The Historians' History of the World 07 [The History of the Later Roman Empire]

Gregory refers, though not by name, to other kings of the same family, who were all destroyed by Clovis. “Having killed many other kings,” he says, “who were his kinsmen, because he feared they might deprive him of his power, he extended his kingdom through the whole of Gaul.” He also tells us that the royal hypocrite, having summoned a general assembly, complained before it, with tears in his eyes, that he was “alone in the world.” “Alas, for me!” he said, “I am left as an alien among strangers, and have no relatives who can assist me.” This he did, according to Gregory, “not from any real love of his kindred, or from remorse at the thought of his crimes, but that he might find out any more relatives and put them also to death.”

Clovis died at Paris, in 511 A.D., in the forty-fifth year of his age and the thirtieth of his active, blood-stained, and eventful reign. He lived therefore only five years after the decisive battle of Voulon.

Did we not know, from the judgment he passes on other characters in his history, that Gregory of Tours was capable of appreciating the nobler and gentler qualities of human nature, we might easily imagine as we read what he says of Clovis that, Christian bishop as he was, he had an altogether different standard of right and wrong from ourselves. Not a single virtuous or generous action has the panegyrist found to record of his favoured hero, while all that he does relate of him tends to deepen our conviction that this favourite of heaven, in whose behalf miracles were freely worked, whom departed saints led on to victory and living ministers of God delighted to honour, was quite a phenomenon of evil in the moral world, from his combining in himself the opposite and apparently incompatible vices of the meanest treachery and the most audacious wickedness.

We can only account for this amazing obliquity of moral vision in such a man as Gregory, by ascribing it to the extraordinary value attached in those times (and would that we could say in those times only) to external acts of devotion, and to every service rendered to the Roman church. If, in far happier ages than those of which we speak, the most polluted consciences have purchased consolation and even hope by building churches, endowing monasteries, and paying reverential homage to the dispensers of God’s mercy, can we wonder that the extraordinary services of a Clovis to Catholic Christianity should cover even his foul sins as with a cloak of snow?

He had, indeed, without the slightest provocation, deprived a noble and peaceable neighbour of his power and life. He had treacherously murdered his royal kindred, and deprived their children of their birthright. He had on all occasions shown himself the heartless ruffian, the greedy conqueror, the blood-thirsty tyrant; but by his conversion he had led the way to the triumph of Catholicism; he had saved the Roman church from the Scylla and Charybdis of heresy and paganism, planted it on a rock in the very centre of Europe, and fixed its doctrines and traditions in the hearts of the conquerors of the West.

Other reasons, again, may serve to reconcile the politician to his memory. The importance of the task which he performed (though from the basest motives), and the influence of his reign on the destinies of Europe, can hardly be overrated. He founded the monarchy on a firm and enduring basis. He levelled, with a strong though bloody hand, the barriers which separated Franks from Franks, and consolidated a number of isolated and hostile tribes into a powerful and united nation. It is true, indeed, that this unity was soon disturbed by divisions of a different nature; yet the idea of its feasibility and desirableness was deeply fixed in the national mind; a return to it was often aimed at, and sometimes accomplished.q