Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day. William Walton
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before the invasions of the fifth century the Germans had been established in the empire, both as colonists and as soldiers. The legions composed of Germans are said to have been even more amenable to discipline than the Roman ones. The first who established themselves in Gaul were the Visigoths and the Burgundians; the former, flying before the Huns, appeared as suppliants on the frontiers of the empire in the closing years of the fourth century. Ataulf (Ataulphus), the successor of the imperial puppet Attalus, set up by the conquering Alaric, came into Gaul early in the fifth century, became the ally of the Emperor Honorius, married his sister Placida, and marched to the conquest of Spain. The Visigoths, being thus installed in Gaul, admitted the Burgondes (Burgundii) in a neighborly manner; we are even told that they considered themselves as honored by the friendship of the Romans, and pretended that they had a common origin. Their kings proclaimed themselves lieutenants of the emperors, and fed their vanity by the Roman titles with which they invested themselves. The historian Orosius says the Burgundii were a quiet people, with gentle manners, respecting the civil authorities, and living in friendly relations with the Gauls. Both Visigoths and Burgundii promptly abandoned their national religions and traditions and adopted Christianity, but they followed the Aryan sect—"unfortunately," says Duruy. Some modern French historians, on the contrary, attribute the greatness of France to this circumstance. The Gallo-Romans were orthodox.
When the Huns, driving the Germans before them or passing over their bodies, appeared on the frontiers of Gaul in the year 451, they were met by an army commanded by a Roman, Aëtius, but composed of Romans, Burgundii, Visigoths, Franks, and Saxons, which defeated them at the famous battle of the champs catalauniques, over the locality of which the historians are still disputing. When the Franks appeared, at the end of the fifth century, the army of Clovis contained a large number of Romans, and from the time of the sons of Clotaire, the entire population, without distinction of race, was called upon to do military duty. It is even said that it was only the Gallo-Roman chiefs of the armies who acquired military renown. Notwithstanding all this, there are still historians of the present day who speak of "the catastrophe of 406 breaking abruptly the bond which attached the barbarians to the Empire of the West." Some of these latter are disposed to see in Clovis, after his conversion, the founder of modern political society, a creator of a nationality, a maker of civilization—titles which are freely denied him by others. His success was owing, it is said, not to his victories, but to his conversion. He was baptized by the Bishop of Reims, Remi, on Christmas Day, 496. "From that date, he had the alliance of the bishops throughout all Gaul against the Visigoths and the Burgondes, and his reign was assured."
This conversion, it is said, had been earnestly desired by his wife Clotilde, a niece of Gondebaud, King of the Burgondes, who had stipulated with her royal spouse that her first-born should be "consecrated to Christ by baptism." It also contributed greatly to his final establishment in Paris, a capital which he had long coveted and from which his predatory attacks had been constantly turned aside by the efforts of a virgin, Sainte-Geneviève, whom the Parisians still honor as their patron saint. The central position of this city, between the Rhine and the Loire, enabled him to keep a watchful eye upon Brittany, Aquitaine, the Burgondes, and the Frankish tribes of Belgium.
At his death, his kingdom was divided among his four sons, Paris, with Poitiers, Périgueux, Saintes, and Bordeaux, falling to the lot of Childebert. From the confused records of these barbaric times the names of two women issue, and have remained permanently engraven upon the tablets of history—one of them as that of a personification of Christian and feminine virtues rare at any age and doubly so in these dark ages, and the other that of a monstrous queen whose crimes have made her immortal. Radegonde was a daughter of Bertaire, King of Thuringe, killed by his brother Hermanfried at the instigation of the wife of the latter; the murderer invited Thierry, King of Metz, and Clotaire, King of Soissons, sons of Clovis, to invade the kingdom, and in the partition of the booty, Radegonde fell to the share of Clotaire. Charmed by her original beauty, the king had her educated with unusual care, and, later, married her, but the queen sought only to forget her earthly dignities in ministering to the poor, in pious meditation, and in long conversations upon the Scriptures with some learned prelate. "She is a nun," said Clotaire, "and not a queen;" and he ended by killing her last surviving brother. Whereupon she fled to Noyon and implored Saint Médard at the altar to give her the protection of the Church; Clotaire threatened and protested, but finally permitted her to found a church and a convent at Poitiers, in which she immured herself till her death, in 587—thirty-seven years. "During this long seclusion she constantly mingled with good works and with the austerity of religious exercises the culture of letters; constantly also did she guard her cherished traditions of the domestic hearth, and we find her living again in the awkward verses of the greatest poet of that time, Fortunatus, who had himself ordained priest that he might never be constrained to leave her."
