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Updated: May 18, 2025
Ambition and fraternal hatred had devastated her family. Her father, Chilperic, and her two brothers, had been put to death by her uncle Gondebaud, who had caused her mother, Agrippina, to be thrown into the Rhone, with a stone round her neck, and drowned.
"Aridius, in fact, returned very speedily from Marseilles, and Gondebaud, on seeing him, said to him, 'Thou knowest that we have made friends with the Franks, and that I have given my niece to Clovis to wife. 'This, answered Aridius, 'is no bond of friendship, but the beginning of perpetual strife; thou shouldst have remembered, my lord, that thou didst slay Clotilde's father, thy brother Chilperic, that thou didst drown her mother, and that thou didst cut off her brothers' heads and cast their bodies into a well.
So soon as I shall be with him, I will so do that he ruin neither thee nor the land. Only have thou care to perform whatsoever I shall ask of thee, until the Lord in His goodness deign to make thy cause triumph." "All that thou shalt bid will I do," said Gondebaud.
Pleased with his campaign against the Burgundians, Clovis kept on good terms with Gondebaud, who was to be henceforth a simple tributary, and transferred to the Visigoths of Aquitania, and their king, Alaric II., his views of conquest. Alaric and his Visigoths were Arians, and between them and the bishops of Southern Gaul, nearly all orthodox Catholics, there were permanent ill-will and distrust.
Return promptly to thy lord; if he would fain unite me to him by marriage, let him send without delay messengers to demand me of my uncle Gondebaud, and let the messengers who shall come take me away in haste, so soon as they shall have obtained permission; if they haste not I fear lest a certain sage, one Aridius, may return from Constantinople, and, if he arrive beforehand, all this matter will by his counsel come to naught.
"Clovis at once sent a deputation to Gondebaud to ask Clotilde in marriage. Gondebaud, not daring to refuse, put her into the hands of the envoys, who took her promptly to the king. Clovis at sight of her was transported with joy, and married her."
Gondebaud, betrayed and beaten at the first encounter at Dijon, fled to the south of his kingdom, and went and shut himself up in Avignon. Clovis pursued and besieged him there. Gondebaud in great alarm asked counsel of his Roman confidant Aridius, who had but lately foretold to him what the marriage of his niece Clotilde would bring upon him.
So Aridius left Gondebaud and went his way to Clovis, and said: "Most pious King, I am thy humble servant; I give up this wretched Gondebaud and come unto thy mightiness. If thy goodness deign to cast a glance upon me, thou and thy descendants will find in me a servant of integrity and fidelity."
Clovis found the counsel good, ordered his army to return home, sent deputies to Gondebaud, and called upon him to undertake the payment every year of a fixed tribute. Gondebaud paid for the time, and promised to pay punctually for the future. And peace appeared made between the two barbarians.
It will be easier for thee to bear the wrath of one person than to be perpetually at strife, thyself and thine, with all the Franks. And Gondebaud did send forthwith a troop in chase to fetch back Clotilde with the carriage and all the treasure; but she, on approaching Villers, where Clovis was waiting for her, in the territory of the Troyes, and before passing the Burgundian frontier, urged them who escorted her to disperse right and left over a space of twelve leagues in the country whence she was departing, to plunder and burn; and that having been done with the permission of Clovis, she cried aloud, 'I thank thee, God omnipotent, for that I see the commencement of vengeance for my parents and my brethren!"
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