General Notes

1  BIRT
2  DATE ABT. 585
ema p 308 "DAGOBERT (603 or 605-638 or 639) was the last great Merovingi
an ruler.  He ruled Austrasia with his father from 622 and Neustria and Bu
rgundy from 629, the year of his father's death.  Dagobert was an effecti
ve military leader, and he took an interest in codifying the laws of the p
eoples he ruled.  He was dedicated to the reform of the Church and promot
ed missionary activity.  . . . The Merovingian rulers preserved the German
ic custom of wearing long hair and beards, and were called long-haired kin
gs.  Until the middle of the seventh century, they led their armies--compo
sed of soldiers of many ethnic backgrounds, including Roman descendants--p
ersonally, though they also delegated authority to relatives and officials
."
see bk&q p 724
FIMA pp 134, 252, GWC p 28
ohme chart p 65 and 85-89 "DAGOBERT's power stretched over the whole of mo
dern France and the Low Countries, and much of modern West Germany, a
nd to any other barbarian monarch his wealth must have seemed quite enormo
us.  Dagobert was the son of Clothar II, who had reunited the Frankish kin
gdom in 613 after torturing to death the dominant figure in Frankish polit
ics for twenty years, his aged aunt Brunhild.  In 622 Clothar II made Dago
bert king in Austrasia, the north-eastern portion of the Frankish kingd
om . . . Dagobert's chief advisers were two Austrasian aristocrats, ARNUL
F, bishop of Metz, and PIPPIN, who was made mayor of Dagobert's palace.  (
It was a marriage arranged between Arnulf's son and Pippin's daughter th
at was to form the powerful dynasty known later as the Carolingians
.)  . . . According to the chronicler Fredegar, a contemporary, the fir
st years of his reign over Gaul were very auspicious.  Fredegar clearly ap
proved of the way in which Dagobert tried to put local aristocrats, the re
al powers in the provinces, in their place.  He tells us of a royal vis
it to Burgundy, for instance, which caused great alarm to bishops and aris
tocrats, and joy to the oppressed; 'such was his great good-will and eager
ness that he neither ate nor slept, lest anyone should leave his presen
ce without having obtained justice'.  For Fredegar things went sour when A
rnulf retired and Dagobert left Pippin's side to take up residence in Neus
tria. 'He forgot the justice he had once loved.'  One of his foreign campa
igns illustrates his internal problems.  He sent an expedition of Austrasi
an Franks to Bohemia, against the Wends, a Slavic people.  The Wends we
re led by Samo, an enterprising Frankish merchant, who had so impressed t
he Wends that he ruled him, and his twelve Wendish wives, for thirty-fi
ve years.  Dagobert's Austrasians were defeated, not, according to Fredega
r, because of the strength of the Slavs but rather through the demoralizat
ion of the Austrasians, who apparently felt that Dagobert had deserted th
em by going to live in Neustria.  Samo's Wends were encouraged by this vic
tory, and by an alliance with the Sorbs, another Slavic people, and beg
an raiding in Frankish territories further west.  In 631 the Saxons offer
ed to help Dagobert against the Wends if he remitted the 500 cows they h
ad paid yearly--to the Austrasians--since the time of Chlothar I; Dagobe
rt agreed, but to little effect, said Fredegar, for in the following yea
r, the Wends were attacking again.
Dagobert was rather more successful within Gaul.  He mollified the Au
strasians by giving them as king his infant son Sigibert, with two of the
ir number as regents; later he persuaded his magnates to accept that his o
ther son Clovis would be heir to Neustria and Burgundy.  In 635 his army d
efeated the Basques who were invading Gascony from their Pyrenean homes, a
nd he forced King Judicael of Brittany to come to terms.  According to Fre
degar, Judicael came to Dagobert's palace at Clichy, near Paris, but refus
ed to eat with Dagobert because of the king's sins; he dined instea