The people, however, as yet insufficiently educated in religious politics, hesitated to march against their Christian neighbours under the banner of a pagan king; but the difficulty was happily solved after the great Frankish victory at Zülpich or Tolbiacum, by the conversion of Clovis (496) who found, like his celebrated successor, that France was well "worth a Mass"; and the newly-baptised Catholic was ready to embark upon the first religious war of Europe.

Alaric, alarmed at the prospect of the coming struggle, craved the honour of a friendly interview with his brother Clovis. The interview was granted. The two kings met on an island in the Loire, near Amboise, and swore eternal friendship. Alaric returned contented to Toulouse-and within the year Clovis had declared war against the Visigoths.

"It

No pretext was needed for this fifth century Crusade. was not to be endured," says the pious Gregory of Tours, "that these Arians should possess the finest country in Gaul."1 It was clearly the duty of a Catholic king to drive them out; a duty insisted upon by Churchmen, enforced by miracles 2 and entirely agreeable to the temper of "the chosen champion of Catholicism". There is indeed a fine mixture of the ecclesiastical and the temporal at the Court of the Frank, where ambition and superstition were equally powerful, "and for the first time in history," says Dean Milman, "the diffusion of belief of the nature of the Godhead became the avowed pretext for the invasion of a neighbouring territory". Clovis, as an orthodox Catholic, and a zealous convert, lost no time in invading the dominion of the Visigoths. And the great battle 5 on the Campus Vocladensis, near Poictiers, in which Alaric was slain, and his Arian army completely defeated, was at once the foundation of the Frankish kingdom of France, and the origin of the Gothic kingdom of Spain.

1 Gregory of Tours, ii., 37.

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2 The milk-white hind at the ford at Vienne, the fiery column over the cathedral of Poictiers; these and many equally convincing prodigies are faithfully recorded by Gregory of Tours.

3 Montalembert, Moines de l Occident, ii., 248; Milman, Latin Christianity, vol. i., p. 277.

• Clovis occupied the remarkable position of being the only Catholic king in Europe. The Emperor Anastasius professed heretical views on the Incarnation. Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths, Alaric, King of the Visigoths, Gondebald and Gondisel, Kings of the Burgundians, and Thrasimond, King of the African Vandals, were all Arians.

5 The plain of Vouglé or Vouillé.

Toulouse was immediately occupied by the victorious Franks; the Visigoths were driven out of Gaul, and the orthodox army of Clovis was checked only by the great mountain barrier of the Pyrenees.

Alaric left two sons, Gensalic, whose birth was illegitimate; and Amalaric, a child of but five years old, whose mother was a daughter of Theodoric, the great King of the Ostrogoths in Italy. Gensalic was elected on the death of Alaric to fill the vacant throne. Five years later, in 511, he was slain by the armies of Theodoric, who had maintained the rights of succession of his grandson Amalaric, not only against the illegitimate pretension of Gensalic, but against the Catholic ardour of the more formidable Clovis; and it was due to the successful warfare waged against the Franks by the great Ostrogoth, not only that Amalaric inherited the new kingdom of Spain,1 but that the kingdom was preserved or created for him to inherit, and administered during the long minority of Amalaric by Theudis, the first Minister Regent of Spain.

On the death of Theodoric, in 526, the boundaries of the Visigothic kingdom were once more disturbed. To Athanaric, his nephew, the great Ostrogoth left Italy and the country to the north-west as far as the Rhone; while to Amalaric was given not only Gothic Spain, but Gothic Gaul, or Septimania-the rich country lying between the Rhone and the Pyrenees, and including the city of Narbonne, where Amalaric established his court. His marriage with Clothilda, a daughter of Clovis, the vanquisher, and perhaps the actual slayer of his father, was dictated by political prudence, but it was attended with most unfortunate results. Christian dissensions had already begun to vex unhappy Spain. The king was an Arian, the queen an Athanasian Catholic, and neither of them would endure the heresy of the other. Amalaric, at length, unable to convince his consort of the truth of the doctrines that he professed, forbade her the public exercise of her religion. It is not thus that alliances were cemented in the sixth century; and Clothilda appealed in anger to her brother in Gaul.2

