nation of his unfortunate rival, 493. Following the example of the latter Cæsars, he abode at Ravenna, and had his claim to the regal title formally recognised by the emperor. Little is known of the reign of Theodoric, but that he preserved internal tranquillity, and was also honoured by the respect of foreign nations. Without quitting Italy, he added to his kingdom Illyria, Pannonia, Noricum, and Rhætia. The Bavarians became tributary; and many German tribes sought to be admitted to the privilege of living under his laws. He increased his territories by his war with the Burgundians and the Franks. He rebuilt the walls of Rome, restored the ruined theatre of Pompey, cleared and repaired the aqueducts and public baths, built a cathedral at Ravenna, and palaces at Verona and Pavia. The Roman police, customs, and laws were maintained; and although himself an Arian, he in no instance oppressed the church which maintained the Nicene faith. The cruel deaths of Symmachus, 525, and Boethius, 526, have left a deep stain upon his character: and at length, after an active life, he sank, conscience-stricken, to the grave, 526, leaving the throne of Italy to Athalaric, under the regency of his mother Amalasontha. The empire of the Goths now fell to pieces; the Visigoths of Spain refusing to recognise the infant king, elected Amalaric, son of Alaric II., whose power was acknowledged as far as the mouths of the Rhone.

TOTILA Succeeded to the throne in the year 541, his predecessor Vitiges having been led captive to Constantinople. He successfully resisted the attacks of eleven hostile generals, and even captured Rome, 546. He fell in the battle of Tagine, and although Teias with his brother Aligern struggled manfully against their enemies, with him terminated the Gothic dominion in Italy, which now became a province of the empire, 552. The chamberlain Narses, by a prudent administration promoted, as we have seen, the wealth and tranquillity of the country; but a fierce nation was rising near the Danube, which in 568 overran the greater part of the peninsula.

THE LOMBARDS.-This German tribe, originally dwelling on the banks of the Oder, had been settled in Pannonia by Justinian in 527, as a barrier against other warlike nations. At the invitation, it is said, of the disgraced Narses, the whole people marched for Italy, and crossed the Julian Alps without resistance, 568. ALBOIN soon reduced all the country, except Rome, the exarchate of Ravenna, and a part of the eastern coast. Pavia, which he afterwards made the capital of his dominions, resisted his arms during a three years' blockade. He did not live to reap the fruits of his successful enterprise, as he fell a victim to domestic treason. It was the custom of this savage people, on certain occasions, to quaff from the skulls of the enemies they had slain in battle. One day, when heated with liquor, he sent to his wife Rosamond the skull of her father filled with wine, requesting her to drink it. The insulted queen obeyed, but in a short time caused her husband to be assassinated, 573, and rewarded the murderer with her hand in marriage. After the violent death of Cleph, who had succeeded Alboin, the Lombard dukes allowed the throne to remain vacant, and substituted a federative government; but internal divisions and the necessity of union against the Greeks and Franks, brought them back to monarchical principles. Their kingdom, however, did not acquire stability until Autharis mounted the throne, 584, who, "touching with his spear a

column on the sea-shore of Rhegium, proclaimed that ancient land-mark to stand the immovable boundary of his kingdom :" but a premature death removed him, 590, before he had time or means to make good this boast. In the reign of Agilulf, whom the widowed queen, Theolinda, had married, the nation enjoyed the sweets of peace for the first time; and the joint exertions of these two sovereigns, aided by Pope Gregory, propagated Christianity among the Lombards, encouraged agriculture, and commenced the civilisation of these savage people.

FEUDALITY. The system of feudal polity received its first regular establishment and legislative provisions from the Lombards of Italy. Alboin had intrusted the command of several conquered districts to thirty-six dukes, who within two years after his death, became so many confederate independent princes. Apprehensive for their safety, when attacked by the Greek emperor and the Franks, they agreed to pay to the king each the half of his revenue, and to provide a body of troops to be placed at his disposal; the duchies being liable to forfeiture for felony, and revertible to the crown if no male heir (a major) were left.

FRANCE.

