Today I have a goal, possibly an overambitious goal. I’m aiming today to wrap up the story of Clovis’ sons. We’ve introduced the four of them, two of them are already dead, and have covered the life and times of one Grandson – Theudebert. Chlothar is in the title because we’ll end with him, but we’ll deal with his brother Childebert as well. Their stories are intertwined anyway, obviously. We’ll also deal with the life and career of their grand-nephew Theudebald son of Theudebert, which unfortunately will not take long. That will bring us up to the year 561, as I push toward the end of the sixth century in Francia. It’s a broad mandate kind of episode, and there will be digressions today. There’s just no avoiding them.
The long term plan is to finish Francia, move on to the second Gothic war and Italy, bring that up to roughly the same time, and then have some non-narrative episodes before we set the stage for the seventh century. I’m thinking things like monasticism, the Avars, the early Slavs, and such. Let me know if you have specific topics you’d like to hear about. We probably need to check in on Britain and Ireland too, now that I’m thinking about it. Clearly we haven’t a minute to waste.
So, when we left off last time, before I was distracted by bishops, Theudebert had died in 547, after extending his kingdom to the south and west and keeping his royal uncles largely off his back. He passed power to his son Theudebald, and neither Childebert or the aggressive Chlothar said a word about it. That was itself something of a triumph. But, fortune’s wheel is always turning, and no matter what Badger says, every one of us lives on the rim. Please let me know if that reference landed for you or if it was beyond the pale of Nerdery, I’m not sure where the line is. Theudebald was only 13 when he came to the throne, which makes Childebert and Chlothar’s forbearance even more surprising. He was married to a Lombard princess named Walrada, who was his step-mother’s sister, and who came with the support of the Lombard king, which may have helped prop up Theudebald’s reign in that dangerous early period. His father’s fighting men also maintained their loyalty, and for seven years Theudbald managed to hold his inheritance together. The one exception was the territory that Theudebert had seized in Northern Italy, which was too remote to be sustained, and fell to Justinian’s armies shortly after Theudebald’s succession. The Goths were struggling in renewed conflict with the Byzantines by then, and looked for help from the Franks, but found none forthcoming.
Theudebald had never been a robust young man, and his poor health caught up with him in 555. He was twenty or twenty one years old when he died, and had been king of the northern Franks, as well as overlord of the Thuringians and a collection of others, for about eight years. According to Gregory, he was generally unpleasant and malicious, but even he uses the weasel word “apparently”, so you can give Theudebald the benefit of the doubt if you’re so inclined. He had no children, and so the line of Thiuderic, eldest son of Clovis, came to an end.
Chlothar, making up for his earlier lethargy, was Johnny on the Spot about boxing Childebert out and seizing Theudebald’s lands. Childebert was probably distracted by his efforts to incorporate and subdue the Burgundian lands after the battle of Autun and by continuous campaigning against the Visigoths. In addition to the war to return his sister Chrotilda, which we talked about earlier, he led expeditions into Septimania and Catalonia. He occupied Pamplona for a time, and besieged Zaragoza, which we also spoke about. Chlothar participated in some of these campaigns, but not all of them. While these efforts were not outrageously successful, they did generate reasonable amounts of pillage and wealth. Among the spoils was a tunic reputed to have belonged to St Vincent, who had been deacon at the cathedral in Pamplona. He returned with it to Paris, where he founded the Abbey of St Vincent, on the Left Bank of the Seine. We have here yet another Merovingian religious institution that survives to the present day. It’s known now as Saint-Germaine-des-Pres, on the same site in Paris, though nothing remains of the original buildings.
The southern conquests meant that the two brothers were in control of more or less equal territories, though Chlothar was ahead in the treasury department. As we know from all the rest of history we’ve ever learned, two equally matched powers will always live in perfect harmony and balance.
I kid, obviously.
Chlothar and Childebert, and the other brothers, had collaborated on various campaigns, of course, but as often these partnerships were designed more to avoid fighting each other than to achieve coherent foreign policy goals. When the Merovingian king count was pared down to two, opportunities for extra-Frankian activities were also beginning to be thinner on the ground. Tensions between the two grew, though no immediate cause for war presented itself.
