of Soissons, “though he had already several wives, asked the hand of Galsuinthe, eldest daughter of Athanagild, king of Spain. She arrived at Soissons and was united to him in marriage; and she received strong evidences of love, for she had brought with her vast treasures. But his love for Fredegonde, one of the principal women about Chilperic, occasioned fierce disputes between them. As Galsuinthe had to complain to the king of continual insult and of not sharing with him the dignity of his rank, she asked him in return for the treasures which she had brought, and which she was ready to give up to him, to send her back free to her own country. Chilperic, artfully dissimulating, appeased her with soothing words; and then had her strangled by a slave, and she was found dead in her bed. When he had mourned for her death, he espoused Fredegonde after an interval of a few days.” (Gregory of Tours, IV. xxvi., xxviii.)
Amidst such passions and such morals, treason, murder and poisoning were the familiar processes of ambition, covetousness, hatred, vengeance, and fear. Eight kings or royal heirs of the Merovingian line died of brutal murder or secret assassination, to say nothing of innumerable crimes of the same kind committed in their circle, and left unpunished, save by similar crimes. Nevertheless, justice is due to the very worst times and the very worst governments; and it must be recorded that, whilst sharing in many of the vices of their age and race, especially their extreme license of morals, three of Clovis’s successors, Theodebert, king of Austrasia (from 534 to 548), Gontran, king of Burgundy (from 561 to 598), and Dogobert I., who united under his own sway the whole Frankish monarchy (from 622 to 688), were less violent, less cruel, less iniquitous, and less grossly ignorant or blind than the majority of the Merovingians.
“Theodebert,” says Gregory of Tours, “when confirmed in his kingdom, showed himself full of greatness and goodness; he ruled with justice, honoring the bishops, doing good to the churches, helping the poor, and distributing in many directions numerous benefits with a very charitable and very liberal hand. He generously remitted to the churches of Auvergne all the tribute they were wont to pay into his treasury.” (III. xxv.)
Gontran, king of Burgundy, in spite of many shocking and unprincipled deeds, at one time of violence, at another of weakness, displayed, during his reign of thirty-three years, an inclination towards moderation and peace, in striking contrast with the measureless pretensions and outrageous conduct of the other Frankish kings his contemporaries, especially King Chilperic his brother. The treaty concluded by Gontran, on the 38th of November, 587, at Andelot, near Langres, with his young nephew Childebert, king of Metz, and Queen Brunehant, his mother, contains dispositions, or, more correctly speaking, words, which breathe a sincere but timid desire to render justice to all, to put an end to the vindictive or retrospective quarrels and spoliations which were incessantly harassing the Gallo-Frankish community, and to build up peace between the two kings on the foundation of mutual respect for the rights of their lieges. “It is established,” says this treaty, “that whatsoever the kings have given to the churches or to their lieges, or with God’s help shall hereafter will to give to them lawfully, shall be irrevocable acquired; as also that none of the lieges, in one kingdom or the other, shall have to suffer damage in respect of whatsoever belongeth to him, either by law or by virtue of a decree, but shall be permitted to recover and possess things due to him. … And as the aforesaid kings have allied themselves, in the name of God, by a pure and sincere affection, it hath been agreed that at no time shall passage through one kingdom be refused to the Leudes (lieges—great vassals) of the other kingdom who shall desire to traverse them on public or private affairs. It is likewise agreed that neither of the two kings shall solicit the Leudes of the other or receive them if they offer themselves; and if, peradventure, any of these Leudes shall think it necessary, in consequence of some fault, to take refuge with the other king, he shall be absolved according to the nature of his fault and given back. It hath seemed good also to add to the present treaty that whichever, if either, of the parties happen to violate it, under any pretext and at any time whatsoever, it shall lose all advantages, present or prospective, therefrom; and they shall be for the profit of that party which shall have faithfully observed the aforesaid conventions, and which shall be relieved in all points from the obligations of its oath.” (Gregory of Tours, IX. xx.)
