Thugs and Miracles: A History of France

Merovech - The Ghost Who Spawned A Dynasty (S1: E2)

What happens when Roman gods, pagans, and people looking for larger-than-life leaders all come together? Merovech. The first king of the Merovingian Dynasty, he was said to have been born from the dual fathers of a sea monster and a normal man. Then again, if you look deeper, maybe he never existed at all. Sometimes, a myth can be more enduring than the truth...

Childéric - Crossing Worlds (S1: E3)

Around 455CE, the Salian Franks of Belgica Secunda, an area that in modern times falls in and around Northern France and Belgium, were facing a crisis. They were fresh off of having helped to push Attila and his Huns out of Roman Gaul, and were generally gaining strength due to their military prowess and their ties to the Roman Empire; however, their leader, the great king Merovech – who as we discussed last time, was rumored to have been descended from the Roman gods themselves - had just died, leaving his young son Childéric in charge of the Franks. In a hereditary system where most elders die before the age of 50, having a very young leader in charge of a group of people was most certainly not out of place. But make no doubts about it, a 15-year-old king is an unknown quantity, and one should not be surprised if the new king allows his newfound power to go to his head. Well, this was the case with Childéric. He had been raised from birth to expect to wear the crown, and he had also been raised to learn that what he wants, he gets. And what Childéric wanted more than anything, at the testosterone-fueled age of 15, was to make time with every single girl who came near him. Of course, many of the Frankish leaders probably thought it was great, at least for a moment, that their daughter may be a tool for them to get close to their new king and the power he wielded. But after many, many of the daughters had been sent back home to their families, dishonored and no closer to wearing the crown of queen than before they spent the night with the king, the Franks got fed up.
Or did they?
Skewed histories and altered perceptions have given us this story of Childéric as a wanton defiler of young female Frankish virtue, penalized by his own people to live outside of the tribe for eight years until he could fix his lustful ways. In reality, it is much more likely that he was actually acting as a de facto Roman general during his eight years away from home; however, the story of a fallen king being given a second chance to redeem the wantonness and wickedness of his ways made for better allegorical reading.
No matter which story you believe, the end result is that Childéric spent from roughly 455-481 as the king of the Franks, laying the groundwork for his son Clovis to eventually take the reins of this small northern tribe and transform them into the preeminent military and cultural force in Western Europe. Childéric played a role similar to that of Phillip II of Macedonia almost a thousand years earlier, with both leaving an inheritance to their sons that would allow them to make incredible gains at a very young age and in a relatively short amount of time.
Besides a few great stories and an unimaginable inheritance for Clovis to capitalize on, Childéric's other great contribution to history was his grave, which was discovered in Tournai in the 17th century. This tomb, and the amazing artifacts therein, served to give us tangible proof of a king living in a time between two worlds. With an assortment of Roman artifacts mixed into a grave that would have made any Germanic chieftain proud, Childéric's legacy shows us how people in the 5th century made the transition from a Roman world to a new world wherein Rome was only a memory. Childéric touched both; he crossed worlds.

Clovis - The First King: Taking Power (S1: E4)

Clovis's rise to power began after the death and ornate burial of his father, Childéric, but it wasn't as simple as being the next in line for Clovis to take power. Clovis came to his position at the age of 15 or 16, an age which, nowadays, most people barely trust a kid with a car. He had to firmly seize his right to take power, then step on anyone who would dare challenge him. Clovis and his advisers were able to make sure the transition of power went smoothly by putting on one of the most ornate funerals seen in Gaul, before or since. And after that, Clovis started his campaign of crushing those who dared to stand against him by heading southwest into the Domain of Soissons, calling out and then crushing that area's would-be king in a single battle. He also stood against those in his own tribe that would stand against him, as we'll see when we get to the story of the Vase of Soissons. It may be needless to say, but Clovis embodied the saying, "If you come at the king, you'd best not miss."
In addition to Clovis, we introduce his wife, Clotilde, a woman who would ultimately lead Clovis to convert to Catholicism and who would then stage manage the succession of her children as Kings of Francia following the death of Clovis. Clotilde is an underreported and outsized figure from this time, and her story plays into the narrative just as much, and maybe even moreso, than her husband's.

Clovis - The First King: Conversion (S1: E5)

The artwork for T+M depicts Clovis at the Battle of Tolbiac, and it’s the starting scene for today’s show as we focus on his conversion to Catholicism and the many different, sometimes competing, influences that brought him to the Faith. Did he convert because of an immediate battlefield need, the insistence of his wife, or was his close lifelong affiliation with Catholics throughout Frankish society the driving factor that led him to the baptismal font? Also, to what extent did Clovis emulate the example set by Emperor Constantine? Did he try to be like the great Christian leader, or was his likeness to Constantine a dramatic embellishment added years later? We’ll cover all of this and more in this installment of Thugs and Miracles.