In addition to greater financial wherewithal, Chlothar was in possession of a potentially even greater resource in the long term. He had a packet of sons, while Childebert had only two daughters. And that brings us to the complicated familial relations of Chlothar, and a potential rabbit warren of digressions..
First, a correction. You remember Radegund, the Thuringian Princess. When I first introduced her, I gave the impression that she spent maybe a few months with Chlothar before making her escape and founding her abbey in Poitiers. That impression was quite incorrect, and came from a misreading of Gregory, and not paying enough attention to chronology. What actually happened to Radegund was this:
Radegund was around 11 years old when Thiuderic and Chlothar conquered the Thuringian kingdom. The young princess lived on one of Chlothar’s estates until 540, when he married her. She would by then have been about 20, and him in his early forties. By the standards of the time, that makes the whole thing at least a little bit less icky, though I know that today the pair would be in receipt of a lot of side-eye. The two had no children, and Radegund was popular with the people of Chlothar’s realms for her charitable work. It was said that Chlothar had married a nun, not a queen, she was so pious, and Chlothar seems to have respected her for it. .
The Early Merovingians in general, and Chlothar in particular, saw no reason to abandon polygamy, no matter what the bishops said about it. Radegund was one of a total of six wives or long-term concubines taken by Chlothar in the course of his life. Dates are tenuous, so it’s hard to say how many were around in his household at any given time, but it’s pretty clear that at various points during her time in Chlothar’s household, Radegund would have been living with between one and three co-wives, most notably the sisters Ingund and Aregund. I’ll come back to those two in a minute. How Radegund felt about all this is not known. She lived as Chlothar’s wife for about five years, until Chlothar tracked down and executed her last remaining brother, possibly because he had been involved in a Saxon rebellion. Either fearing that she might be targeted, or simply unwilling to live with her brother’s murderer, Radegund fled and used her connections to set up the Abbey at Poitiers. I lean toward the former, for the simple reason that Chlothar and Thiuderic had already been responsible for the deaths of much of the rest of her family, it would seem an odd time to finally draw a line..
Chlothar made several attempts to bring Radegund back, but didn’t really put his back into it. Radegund was well connected with influential churchmen all over Francia and beyond, and forcing her to return would have brought all kinds of problems for the king. He supported her and the abbey financially until his death, and seems to have been overall fairly sanguine about the whole thing. After all, he had other wives, and the marriage certainly was not a towering inferno of passion, as far as I can see.
Chlothar’s first wife we’ve already mentioned, it was his brother Chlodomer’s widow Guntheuc. Maybe she had eyes that could steal a sailor from the sea, or maybe it was the access to his brother’s lands and treasury that attracted Chlothar, who can say? They had been married shortly after Chlodomer’s death, in 524, but had no children, and Gungheuc died sometime around 532.
It was a pattern Chlothar would repeat. After Theudebald’s death, Chlothar apparently started an affair with his widow, until his bishop’s objections forced him to break it off and find her a husband from among his own nobles.
Radegund we’ve already covered.
Chlothar’s most successful marriage, if we’re just scoring by offspring offsprung, was to a woman named Ingund. Ingund was a daughter of King Baderic the Thuringian, and was thus a cousin of Radegund. She had been Chlothar’s concubine beginning in around 517, when she would have been 18 or 20, and he married her around the time of Guntheuc’s death. Ingund was Chlothar’s longest relationship, and together they had four sons and a daughter. All five surviving children would be kings and queens in their time, but we will not being dealing with them today. I can only imagine your relief. Probably matches my own.
Ingund and Chlothar seem to have gotten along well together, as far as we can tell about these things. Gregory says that he “loved her with all his heart”, though that didn’t keep him from having some out of the box ideas. One day, Ingund came to her beloved husband with a request. Again according to Gregory: “My lord, to complete my happiness … I ask that you choose for my sister, who is also a member of your household, a competent and worthy husband, so I need not be ashamed of her, but rather that she may be a source of pride for me, so that I may serve you ever more faithfully.”
Hm, well, thought Chlothar, that’s going to be tricky, a worthy and competent spouse for the queen’s sister… Who among his nobles could he find to marry his sister in law? Aregund was a little younger than Ingund, of royal blood in her own right, as well as by marriage. Whatever noble secured such a match would be bound closer to the king, which would improve internal relationships. Or there might even be some outside king, a neighbor whose goodwill could be assured by marriage? Both of those would be good options, but hey, that’s a thought: what about … me?
