w convert may have soon perceived that from that support he
would "suck no small advantage".

[Footnote 95: Especially Dahn ("Urgeschichte der germanischen Voelker",
iii., 61).]

The first of his Arian neighbours whom Clovis struck at was the
Burgundian, Gundobad. In the year 500 he beseiged Dijon with a large
army. Gundobad called on his brother Godegisel, who reigned at Geneva,
for help, but that brother was secretly in league with Clovis, and at a
critical moment joined the invaders, who were for a time completely
successful. Gundobad was driven into exile and Godegisel accepting the
position of a tributary ally of his powerful Frankish friend, ruled over
the whole Burgundian kingdom. His rule however seems not to have been
heartily accepted by the Burgundian people. The exiled Gundobad
returned with a few followers, who daily increased in number; he found
himself strong enough to besiege Godegisel in Vienne; he at length
entered the city through the blow-hole of an aqueduct, slew his brother
with his own hand, and put his chief adherents to death "with exquisite
torments". The Frankish troops who garrisoned Vienne were taken
prisoners, but honourably treated and sent to Toulouse to be guarded by
Alaric the Visigoth, who had probably assisted the enterprise of
Gundobad.

The inactivity of Clovis during this counter-revolution in Burgundy is
not easily explained. Either there was some great explosion of
Burgundian national feeling against the Franks, which for the time made
further interference dangerous, or Gundobad, having added his brother's
dominions to his own, was now too strong for Clovis to meddle with, or,
which seems on the whole the most probable supposition, Gundobad
himself, secretly inclining towards the Catholic cause, had made peace
with Clovis through the mediation of the clergy, and came back to Vienne
to rule thenceforward as a dependent ally, though not an avowed
tributary, of Clovis and the Franks. We shall soon have occasion to
observe that in the crisis of its fortunes the confederacy of Arian
states could not count on the co-operation of Gundobad.

To form such a confederacy and to league together all the older Arian
monarchies against this one aspiring Catholic state, which threatened to
absorb them all, was now the main purpose of Theodoric. He seems,
however, to have remained meanwhile on terms of courtesy and apparent
harmony with his powerful brother-in-law.

He congratulated him on