Clovis takes to the stage and the end of Roman Gaul (481 - 486)

As we get to this point in  Adhemar's narrative., we've got to deal with a thorny (though pretty minor to non-specialists in late Roman and Merovingian history) historiographical question, one for which we're not much better informed about than Adhemar and his eleventh century contemporaries were - what was this entity that Aegidius, and his son Syagrius who appears centre stage in this chapter, were in charge of. 

The one thing we can be fairly sure about is that any effective control from the West Roman imperial centre (the imperial court at Ravenna in Italy, that is to say) over Gaul north of the Loire ended in the late 450s. In Aquitaine (the south western third of Gaul between the Loire, Rhone and Pyrenees) Roman rule had already ended, as the Visigoths had established themselves a kingdom based at Toulouse and the local senatorial aristocracy and other provincial Roman elites had agreed to co-operate with them - one of such figures, Sidonius Apollinaris (d.489) recounts in his letters playing backgammon with the Visigothic king Theodoric II (d.466) and tactically losing to win his patronage. But a string of events between 454 and 460 would lead to the one corridor linking northern Gaul to Italy (the modern day French regions of Burgundy, the Rhone-Alpes and Provence) being lost. In September 454 Valentinian III, the incompetent, child-like emperor Western Roman Emperor (a bit like an overgrown Joffrey Baratheon, to give a rough analogy to any Game of Thrones fans among you), had his effective second in command and right hand man, the magister militum (head of the armed forces) Flavius Aetius, who was responsible for cutting short Attila the Hun's invasion of Gaul in 451, murdered in his own presence. Valentinian III was then himself assassinated by a eunuch the following year. At this stage it was pretty clear that the Western Roman empire was going up schitt's creek without a paddle - the Rhineland, Britain, Aquitaine, Africa and Sicily had all either been abandoned or lost for good, the centre was becoming starved of tax revenues to pay the armed forces and the time-honoured ancient Roman political traditions of factionalism, assassination, military coups and usurpation were as alive as ever. The new emperor, Petronius Maximus, dispatched his confidant Avitus in order to establish friendly relations with the Visigoths, knowing that the Western Roman Empire could not militarily defend itself on its own steam. However, the Visigoths proclaimed Avitus emperor and as he returned via Provence the Gallo-Roman senators at Arles proclaimed him as such too. Petronius Maximus meanwhile had been deposed after the Vandal fleet sailed from their newly established kingdom in Africa and sacked Rome. The Burgundians also got behind Avitus, but the Roman legions in Italy under the command of a Romanised-Germanic general called Ricimer resisted Avitus, and he was defeated by 457. The new emperor, Marjorian, got the Burgundians and Visigoths to help him out in dealing with the Suebi, a Germanic tribe that had taken over much of Spain, but in the end the Visigoths further consolidated their holdings in Aquitaine by taking the area around Narbonne (Septimania) as well and the Burgundians took over Burgundy (the region of course gets its name from them), Provence and Savoy, sharing the lands there with the local senators. Northern Gaul was thus by the time of Marjorian's overthrow in 461, completely cut off from the remaining West Roman imperial territories in Italy and Dalmatia and, given the nature of communications at that time, had to basically be run on its steam (my source here is Peter Heather, "The Huns and the End of the Roman Empire in Western Europe", English Historical Review, 1994, pp 31 - 35).

(Above: Modern reconstruction of what Roman legionaries would have looked like in the mid-5th century)

So with this necessary context established, what kind of regime existed in northern Gaul in the 460s to 480s? The first theory is the most straightforward. Aegidius, the commander of the Roman legions in Gaul, kept the Roman imperial government structures (the legions, the tax system, the bureaucracy, the coinage) going at provincial level there and established himself as a "king" or as a contender for the imperial throne (as Steven Fanning has suggested, to counter those who suggest that this is implausible because the Romans had been ideologically opposed to kingship since Tarquin the Proud) with his base at Soissons in the modern day Picardy region of northeast France. His son Syagrius then succeeded him after his death and kept going until, well, we'll see in the upcoming translated chapter. However, there's a problem with this. Its all based on a passage in the Ten Books of Histories of Bishop Gregory of Tours (535 - 594). Since Gregory was writing about a century after all this was supposed to have happened, historians have argued that he is therefore not reliable, that either he got confused over what went on in the 460s and so decided to oversimplify things thus, or that for some reason or other he made a purposeful distortion. This goes with the feeling that the idea of a Roman rump-state holding out in northern Gaul is too romantic to be true, and doesn't gel well with what we know about how things worked out between Romans and barbarians elsewhere in the Roman west during the second half of the fifth century. 

