General Notes

Clovis I (466?-511), king of the Franks (481-511) and first important ruler of the Merovingian dynasty. He united the dominions of the Salian Franks on the northern Rhine River and the Ripuarian Franks on the lower Rhine. Clovis began with a victory in 486 over the last Roman governor in northern Gaul. By 493 he had absorbed many territories that surrounded his capital at Soissons. Clovis converted to Christianity in 496. He had completely defeated the confederation of Germanic tribes known as the Alamanni by 506; the next year the Visigoths were decisively defeated. Clovis made Paris the capital of the Frankish kingdom, which at that time included most of present-day France and southwestern Germany.

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King of the Salian Franks 481-486
King of the Franks 486-511

CLOVIS (466?-511). The founder and king of the Frankish kingdom that dominated Western Europe in the early Middle Ages was Clovis. He supposedly became a great warrior after his conversion to Christianity when he was about 30 years old.

During a battle with a neighboring tribe of Teutons in 496, Clovis'warriors were being driven from the field. Their gods Odin and Thor seemed to have failed them. Then Clovis remembered that his wife,Clotilda, had urged him to become a Christian. He cried out, "Oh, Christ Jesus, I beseech thee for aid! If thou wilt grant me victory over mine enemies, I will believe in thee and be baptized in thy name!"

Clovis rallied his men and gained a victory, and within a few years, he and some of his warriors were baptized. But at heart Clovis remained the same rough warrior he had been before. When the monks told him the story of Christ's crucifixion, he clutched his battle-ax and cried: "If I had been there with my Franks, I would have revenged his wrongs!"

When Clovis at the age of 16 became king of one tribe of the Franks,these ancestors of the modern French nation were a scattered people with a number of kings. When he died, 30 years later, he had united all theFranks into a single powerful nation under his own rule. He overthrew the Roman power in Gaul in a battle near Soissons in 486, and before his death in Paris he had won for his people a kingdom that reached from the Rhine on the north and east almost to the Pyrenees on the south. So complete was the conquest by the Franks that this land ever since has been called France, from their name.

On Clovis' death in 511, the kingdom was split between Chlodomer (Orleans), Childebert (Paris), Chlotar (Soissons), and Theuderic (Metz).