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But Theodoric immediately complained to his own folks that he had sacrificed his silvern dish to no purpose, and said to his son Theodebert, 'Go, find thy uncle, and pray him to give thee the present I made him. Theodebert went, and got what he asked. In such tricks did Theodoric excel." These Merovingian kings were as greedy and licentious as they were cruel.
"Theodebert," says Gregory of Tours, "when confirmed in his kingdom, showed himself full of greatness and goodness; he ruled with justice, honoring the bishops, doing good to the churches, helping the poor, and distributing in many directions numerous benefits with a very charitable and very liberal hand.
Encouraged by this successful inroad, Theodebert himself, in the ensuing spring, invaded the plains of Italy with an army of one hundred thousand Barbarians.
The victory gained in the year 496 near Cologn, by Clovis I. king of the Franks, over the Alemanni, who had wrested from the Romans all the dominions on the northern side of the Alps; and the defeat of both Romans and Goths in Italy, in the year 549, by the treacherous arms of Theodebert king of Austrasia, whose dominions soon after devolved to the crown of France, necessarily gave the aspiring Merovingian race a great ascendency over all the countries surrounding the Grisons; and accordingly we find, that this district also was soon after, without any military effort, considered as part of the dominions of the reviving western empire.
In 614, after thirty-nine years of wars, plots, murders, and political and personal vicissitudes, from the death of her husband Sigebert I., and under the reigns of her son Theodebert, and her grandsons Theodebert II. and Thierry II., Queen Brunehaut, at the age of eighty years, fell into the hands of her mortal enemy, Clotaire II., son of Fredegonde, now sole king of the Franks.
She had been betrothed to Radiger, king of the Varni, a tribe of Germans who touched the ocean and the Rhine; but the perfidious lover was tempted, by motives of policy, to prefer his father's widow, the sister of Theodebert, king of the Franks. The forsaken princess of the Angles, instead of bewailing, revenged her disgrace.
But the arms of Belisarius, and the revolt of the Italians, had no sooner shaken the Gothic monarchy, than Theodebert of Austrasia, the most powerful and warlike of the Merovingian kings, was persuaded to succor their distress by an indirect and seasonable aid.
The dysentery swept away one third of their army; and the clamors of his subjects, who were impatient to pass the Alps, disposed Theodebert to listen with respect to the mild exhortations of Belisarius. The memory of this inglorious and destructive warfare was perpetuated on the medals of Gaul; and Justinian, without unsheathing his sword, assumed the title of conqueror of the Franks.
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