Clovis

Clovis - or Chlodovech - succeeded his father, Childeric, as King of the Salian Franks in 481. In 486, he defeated Syagrius, who ruled an isolated Roman territory in northern Gaul, then went on to defeat various rivals in the lands surrounding his capital at Soissons.

In 493, he married a Burgundian princess, a Christian woman named Chlothild (later canonised as St. Clotilda). She was the daughter of Chilperic II, King of Burgundy. Chilperic was murdered by his brother, Gundobad. Clovis, learning about the girl, asked for her hand, and Gundobad was said to be too afraid to refuse. Chlothild attempted to convert her new husband to Christianity but initially failed.

In 496, he came into conflict with the Alamanni. According to Gregory of Tours, he vowed to become a Christian if he was victorious. When victory was forthcoming, he was true to his word and was baptised by bishop Remigius of Rheims. Significantly, he was baptised into the Orthodox, rather than the heretical Arian persuasion, unlike the rulers of the other Germanic successor kingdoms. This was a shrewd political move, which ensured the approval and support of the Roman Church in his subsequent campaigns.

King Gundobad's brother, Godegisel, now made secret overtures to Clovis, persuading him to invade Burgundy to support his own attempt on the throne. In the light of Gundobad's murder of Chilperic, this might be seen as a pursuit of Chlothild's blood feud with the Burgundian king - or it might be that the 'murder' never took place, and was invented retrospectively, to justify Clovis' invasion. In any event, Gundobad fled to Avignon, but eventually came to terms with Clovis, and became his tributary. (He then wasted no time in bringing his brother to bay at Vienne and killing him).

He then attacked the Visigoths, perhaps on the pretext that they were heretical Arians. He defeated and killed their king, Alaric II, in 507 at Vouillé near Poitiers.

He made Paris his capital and spent the remainder of his reign eliminating rival Frankish leaders. By the time of his death in 511, his empire stretched to include much of modern-day France and south-western Germany, and he was the favoured ally of the Eastern Emperor, Anastasius. The Franks were not yet the dominant power in Western Europe, nor had they even completed their hegemony in Gaul, which was still contested by the Burgundians, but Clovis had turned the Salian Franks into a major power amongst the barbarian successor kingdoms.