 448 (450?) He left two sons who disputed his succession. All we can gather from the very confused and contradictory accounts of this period, is that the younger of the two sons, whose name is not mentioned, was raised on the buckler by the Ripuarian, the elder, Mervey or Meroveus,[79] by the Salian Franks; and that the former joined Attila in his invasion of Gaul, and fought on the side of the Huns in the great battle of Chalons (451); whilst Meroveus, with his Salians joined the standard of Ætius, and combated on the side of the Romans and Visigoths. Mervey’s son, Childeric, offended the Franks by his excesses and his arbitrary proceedings: he was deposed by them, and was compelled to seek a refuge at the court of the King of the Thuringians, Bisinus or Basinus. The Franks having thus disposed of their king, proceeded to bestow the royal dignity upon Ægidius, the Roman master-general of Gaul, who, after the compelled abdication and the most suspicious death of the Emperor Majorian, in 461, had refused to acknowledge the successor forced upon the acceptance of the Roman Senate by the all-powerful Patrician Ricimer, the instigator of Majorian’s fall, and had assumed the sovereignty over the remnant of the Gallic province which still obeyed the Roman sway. However, a few years after, the Franks, who found the Roman system of taxation more oppressive and objectionable than any act of Childeric’s, recalled that prince, and, under his guidance, expelled the “tax-gatherers” (465). Ægidius acquiesced with a good grace in a change which he had not the power to oppose. Childeric had been most hospitably entertained by King Bisinus; but the hospitality extended to him by the wife of that monarch, Queen Basina, was, by all accounts, still more liberal than that shown to the interesting guest by her worthy husband. After Childeric’s restoration, Basina left her husband, and rejoined her lover: the fruit of this voluntary union was Clovis, who, at the age of fifteen, succeeded, by his father’s death, to the rule of that portion of the Salian territory, over which Childeric had held sway, and which was confined to the island of the Batavians, with the ancient dioceses of Tournay and Arras; for the custom of the Franks to divide the treasures and territories of a deceased duke or king equally among his sons, had had the natural effect to split the kingdom of Pharamond into several parts independent of each other. Clovis combined with an insatiable ambition, all the qualities requisite to satisfy that all-absorbing passion. His personal bravery was controlled and directed by cool and consummate prudence. He wielded the francisca (the battle-axe of the Franks) with formidable strength and skill; and he did not hesitate, when occasion required, to make his own soldiers feel the weight of his arm and the precision of his aim. He subjected the barbarians whom he commanded to the strict rules of a severe discipline which he enforced with unbending rigor. A crafty and astute politician, he was endowed with the most essential requisites for success, patience and perseverance. In the pursuit and accomplishment of his ambitious designs, he trampled on every law of God and nature: no feeling of pity ever stayed, no fear of retribution ever restrained, his murderous hands. He was indeed the worthy progenitor of a line of princes fit to take the proudest place among the highest aristocracy of crime, to put to the blush the Neros, the Caligulas, the Domitians, the Caracallas, the Elagabalus of imperial Rome, and to rank with the Bourbons, the Hapsburgs and the Tudors. At the age of twenty, he made war upon Syagrius, the son of Ægidius, who had inherited from his father the city and diocese of Soissons, and whose sway was acknowledged also by the cities and territories of Rheims, Troyes, Beauvais and Amiens. In alliance with his cousin Ragnachar, King of the Franks of Cambray, and some other Merovingian princes, he defeated Syagrius at Soissons, and reduced in the brief space of a few months the remnant of the Roman dominion in Gaul, and which had survived ten years the extinction of the Western empire (486). Syagrius fled to Thoulouse, where he flattered himself to find a safe asylum; but in vain: Alaric II., the son of the great Euric, was a minor, and the men who governed the kingdom of the Visigoths in his name, were but too readily intimidated by the threats of Clovis, and pusillanimously delivered up the hapless fugitive to certain death. A few years after (491), Clovis enlarged his dominions towards the east by the ample diocese of Tongres. In 498, he married the Burgundian princess Clotilda, who, in the midst of an Arian court, had been educated in the Nicean faith.[80] Clotilda’s endeavors to convert her husband to Christianity were not very successful at first, though he consented to the baptism of his first-born son; the sudden death of the infant, which the ignorant and superstitious Pagan was inclined to attribute to the anger of his gods, had well-nigh proved fatal to any further attempt at conversion; still the beauty and blandishments of the pious queen succeeded at last in overcoming the scruples and apprehensions of her husband, and gaining his consent to a repetition of the experiment: this time the infant survived, and Clovis began to listen with greater favor to the exhortations of his Christian spouse.