Moslem and Frank; / or, Charles Martel and the rescue of Europe from the threatened yoke of the Saracens

by G. L. M. Strauss

In the year 496, the Alemanni,[81] who occupied both banks of the Rhine, from the source of that river to its conflux with the Mein and the Moselle, and had spread themselves over the modern provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, invaded the territories of Sigebert, the king of the Ripuarian Franks, who had his seat at Cologne. Sigebert, unable to resist the invaders single-handed, invoked the powerful aid of his cousin, Clovis, and the latter hastened at once to the rescue. He encountered the invaders in the plain of Tolbiac (Zülpich), about twenty-four miles from Cologne. A fierce battle ensued. For several hours it raged with unabated fury, without any decided advantage being gained by either party; at length the Franks gave way, and the Alemanni raised shouts of victory. Clovis saw his dream of power and ambition rapidly fading away; in his extremity he invoked the God of Clotilda and the Christians, to grant him the victory over his enemies, which service he vowed duly to acknowledge, by consenting to be baptised.[82] Resolved, however, to do his share also towards the achievement of the victory which he was imploring the Christian Lord of Hosts to vouchsafe him, he rallied his discomfited troops, and placing himself at their head, led them on again to the attack, and by his valor and conduct, succeeded in restoring the battle. The franciscas, and the heavy swords of the Franks, made fearful havoc in the hostile ranks; the king, and many of the most valiant chiefs of the Alemanni, were slain, and ere evening the power of one of the fiercest and most warlike nations of Germany, was annihilated. Pursued by the victorious Franks into the heart of their forests, the Alemanni were forced to submit to the yoke of the conqueror; some of their tribes fled to the territory of the Gothic king of Italy, Theodoric, who assigned them settlements in Rhætia, and interceded, with his brother-in-law,[83] in favor of the conquered nation.

In his distress, Clovis had vowed to adore the God of the Christians, if He would succour him; the danger past, and the victory achieved, the perfidious Frank would gladly have made light of his vow, but for the incessant importunities of Clotilda, and of Remigius, the Catholic bishop of Rheims. On the day of Christmas in the same year, (496), Clovis was baptised in the Cathedral of Rheims with 3000 of his warlike subjects; and the remainder of the Salians speedily followed the example. As the kings of the Goths, Burgundians, and Vandals were Arians, and even the Greek emperor, Anastasius, was not quite free from the taint of heresy; the Bishop of Rome, Anastasius II., overjoyed at the conversion of the powerful king of the Franks to the Nicean faith, hailed the neophyte as the “Most Christian King.”

The conversion of Clovis to the Catholic faith stood him in excellent need in his schemes of further aggrandisement. His arms were henceforward supported by the favor and zeal of the Catholic clergy, more especially in the discontented cities of Gaul, under the sway of the Arian kings of the Visigoths and the Burgundians. The Armoricans, or Bretons, in the north-western provinces of Gaul, who had hitherto bravely and successfully resisted all attempts of the Pagan chief to conquer them, were now gradually induced to submit to an equal and honorable union with a Christian people, governed by a Catholic king (497-500); and the remnants of the Roman troops (most of them of barbarian extraction), also acknowledged the sway of Clovis, on condition of their being permitted to retain their arms, their ensigns, and their peculiar dress and institutions.

Clotilda had never ceased to urge her husband to make war upon her uncle Gundobald, the murderer of her father. Her other uncle, Godegesil, had been permitted by his rapacious brother to retain the dependent principality of Geneva. But fearful lest Gundobald should treat him in the end the same as he had his other brothers, he lent a willing ear to the suggestions of his niece, and the tempting offers of the Frankish king, and entered into a secret compact with the latter to betray and abandon the cause of his brother on the first favorable opportunity. Hereupon Clovis declared war against the King of Burgundy, and invaded his territories: in the year 500 or 501, the armies of the Franks and the Burgundians met between Langres and Dijon. The treacherous desertion, at the decisive moment, of Godegesil and the troops of Geneva, saved Clovis from defeat. Apprehensive of the disaffection of the Gauls, Gundobald abandoned the castle of Dijon, and the important cities of Lyons and Vienna, to the king of the Franks, and continued his flight till he had reached Avignon; but here he made a stand, and defended the city with such skill and vigor, that Clovis ultimately consented to a treaty of peace, which made the king of Burgundy tributary to him, and stipulated the cession of the province of Vienna to Godegesil, as a reward for his treachery. A garrison of 5000 Franks was left at Vienna, to secure the somewhat doubtful allegiance of Godegesil, and also to protect the latter against the vengeance of his offended brother. But Gundobald, unscrupulous and truculent though he was in the pursuit of his grasping policy, was yet not lacking wisdom. As soon as the conclusion of the peace with Clovis had restored to him the remnant of his kingdom, he applied himself to gain the affections of his Roman and Gallic subjects, by the promulgation of a code of wise and impartial laws[84] (502), and to conciliate the Catholic prelates by artful promises of his approaching conversion from the errors of the Arian heresy. Having strengthened his position, moreover, by alliances with the kings of the Ostrogoths and Visigoths, he suddenly invaded the territories which Clovis had compelled him to cede to his brother, and surprised Vienna and its Frankish garrison ere his brother was even fully aware of his hostile intentions. Godegesil sought refuge in a church; but the protection of the holy precincts availed him nought; he was struck down dead at the altar by his remorseless brother. The provinces of Geneva and Vienna were re-united to the Burgundian kingdom; the captive Franks were sent to the king of the Visigoths, who settled them in the territory of Thoulouse. Clovis, who could now no longer rely upon the assistance of a traitor in the camp of Gundobald, deemed it the wiser course to submit to the altered state of affairs, and to content himself with the alliance and the promised military service of the King of Burgundy.