According to Gregory, Chlothar went to the house where Aregund was staying, married and had his way with her, before returning to Ingund. “I have done my best to reward you for the sweet request you have put to me … I have looked everywhere for a wealthy and wise husband who I could marry to your sister, but could find no one more eligible than myself. You must know then that I myself have married her. I am sure that this will not displease you.” I’m going to pause for a moment to let you imagine how this approach might be received if you were to try it on your significant other. Personally, I would hide all sharp objects and the heavier frying pans before I started. But then, I’m not a long-haired king of the Franks.
For Ingund’s part, she simply replied “You must do as you wish. All I ask is that I retain your good favor.” Chlothar and Aregund would go on to have one child, a son.
Gregory frames the whole story as an example of Chlothar’s lustful nature. He was “too given over to woman-chasing” to resist. While that may have been part of his character – he seems disinclined to deny himself anything – there may have been more behind Chlothar’s actions.
In 1959 a sarcophagus was discovered beneath the cathedral of St Denis. It contained the remains of a woman, buried between 580 and 590. Along with an array of well-preserved grave goods, including garments of silk, was a ring, inscribed with the legend ARNEGUNDUS REGINE. There are the usual package of caveats and warnings about positively identifying the corpse, but assuming this is the lady herself, then her skeleton reveals a couple interesting things. First, she gave birth to a child when she was in the neighborhood of eighteen years old. Second, she would have walked with a pronounced limp, probably thanks to an encounter with polio in her youth. It’s possible that Aregund’s disability actually presented difficulties in finding her a suitable marriage, and that Chlothar married her to avoid having an unmarried relative, who might reflect poorly on his own prestige. We could even accept the idea that it was an altruistic move, motivated by pity, or at the request of Ingund herself. This last possibility is the one that I favor, actually, since after Ingund died, around 546, Aregund found herself out of favor with Chlothar, it may have been that her sister’s goodwill was the only thing maintaining Aregund’s position at court.
Chlothar’s last marriage was to a woman named Chunsina, and we know pretty much nothing at all about her, or the circumstances of the marriage. All we know is that she had a son by Chlothar, named Chramn.
Whew. So by the time we have added up all the scores, when all the begetting has been finished, what are we left with?
We’re left with Childebert, in control of most of a kingdom centered mainly on Paris or Orleans, and including most of the former Burgundian lands. Along the way he had taken control of Provence, finally giving the Franks the Mediterranean port they’d been fighting for for decades. He has two daughters.
Set against him, we have Chlothar, who has gobbled up the bulk of the northern and eastern territories, extending as far east as Bavaria, and who controls the strategically important Auvergne. In the family derby, he’s the runaway winner, with at least eight children surviving to adulthood. It’s entirely possible, even likely, that there were plenty of other children who died young, or who had the misfortune of being born girls whose marriages were not glittering enough to attract the chroniclers’ attention. C’est la vie.
The rest of the episode will be concerned with just one of those children of Chlothar, his son Chramn.
Chramn was the son of Chlothar’s last wife, Chunsina, who is not otherwise mentioned anywhere in the sources. It’s hard to say when exactly he was born, though he was definitely Chlothar’s youngest son. In around 555, he was sent by his father to pacify the Auvergne. The region had a strong Gallo-Roman aristocracy and an independent streak that made rule by any king, Visigoth or Frank, difficult. For Chramn to be given such a responsibility, he had to have been at least a teenager; I’m busking here, but I’d guess that would put his birth date between 535 and 540. Please do not quote me on that. Because I know you’re out there quoting me regularly at the sports bar.
Per Gregory’s account, Chramn was a bad egg. He was wildly unpopular as governor in Clermont-Ferrand. He surrounded himself with people who were full of bad advice and worse impulses. Gallo-Roman aristocrats were ousted from their positions and driven into exile or hiding, and the local bishop worried that he would be treated similarly. This particular bishop probably should have been exiled, but that’s another story. Worst or all, certainly to the modern reader, was Chramn’s order that “the daughters of certain senators [were] to be forcibly abducted for [his] entertainment.”
