and his dominions were enlarged towards the East by the ample diocese of Tongres,[1] which Clovis subdued in the tenth year of his reign.
Defeat and submission of the Alemanni. A.D. 496 The name of the Alemanni has been absurdly derived from their imaginary settlement on the banks of the Leman lake.[2] That fortunate district, from the lake to Avenche and Mount Jura, was occupied by the Burgundians.[3] The northern parts of Helvetia had indeed been subdued by the ferocious Alemanni, who destroyed with their own hands the fruits of their conquest. A province, improved and adorned by the arts of Rome, was again reduced to a savage wilderness; and some vestige of the stately [Windisch] Vindonissa may still be discovered in the fertile and populous valley of the Aar.[4] From the source of the Rhine to its conflux with the Main and the Moselle, the formidable swarms of the Alemanni commanded either side of the river, by the right of ancient possession or recent victory. They had spread themselves into Gaul, over the modern provinces of Alsace and Lorraine; and their bold invasion of the kingdom of Cologne summoned the Salic prince to the defence of his Ripuarian allies. Clovis encountered the invaders of Gaul in
- ↑ Dubos has satisfied me (tom. i. p. 277-286) that Gregory of Tours, his transcribers, or his readers, have repeatedly confounded the German kingdom of Thuringia, beyond the Rhine, and the Gallic city of Tongria on the Meuse, which was more anciently the country of the Eburones and more recently the diocese of Liege. [Thoringis bellum intulit, Greg. ii. 27. There is nothing to be said for the view (revived by Pétigny in Études sur l'époque merovingienne, 1842-4) that the Tongri are meant. But the view of Junghans that these Thoringi dwelt on the left bank of the Rhine near its mouth seems highly improbable. The Thuringian kingdom approached the Rhine, but was entirely on the right bank.]
- ↑ Populi habitantes juxta Lemannum lacum, Alemanni dicuntur. Servius, ad Virgil. Georgic. iv. 278. Dom Bouquet (tom. i. p. 817) has only alleged the more recent and corrupt text of Isidore of Seville.
- ↑ Gregory of Tours sends St. Lupicinus inter ilia Jurensis deserti secreta, quæ, inter Burgundiam Alamanniamque sita, Aventicæ adjacent civitati, in tom. i. p. 648. M. de Watteville (Hist. de la Confédération Helvétique, tom. i. p. 9, 10) has accurately defined the Helvetian limits of the duchy of Alemannia and the Transjurane Burgundy. They were commensurate with the dioceses of Constance and Avenche, or Lausanne, and are still discriminated, in modern Switzerland, by the use of the German or French language.
- ↑ See Guilliman de Rebus Helveticis, l. i. c. 3, p. 11, 12. Within the ancient walls of Vindonissa, the castle of Habsburg, the abbey of Königsfeld, and the town of Bruck [Brugg], have successively arisen. The philosophic traveller may compare the monuments of Roman conquest, of feudal or Austrian tyranny, of monkish superstition, and of industrious freedom. If he be truly a philosopher he will applaud the merit and happiness of his own times.
Armorici); in the siege of Paris in the Vita Genovefae; and in the unsuccessful siege of Nantes in Gregory's De Gloria Martyrum, i. 60. Gibbon places this advance after A.D. 496; see below.]
