General Notes

Name Suffix:<NSFX> King Of The Salian Franks
CLOVIS (Chlodovech) (c. 466-511], king of the Salian Franks, son of Childeric I, whom he succeeded in 481. At that date the Salian Franks had advanced as far as the river Somme, and the centre of their power was at Tournai. On this history of Clovis between the years 481 and 486 the records are silent. In 486 he attacked Syagrius, a Roman general who, after the fall of the western empire in 476, had carved out for himself a principality south of the Somme, and is called by Gregory of Tours "rex Romanorum." After being defeated by Clovis at the battle of Soissons, Syagrius sought refuge with the Visigothic king Alaric II, who handed him over to the conqueror. Henceforth Clovis fixed his residence at Soissons, which was in the midst of public lands, e.g., Berny-Rivière, Juvigny, etc. The episode of the vase of Soissons has a legendary character, and all that it proves is the deference shown by the pagan king to the orthodox clergy. Clovis undoubtedly extended his dominion over the whole of Belgica Secunda, of which Reims was the capital, and conquered the neighbouring cities. Little is known of the history of these conquests. It appears that St. Geneviève defended the town of Paris against Clovis for a long period, and that Verdun-sur-Meuse, after a brief stand, accepted an honourable capitulation thanks to St. Euspitius. In 491 some barbarian troops in the service of Rome, Arboruchi Thuringians, and even Roman soldiers who could not return to Rome, went over to Clovis and swelled the ranks of his army.
In 493 Clovis married a Burgundian princess, Clotilda, niece of Gundobald and Godegesil, joint kings of Burgundy. This princess was a Christian, and earnestly desired the conversion of her husband. Although Clovis allowed his children to be baptized, he remained a pagan himself until the war against the Alamanni, who at the time occupied the country between the Vosges and the Rhine and the neighbourhood of Lake Constance. By pushing their incursions westward they came into collision with Clovis who marched against them and defeated them in the plain of the Rhine. The legend runs that, in the thickest of the fight, Clovis swore that he would be converted to the God of Clotilda if her God would grant him the victory. After subduing a part of the Alamanni, Clovis went to Reims, where he was baptized by St. Remigius on Christmas day 496, together with 3,000 Franks. The story of the phial of holy oil brought from heaven by a white dove for the baptism of Clovis was invented by archbishop Hincmar of Reims three centuries after the event.
The baptism of Clovis was an event of very great importance. From that time the orthodox Christians in the kingdom of the Burgundians and Visigoths looked to Clovis to deliver them from their Arian kings. Clovis seems to have failed in the case of Burgundy, which was at that time torn by the rivalry between Godegesil and his brother Gundobald. Godegesil appealed for help to Clovis, who defeated Gundobald on the banks of the Ouche near Dijon, and advanced as far as Avignon (500), but had to retire without being able to retain any of his conquests. Immediately after his departure Gundobald slew Godegesil at Vienne, and seized the whole of the Burgundian kingdom. Clovis was more fortunate in his war with the Visigoths. Having completed the subjugation of the Alamanni in 506, he marched against the Visigothic king Alaric II in the following year in spite of the efforts of Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, to prevent the war. After a decisive victory at Vouillé near Poitiers, in which Clovis slew Alaric with his own hand, the whole of the kingdom of the Visigoths as far as the Pyrenees was added to the Frankish empire, with the exception of Septimania, which, together with Spain, remained in possession of Alaric's grandson, Amalaric, and Provence, which was seized by Theodoric and annexed to Italy. In 508 Clovis received at Tours the insignia of the consulsh