The faithful built a little wooden oratory over her tomb, which Clovis and his wife Clotilde replaced by a great basilica and monastery which became their burial-place. All that now recalls the church, whose length the king measured by the distance he could hurl his axe, is the so-called Tower of Clovis, a thirteenth-century structure in the Rue Clovis. The golden shrine of the saint,[20] which reached thirty feet above the high altar, was confiscated by the Revolutionists to pay their armies, and what remains of her relics is now treasured in the neighbouring church of St. Etienne du Mont.
The conversion of Clovis is the capital fact of early French history. His queen Clotilde, niece of the Burgundian king, had long[21] importuned him to declare himself a Christian. He had consented to the baptism of their firstborn, but the infant’s death within a week seemed an admonition from his own jealous gods. A second son, however, recovered from grievous sickness at his wife’s prayers and this, aided perhaps by a shrewd insight into the trend of events, induced him to lend a more willing ear to the teachers of the new Faith. In 496 the Franks were at death grapple with their German foes at Tolbiac. Clovis, when the fight went against him, invoked the God of the Christians and prayed to be delivered from his enemies. His cry was heard and the advent of the new Lord of Battles was winged with victory.
There was a stirring scene that Christmas at Rheims, when Clovis with his two sisters and three thousand of his warriors marched through the streets, all hung with cloth of many colours, into the cathedral which was glittering with innumerable candles and perfumed with incense of divine odour. Clovis was the first to be baptised. “Bend thy neck, gentle Sicamber,” cried St. Rémi. “Adore what thou didst burn: burn what thou didst adore.” When the bishop was reading the Gospel story of the Passion, the king, thrilled with indignation, cried out: “Ah! had I been there with my Franks I would have avenged the Christ.”
The conversion of Clovis was a triumph for the Church: in her struggle with the Arian heresy in Gaul, she was now able to enforce the arguments of the pen by the edge of the sword. The enemies of Clovis were the enemies of the Church, and as the representative of the Eastern emperor, she arrayed him, after the defeat of the Arian Goths in the South, in purple and hailed him Consul and Augustus at Tours. Her scribes are tender to his memory, for his Christianity was marked by few signs of grace. He remained the same savage monarch as before, and did not scruple to affirm his dynasty and extend his empire by treachery and by the assassination of his kinsmen. To the Franks, Jesus was but a new and more puissant tribal deity. “Long live the Christ who loves the Franks,” writes the author of the prologue to the Salic law; and Clothaire I., when the pangs of death seized him in his villa at Compiègne, cried out, “Who is this God of Heaven that thus allows the greatest kings of the earth to perish?” Nor was their ideal of kingship any loftier. Their kingdom was not a trust, but a possession to be divided among their heirs, and the jealousy and strife excited by the repeated partition among sons, make the history of the Merovingian[22] dynasty a tale of cruelty and treachery whose every page is stained with blood.
In the ninth century a story was current among the people of France which admirably symbolises the fate of the dynasty. One night as Childeric, father of Clovis, lay by the side of Basine, his wife, she awoke him and said, “Arise, O king, look in the courtyard of thy dwelling and tell thy servant what thou shalt see.” Childeric arose and saw beasts pass by that seemed like unto lions, unicorns and leopards. He returned to his wife and told her what he had seen. And Basine said to him: “Master, go once again and tell thy servant what thou shalt see.” Childeric went forth anew and saw beasts passing by like unto bears and wolves. Having related this to his wife she bade him go forth yet a third time. He now saw dogs and other baser animals rending each other to pieces. Then said Basine to Childeric: “What thou hast seen with thine eyes shall verily come to pass. A son shall be born to us who will be a lion for courage: the sons of our sons shall be like unto leopards and unicorns: they in their turn shall bring forth children like unto bears and wolves for their voracity. The last of those whom thou sawest shall come for the end and destruction of the kingdom.”
Clovis, in 508, made Paris the official capital of his realm, and at his death in 511 divided his possessions between his four sons—Thierry, Clodomir, Childebert, and Clothaire. Clodomir after a short reign met his death in battle, leaving his children to the guardianship of their grandmother, Clotilde. One day messengers came to her in the palace of the Thermæ from Childebert and Clothaire praying that their nephews might be entrusted to them. Believing they were to be trained in kingly offices that they might succeed their father in due time, Clotilde granted their prayer and two of the children were sent to them in the palace of the Cité. Soon came another messenger, bearing a pair of shears and a naked sword, and Clotilde was bidden to determine the fate of her wards and to choose for them between the cloister and the edge of the sword. An angry exclamation escaped her: “If they are not to be raised to the throne, I would rather see them dead than shorn.” The messenger waited to hear no more and hastened back to the two kings. Clothaire then seized the elder of the children and stabbed him under the armpit. The younger, at the sight of his brother’s blood, flung himself at Childebert’s feet, burst into tears, and cried: “Help me, dear father, let me not die even as my brother.” Childebert’s heart was softened and he begged for the child’s life. Clothaire’s only answer was a volley of insults and a threat of death if he protected the victim. Childebert then disintwined the child’s tender arms clasping his knees—he was but six years of age—and pushed him to his brother, who drove a dagger into his breast. The tutors and servants of the children were then butchered, and Clothaire rode calmly to his palace, to become at his brother’s death, in 558, sole king of the Franks. The third child, Clodoald, owing to the devotion of faithful servants escaped, and was hidden for some time in Provence. Later in life he returned to Paris and built a monastery at a place still known by his name (St. Cloud) about two leagues from the city.