Where was dad when all of this was going on? Whether he sympathized with the subjects of Clermont was irrelevant, his son’s behavior reflected poorly on Chlothar’s reputation, and he should have put a stop to it. Unfortunately at the time, Chlothar was busy with other matters. The Saxon residents, formerly under Theudebald’s rule, wondered if they really wanted a Frankish king, and rebelled in 555. Chlothar smacked this rebellion down, and imposed an annual tribute of 500 head of cattle on the Saxons as a fine. The next year, he heard that a second rebellion had bubbled up, gathered his army and went to deal with the Saxons again. When he arrived, emissaries of the Saxons met him, and sued for peace. They offered to increase the tribute they were paying, and Chlothar was inclined to take the peaceful route. His army, though, had come expecting a fight, they were spoiling for a fight, and they would not be talked out of it, even by their king. It’s possible, even likely, that the rumors of this second Saxon uprising had been started and spread by Childebert, seeking to destabilize his brother’s rule. How powerful could a king be if he couldn’t control even his own army?
Eventually Chlothar succumbed to the demands of his men, and attacked the Saxons. The battle was bloody, inconclusive, and ultimately pointless. In the end, peace was patched up and Chlothar was able to return home.
Chramn eventually left Clermont Ferrand and moved to Poitiers, where he continued to be malicious and unpopular. He had got it into his head that he could gain some advantage by allying with his uncle Childebert against his father. I could not tell you what he thought he would gain, it makes very little sense, and Gregory is not very illuminating. The only thing I can think of is that as the youngest son, by a different mother from all his brothers, he may have expected to lose in the inheritance game. By ingratiating himself with his son-less uncle, he might make out better when the grim reaper came calling. But that’s me speculating. I don’t think it’s wild speculation, but it is speculation.
Childebert welcomed his nephew with open arms and his fingers crossed behind his back. Figuratively speaking. He had every intention of betraying Chramn in turn, though he seems to have enjoyed the plotting and planning too much to be in much of a hurry. Chramn married the daughter of a Childebertist noble and had a son, who he named … Childebert.
Chramn then declared his rebellion openly, and claimed all the territory over which he had ever held authority, or even visited, centered on the Limousin. Chlothar was still patching up the Saxon rebellion, so sent two of he other sons, Charibert and Guntram, to sort things out. They found him near a hill called Nigremont, where now a town called Saint-Georges stands, and offered him a simple ultimatum. Either return all the territory he had usurped, or draw up his army and fight them. Chramn offered to hold the lands in his father’s name, which doesn’t really seem like giving a lot of ground, and the brothers were not having it; they would have their battle. Bad weather delayed the engagement, and Chramn tried a new tactic. He found a messenger his brothers would not know to bring news that their father had been killed in his fight with the Saxons. Charibert and Guntram withdrew into Burgundy to wait for confirmation, while Chramn moved quickly northward to capture Chalôns and to lay siege to Dijon.
Childebert also heard that Chlothar had been killed by the Saxons, who now actually were in earnest rebellion and raiding Chlothar’s eastern territories. He believed he could seize all of Francia for himself and pushed to occupy as much as he could, especially around the royal city of Rheims. The Church was pulled into the growing civil war; almost every diocese had at least one noble cleric who believed he deserved the post more than the incumbent, and in sees where vacancies arose, candidates aligned with whichever side they believed would be most advantageous to their claim. As an example, one Austrapius, a secular noble who had once been imprisoned by Chramn, was ordained a priest and later bishop of Champtoceaux, with the understanding that he would have the much richer Poitiers when the incumbent there died. The arrangement was blocked by Childebert, who installed his own man at Poitiers and ignored Austrapius’ protests. Austrapius returned to his own lands, where he ran into a blast from our podcast past. The settlements of the Taifali, who I talked about waaaay back in episode ***. They were a possibly Sarmatian tribe that had crossed the Danube along with the Goths in 376. Many of them attached themselves to Alaric’s Visigoths, had been settled in Gaul and served as cavalry units in the Roman armies. No here they are, still recognized by Gregory at least as a distinct people in the 550s and 560s.
