He took her for his wife, and their son is Clovis. 11. A wonderful story; how far in literalness true is of no manner of moment to us; the myth, and power of it, do manifest the nature of the French kingdom, and prophesy its future destiny. Personal valour, personal beauty, loyalty to kings, love of women, disdain of unloving marriage, note all these things for true, and that in the corruption of these will be the last death of the Frank, as in their force was his first glory. Personal valour, worth. Utilitas, the keystone of all. Birth nothing, except as gifting with valour;-Law of primogeniture unknown;-Propriety of conduct, it appears, for the present, also nowhere! (but we are all pagans yet, remember). 12. Let us get our dates and our geography, at any rate, gathered out of the great "nowhere" of confused memory, and set well together, thus far. 457. Merovée dies. The useful Childeric, counting his exile, and reign in Amiens, together, is King altogether twenty-four years, 457 to 481, and during his reign Odoacer ends the Roman empire in Italy, 476. 481. Clovis is only fifteen when he succeeds his father, as King of the Franks in Amiens. At this time a fragment of Roman power remains isolated in central France, while four strong and partly savage nations form a cross round this dying centre: the Frank on the north, the Breton on the west, the Burgundian on the east, the Visigoth, strongest of all and gentlest, in the south, from Loire to the sea. Sketch for yourself, first, a map of France, as large as you like, as in Plate VI.,* Fig. 1, marking only the courses The first four figures in this illustration are explained in the text. The fifth represents the relations of Normandy, Maine, Anjou, and Aquitaine; see Viollet-le-Duc, Dict. Arch., vol. i. p. 136.1 1 [Where a map of the divisions of France at the end of the tenth century is given. For another reference to the maps on the present plate, see Fors Clavigera, Letter 95 (Vol. XXIX. p. 504), and compare Vol. XXVII. pp. lxx.-lxxiii.] III, Bur of the five rivers, Somme, Seine, Loire, Saone, Rhone; then, rudely, you find it was divided at the time thus, Fig. 2: Fleur-de-lysée part, Frank; \\\, Breton; gundian;, Visigoth. I am not sure how far these last reached across Rhone into Provence, but I think best to indicate Provence as semée with roses. 1 13. Now, under Clovis, the Franks fight three great battles. The first, with the Romans, near Soissons, which they win, and become masters of France as far as the Loire. Copy the rough map Fig. 2, and put the fleur-delys all over the middle of it, extinguishing the Romans (Fig. 3). This battle was won by Clovis, I believe, before he married Clotilde. He wins his princess by it: cannot get his pretty vase, however, to present to her. Keep that story well in your mind, and the battle of Soissons, as winning mid-France for the French, and ending the Romans there, for ever. Secondly, after he marries Clotilde, the wild Germans attack him from the north, and he has to fight for life and throne at Tolbiac. This is the battle in which he prays to the God of Clotilde,' and quits himself of the Germans by His help. Whereupon he is crowned in Rheims by St. Remy. And now, in the new strength of his Christianity, and his twin victory over Rome and Germany, and his love for his queen, and his ambition for his people, he looks south on that vast Visigothic power, between Loire and the snowy mountains. Shall Christ, and the Franks, not be stronger than villainous Visigoths "who are Arians also"? All his Franks are with him, in that opinion. So he marches against the Visigoths, meets them and their Alaric at Poitiers, ends [See, however, below, p. 77, where Ruskin corrects this statement.] 2 "Oh Jesus Christ! whom Clotilda declares to be the son of the living God, who art said to give help to the weary, and victory to them that trust in thee, Í humbly pray for thy glorious aid, and promise that if thou wilt indulge me with the victory over these enemies, I will believe in thee and be baptized in thy name. For I have called on my own gods, and have found that they are of no power and do not help those who call upon them" (Hodgkin's Theodoric the Goth, p. 189).] [See Gibbon, ch. xxxviii. (vol. vi. p. 312).] |