Lecture 12

LECTURE XII

VISIGOTHS AND FRANKS IN GAUL

THE KINGDOM OF TOULOUSE UNDER EURIC---THE ROMAN REMNANT IN GAUL---THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE FRANKS---THE REIGN OF CHILDERIC THE FRANK

THE KINGDOM OF TOULOUSE UNDER EURIC

We must now turn from Italy to observe how the power of the barbarians had been advancing in the provinces farther west. The great growth of the Visigothic kingdom, the kingdom of Toulouse, as it was called, belongs to the time of Euric. This powerful king, son of that Theodoric who had perished in the great battle against Attila in 451, was the third of three brothers---Thorismund, Theodoric II., Euric---to ascend the Visigothic throne. He gained the throne by murdering his predecessor in 466, and he reigned till 484. He was probably the greatest of the Visigothic kings. Not only did he show conspicuous ability both in war and diplomacy, but he was also the first of the Visigothic legislators. He not only succeeded in achieving those territorial acquisitions for the kingdom which his predecessors had in vain attempted to make, but he extended the realm far beyond the bounds at which they had aimed. In Gaul he carried his frontier to the Loire and to the Rhone. A few years before his accession the Visigoths had won Narbonensis, including Narbonne but not including Arles; they acquired thereby a sea-board on the Mediterranean. Euric gained possession of Arles and Marseilles, and in 481, after the death of the Emperor Julius Nepos, the whole of Provence to the border of Italy was formally conceded to him by Odovacar, who professed to represent the imperial authority. Meantime, Euric had advanced northwards, and had won the province of Aquitania Prima, which stretched from Orleans to Vienne, and included the district of Auvergne. This district held out longest against the Visigoths, and the fierceness of the struggle of the Roman magnates against the Goths is reflected in the pages of the poet and bishop Sidnoius Apollinaris.

But Euric was no less active in Spain than in Gaul. His predecessors had constantly made incursions into Spain against the Suevians, and had generally co-operated with the Romans. In fact, in these Spanish wars they might be considered as continuing the work of Wallia, as imperial federates, helping to protect Roman Spain against the Suevians. Euric continued the war against the Suevians; but it carried him much farther. He not only conquered a part of Suevic territory, but he extended his power ultimately over the whole of Roman Spain, except a few strong places on the coast. We may say that by the year 478, all Spain, except the north-western corner where the disabled and weakened Suevian kingdom continued to exist, had been incorporated in the Visigothic kingdom. By the year 481 Euric's dominion stretched from the Straits to the Loire. In Gaul it was bounded by the Atlantic, the Loire, and the Rhone, with the addition of Provence, east of the Rhone. It was now at the height of its territorial power, and it seemed in these years, from 480 onwards, far the greatest and most promising state of western Europe. In fact, anyone surveying western Europe at that moment could hardly have failed to conclude that its destinies depended on the Visigoths.

THE ROMAN REMNANT IN GAUL

The Roman power, however, had not yet wholly disappeared. I must go back to say that after the death of Aetius, in 454, the great bulwark of the imperial authority had been Aegidius, a native of western Gaul. For ten years, doubtless as magister militum, he had maintained the frontiers with varying success against the Visigoths; as to his relations with the Franks I shall have to speak later on. After his death about 464 or 465, the defence of the Gallo-Romans devolved upon his son Syagrius, who was unable to resist the advance of Euric to the Loire. But he maintained the north of Gaul, the lands of the Seine and Somme against the Goths on the south, and against the Franks on the east. The position was difficult, and it was mainly be keeping on good terms with the Franks that Aegidius had been able to maintain it. It seemed probable that the Gothic power would soon advance to the Channel, and that the remnant of Roman provincial government would be crushed out. Indeed, it actually was crushed out in a few years, but not, as everyone might have expected, by the Goths. It was crushed out by the Franks, after Euric's death, an event the treatment of which belongs to another lecture. But I would insist here on the great prospect which to all outward appearance the Visigothic kingdom possessed during the last four years of Euric's reign, 480-484. The Goths seemed almost certain to be the ultimate inheritors of all Gaul, and they had already acquired almost all Spain. It is interesting to realise this apparent probability, which the actual course of things so markedly belied.