Clovis - The First King: Consolidation (S1: E6)

Clovis had taken all of the steps he needed by the year 500 to set the stage for the Franks to go from being a small regional tribe in the north to being the preeminent power in post-Roman Gaul. His conversion to Catholicism earned him support from Gallo-Romans living in Arian Christian areas, and would also draw the attention of the Byzantine Emperor. Meanwhile, he had worked to weaken the Burgundians to his southeast and pacify the Visigoths to his southwest, all before making his power move against them in 507. At the Battle of Vouillé, things were set for Clovis to either take over take over most of Gaul or die trying.

The Peasant Rusticus (S1: E7)

I normally like to start off by introducing a grand story from one of the monarchs that we’re discussing and then break that story down to better understand what was happening in the region that set the conditions for that scene to happen. This week, however, we’re going to alter that approach, just for an episode, because this week it’s my great honor to work with David Powell, an alumnus of Villanova University. David spent his graduate studies focused on the evolution of late antique and early medieval urban and suburban morphology in Western Europe - and in particular Gaul - making him the perfect person to talk to about some of the dynamics that were taking place in the late 5th and early 6th centuries.
One of his papers, edited here for length, discusses in brilliant detail the life of the common person at this time and makes for a nice understanding of the world we’re looking at from an angle other than top down. So this week, we’ll be looking up at the long-haired kings as they parade themselves in front of us, and we’ll be wondering what the arrival of Clovis in Paris really meant for a peasant – Rusticus, in this case, as David named his fictional peasant – whose life was so hyper-local that the thought of visiting the sea, even from Paris, would have seemed an unimaginable journey. This week, we’ll try to understand what it felt like for a normal person to live in a time of Thugs and Miracles.

Clovis - The First King: Legacy (S1: E8)

Clovis never passed a day in his life as King without thinking about how he could expand his Kingdom and provide loot and booty to the lieutenants he trusted to burnish his hold on power. However, Clovis was pragmatic enough to sense that there were times when he could get more by using his brain rather than his brawn. The most obvious example of this is his conversion to Catholicism, but that wasn’t his only moment of inspired intelligence. He planted the seed of patricide in his rival Clodéric’s mind, leading to the downfall of both Clodéric and his father; he convinced another king's chiefs that he was a better King, leading them to turn their back on their boss and hand the kingdom to Clovis; and he never forgot a slight, real or imagined, and used these as justifications for power grabs.
Once Clovis had his Kingdom, he solidified his hold on it; to do this, Clovis went down three paths. The first of these was the construction of The Church of the Holy Apostles, a project designed to simultaneously show the King’s great piety and his great wealth. The second path was the writing of the Salic Law, bringing Clovis's domain under his written control. And the third path was the First Council of Orléans in 511. This Council established a strong link between the Crown and the Catholic episcopate, with one its main tenets being "the obligation of the approval of the king and of the local civil authority for priestly ordinations."
Clovis is said to have died on 27 November 511. He had done about as much in 30 years as could be expected of any 15-year-old who was handed the keys to the kingdom. It would be easy to sit back and say that Clovis was barbaric, that he was lied and cheated and relied on brute force. But to do so would be to overlook the fact that Clovis was actually very intelligent. He responded to the times in which he lived with the level of force and the attitude of realpolitik necessary to ensure that he not only survived, but thrived. He was the right person, in the right place, at the right time to take advantage of the situation that presented itself.
 
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The Sons of Clovis - Part I (S1: E9)

This week we’re going to explore what exactly happened after Clovis’s ended his 30-year reign and passed the torch to his sons Theuderic, Chlothar, Chlodomir and Childebert.
Theuderic was Clovis’s oldest child by nearly a decade. He was born around 487, just a year or so after his father led his army to victory against Syagrius in Soissons. Not much is mentioned about his birth or his childhood except that Gregory refers to his mother as a “concubine” who had had a child with Clovis prior to him having met Clotilde. Well, Theuderic grew up tall and he grew up right, and by the age of twenty he went on campaign with his father in Vouillé. Following Clovis’s victory against Alaric in the main event, he sent his son to clean up in Visigothic areas to the east of the battle. According to Gregory, Theuderic “went, and brought under his father's dominion the cities from the boundaries of the Goths to the limit of the Burgundians.”
As a result of all of this, Theuderic had a commanding lead over his half-brothers when it came time to determine the line of succession for their father. Clotilde’s three boys ranged in age from 14-16 years old at Clovis’s death, and would have had little, if any, military experience by this point. Although it’s possible that Clotilde may have tried to push her own children to the head of the line of succession, their status as minors, Theuderic’s claim as the first-born, and his military success alongside of his father guaranteed he would in no way be passed over. When all was said and done, a strong argument can be made that Clotilde did well to barter for as much as she was able to get for her boys.
In the end, Clotilde was willing to bide her time and wait for an opportunity to push the career of all three of her sons. This event came about when myriad considerations came together to make an attack on Burgundy politically advantageous. Clotilde was not new to the political scene of this time and would have received an education both from the tragic events of her youth and from having been in Clovis’s presence for nearly two decades. She would have known the geography and she would have known the general location of her threats, her stepson included. She would have had all sorts of intelligence indicating for her that now was the time, and as a mother wanting to set her children up for success, she likely would have pushed them to move fast and hard. She may even have used a little Catholic mother guilt to get the job done, but what I find extremely unlikely is that she simply cried and wailed due to her “ungovernable passions” in an attempt to get her kids to avenge the deaths of her parents some thirty years prior. To believe otherwise is to rob Clotilde of her agency, and she showed on multiple other occasions in Gregory’s writings that she was intelligent, pious and headstrong.