The story of the bloodstained kerchief sent by Clothilda to Childebert, as an eloquent token of her ill-usage at the rude

1 As a matter of fact, the Visigothic sovereign never assumed the title of King of Spain; but that of "King of the Visigoths in Spain.' Yet Ama!aric was de facto King of Spain-the first of all the Visigothic kings who held sway in the Peninsula, who were not kings of Toulouse.

2 See Gregory of Tours, lib. iii.

hands of her Arian lord, may be treated as an episcopal fiction; but however summoned, it is certain that Childebert, rejoicing to find so orthodox a pretext for an invasion of the dominions of the Visigoths, hastened to the defence of his sister and of his faith. The Frank triumphed. Amalaric, defeated near Narbonne, fled across the Pyrenees; and Childebert pursued the unfortunate Arian into north Catalonia (531). Amalaric was slain in battle;1 and Childebert returned to Gaul, bearing with him not only his rescued sister, and the applause of his ecclesiastical patrons, but an immense booty of sacred treasure, the spoil of the Arian churches of Spain. Amalaric leaving no issue, Theudis, his worthy tutor, and possibly his murderer, was elected to succeed him on the throne, and the old regent fought not without success against the Gauls or Franks, once more invading his Spanish territories; and he not only drove them out of the country to the south of the Pyrenees,2 but re-established the Visigothic sovereignty in the rich province of Septimania, with the cities of Carcassonne, Narbonne, and even Nismes. He was less fortunate in a campaign beyond the Straits of Gibraltar.

The Roman Empire of the East under Justinian was just now showing some signs of life in the south-west of Europe; and Belisarius was striving with a success long unknown to the arms of the legions, to recover the old province of Africa from the Vandals. Theudis, dreading the near approach of so great a neighbour, more especially as Spain might, like Africa, still be considered to be a province of the Empire, responded to the entreaty of Hildibad, King of the Ostrogoths, who was supporting Gelimer and the cause of the Vandals against Belisarius in Mauretania. The story of the campaign is confused and uncertain. Theudis crossed over the straits and attempted to relieve Ceuta ; but the Gothic armies were defeated with great

1 How Amalaric died, whether he fell in battle, or was murdered by order of Childebert, or by that of Theudis, is uncertain. The presumption of probability in those days would seem to be always in favour of the most unworthy.

2" In the following year (543), Childebert, King of the Franks, and Clotarius his brother, not satisfied with what they had done before, again made war upon Spain, and after wasting all the province of Tarragona, laid siege to Caesaraugusta or Saragossa.

"The citizens had recourse to their patron Saint Vincent, whose garments they carried in procession about the walls, imploring his assistance, whereof Childebert being informed, he took compassion, and desisted from doing them any further harm. At his request, the citizens gave him that garment, which he carried to Paris, and there built a church in the suburbs, of the invocation of this saint-now called St. Germain des Prés." Mariana, Hist. of Spain, v., 6, translated by Stevens. Cf. Gaillard, Rivalité de la France et de l'Espagne, vol. i., 28, 29.