Already before the Burgundian war, Clovis had cast his covetous eyes upon the fair provinces of the south of Gaul, which were held by Alaric II., the King of the Visigoths. Here, also, the disaffection of the Catholic Gauls and Romans promised the best chances of success. Some paltry border-squabble was eagerly laid hold of by Clovis to pick a quarrel with the King of the Visigoths, and war seemed at the time inevitable between the two nations; when Theodoric, Alaric’s father-in-law,[85] interposed his good offices, and succeeded, by a well-timed threat of an armed intervention, in restraining the aggressive spirit of the Frankish King, (498). A personal interview was proposed between Clovis and Alaric: it was held on the border of the two states, in a small island of the Loire, near Amboise. The two kings met in right royal fashion: they embraced, feasted together, indulged in a profusion of protestations of mutual regard and brotherly affection, and parted full of smiles—and mutual hatred and distrust.

Had Alaric pursued the same wise course as Gundobald, he might have found in the affection of the people under his sway, a safe shield against Frank aggression. But, unfortunately, the Arian could not forbear from inflicting upon his dissenting subjects, those petty acts of tyranny in which dominant sects delight, and which are always sure to create a deeper and more lasting disaffection than any act of political oppression. The Catholic clergy in Aquitaine laid their complaints against their Arian sovereign, before the Catholic King of the Franks; and besought the latter to come to the aid of his co-religionists, and free them from the yoke of their Gothic tyrants. Clovis eagerly seized the pretext. In a general assembly of the Frankish chiefs and the Catholic prelates held at Paris, he declared his intention not to permit the Arian heretics to retain possession any longer of the fairest portion of Gaul. Alaric did his best to prepare for the coming struggle; the army which he collected was much more numerous, indeed, than the military power which Clovis could bring against him; but, unfortunately, a long peace had enervated the descendants of the once so formidable warriors of the first Alaric. They were unable to sustain the fierce shock of the Franks, who totally overthrew and routed them in the battle of Vouglé, near Poitiers, in 507. Alaric himself fell by the hand of his rival; Angoulême, Bordeaux, Thoulouse, submitted to the conqueror, and the whole of Aquitaine acknowledged his sway, (508); and he would have succeeded in driving the Visigoths beyond the Pyrenean mountains, had not the King of Italy thrown the shield of his power over the discomfited nation. The Franks and their Burgundian allies were besieging Arles and Carcassone, when the valiant Hibbas, Theodoric’s general, appeared on the scene with a powerful and well-appointed army of Ostrogoths. He defeated the victors of Vouglé, and compelled the ambitious King of the Franks to raise the siege of the two cities, and to lend a willing ear to proposals of an advantageous peace. He then overthrew and slew the bastard Gesalic, who had usurped the throne of the Visigoths, to the exclusion of Alaric’s infant son, Amalaric. The latter was now proclaimed King of Spain and Septimania, under the guardianship of his grandfather, Theodoric: Clovis being permitted to retain possession of the land from the Cevennes and the Garonne to the Loire, whilst the Provence was annexed to the dominions of the King of Italy, who thus did not disdain despoiling his own grandson of one of the finest provinces of his kingdom.

The Emperor Anastasius, overjoyed at the humiliation inflicted by Clovis upon the Goths, bestowed upon the King of the Franks the dignity and ensigns of the Roman consulship! (510); which, though in reality a mere empty title, yet invested that monarch, in the eyes of his Roman and Gallic subjects, with the prestige of Imperial authority.

