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Updated: June 19, 2025
Intoxicated with power, pride, hate, and revenge, she entered more violently every day into strife not only with the Austrasian laic chieftains, but with some of the principal bishops of Austrasia and Burgundy, among the rest with St. Didier, bishop of Vienne, who, at her instigation, was brutally murdered, and with the great Irish missionary St.
Austrasia, having Rheims for its capital, had a population chiefly German. Neustria, where the Gallo-Roman manners were adopted, had Soissons for its capital; and Burgundy had its capital at Orleans. The population in both these last dominions was more predominantly Romano-Celtic, or "Romance."
In 567, Charibert, king of Paris, died without children, and a new partition left only three kingdoms, Austrasia, Neustria, and Burgundy. Austrasia, in the east, extended over the two banks of the Rhine, and comprised, side by side with Roman towns and districts, populations that had remained Germanic.
Its first chief known in history had been Pepin of Landen, called The Ancient, one of the foes of Queen Brunehaut, who was so hateful to the Austrasians, and afterwards one of the privy councillors and mayor of the palace of Austrasia, under Dagobert I. and his son Sigebert II. He died in 639, leaving to his family an influence already extensive.
After this act of supremacy they were for some time content to act as Mayors of the Palace, in the districts of Neustria and Austrasia respectively, under the nominal sovereignty of Childeric III., the last of the fainéant kings, whom they set up as a puppet. Pepin soon had no sharer in his power or fame.
The family of the Pipins, who were of pure German extraction, acquired the hereditary right to this office, first in Austrasia and later in Neustria. The descendants of Pipin of Heristal, as dukes of the Franks, had regal power, while the title of king was left to the Merovingian princes. The race of Pipin was afterwards called Carolingians, or Karlings.
In particular, since I have observed that in our lands provinces have been given new names, we should assume that the same changes take place in foreign lands. For if what was once called Neustria is now called Normandy, and what was once called Austrasia is now, because of a turn of events, called Lotharingia, why should one not believe that the same thing happened in the East?
Charles, at the head of the Austrasians, twice succeeded in beating, first near Cambrai and then near Soissons, the Neustrian king and mayor of the palace, pursued them to Paris, returned to Cologne, got himself accepted by his old enemy Queen Plectrude, and remaining temperate amidst the triumph of his ambition, he, too, took from amongst the surviving Merovingians a sluggard king, whom he installed under the name of Clotaire IV., himself becoming, with the simple title of Duke of Austrasia, master of the Frankish dominion.
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.
He went back to the Tribocci, that German nation settled about Strasbourg, remembering Clovis, Chilperic, Theodoric, Dagobert, the furious struggle between Brunehaut, Queen of Austrasia, and Frédégonde, queen of Chilperic of France, and many heroes and heroines besides. All these fierce personages passed in review before his eyes.
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