Clovis, the first king of a united France, died on 27th
November 511. Born in about 466, he was 15 or thereabouts when his father, king
of the Salian Franks, died. This was a small kingdom centred on the town of
Tournai, which is now in western Belgium. Clovis must therefore be included on
the select list of “famous Belgians”.
King Clovis of France
Clovis was determined to expand the borders of his realm,
and he did so in no uncertain style. By the time of his death, some 30 years
later, his kingdom resembled an inverted “L” that incorporated much of
present-day France, Belgium and northwest Germany.
His methods of conquest included cunning and brutality. He
persuaded a prince named Chlodoric to murder his father, the king of the
Rhineland Franks, with the promise that he would support Chlodoric as king.
However, Chlodoric was immediately murdered on Clovis’s orders and the
Rhineland became incorporated into Clovis’s empire.
When Clovis conquered his cousin Ragnacaire, the King of
Cambrai, he executed the latter in person, on the grounds that Ragnacaire had
tainted the family’s blood by allowing himself to be captured. Ragnacaire’s
brother suffered the same fate for not coming to his brother’s rescue.
At the age of 30 Clovis married Clothilde, the daughter of
the King of Burgundy. She was a Catholic who tried to convert Clovis to
Christianity and only succeeded when Clovis uttered a swift prayer to get him
out of a tight spot during a battle and it appeared to do the trick. Clovis
then insisted that 3,000 of his troops should be baptized as well as himself.
The fact that he was now a Christian did not seem to make
much difference to his ruthlessness. On one occasion a knight stole a vase from
a church and refused to return it, even when Clovis demanded it on behalf of
the local bishop. Instead, the knight smashed the vase with his axe. A year
later, Clovis spotted the knight on a military parade and, in front of the
assembled troops, smashed the knight’s head with an axe as payment for the
vase.
It was Clovis who decided to make Paris the capital of his
territories, as it was a good central location for his empire as it then stood.
A derivation of his name, “Louis” was subsequently chosen by 18 later French
kings.
© John Welford
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