Chararic had not gone forth to the battle against Syagrius, but Ragnachar of Cambray had given Clovis effectual help in that crisis of his early fortunes. However Ragnachar, by his dissolute life and his preposterous fondness for an evil counsellor named Farro, had given great offence to the proud Franks, his subjects. Just as James I. said of the forfeited estates of Raleigh: "I maun hae the land, I maun hae it for Carr", so Ragnachar said whenever anyone offered him a present, or whenever a choice dish was brought to table: "This will do for me and Farro". Clovis learned and fomented the secret discontent. He sent to the disaffected nobles amulets and baldrics of copper-gilt--which they in their simplicity took for gold,--inviting them to betray their master. The secret bargain being struck, Clovis then moved his army towards Cambray. The anxious Ragnachar sent scouts to discover the strength of the advancing host. "How many are they?" said he on their return. "Quite enough for thee and Farro", was the discouraging and taunting reply: and in fact the soldiers of Ragnachar seem to have been beaten as soon as the battle was set in array. With his hands bound behind his back, Ragnachar and his brother Richiar were brought into the presence of Clovis. "Shame on thee", said the indignant king, "for humiliating our race by suffering thy hands to be bound. It had been better for thee to die--thus", and the great battle-axe descended on his head. Then turning to Richiar, he said: "If thou hadst helped thy brother, he would not have been bound"; and his skull too was cloven with the battle-axe. Before many days the traitorous chiefs discovered the base metal in the ornaments which had purchased their treason, and complained of the fraud. "Good enough gold", said Clovis, "for men who were willing to betray their lord to death"; and the traitors, trembling for their lives under his frown and fierce rebuke, were glad to leave the matter undiscussed.
Thus in all his arguments with the weaker creatures around him the Frankish king was always right. It was always they, not he, who had befouled the stream. In this, shall I say, shameless plausibility of wrong, the founder of the Frankish monarchy was a worthy prototype of Louis XIV. and of Napoleon.
Having slain these and many other kings, and extended his dominions over the whole of Gaul, he once, in an assembly of his nobles, lamented his solitary estate. "Alas, I am but a stranger and a pilgrim, and have no kith or kin who could help me if adversity came upon me". But this he said, not in real grief for their death, but in guile, in order that if there were any forgotten relative lurking anywhere he might come forth and be killed. None, however, was found to answer to the invitation. [112]
Footnote 112:[ (return) ] We are reminded of the well-known story of Marshal Narvaez on his death-bed. "My son", said the confessor, "it is necessary that you should with all your heart grant forgiveness to your enemies". "Ah, that is easy", said the dying man, "I have shot them all".
Like all his family, Clovis was short-lived, though not so conspicuously short-lived as many of his descendants. He died at forty-five, in the year 511, five years after the battle of the Campus Vogladensis. He was buried (511) in the Church of the Holy Apostles at Paris, and his kingdom, consolidated with so much labor and at the price of so many crimes, was partitioned among his four sons.
The aged Emperor Anastasius survived his Frankish ally seven years, and died in the eighty-ninth year of his age, 8th July, 518. His death was sudden, and some later writers averred that it was caused by a thunderstorm, of which he had always had a peculiar and superstitious fear. Others declared that he was inadvertently buried alive, that he was heard to cry out in his coffin, and that when it was opened some days after, he was found to have gnawed his arm. But these facts are not known to earlier and more authentic historians, and the invention of them seems to be only a rhetorical way of putting the fact that he died at enmity with the Holy See.
COPPER COIN OF ANASTASIUS FORTY NUMMI.