It may be doubted whether between Gontran and Childebert the promises in the treaty were always scrupulously fulfilled; but they have a stamp of serious and sincere intention foreign to the habitual relations between the other Merovingian kings.
Mention was but just now made of two women—two queens—Fredegonde and Brunehaut, who, at the Merovingian epoch, played important parts in the history of the country. They were of very different origin and condition; and, after fortunes which were for a long while analogous, they ended very differently. Fredegonde was the daughter of poor peasants in the neighborhood of Montdidier in Picardy, and at an early age joined the train of Queen Audovere, the first wife of King Chilperic. She was beautiful, dexterous, ambitious, and bold; and she attracted the attention, and before long awakened the passion of the king. She pursued with ardor and without scruple her unexpected fortune. Queen Audovere was her first obstacle and her first victim; and on the pretext of a spiritual relationship which rendered her marriage with Chilperic illegal, was repudiated and banished to a convent. But Fredegonde’s hour had not yet come; for Chilperic espoused Galsuinthe, daughter of the Visigothic king, Athanagild, whose youngest daughter, Brunehaut, had just married Chilperic’s brother, Sigebert, king of Austrasia. It has already been said that before long Galsuinthe was found strangled in her bed, and that Chilperic espoused Fredegonde. An undying hatred from that time arose between her and Brunehaut, who had to avenge her sister. A war, incessantly renewed, between the kings of Austrasia and Neustria followed. Sigebert succeeded in beating Chilperic, but, in 575, in the midst of his victory, he was suddenly assassinated in his tent by two emissaries of Fredegonde. His army disbanded; and his widow, Brunehaut, fell into the hands of Chilperic. The right of asylum belonging to the cathedral of Paris saved her life, but she was sent away to Rouen. There, at this very time, on a mission from his father, happened to be Merovee, son of Chilperic, and the repudiated Queen Audovere; he saw Brunehaut in her beauty, her attractiveness and her trouble; he was smitten with her and married her privately, and Praetextatus, bishop of Rouen, had the imprudent courage to seal their union. Fredegonde seized with avidity upon this occasion for persecuting her rival and destroying her step-son, heir to the throne of Chilperic. The Austrasians, who had preserved the child Childebert, son of their murdered king, demanded back with threats their queen Brunehaut. She was surrendered to them; but Fredegonde did not let go her other prey, Merovice. First imprisoned, then shorn and shut up in a monastery, afterwards a fugitive and secretly urged on to attempt a rising against his father, he was so affrightened at his perils, that he got a faithful servant to strike him dead, that he might not fall into the hands of his hostile step-mother. Chilperic had remaining another son, Clovis, issue, as Merovee was, of Queen Audovere. He was accused of having caused by his sorceries the death of the three children lost about this time by Fredegonde; and was, in his turn, imprisoned and before long poniarded. His mother Audovere was strangled in her convent. Fredegonde sought in these deaths, advantageous for her own children, some sort of horrible consolation for her sorrows as a mother. But the sum of crimes was not yet complete. In 584 King Chilperic, on returning from the chase and in the act of dismounting, was struck two mortal blows by a man who took to rapid flight, and a cry was raised all around of “Treason! ’tis the hand of the Austrasian Childebert against our lord the king!” The care taken to have the cry raised was proof of its falsity; it was the hand of Fredegonde herself, anxious lest Chilperic should discover the guilty connection existing between her and an officer of her household, Landry, who became subsequently mayor of the palace of Neustria. Chilperic left a son, a few months old, named. Clotaire, of whom his mother Fredegonde became the sovereign guardian. She employed, at one time in defending him against his enemies, at another in endangering him by her plots, her hatreds and her assaults, the last thirteen years of her life. She was a true type of the strong-willed, artful, and perverse woman in barbarous times; she started low down in the scale and rose very high without a corresponding elevation of soul; she was audacious and perfidious, as perfect in deception as in effrontery, proceeding to atrocities either from cool calculation or a spirit of revenge, abandoned to all kinds of passion, and, for gratification of them, shrinking from no sort of crime. However, she died quietly at Paris, in 597 or
