History of the Franks

by Saint Bishop of Tours Gregory

7. And Attila king of the Huns went forth from Metz and when he had crushed many cities of the Gauls he attacked Orleans and strove to take it by the mighty hammering of battering rams. Now at that time the most blessed Annianus was bishop in the city just mentioned, a man of unequaled wisdom and praiseworthy holiness, whose miracles are faithfully remembered among us. And when the people, on being shut in, cried to their bishop, and asked what they were to do, trusting in God he advised all to prostrate themselves in prayer, and with tears to implore the ever present aid of God in their necessities. Then when they prayed as he had directed, the bishop said: “Look from the wall of the city to see whether God’s mercy yet comes to your aid.” For he hoped that by God’s mercy Ætius was coming, to whom he had recourse before at Arles when he was anxious about the future. But when they looked from the wall, they saw no one. And he said: “Pray faithfully, for God will free you this day.” When they had prayed he said: “Look again.” And when they looked they saw no one to bring aid. He said to them a third time: “If you pray faithfully, God comes swiftly.” And they besought God’s mercy with weeping and loud cries. When this prayer also was finished they looked from the wall a third time at the old man’s command, and saw afar off a cloud as it were arising from the earth. When they reported this the bishop said: “It is the aid of the Lord.” Meanwhile, when the walls were now trembling from the hammering of the rams and were just about to fall, behold, Ætius came, and Theodore, king of the Goths and Thorismodus his son hastened to the city with their armies, and drove the enemy forth and defeated him. And so the city was freed by the intercession of the blessed bishop, and they put Attila to flight. And he went to the plain of Moirey and got ready for battle. And hearing this, they made manful preparations to meet him….

Ætius with the Goths and Franks fought against Attila. And the latter saw that his army was being destroyed, and escaped by flight. And Theodore, king of the Goths, was slain in the battle. Now let no one doubt that the army of Huns was put to flight by the intercession of the bishop mentioned above. And so Ætius the patrician, along with Thorismodus, won the victory and destroyed the enemy. And when the battle was finished, Ætius said to Thorismodus: “Make haste and return swiftly to your native land, for fear you lose your father’s kingdom because of your brother.” The latter, on hearing this, departed speedily with the intention of anticipating his brother, and seizing his father’s throne first. At the same time Ætius by a stratagem caused the king of the Franks to flee. When they had gone, Ætius took the spoils of the battle and returned victoriously to his country with much booty. And Attila retreated with a few men. Not long after Aquileia was captured by the Huns and burned and altogether destroyed. Italy was overrun and plundered. Thorismodus, whom we have mentioned above, overcame the Alans in battle, and was himself defeated later on by his brothers, after many quarrels and battles, and put to death.

[8. The history of Renatus Frigeridus is quoted for the character of Ætius and an account of his death.]

[S]9. The question who was the first of the kings of the Franks is disregarded by many writers. Though the history of Sulpicius Alexander tells much of them, still it does not name their first king, but says that they had dukes. However, it is well to relate what he says of them. For when he tells that Maximus, losing all hope of empire, remained within Aquileia, almost beside himself, he adds: “At that time the Franks burst into the province of Germany under Genobaud, Marcomer, and Sunno, their dukes, and having broken through the boundary wall they slew most of the people and laid waste the fertile districts especially, and aroused fear even in Cologne. And when word was carried to Trèves, Nanninus and Quintinus, the military officers to whom Maximus had intrusted his infant son and the defense of the Gauls, assembled an army and met at Cologne. Now the enemy, laden with plunder after devastating the richest parts of the provinces, had crossed the Rhine, leaving a good many of their men on Roman soil all ready to renew their ravages. An attack upon these turned to the advantage of the Romans, and many Franks perished by the sword near Carbonnière. And when the Romans were consulting after their success whether they ought to cross into Francia, Nanninus said no, because he knew the Franks would not be unprepared and would doubtless be stronger in their own land. And since this displeased Quintinus and the remainder of the officers, Nanninus returned to Mayence, and Quintinus crossed the Rhine with his army near the stronghold of Neuss, and at his second camp from the river he found dwellings abandoned by their occupants and great villages deserted. For the Franks pretended to be afraid and retired into the more remote tracts, where they built an abattis on the edge of the woods. And so the cowardly soldiers burned all the dwellings, thinking that to rage against them was the winning of victory, and they passed a wakeful night under the burden of their arms. At the first glimmer of dawn they entered the wooded country under Quintinus as commander of the battle, and wandered in safety till nearly mid-day, entangling themselves in the winding paths. At last, when they found everything solidly shut up by great fences, they struggled to make their exit into the marshy fields which were adjacent to the woods, and the enemy appeared here and there, and sheltered by trunks of trees or standing on the abattis as if on the summit of towers, they sent as if from engines a shower of arrows poisoned by the juices of herbs, so that sure death followed even superficial wounds inflicted in places that were not mortal. Later the army was surrounded by the enemy in greater number, and it eagerly rushed into the open places which the Franks had left unoccupied. And the horsemen were the first to plunge into the morasses, and the bodies of men and animals fell indiscriminately together, and they were overwhelmed by their own confusion. The foot soldiers also who had escaped the hoofs of the horses were impeded by the mud, and extricated themselves with difficulty, and hid again in panic in the woods from which they had struggled a little before. And so the ranks were thrown into disorder and the legions cut in pieces. Heraclius, tribune of the Jovinians, and nearly all the officers were slain, when night and the lurking places of the woods offered a safe escape to a few.” This he narrated in the third book of his History.