I think it is likely that the subjugation of all Gaul was a dream which Euric dreamed, and hoped to realise. His policy is thus expressed by Jordanes, who was no doubt copying Cassiodorus: "Euric saw the frequent change of Roman Emperors and the tottering state of the Empire: so he determined to be independent and to subdue Gaul." This general statement of Euric's policy is borne out by the facts; hemade very considerable steps towards carrying it out. It is possible that if he had lived longer he might have done more. But I do not believe that he or any other king of the Visigoths, however able, could have accomplished Euric's dream unless they had fulfilled one condition. I come here to what was probably the principal and radical cause of the remarkable failure of the Visigoths, notwithstanding their splendid promise. It was their religion; they were Arians. If Euric or his sonAlaric had embraced the Catholic creed and brought about the conversion of his people, the course of history in Gaul might have been quite different. The weak joint in the armour of the Visigothic kings was the antagonism of the Roman population and their clergy to their heretical rulers. This cause of weakness was not confined to the Visigoths: it appears with similar effects in the case of the other great East German kingdoms. I think it is not too much to lay down the general proposition that the Arian heresy was one main cause of the striking fact that the East German peoples who had begun so brilliantly, sweeping, as it were, all before them, ended their career in failure. The three leading cases are the Vandals, the Visigoths, and the Ostrogoths. The overthrow of the Vandal kingdom by the forces of the Empire might never have been achieved but for the fanatical devotion of the Vandals to their heretical creed and their persecution of the Catholic provincials. it was the same with the still shorter lived Ostrogothic kingdom in Italy; for, although the Ostrogoths did not persecute, their rule could never establish itself on a popular basis because they were Arians; and it was the difference in faith, keeping the Goths and the Italians apart, and the rallying of the Italians to the side of the orthodox conqueror, that conduced above all the success of the imperialist armies which reconquered Italy under Justinian. The Visigothic kingdom did not come to an untimely end like the Vandal and the Ostrogothic; yet it not only fell short of the success which it seemed likely to achieve, but it did collapse suddenly in Gaul. But before we consider that collapse we must follow the history of the Franks.

THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE FRANKS

The united strength of Roman and Goth had repulsed the Hun from Gaul, but neither Roman emperor nor Gothic king was destined permanently to inherit it. We have now to trace the rise of the power of the Franks, who in less than sixty years after the deaths of King Theodoric I. (451) and Aetius (454) had annexed the territory of Roman and Visigoth alike. Considering their importance, considering the fact that contemporary chroniclers were still recording events in the fifth century in Gaul, our knowledge of the rise and advance of the Salian Franks is curiously meagre. Our chief authority is the Historia francorum of Gregory of Tours, the historian who is for the Franks what Cassiodorus is for the Goths, Bede for the Anglo-Saxons, Paul the Deacon for the Lombards. Gregory wrote towards the end of the sixth century, and brought his history down to his own time. From 561 to 591---the year with which his story terminates---for these thirty years he narrates events of which he was contemporary. But up to 561, from the beginning of the fifth century, his sketch of the history of the Franks is derived from sources the nature of which we are only just beginning to understand. As everything depends on Gregory of Tours, I must begin by explaining briefly his method and the value of his material. He had no Roman historians to help him. He does, it is true, at the very outset find something to his purpose in Sulpicius Severus and in Renatus Frigeridus Profuturus; but of these the former stops before the end of the fourth century, while Renatus does not come down very far into the fifth, and stops before the serious advance of the Franks begins. In the fifth century, annals take the place of histories in the Latin half of the Empire, and Gregory got what he could out of the annals which were accessible to him. Besides the annals he was able to get some information from Lives of Saints, and we find him using the Life of St. Remigius. But beyond these we may say with certainty that he had no written sources.

