110 THE DECLINE AND FALL [Chap xxxviii received his proportionable share, and the royal prerogative sub- mitted to the equal regulations of military law. The untamed spirit of the Barbarians was taught to acknowledge the advan- tages of regular discipline. 13 At the annual review of the month of March, their arms were diligently inspected ; and, when they traversed a peaceful territory, they were prohibited from touching a blade of grass. The justice of Clovis was inexorable ; and his careless or disobedient soldiers were punished with instant death. It would be superfluous to praise the valour of a Frank ; but the valour of Clovis was directed by cool and consummate prudence. 14 In all his transactions with mankind, he calculated the weight of interest, of passion, and of opinion ; and his measures were some- times adapted to the sanguinary manners of the Germans, and sometimes moderated by the milder genius of Rome and Chris- tianity. He was intercepted in the career of victory, since he died in the forty-fifth year of his age ; but he had already ac- complished, in a reign of thirty years, the establishment of the French monarchy in Gaul. His victory The first exploit of Clovis was the defeat of Syagrius, the grius. y son of iEgidius ; and the public quarrel might, on this occasion, be inflamed by private resentment. The glory of the father still insulted the Merovingian race ; the power of the son might ex- cite the jealous ambition of the king of the Franks. Syagrius inherited, as a patrimonial estate, the city and diocese of Sois- sons, the desolate remnant of the second Belgic. Rheims and Troyes, Beauvais and Amiens, would naturally submit to the count or patrician ; 15 and after the dissolution of the Western 13 See Gregory (1. ii. c. 27, 37, in torn. ii. p. 175, 181, 182). The famous story of the vase of Soissons explains both the power and the character of Clovis. As a point of controversy, it has been strangely tortured by Boulainvilliers, Dubos, and the other political antiquarians. 14 The Duke of Nivernois, a noble statesman, who has managed weighty and delicate negotiations, ingeniously illustrates (Mem. de l'Acad. des Inscriptions, torn, xx. p. 147-184) the political system of Clovis. 15 M. Biet (in a dissertation which deserved the prize of the Academy of Soissons, p. 178-226) has accurately defined the nature and extent of the kingdom of Syagrius, and his father ; but he too readily allows the slight evidence of Dubos (torn. ii. p. 54-57) to deprive him of Beauvais and Amiens. [His kingdom was bounded by the Somme (beyond which was the Salian territory under Chlodwig) ; by the territory of the Ripuarian Franks (on the lower Mosel) ; by the Burgundian kingdom (Auxerre was probably near the frontier) ; and by the Seine. The territory of the Armorican federation between the Seine and Loire seems to have been independent, after the death of iEgidius. And in this region isolated fortresses may have been still in the hands of Roman garrisons, independent of the lord of Soissons (Procop., B. G. i. 12). Cp. Junghans, op. cit. p. 23, 24.] a.d. 486