CLOVIS, A. D. 481.-At the age of fifteen, Clovis (properly Chlodwig or Ludwig, i. e. Louis) inherited the little kingdom of Tournay, in right of his father Childeric, the son of Meroveus. The Franks at this period were divided into Ripuarians and Salians. The country lying between the two streams of the Rhine, from Coblentz to Wesel or Cleves, formed the kingdom of the Ripuarian section, whose chief resided at Cologne. The Salians (said by the learned Schoell to derive their name from the river Yssel) obeyed several chiefs, whose territories were respectively Terouenne, Tournay, Cambray, and Mans.

Beauvais, Soissons, Amiens, Troyes, and Rheims with their respective dependencies, were all that belonged to the Romans in Gaul. Syagrius acknowledged, in form only, the supremacy of the Byzantine emperors after Rome had fallen. Alsace and Lorraine belonged to the Allemanni, a Teutonic federation, which occupied also the country between the Rhine and the Moselle, with Swabia, Hesse, and a part of Franconia. Armorica, between the Mayenne and the sea, belonged to the Britons who had fled from their country at the approach of the Saxon invaders. The Burgundian establishments had increased, and in addition to Western Switzerland they occupied the valley of the Rhone as far as the Durance. The kingdom of the Visigoths lay on the left bank of the Loire.

Clovis first directed his arms against Syagrius, and defeated him, 486, in a battle near Soissons, which city afterwards became the residence of the conqueror. The Roman general, who had sought refuge at the court of Toulouse, was given up by Alaric II. to the vengeance of the royal Frank. In 496, he repulsed the Alemanni with dreadful slaughter at Tolbiac (Zulpich, near Cologne), and compelled the cession of their territories between the Moselle and the Rhine, and on the right bank of the latter river, between the Maine and the Neckar. It was during this battle, when his soldiers were wavering, that he vowed to be baptized, if the God of his Christian wife Clotilda, niece of the Burgundian Gundebald, should grant him the victory. Policy also was a motive for his conversion, as he thus attached to him by firmer bonds his new Gallic subjects, who were all believers. He was baptized in the cathedral of

Rheims, with his sister and 3000 of his warriors; at which time the celestial oil, still used in the coronation of the kings of France, was said to have been brought down from heaven by a snow-white dove. The title of Most Christian Majesty, borne by the French monarchs, was conferred by Pope Anastasius on Clovis, who compelled Gundebald and the Britons of Armorica to pay him tribute. He next crossed the Loire; and the battle of Vouglé cost Alaric II. his life, 507. The Visigoths, however, recovered Septimania, which remained long united to the destinies of Spain; the Franks kept Aquitania, and the Burgundians resumed their ancient frontiers.

Returning from this expedition, the conqueror fixed his residence at Paris, where he inhabited the palace built by Julian. Here envoys from the Emperor Anastasius brought him the purple mantle and the golden crown, emblems of the patriciate, a title revered by the Gauls, as legitimatizing their obedience. On the death of Clovis in 511, his kingdom, like a personal estate, was divided among his four sons. Childebert had Paris; Thierry, Metz; Clodomir, Orleans; and Clotaire, Soissons, with their respective territories. The history of these princes and their successors is a mournful tale of civil wars and assassinations, arising chiefly from the partition of the royal power at the death of each monarch. In 558, the supreme authority was re-united for a short period in the hands of Clotaire, whose dominions extended from the Pyrenees to the Bohemian mountains, and from the Zuyder Zee to the Mediterranean.

NOTE. The whole series of French monarchs has been divided into three races. The first or Merovingians began with Clovis, 481-750; the second or Carlovingians with Pepin, 751-987; the third or Capetians with Hugh Capet, 987, to which belongs the reigning family of Bourbon-Orleans.