Like all the other German peoples, the Franks had their heroic songs, and these songs were not only about the remote past; they celebrated living or recently dead chieftains, together with recent and contemporary events. Historical facts were altered by popular imagination, and gradually cast into legendary moulds which conformed them to the spirit of epic poetry. The existence of poetry of this kind can be proved among all the chief German peoples. That the character and origin of these narratives have been so slowly recognised is due to the semi-critical attitude of Gregory in receiving and recording them. He did not know the Frank tongue himself, and he must have got friends who knew the songs to tell him the gist of them. He evidently distrusted these Frank traditions, but he had no other source, and was obliged to make use of them. But he shows his distrust and contempt for them, as compared with written sources, by never designating them, or referring to them by any more particular formula than ut ferunt, or the like. He mentions his written authorities because he regarded a written authority as a guarantee of correctness; but he had little respect for popular rumour or tradition, and did not consider it a guarantee at all. This is the characteristic sceptical attitude of the Roman man of letters to oral tradition. You understand, then, that the Franks of Gregory's time had their heroic songs not only of the remote past, but also of the very recent past; and that the popular imagination was still busy in Gregory's own day with the invention of new works of poetical creation.

Let us see what we can make out of this material concerning the early history of the Franks. The first Salian king of whom Gregory of Tours tells us is Chlodio, and here too it can be shown that he gained his information not from any written sources, but from the traditions, the poetical traditions, of the Franks. I may quote verbally his notice of Chlodio: it is highly important. "It is related that Chlodio, a brave man and the most noble of his race, was at that time king of the Franks. He lived in the stronghold of Dispargum, which is in the borders of the Thuringians. Chlodio sent reconnoitrers to the city of Cameracum (Cambrai): they explored the whole district, and then Chlodio followed, defeated the Romans and captured the city, where he resided for some time. Then he occupied all the country as far as the river Somme." This notice is a brief summary of the drift of a Frankish tale of which Chlodio was the hero. You observe here the land of the Thuringians means a land west of the lower Rhine on the north-east border of France. You observe too how Gregory is, in spite of himself, under the influence of his source. In such a brief notice he might better have left out the details of the sending forth of reconnoitrers and the king himself following subsequently; we ought either to have more details or none at all. Fortunately for us he has left them in; for they indicate clearly, as Kurth has pointed out, that he was abbreviating from a much fuller story in which those details had interest and significance.

The stronghold of Dispargum is, not doubt, historical; we need not doubt that it was a stronghold north of the great forest, the Silva Carbonaria, which bounded the Frankish territory on the south. But what about Chlodio himself? Is he a historical person or a legendary figure? If we had no evidence but this notice of Gregory of Tours we might feel considerable doubt as to his reality. But by a lucky chance we have another piece of evidence which completely reassures us that Chlodio was a real king of the Franks, and one, moreover, which gives us a chronological date. This important testimony is found in a peom of Sidonius Apollinaris. The poet describes an episode in the career of the great Roman general Aetius, his own contemporary. He tells how Chlodio with his Franks invaded the plains of Artois. He encamped near a place called Vicus Helena, and his warriors, deeming themselves quite secure, celebrated the wedding of one of their comrades. As they are engaged in songs and festivity, Aetius is suddenly seen on the road descending into the valley. The Franks, taken unprepared, are routed, and the bride and bridegroom fall into the hands of the conquerors. This precious text assures us, in the first place, of the reality of King Chlodio; in the second place, it shows us that the Frank tradition is historically correct in representing Chlodio as trying to extend his dominion in the direction of Artois; in the third place, it gives us a date for King Chlodio's reign, since the incident recorded by Sidonius can be fixed to the year A.D. 431 or thereabouts. But how very instructive the existence of this testimony is! Sidonius was not a historian; and it was only a chance that he should have chosen to tell this story. If he had not told the story, the existence of Chlodio would have been a subject for legitimate doubt. It is a most useful warning to us, that tradition must be criticised and not merely set aside.