Clovis seeing himself thus in undisputed possession of the greater part of Gaul, thought the time had come to unite the several Frankish tribes into one nation, under his sceptre. But, knowing full well that his Franks would not follow him in an open war against his own kindred of the race of Pharamond, he coolly planned the assassination of the whole family. Sigebert, the king of the Ripuarians, had proved himself a most faithful ally of his Salian cousin; and in the last campaign against the Visigoths, he had sent to his aid a powerful contingent of his Ripuarians, under the command of his own son, Chloderic. Clovis excited the ambition and cupidity of the latter, and succeeded in persuading him to murder his own father; when the horrid deed was perpetrated, the wretched son, intent upon securing the powerful support of the Salian king, offered him part of the treasures of the murdered man. The “fair cousin” sent him word to keep his treasures, and simply to show them to his ambassadors, that he, Clovis, might rejoice in the prosperity of his cousin; but, when the assassin of his father had lifted up the heavy lid of one of the boxes, and was bending down to take out some of the precious articles which it held, he was slain in his turn by one of the ambassadors of Clovis. That most Christian king afterwards solemnly protested to the Ripuarians that Chloderic, the assassin of his father, had fallen by the hand of some unknown avenger, and that he, Clovis, was innocent of the death of either of them. “Surely,” he exclaimed, with well affected horror and indignation, “no one would dare to deem me guilty of that most horrible of all crimes, the murder of my own kindred!” The Ripuarians believed him, and acknowledged him their king, by raising him on a shield. The next victims were Chararic, the king of the Morinic Franks, in Belgium, and his son. Chararic, had refused his aid to Clovis, in the campaign against Syagrius; the fact had, indeed, occurred rather long ago, but still it answered the purpose of the unscrupulous son of Childeric. Chararic and his son, having fallen into his hands by the grossest treachery, were despoiled of their treasures and their long hair, and ordained priests. When the son, endeavoring to console his father, could not refrain from indignant invectives against the author of their misery, the pious king of the Salians calmly ordered both of them to be slain, as they had “dared to rebel against the will of the Most High!” There remained still the family of the Cambray princes, consisting of three brothers, viz., Ragnachar, Richar, and Rignomer. The pretext in their case was that they still continued Pagans. Clovis bribed some of the chiefs of the tribe with spurious gold; they fell unawares upon Ragnachar and Richar, bound them, and delivered them into the hands of their “loving cousin.” Addressing the hapless Ragnachar, that monstrous villain exclaimed, “How dare you bring disgrace upon our noble family, by submitting to the indignity of bonds!” and, with a blow of his battle-axe, he spared the wretched captive the trouble of a reply; then turning to the brother of the butchered man, “Hadst thou defended thy brother,” he cried, “they could not have bound him;” and an instant after, the blood and brains of the brothers had mingled their kindred streams on the weapon of the most Christian king. When the wretches who had betrayed their princes into the hands, of the assassin, came to complain that the price of their treachery had been paid in base coin, he told them, traitors deserved no better reward, and bade them be gone, lest he should feel tempted to avenge upon them the blood of his murdered relations.

Rignomer was disposed of by private assassination, and Clovis might now exclaim: “At last I am king of the Franks.” The worthy bishop of Tours, the chronicler of this, and some of the following reigns of the Merovingians, whilst coolly relating these horrid crimes of his hero, piously informs us that success in all his undertakings was vouchsafed to Clovis by the Most High, and that his enemies were delivered up into his hands, because he walked with a sincere heart in the ways of the Lord, and did that which was right in his sight!![86] What a pity that this godly monarch was not permitted to walk a little longer in the ways of the Lord: an additional score or so of murders would surely have achieved canonisation for him. But the most orthodox and most Christian king was suddenly called away from the scene of his glorious exploits; at the very time when he was revolving mighty schemes of further aggrandisement, and planning, as preliminary step, the assassination of Gundobald, the king of Burgundy, and of Theudes, the regent of Spain, (511). His four sons divided his kingdom between them; Theodoric, (Thierry) the eldest, received the Eastern part, Austrasia,[87] (Francia orientalis), and also part of Champagne, and the conquests of Clovis south of the Loire; he established the seat of his government at Metz; Clodomir’s seat was at Orleans; Clotaire’s at Soissons; Childebert’s at Paris; the share of the latter was called Neustria or Neustrasia (Francia occidentalis), a name which was afterwards used to designate the whole of the territories occupied by the Franks between the mouths of the Rhine and the Loire, the Meuse, and the sea.