And in the fourth book, when he tells of the killing of Victor, son of Maximus, the tyrant, he says: “At that time Carietto and Sirus who had been appointed in place of Nanninus, were absent in the province of Germany with the army opposed to the Franks.” And a little later when the Franks had taken booty from Germany, he added: “Arbogastes, wishing no further delay, warned Cæsar that the punishment due must be exacted from the Franks, unless they speedily restored all the plunder they had taken the previous year when the legions were destroyed, and delivered up the instigators of the war to be punished for their treachery in breaking the peace.” He related that this had been done under the leadership of dukes and says further: “A few days later he held a hasty conference with Marcomer and Sunno, princes[48] of the Franks and required hostages of them as usual, and then retired to Trèves to spend the winter.” But when he calls them princes, we do not know whether they were kings or held in the place of kings. Still the same writer, when he told of the hard straits of the emperor Valentinian, added this: “While events of various sorts were taking place in the East throughout Thrace, the public order was disturbed in Gaul. Valentinian the emperor was shut up in Vienne in the palace, and reduced almost below the position of a private person, and the military command was given over to the Frankish allies, and even the civil offices fell under the control of Arbogast’s faction, and no one of all the oath-bound soldiery was found to dare to heed the familiar speech or obey the command of the emperor.” Then he says: “In the same year Arbogast pursued with heathenish hate the princes of the Franks, Sunno and Marcomer, and hastened to Cologne in the depth of winter, since he knew that all the retreats of Francia could be safely penetrated and ravaged with fire when the woods, left bare and dry by the fall of the leaves, could not conceal men lying in ambush. And so he gathered an army and crossed the Rhine, and devastated the country of the Brictori, near the bank, and also the district which the Chamavi inhabit, and no one met him anywhere, except that a few of the Ampsivarii and Chatti appeared with Marcomer as duke on the ridges of distant hills.” At another time this writer, no longer mentioning dukes and princes, openly asserts that the Franks had a king, and without mentioning his name he says: “Then the tyrant Eugenius undertook a military expedition, and hastened to the Rhine to renew in the customary way the old alliances with the kings of the Alemanni and the Franks and to threaten the barbarian nations at that time with a great army.” So much the historian mentioned above wrote about the Franks.

Renatus Profuturus Frigeridus, whom we have already mentioned, in his story of the capture and destruction of Rome by the Goths, says: “Meantime when Goare had gone over to the Romans, Respendial, king of the Alamanni, turned the army of his people from the Rhine, since the Vandals were getting the worse of the war with the Franks, having lost their king Godegisil, and about 20,000 of the army, and all the Vandals would have been exterminated if the army of the Alamanni[49] had not come to their aid in time.” It is surprising to us that when he names the kings of the other nations he does not name the king of the Franks as well. However, when he says that Constantine, after seizing imperial power, commanded his son Constantius to come to him from the Spains, he speaks as follows: “The tyrant Constantine summoned from the Spains his son Constans, also a tyrant, in order to consult with him about their general policy; and so Constans left at Saragossa his court and his wife, and gave Gerontius charge over all in the Spains, and hastened to his father without breaking his journey. And when they met, many days passed and there was no danger from Italy, and Constantine gave himself up to gluttony and urged his son to return to Spain. And while Constans was sending his troops forward, being still with his father, news came from Spain that Maximus, one of his clients, had been given imperial authority by Gerontius, and was securing a following of the barbarians. Alarmed at this, they sent Edobeccus forward to the German tribes, and Constans and Decimus Rusticus, now a prefect,—​he had been master of the offices,—​hastened to the Gauls, with the intention of presently returning to Constantine with the Franks and Alamanni and all the soldiers.”

