eign of each, a short duration compared with
that of most of the royal dynasties. Five of these kings, Clotaire I.,
Clotaire II., Dagobert I., Thierry IV. and Childeric III., alone, at
different intervals, united under their power all the dominions
possessed by Clovis or his successors. The other kings of this line
reigned only over special kingdoms, formed by virtue of divers
partitions at the death of their general possessor. From A.D. 511 to
638 five such partitions took place. In 511, after the death of Clovis,
his dominions were divided amongst his four sons; Theodoric, or Thierry
I., was king of Metz; Clodomir, of Orleans; Childebert, of Paris;
Clotaire I., of Soissons. To each of these capitals fixed boundaries
were attached. In 558, in consequence of divers incidents brought about
naturally or by violence, Clotaire I. ended by possessing alone, during
three years, all the dominions of his fathers. At his death, in 561,
they were partitioned afresh amongst his four sons; Charibert was king
of Paris; Gontran of Orleans and Burgundy; Sigebert I., of Metz; and
Childeric, of Soissons. In 567, Charibert, king of Paris, died without
children, and a new partition left only three kingdoms, Austrasia,
Neustria, and Burgundy. Austrasia, in the east, extended over the two
banks of the Rhine, and comprised, side by side with Roman towns and
districts, populations that had remained Germanic. Neustria, in the
west, was essentially Gallo-Roman, though it comprised in the north the
old territory of the Salian Franks, on the borders of the Scheldt.
Burgundy was the old kingdom of the Burgundians, enlarged in the north
by some few counties. Paris, the residence of Clovis, was reserved and
undivided amongst the three kings, kept as a sort of neutral city into
which they could not enter without the common consent of all. In 613,
new incidents connected with family matters placed Clotaire II., son of
Chilperic, and heretofore king of Soissons, in possession of the three
kingdoms. He kept them united up to 628, and left them so to his son,
Dagobert I., who remained in possession of them up to 638. At his death
a new division of the Frankish dominions took place, no longer into
three but two kingdoms, Austrasia being one, and Neustria and Burgundy
the other. This was the definitive dismemberment of the great Frankish
dominion to the time of its last two Merovingian kings, Thierry IV. and
Childeric III., who were kings in nam