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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Clovis Biography CLOVIS, CHLODWIG, OR CHLODOVECH (c.466-511). A king of the Franks, of the line of the Merovingians. By the death of his father, in 481, he became King of the Salian Franks, whose capital was at Tournai, in what is now the Belgian Province of Hainault. His first achievement was the overthrow, in 486, of the Gallo-Romans under Syagrius, near Soissons, after which he extended his conquests to the Loire. Clovis did not dispossess the inhabitants, as the Franks were only few in numbers, and the public lands were sufficient for them. About 493 Clovis married Clotilda, daughter of a Burgundian prince. Clotilda was a Christian, and earnestly desired the conversion of her husband, who, like most of the Franks, was still a heathen. According to the picturesque account of Gregory of Tours, in a great battle with the Alemanni, in 496, Clovis was hard pressed and, as a last resource, invoked the God of Clotilda, vowing that he would become a Christian if he obtained the victory. The Alemanni were routed, and on Christmas Day of the same year Clovis and 3000 of his army were baptized by Remigius, Bishop of Rheims. Love of conquest concurring with zeal for the Orthodox faith, Clovis marched to the southwest of Gaul against the heretic Visigoth, Alaric II, whom he defeated and slew at Vouillé, taking possession of the whole country as far as Bordeaux and Toulouse. Clovis now took up his residence in Paris, where he died in 511. His great aim had been the subjugation of all the Frankish princes and the union of the whole Frankish people into a single powerful kingdom. The means he employed to secure this end were cruel and unscrupulous; but the end itself would have been beneficial, if he had not frustrated it at his death by redividing the newly organized realm among his four sons, and exposing it to the very perils from which he himself had rescued it. An account of the deeds of Clovis may be found in Gregory of Tours, Historia Francorum, bk. ii, ed. by Arndt for the Monumenta Germaniæ Historica (Hannover, 1885). Consult also: Junghans, Geschichte der fränkishen Könige Childerich and Chlodivig (Göttingen, 1857); Schultze, Deutsche Geschichte von der Urzeit bis zu den Karolingern (vol. ii, Stuttgart, 1896); Kurth, Clovis (2d ed., Paris, 1901) . The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. V (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 487. |