At the death of Clotaire, the monarchy was again divided into four kingdoms, those of Paris, Soissons, Metz, and Burgundy—soon reduced to three by the death of Charibert, King of Paris. The Burgondes were under the sway of Gontran, the Austrasien and Eastern Franks under Sigebert, and the mingled population of Franks and Gallo-Romans which were called Neustriens, or the Westerners, under Chilpéric. Aquitaine was divided between the three, and Paris was already of so much importance that none of them was willing to yield her to the others, and it was agreed that no one should enter the city without the consent of the other two. The royal authority was weaker in Austrasie, now Belgium and Lorraine, the petty chiefs stronger, and the manners and customs more Germanic and barbaric; in Neustrie, now Ile-de-France, Normandy, etc., there were more ancient cities, mere remnants of the Roman civilization and vestiges of imperial administration. To the political rivalry to which this disparity gave rise was added the personal animosity of the two queens, Frédégonde and Brunehaut.
While Sigebert was fighting the Avars, barbarians from Asia, on the eastern frontier, his two brothers amused themselves by pillaging his western provinces. Chilpéric had taken, for a most unwilling bride, a younger sister of Brunehaut, Galswinthe, daughter of a king of the Visigoths, notwithstanding the fierce jealousy of his mistress, or his first wife, Frédégonde; her empire was, however, soon regained, and Galswinthe was strangled in her sleep. Brunehaut incited her husband, Sigebert, to a war of vengeance; Paris was taken, and Chilpéric only saved from ruin by his wife, who despatched two assassins against the King of the Neustriens. The rights of inheritance of her son, Clotaire, were impaired by the existence of two sons of Chilpéric by a former marriage. One of them, Mérovée, imprudently married the widowed Brunehaut, and his step-mother sent him to rejoin Sigebert. The Bishop of Rouen, Prétextat, who had already narrowly escaped with his life, in Paris, from the terrible queen, had blessed this marriage; he was killed on the steps of the altar while celebrating mass. Clovis, the brother of Mérovée, followed; then one of his sisters, and Audovère, the mother. The king left Paris for Chelles one afternoon, for the chase; he had previously entered his wife's apartment while she was occupied with her toilette and struck her playfully on the shoulder with a light wand—the queen mistook him for another, and answered, without turning round: "Tout beau! Landry," and other words of great familiarity. Then she perceived her error, and the king went out without a word; as he dismounted, on his return, some one slipped a knife into his heart, "and no one thought it worth while to run after the murderer."
Charibert, the short-lived king of Paris, had in his royal palace a serf named Leudaste, who, when a fellow-servant, Markowefe, attracted the monarch's favor and was made queen, contrived to ingratiate himself with her to such an extent that he was made grand equerry and, later, Comte de Tours. In his administration he proved himself capable of every outrage; but the death of Charibert compelled him to seek refuge with Chilpéric, and he endeavored to win Frédégonde's favor as he had Markowefe's. When Tours fell into the hands of Chilpéric, in 574, Leudaste was re-established in his office and resumed his old practices; two years later, upon a petition addressed to the king by the bishop, Saint Grégoire de Tours, he was dismissed. Thereupon he hatched a plot against the bishop and against the queen who had not interposed to save him; he declared to the king that the former had conspired to deliver Tours to the King of Austrasie, and that the queen had done him an even greater wrong, and he offered to produce witnesses. But his case fell to the ground; the king, threatened with excommunication by the clergy for bringing false charges against the revered prelate, threw all the responsibility upon Leudaste, and that