Again, when he writes that Constantine was being besieged, he uses these words: “The fourth month of the siege of Constantine was scarcely yet under way, when news came suddenly from farther Gaul that Iovinus had assumed royal state, and was threatening the besiegers with the Burgundians, Alamanni, Franks, Alans, and all his army. So the attack on the walls was hastened, the city opened its gates, and Constantine surrendered. He was sent hastily into Italy, and was slain at the river Mincio by assassins sent to meet him by the emperor.” And a little later the same writer says: “At the same time Decimus Rusticus, prefect of the tyrants, Agrœtius, one of the chief secretaries of Jovinus, and many nobles, were captured in Auvergne by the commanders of Honorius and cruelly put to death. The city of Trèves was plundered and burnt in a second inroad of the Franks.” And when Asterius had been made a patrician by an imperial letter, he adds this: “At the same time Castinus, count of the body-guard, undertook an expedition against the Franks and was sent into the Gauls.” This is what these have told of the Franks. And the historian Horosius says in the seventh book of his work: “Stilico gathered the nations, crushed the Franks, crossed the Rhine, wandered through the Gauls, and made his way as far as the Pyrenees.”

This is the evidence that the historians who have been named have left us about the Franks, and they have not mentioned kings. Many relate that they came from Pannonia and all dwelt at first on the bank of the Rhine, and then crossing the Rhine they passed into Thuringia, and there among the villages and cities appointed long-haired kings over them from their first or, so to speak, noblest family. This title Clovis’ victories afterwards made a lasting one, as we shall see later on. [T]We read in the Fasti Consulares that Theodomer, king of the Franks, son of Richimer, and Ascyla his mother, were once on a time slain by the sword. They say also that Chlogio, a man of ability and high rank among his people, was king of the Franks then, and he dwelt at the stronghold of Dispargum which is within the borders of the Thuringians. And in these parts, that is, towards the south, the Romans dwelt as far as the Loire. But beyond the Loire the Goths were in control; the Burgundians also, who belonged to the sect of the Arians, dwelt across the Rhone in the district which is adjacent to the city of Lyons. And Chlogio sent spies to the city of Cambrai, and they went everywhere, and he himself followed and overcame the Romans and seized the city, in which he dwelt for a short time, and he seized the land as far as the river Somme. Certain authorities assert that king Merovech, whose son was Childeric, was of the family of Chlogio.

10. Now this people seems to have always been addicted to heathen worship, and they did not know God, but made themselves images of the woods and the waters, of birds and beasts, and of the other elements as well. They were wont to worship these as God and to offer sacrifice to them. O! would that that terrible voice had touched the fibers of their hearts which spoke through Moses to the people saying, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image nor worship any likeness of anything that is in heaven or on earth or in the water; thou shalt not make them and shalt not worship them.”…

And in Isaiah he speaks a second time: “I am the first, and I am the last, and besides me there is no god and creator whom I do not know. They that fashion a graven image are all of them vanity, and the things that they delight in shall not profit them. They are themselves witnesses of what they are, that they do not see nor have understanding, and they are confounded in them. Behold all his fellows shall be put to shame, for the workmen are of men. On the coals and with hammers did he form it, and he worked it with his strong arm. In like manner, too, the carpenter fashioned it with compasses, and made the likeness of a man as if of a comely man dwelling in a house. He hewed down the wood, he worked and made a graven image, and worshiped it as a god, he fastened it with nails and hammers so that it should not fall to pieces. They are carried because they cannot walk; and the remainder of the wood is prepared by men for the hearth and they are warmed. And from another he made a god, and a graven image for himself. He bends before it and worships it and prays, saying: ‘Deliver me, for thou art my god. I burned half of it with fire; and baked bread upon its coals; I baked flesh and ate, and from the residue I shall make an idol, I shall worship before a wooden trunk; part of it is ashes.’ The foolish heart worshiped it, and did not deliver his soul. And he does not say: ‘Perhaps there is a lie in my right hand?’” The nation of the Franks did not understand at first; but it understood later, as the following history relates.