BRUNEHAUT AND FREDEGONDE.-Clotaire, at his death, 561, left four sons, Sigebert I. king of Ostrasia,* Chilperic I. king of Soissons, Caribert of Paris, and Gontran of Orleans and Burgundy. The elements of discord arising from this partition were increased by the death of Caribert, whose estates were dismembered by his three brothers. The inequality of the shares occasioned a brief civil war, which terminated in the reconciliation of the inimical princes, and the double marriage of Sigebert with Brunehaut, and Chilperic with Gualsinda daughter of the Visigoth Athanagild. But the King of Soissons having put his wife to death that he might be united to her domestic, the sanguinary Fredegonde, Brunehaut swore to avenge her sister, and to punish the woman who had usurped her place. These hostile feelings gave rise to an intestine war, which, during half a century, desolated France, and filled the royal house with crimes. The Ostrasians defeated the Neustrians at all points, and shut up Chilperic in Tournay. But an emissary of Fredegonde murdered Sigebert at the very moment he was proclaimed king of Neustria. The former prince regained his kingdom; Brunehaut was detained a prisoner, and her young son Childebert, removed from the vengeance of Fredegonde, was taken back to Ostrasia, when the leudes or nobles were seizing on the government, 575.

* Ostrasia (commonly written Austrasia) or East France (Oster-reich), was a province adjacent to the Rhine; Neustria, or New France, containing the kingdoms of Paris, Soissons, and Orleans, extended from Ostrasia to the Loire. A third division, Lorraine, the kingdom of Lothaire (Lotharii regnum) lay between the Rhine, the Meuse, and the Scheldt.

Gontran, desirous of arresting the encroachments of Chilperic, adopted Childebert II., who forgot this kindness, and formed an alliance with the King of Soissons. Peace was, nevertheless, concluded; but Fredegonde, to reign without control, procured the murder of her husband in 584, and governed under the name of her infant son, Clotaire II. The usual disorders and wars ensued, when, to arrange their discordant interests, and to prevent fresh troubles, Gontran, Childebert, and Brunehaut, in concert with their chief officers, drew up the famous treaty of Andelot, by which the King of Burgundy was confirmed in his succession to the ruler of Ostrasia. Childebert did not long enjoy his uncle's inheritance; his two sons, Theodebert II. and Thierry II. 596, separated Ostrasia and Burgundy, so lately united.

Frank Laws.

The Salic laws are supposed to have been drawn up, about 421, by command of a monarch of the Salian Franks.* The Ripuarian Franks, dwelling on the bank (ripa) of the Rhine, had also their code; and the Burgundians their law of Gundebald, 502. By the first and most ancient of these laws, which may serve as a specimen of the rest, homicide was punished with fines varying from 50 to 600 pieces of gold. Questions of right and wrong were decided by judicial combats - -a practice still subsisting in the modern duel. The conquered territory was equitably divided among the victors; not in perpetuity, but yearly, on the condition of bearing arms in the common cause. Thus arose the peculiarity by which females were prohibited from inheriting landed estates, and, by a forced interpretation of its clauses, the crown of France can never descend but to a male heir. The prisoners of war became slaves; the descendants of the haughty Romans were condemned to cultivate the fields and tend the cattle of their masters, who exercised over them a power of life and death, and made them a subject of traffic.t

SPAIN.

At the commencement of the fifth century, Spain had been invaded by the Suevi, Vandals, and Alans, who inflicted everywhere the most frightful ravages, so that we hear of the natives being compelled to feed on human flesh. The Suevi and Vandals occupied the ancient Galicia, comprising Old Castile and Leon; hence arose the kingdom of the Suevi under Hermanric, A. D. 409. The Alans were spread over Lusitania, while another Vandal tribe took possession of Bætica; the Tarraconensis alone at this time belonging to the Romans. Ataulphus, after the settlement of the Visigoths in France in 412, crossed the Pyrenees two years later, and became the founder of the Gothic monarchy in Spain; but he was unable to subdue these various savage hordes, being stopped in his career by the hand of an assassin, 415. Wallia, having been proclaimed king, continued the plans of his predecessor, and forced the Alans to seek refuge among the Vandals. The Suevi were threatened in their turn, but obtained favourable conditions of peace, and were allowed to remain in the north-west of the peninsula. Wallia's services were rewarded by part of Aquitaine, with the city of Toulouse, which was during the greater part of a century the Visigoth capital.

*The Salic code begins with the following elaborate eulogy on the people by whom it was formed:"Gens Francorum inclyta, auctore Deo condita, fortis in armis, firma pacis fædere, profunda in consilio, corpore nobilis et incolumis, candore et formâ egregia, audax, velox, aspera," &c.

† See Guizot, History of French Civilisation, p. 333, &c.