Anyway, the Taifali were “oppressed” by Bishop Austrapius – though he does not elaborate exactly what that means, and they rebelled and killed him. “A cruel death from the blow of a spear.” The bishopric of Champtoceaux was absorbed into that of Poitiers, and its bishop continued to be the loyal placeman of Childebert.
It turned out to not be very long, though. Childebert fell ill, and after lingering a while, died, in the year 558. He was probably about 62 years old, and had been a king of at least some of the Franks for 47 years, which is surprising, given how little impression he makes. It’s not that he was a bad king, he just has never really emerged into the spotlight here. And now it’s too late, farewell, King Childebert.
Emerging from nesting digressions, Chlothar, still alive and I’d imagine fairly miffed at his brother’s and youngest son’s conduct, quickly took control of Childebert’s lands. In 558 he thus became the first sole ruler of Francia since the death of his father Clovis in 511.
By now he was pushing 60, downright ancient for the time, and so is known in some History books as Clotaire le Vieux, Chlothar the Old. He began by tidying up loose ends: Childebert’s widow and daughters were sent into exile, but Chramn remained unreconciled.
Having run out of uncles, and his brothers being no help, Chramn looked to the west. The Bretons were nominally within the Frankish kings’ bailiwick, but in practice operated entirely independently. Refugees from the ongoing invasion of Britain were still streaming into Brittany, giving it its name and its Celtic flavor, distinct from the rest of France. They fought among themselves, raided the Frankish lands, and ignored the directives of whichever Merovingian king saw fit to try and command them. One of the Breton chieftains, named Chenao, gave refuge to Chramn.
Often, as one is reading Gregory of Tours’ History, there are interspersed stories of events either natural or miraculous. They seem at first glance to be non sequiturs that interrupt the narrative, but on closer inspection, they usually reflect or comment on the action either immediately before or after. One of the most obvious of these passages comes just after Chramn flees to Brittany:
“Two swarms of locusts appeared at this time. They passed through the Auvergne and Limousin and are said to have penetrated as far as the plain of Romagnat. There they fought a great battle and many were killed.”
I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard of swarms of locusts fighting each other. Don’t they usually merge? Given how central to the human protagonists Auvergne and Limousin have been, it’s not too much of a leap to suggest that Gregory is commenting on both the destruction that will be wrought by the coming struggle, and on the greed and immorality of the prince and king. Gregory also strengthens the biblical vibe by overtly comparing Chlothar and Chramn to King David and his rebellious son Absalom, a story found in the second book of Samuel. Chlothar gathered an army and marched into Brittany, to capture his son and punish the Bretons for sheltering him.
The night before the battle was set to begin, Chenao tried to convince Chramn to hold back from fighting himself, as it would be wrong to fight against his father directly. Chramn would not be put off though, and in the morning, the two armies fought.
The Bretons were broken, Chenao fled but was killed in the rout. Chramn attempted to run as well – he had had ships made ready on the coast exactly for this moment, but was delayed when he tried to rescue his wife and daughters. They were all together when Chlothar’s army caught up with them. Chlothar was out of patience and was out of mercy. He had Chramn and his family burned alive in the house where they were being held.
Chlothar was old now, and tired, and probably suspected the end was near. In 561 he made a pilgrimage to Tours, and confessed his sins before the altar, and upon the relics of Gregory’s beloved Saint Martin. A short while later, while hunting, he contracted a high fever, and was taken to his villa at Compiègne, where he died, on the one year anniversary of the execution of Chramn. He was around 64 or 65 years old, had been a king of the Franks for 51 years, and the king of the Franks for three. Through his own efforts, and those of his brothers and nephews, the Merovingians ruled over the largest kingdom in the post-Roman world, including all of modern France, except Septimania, the Low Countries, and most of modern Germany. He was undoubtedly just as ruthless, violent, and untrustworthy as any of his relatives, but he was in the end the last man standing, and the only one to have sons to pass his inheritance on to.
Those four surviving sons buried their father at Soissons, and prepared to decide how this massive inheritance would be carved up.
So next time we will have to deal with the four sons of Chlothar the Old, faced with dividing up the old man’s kingdom as fairly as possible. It was exactly the same position the sons of Clovis had found themselves in when he had died fifty years before. History, as they say, doesn’t repeat, but it does often rhyme.
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