(Above: A helpful yet somewhat controversial map)

The second theory, proposed by Edward James in "The Franks" (1988), argues that the Franks had already taken over northern Gaul by this point and had managed to accomodate themselves by allowing a lot of the imperial government structures to continue, provided they received shares in the tax revenue. Under this model, Aegidius was just a military commander and Syagrius was just a local count (a late Roman term for military governor, from which the medieval hereditary noble title eventually evolved by the eleventh century) of Soissons. The problem with it is that it doesn't explain why the Franks would have been fighting in Anjou and Orleans, supposedly areas under their control, as we saw in the last post. It doesn't properly account for Brittany, which the Franks didn't even begin to make moves towards conquering until well into the sixth century, and even in the areas near Brittany, Nantes and Vannes, the material culture remains thoroughly Gallo-Roman with no sign of Frankish influence until the late 500s. Gregory of Tours might have gotten things wrong, but since there's a complete gap in narrative histories for Gaul between the end of Prosper of Aquitaine's chronicle in 455 and when Gregory himself began writing his histories more than a century later, we can't dismiss him altogether. Indeed, some explanation needs to be made for why Soissons remained such an important political centre for Frankish kings up until the mid-tenth century (I get these critiques from Penny McGeorge's "Late Roman Warlords", Oxford University Press, 2002, pp 161 - 162).

A third theory favoured by McGeorge herself is to see northern Gaul as a "complex and shifting patchwork" (read massive clusterfuck) of competing powers, including Saxon, Alan and British settlements (as well as a Romano-British army led by a king), Frankish warlords, semi-autonomous Gallo-Roman bishops, municipal authorities, landowners and peasant communities and the remnants of the late Roman imperial administration all vying for power, with no one clearly on top (see Ibid, p 164). Yet another theory that I've heard going round on Historical discussion groups (but never seen a source cited for) suggests that Aegidius and the remnants of the Roman legions and Childeric and his Frankish warriors got together to form a joint Romano-Frankish kingdom. Perhaps there are some indications towards this concealed in the sources from Gregory of Tours on, after all if we recall correctly Adhemar, like Gregory, does describe Aegidius running Childeric's kingdom in his absence for 8 years. But I'm not sure if I buy it. As a a Carolingianist and post-Carolingianist, I ultimately sit on the fence on this matter. But what seems relatively uncontentious is that Syagrius's rule, even if it was just in Soissons, (Spoiler alert) came to an end and that Childeric's young son, Clovis, made himself top dog in northern Gaul. So without much further ado, let's hear what Adhemar had to say about all this - as always, I accept all faults in my translation.

"After this, King Childeric died; he had reigned for twenty-four years and his son, Clovis, manfully received the kingdom of the Franks. However, in the fifth year of Clovis’ reign, Syagrius, son of Aegidius, was residing in the city of Soissons, which his father had held, on which Clovis with Ragnachar, his kinsman, approached with an army, and they were fitted for war. Although they bravely fought with each other, decided to abandon his army in favour of fleeing to Alaric, king of the Visigoths, and he escaped to the city of Toulouse. Clovis directed his messengers to Alaric, in order that Syagrius would be returned to him; if, however, he [Alaric] was not willing to return him [Syagrius], they [the Franks] would prepare to do battle with him. But Alaric was afraid of the anger of the Franks, and he handed over Syagrius to the messengers of Clovis. When he [Syagrius] was presented to him, he [Clovis] ordered him to be executed, and he received all his kingdom and treasure"

(Above: what the gates of Soissons would have likely looked like at the time Clovis laid siege to them)

(Above: an early modern depiction of Syagrius being brought before Clovis, who is about to sentence him to death)