him — "like another Absalom," says Gregory of Tours. Chlotar had him shut up in a hut with his wife and children, and caused it to be set on fire. Afterwards, however, he was overwhelmed with remorse. In vain he sought peace for his soul at the tomb of St Martin of Tours. Struck down by disease he died at his palace of Compiègne, his last words being: "What think ye of the King of Heaven who thus overthrows the kings of earth?" His surviving sons buried him with great pomp in the basilica of St Médard at Soissons (561).
In spite of the fact that during the greater part of this period the kingdom was divided into four parts, it was still regarded as a unity: there was only one Frankish kingdom, regnum Francorum. The sons of Clovis had a common task to accomplish in the carrying on of their father's work and the completion of the conquest of Gaul. In this they did not fail. Clovis' expedition against the Burgundians in 500 had miscarried; his sons subjugated that kingdom. Sigismund the son of Gundobad had been converted to the orthodox faith; he restored the great monastery of Agaunum in the Valais, on the spot where St Maurice and his comrades of the Theban legion were slain. He reformed the Church at the great Council of Epaône in 517, where very severe measures were adopted against the Arian heresy. But it was now too late. Sigismund failed to win over the orthodox and he provoked a lively discontent among the Burgundian warriors. The sons of Clovis were not slow to profit by this. Clodomir, Childebert, and Chlotar invaded Burgundy in 523, defeated Sigismund in a pitched battle, and took him prisoner. He was handed over, with his wife and children, to Clodomir, who had them thrown into a well at St Péravy-la-Colombe near Orleans. And while the Franks were invading the kingdom of Burgundy from the north, Theodoric king of the Ostrogoths, resenting Sigismund's zeal against Arianism, had sent troops from Provence and captured several strong-places to the north of the Durance: Avignon, Cavaillon, Carpentras, Orange, and Vaison. Burgundy however regained some strength under the rule of a brother of Sigismund named Godomar, who defeated and slew Clodomir on 25 June 524, at Vézéronce near Vienne. He endeavoured to re-establish some order in his dominions at the assembly of Amberieux, and his kingdom was thus enabled to prolong its existence until the year 534. At that date Childebert, Chlotar, and Theudibert seized Burgundy and divided it between them, each one taking a portion of the country and adding it to his dominions. The kingdom of the Burgundians had existed for nearly a century, not without a certain brilliance. A great legislative work had been accomplished, and among them we find a historian in Marius of Aventicum and a poet in Avitus, whom Milton was to recall in his Paradise Lost.[1] For long Burgundy formed
- ↑ Guizot in his Histoire de la Civilisation en France, Vol. II. lect. xviii., cites some parallels tending to shew that Milton was acquainted with the poem of Avitus on
