ime occupied the
country between the Vosges, and the Rhine and the neighbourhood of Lake
Constance. By pushing their incursions westward they came into collision
with Clovis, who marched against them and defeated them in the plain of
the Rhine. The legend runs that, in the thickest of the fight, Clovis
swore that he would be converted to the God of Clotilda if her God would
grant him the victory. After subduing a part of the Alemanni, Clovis
went to Reims, where he was baptized by St Remigius on Christmas day
496, together with three thousand Franks. The story of the phial of holy
oil (the _Sainte Ampoule_) brought from heaven by a white dove for the
baptism of Clovis was invented by Archbishop Hincmar of Reims three
centuries after the event.

The baptism of Clovis was an event of very great importance. From that
time the orthodox Christians in the kingdom of the Burgundians and
Visigoths looked to Clovis to deliver them from their Arian kings.
Clovis seems to have failed in the case of Burgundy, which was at that
time torn by the rivalry between Godegesil and his brother Gundobald.
Godegesil appealed for help to Clovis, who defeated Gundobald on the
banks of the Ouche near Dijon, and advanced as far as Avignon (500), but
had to retire without being able to retain any of his conquests.
Immediately after his departure Gundobald slew Godegesil at Vienne, and
seized the whole of the Burgundian kingdom. Clovis was more fortunate in
his war against the Visigoths. Having completed the subjugation of the
Alemanni in 506, he marched against the Visigothic king Alaric II. in
the following year, in spite of the efforts of Theodoric, king of the
Ostrogoths, to prevent the war. After a decisive victory at Vouille near
Poitiers, in which Clovis slew Alaric with his own hand, the whole of
the kingdom of the Visigoths as far as the Pyrenees was added to the
Frankish empire, with the exception of Septimania, which, together with
Spain, remained in possession of Alaric's grandson Amalaric, and
Provence, which was seized by Theodoric and annexed to Italy. In 508
Clovis received at Tours the insignia of the consulship from the eastern
emperor, Anastasius, but the title was purely honorific. The last years
of his life Clovis spent in Paris, which he made the capital of his
kingdom, and where he built the church of the Holy Apostles, known later
as the church of St Genevieve. By murdering the petty Frankish kings
who reigned at Cambrai, Co