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slaughter, and their leaders hardly found safety in flight. The explanation of this disaster that was offered by the Goths, that they were surprised at their Sunday devotions, has a suspicious resemblance to that of Alaric at Pollentia, one hundred and fifty years before. One party must always be defeated in a Sunday victory-not always, it is to be hoped, the most devout. Theudis escaped the sword of the enemy, only to perish some four years 1 later within the walls of his palace at Seville, by the ever-ready hand of an assassin. His immediate successor, Theudisel, who is said to have been a monster of licentiousness, was assassinated in his own chamber after a reign of eighteen months' duration; and he was succeeded by Agila, who found himself soon after his election called to suppress a rebellion in the southern provinces, fomented by the Roman authorities in Africa. Liberius, one of Justinian's commanders, had succeeded after nearly five years' desultory fighting, in concluding a treaty of some sort with Athanagild, one of the Visigothic leaders, by which a considerable tract of country in southern Spain was to revert to the Roman Empire in the event of Athanagild's succession to the throne. As a natural result of this arrangement Agila was assassinated in 554, and Athanagild reigned at Toledo over what remained to the Visigoths of Spain. He endeavoured, it would seem, to abandon to Liberius something less than was stipulated in the treaty. His Imperial deliverer desired something more; and Athanagild's war against his sovereign was continued as a war against his ally. But Rome maintained and even extended her power in the Peninsula, until the Imperial territory reached from sea to sea.

The conversion of the Suevians from Arianism to the rival and more powerful religion was certainly the most important event in the reign of Athanagild; for the results, both immediate and remote, were of the utmost consequence to Spain. The restoration to health of a Suevian prince by the influence of the most orthodox relics of St. Martin of Tours led to the adoption of the orthodox religion by the king, together with his entire people (560); and the hostility which ever existed between the inhabitants of Cantabria and the inhabitants of

1 Gregory of Tours, iii., 30.

2 Not only were the principal coast towns of the south and south-east-Cadiz, Malaga, Almeria and Carthagena-restored to the Roman Empire, but even Cordova and Illiberis, the site of more modern Granada. The Roman dominion was said to have extended "from sea to sea"; and it was sixty years before they were finally dispossessed by the Goth.

Spain was accentuated by the newly added zest of religious animosity. And the fresh bond of union between the rebels on the shores of the Atlantic and the rivals beyond the Pyrenees rendered the position of the Spanish Visigoths more isolated and more dangerous than before.

Nor did the diplomatic efforts of Athanagild tend in any way to save the situation. Seeking, like Amalaric before him, to strengthen his position by a family alliance with the rulers of the Franks, he had given his two daughters in marriage to two princes of the house of Clovis.1 Chilperic, King of Neustria, had espoused the elder daughter, Galeswintha, while Brunhilda the younger had fallen to the lot of Sigebert, King of Austrasia; and still further to cement the union, each of the Arian princesses announced her conversion to the orthodox faith of her husband. But neither Church nor State were served by these early Spanish marriages. The terrible story of the faithlessness of Chilperic, the jealousy of Fredegonde, the murder of Galeswintha, the long struggle between the successful mistress and the avenging sister, a struggle in the course of which ten kings and queens are said to have lost their lives, and the final triumph of Fredegonde, and the savage murder of the vanquished Brunhilda, these things are familiar to every reader of French history.2 But the character of Brunhilda, who was at least a woman of immense and indomitable energy, has become a matter of national contention. In the eyes of patriotic Spanish historians, she is a model of all that is virtuous, as well as of all that is beautiful; to the French she is a foreign termagant who brought confusion and bloodshed to the courts of the early Merovingians (564614).

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1 The superiority in refinement, in morality, in royal dignity, and in civilisation generally of the Visigothic kings who ruled in Spain over the Frank kings who ruled in France, is brought into very strong relief by a distinguished French historian, Augustin Thierry, Etudes Historiques (ed. 1835, pp. 375-385).

2 Gregory of Tours, Hist. Franc., lib. iii.

3 See Montesquieu, Esprit des lois, livre xxxi., c. i.; Mariana, Hist. Esp., lib. v., cap. x.; Feyjoo, tom. vi., 2, 6; Masdeu, xi., 4; Boccaccio, De Claris Mulieribus; Gailliard, De la Rivalité entre la France et l'Espagne, i., pp. 47-49. Finally, L'Histoire des Francs, par Grégoire de Tours-I have used Guizot's edition (Paris, 1823)—is invaluable for all events between 397 and 591.