45. Meantime the first of September came and a great embassy of Goths came to king Chilperic.[DP] He had now returned to Paris. He ordered many households of slaves to be taken from his estates and placed on the wagons; many too who wept and refused to go he ordered to be put under guard, in order to send them more easily with his daughter. They say that many in their grief hanged themselves, fearing they would be taken from their kinsmen. Son was separated from father, mother from daughter, and they departed with loud outcries and curses. There was such a wailing in the city of Paris that it was compared with the wailing of Egypt. Many of the older men who were forced to go made their wills and left their property to the churches, and requested that when the girl had entered the Spains the wills should be opened at once as if they were already buried.

Meantime legates came to Paris from king Childebert and warned king Chilperic not to take anything from the cities he held that belonged to the realm of Childebert’s father, [or present his daughter with the treasures in any of them] or dare to touch the slaves or horses or yokes of oxen or anything in them. They say that one of these legates was secretly killed, but it was not known by whom; still suspicion turned to the king. King Chilperic promised that he would touch nothing from these cities, and invited the Frankish nobles and the rest who had sworn fealty and celebrated his daughter’s marriage. She was given over to the legates of the Goths and he gave her great treasures. Moreover her mother presented her with a great quantity of gold and silver and garments, so that when the king saw it he thought he had nothing left. The queen noticed he was provoked and she turned to the Franks and said: “Do not think, men, that I have anything here from the treasures of previous kings; for all that you see is taken from my own property, since the most glorious king has given me much and I have gathered a good deal by my own labor, and I have made great gains from houses granted to me, both from the revenues and the tribute. Moreover you have often enriched me with your gifts, and from these sources comes all that you see before you, for there is nothing here from the public treasures.” And thus the king’s mind was deceived.

There was such a multitude of things that it took fifty wagons to carry the gold and silver and other ornaments. The Franks offered many gifts,[DQ] some gold, others silver, many horses or garments; each gave such a gift as he could. Finally the girl said farewell after tears and kisses and when she was going out of the gate a wagon axle broke and all said: “Mala hora,” which was taken by some as an augury. So she went forth from Paris and ordered the tents pitched at the eighth milestone from the city. And fifty men rose in the night and took a hundred of the best horses with golden bridles and two great chains and fled to king Childebert. Moreover along the whole way when any one could escape, he fled, taking whatever he could lay hands on. Abundant supplies at the expense of the different cities were gathered along the way; in this the king ordered that nothing should be taken from his own treasury but all from the contributions of the poor. And as the king was suspicious that his brother or nephew would prepare some ambush against the girl on the way, he directed that she should be guarded by an army. Great warriors were with her, duke Bobo, Mummolinus’s son, with his wife as attendant on the bride, Domigisel and Ansovald and the major-domo Waddo who had once been count of Saintes, and also about four thousand common soldiers. The rest of the dukes and chamberlains who started with her turned back at Poitiers. The others journeyed on as they could. And on this journey such spoils and booty were taken as can scarcely be described. For they robbed the huts of the poor, wasted the vineyards, cutting off the vines and carrying them away grapes and all, taking domestic animals and whatever they could come upon and leaving nothing along their road, and the words that were spoken through Joel the prophet were fulfilled: “That which the locust hath left hath the cankerworm eaten; and that which the cankerworm hath left, hath the caterpillar eaten; and that which the caterpillar hath left, hath the palmerworm eaten.” This is what happened on this occasion. What was left by frost the storm destroyed, what was left by the storm the drought destroyed, and what was left by the drought the host carried away.

46. While they continued on their way with this plunder, Chilperic, the Nero and Herod of our time, went to his villa of Chelles about one hundred stades distant from Paris and there hunted. One day, returning from the hunt in the dusk, when he was dismounting from his horse and had one hand on a slave’s shoulder a certain one came and stabbed him with a dagger under the armpit and repeating the blow pierced his belly. A flood of blood issued at once from his mouth and the open wounds and put his wicked soul to flight. The narrative before this shows how iniquitous he was. For he frequently laid great districts waste and burned them over, and experienced no pain in this but rather joy, like Nero before him when he recited tragedies as the palace burned. He often punished men unjustly because of their wealth. Very few clerics in his time reached the office of bishop. He was given over to gluttony and his belly was his god. He used to say that no one was wiser than he. He wrote two books on the model of Sedulius,[DR] but their feeble little verses can’t stand on their feet at all, since for lack of understanding he put short syllables for long ones and long for short. He wrote pamphlets also and hymns and masses which can in no wise be received. He hated the causes of the poor. He was always blaspheming the bishops of the Lord, and when he was in retirement he belittled and ridiculed no one more than the bishops of the churches. He called this one lightheaded, that one vain, another lavish, another wanton, another conceited, another pompous. He hated nothing more than churches. For he often used to say: “Behold our treasury has remained poor, behold our wealth has gone to the churches, no one reigns if not the bishops; our office will perish and be transferred to the bishops of the cities.” Going on in this way he would always break wills that were made in favor of churches and he trampled under foot the last directions of his own father, thinking that there was no one left to require the execution of his will. As to lust and wantonness nothing can be found in thought that he did not realize in deed. And he was always looking for new devices to injure the people and of late years if he found any one guilty he would order his eyes torn out. And in the directions he sent to his judges to secure his own advantages he would add this: “If any one disregards our orders let him be punished by having his eyes torn out.” He never loved any one sincerely and was loved by no one, and therefore when he died all his people deserted him. But Mallulf bishop of Senlis, who had been sitting in his tent three days and had been unable to see him, came when he heard he was killed, and washed him and put on better garments, and spent the night singing hymns, and took him in a boat and buried him in the church of St. Vincent which is at Paris, leaving queen Fredegunda in the cathedral.

Here Ends in Christ’s Name the Sixth Book of the Histories. Thanks be to God. Amen.

FOOTNOTES:

[58] West of Marseilles in Septimania.

[59] The argument is continued at length along this line between the Jew on the one hand and Chilperic and Gregory on the other.

HERE BEGIN THE CHAPTERS OF THE SEVENTH BOOK