The Sons of Clovis - Part II (S1: E10)

This week we’re going to explore the Frankish war in Burgundy and the fallout from the death of Clovis and Clotilde’s son Chlodomir. Remember, this war may have been fought by Clovis’s boys, but it was instigated for any number of reasons by the great king’s wife. In the end, it would be her who would experience, more than almost anyone else who survived to a natural death in our history, the truly vicious and zero-sum game nature of this first half of the 6th century.
So let’s look at Chlodomir. This oldest son of Clotilde and Clovis to survive infancy was born in 495, making him just shy of 30 years old when he would have been waging war in Burgundy. He had been granted the region of Orléans following his father’s death in 511, and had gone on to marry a woman named Guntheuca in 517. Long story short, Guntheuca had been the granddaughter of the Burgundian King Godegeisel, the King murdered in Vienne after Clovis allowed Gundobad to escape the siege of Avignon way back in Episode Six. Godegeisel was Chlodomir’s great-uncle, hence making the husband and wife first cousins once removed. Together they produced three boys, Theodebald, Gunthar, and Clodoald. Now keep in mind, assuming Guntheuca and Chlodomir got pregnant almost immediately and she had her baby on time, that means the oldest child from their union would have been born in 518 and would have been no older than six at the time of Chlodomir’s death in 524. This becomes particularly important when looking at the events that occurred just after his death.
Long story short, this week's episode takes a hard look at the power politics of the 6th century. Power moves came in many shapes and sizes, but the story today is perhaps the most repugnant of any of them: the murder of two small boys. Given the choice between good brothers who would see their oldest sibling's children raised to fill the throne he left behind, or being greedy middle-aged child-murderers, the Frankish kings Clothar and Childebert chose the latter. And to do so, they exploited their mother’s love and good faith to get control of their dead brother’s children, then put her on the spot to consider whether she would rather have the boys robbed of their birthright or executed. And then they carried out the murder of the two kids, boys who look at them as father figures, while they screamed and cried in shock, pain, fear and disbelief. I mean, holy brutal...
As always, the music used for the show comes from Josh Woodward and includes his songs “Bully” and “Lafayette.” For a free download of these songs or hundreds of other great tracks, check out his site at joshwoodward.com. Notes on this episode and a list of sources is available online at thugsandmiracles.com; please check out the site and sign up for the e-mail list so we can keep you up-to-date on all things T+M. Speaking of email, you can write to us at thugsandmiracles@gmail.com, you can hit us on Twitter at @thugsandmiracle, with no “s” at the end, or you can leave a comment on Facebook and Instagram at @ThugsAndMiracles. Finally, if you enjoyed the show, I ask you to keep spreading the word! Your word-of-mouth does more than anything else to allow the show to grow. If you want to go a step further, leaving a review on whichever platform you get your podcasts is awesome and would really get this new decade started off right!

The Sons of Clovis - Part III (S1: E11)

This week we’re going to explore the relationships between the last three sons of Clovis, as well as the relationships with their potential successors. If you think about it, the Kingdom of Francia could easily have ended up in fractals if each of Clovis’s sons split their share of the kingdom into equal parts to then bequeath to their sons. Chlothar and Childebert already took care of that problem with Chlodomir’s kids, but eventually the remaining three would have to address this issue when one of them would finally die. Keep this in mind as we move forward…
No matter what anyone thought of their culture, religion, or alliances, no one could deny that the Franks were a militaristic people who were not to be trifled with. They were a true force in the West, and it would have been better, at least until all of the rest of the enemies are dead, to ally with the Franks than to fight them. It appears that Justinian, Emperor of the Byzantine Empire, had a pragmatic side that the Frankish kings were able to inspire. As Professor Freedman had alluded to earlier, Chlothar, Childebert and Theuderic may not have been the best kings, and they certainly could have gone further and enjoyed more success if they had been smarter and less petty in how they ruled, but nonetheless they were still able to hold their territory, expand their borders, and make moves that confirmed their right as sovereigns both in foreign affairs and domestically.
By the end of this episode we are now down from six total children of Clovis to three. Ingomer died in his infancy, Chlodomir was struck down in battle, and Princess Clotilde died returning from Spain. Chlodomir’s children were struck down by their uncles, and Princess Clotilde (not to be confused with her mother, Queen Clotilde) is not reported as having had any children, so up until this point the line of succession has been relatively well pruned, for lack of a better turn of phrase. This will change in our next episode, however, because we are going to pick up in 534 with the sudden illness of Theuderic. His son, Theudebert, was old enough to protect himself and had been hardened by war; if something were to happen to his father, he would not be cast aside so easily as the sons of Chlodomir. His story starts us off next time.