l from barbarian domination. With the help of some of his
brother chiefs, Clovis overthrew this "King of Soissons". Syagrius took
refuge at the court of Toulouse, and the Frankish king now felt himself
strong enough to send to the young Alaric, who had ascended the throne
only a year before, a peremptory message, insisting, under the penalty
of a declaration of war, on the surrender of the Roman fugitive. The
Visigoth was mean-spirited enough to purchase peace by delivering up his
guest, bound in fetters, to the ambassadors of Clovis, who shortly after
ordered him to be privily done to death. From that time, we may well
believe, Clovis felt confident that he should one day vanquish Alaric.

About seven years after this event (493) came his memorable marriage
with Clotilda,[94] a Burgundian princess, who, unlike her Arian uncle,
Gundobad, was enthusiastically devoted to the Catholic faith, and who
ceased not by private conversations and by inducing him to listen to the
sermons of the eloquent Bishop Remigius, to endeavour to win her husband
from the religion of his heathen forefathers to the creed of Rome and
of the Empire. Clovis, however, for some years wavered. Sprung himself,
according to the traditions of his people, from the sea-god Meroveus, he
was not in haste to renounce this fabulous glory, nor to acknowledge as
Lord, One who had been reared in a carpenter's shop at Nazareth. He
allowed Clotilda to have her eldest son baptised, but when the child
soon after died, he took that as a sign of the power and vengeance of
the old gods. A second son was born, was baptised, fell sick. Had that
child died, Clovis would probably have remained an obstinate heathen,
but the little one recovered, given back, as was believed, to the
earnest prayers of his mother.

[Footnote 94: More accurately Chrotchildis.]

It was perhaps during these years of indecision as to his future
religious profession, that Clovis consented to a matrimonial alliance
between his house and that of the Arian Theodoric. The great Ostrogoth
married, probably about the year 495, the sister of Clovis, Augofleda,
who, as we may reasonably conjecture, renounced the worship of the gods
of her people, and was baptised by an Arian bishop on becoming "Queen of
the Goths and Romans". Unfortunately the meagre annals of the time give
us no hint of the character or history of the princess who was thus
transferred from the fens of Flanders to the marshes of Ravenna.