A Short History of France | Page 7

own race; not this
terrible Frank. Had she exchanged one servitude for another? Had she
been, not set free, but simply annexed to the realm of the barbarian
across the Rhine? Let us say rather that it was an espousal. She had
brought her dowry of beauty and "land," that most coveted of
possessions, and had pledged obedience, for which she was to be
cherished, honored, and protected, and to bear the name of her lord.
It will be well not to examine too closely the conversion of Clovis to
Christianity, any more than that of Constantine to the religion of Christ,
or that of Henry VIII. to Protestantism. The only thing Clovis wanted
of the gods was aid in destroying his enemies. At a certain dark
moment, when the pagan deities failed him, and the tide of battle was
turning against him, in desperation he offered to become a Christian, if
the God of the Christians would save him. He kept his word. His
victory was followed by Christian baptism, and the Church had won a
great defender, whose ferocious instincts were thereafter to be directed
toward the extermination of unbelievers. And while hewing and
consolidating and bringing his kingdom into form, whether by
treacheries or intrigues or assassination, this converted Frank was not
alone defender of the faith, but of the orthodox faith. The Visigoth
kingdom in Spain was given over to that heresy known as Arianism! So
in a crusade, like another of a later date, he swept them over beyond the
Pyrenees, thus establishing a frontier which always remained.
Such were the rough beginnings of France, geographically and
historically.
Ancient heroes are said to be seen through a shadowy lens, which
magnifies their stature. Let us hope that the crimes of the three or four
generations immediately succeeding Clovis have been in like manner
expanded; for it is sickening to read of such monstrous prodigality of
wickedness; whole families butchered--husbands, wives, children,
anything obstructing the path to the throne--with an atrocity which
makes Richard III. seem a mere pigmy in the art of intrigue and killing.
The chapter closes with the daughter and mother of kings (Brunhilde or

Brunhaut), naked, and tied by one arm, one leg, and her hair to the tail
of an unbroken horse, and amid jeers and shouts dashed over the stones
of Paris (A.D. 600).
Upon the death of Clovis his inheritance was divided among four sons,
who, with their wives and families and their tempestuous passions,
afforded material for a great epic. Whether Fredegunde or Brunhilde
was the more terrible who can say? But the story of these rival queens,
with their loves and their hatreds and their ambitious, vengeful fury, is
more like the story of demons than of women. But these conditions led
to two results which played a great part in subsequent events. One was
the exclusion of women from the succession by the adoption of the
Salic Law. Then, in order to curb the degeneracy or to reinforce the
inefficiency of the hereditary ruler, there was created the office of
Maire du Palais, a modest title which contained the germ of the future,
not alone of France, but of the world.
To imperfect human vision it would have seemed at the time a fatal
mistake to bury out of sight the refinements which a Latin civilization
had been for nearly five centuries planting in Gaul. But so often has
this been repeated in the history of the world, one is compelled to
recognize it as a part of the evolutionary method. Again and again have
we seen old civilizations effaced by barbarians. But these barbarians
with their coarseness and brutality have usually brought something
better than refinement; a spirit so transforming, so vitalizing, that we
are compelled to believe it was the end sought in the catastrophe we
deplore: that is, a spirit of liberty, a sense of personal independence,
without which the refinements of art, even reinforced by genius, are
unavailing. Such was undoubtedly the invigorating leaven brought into
Gaul by the Frank, although for a time he succumbed to the enervating
Gallic influence, and, while conquering and subduing, was himself
conquered and subdued.
The cultivated Roman in his toga appealed to the imagination of the
fine barbarian; the habits of the Romanized cities were a tempting
model for imitation. Bridges, aqueducts, palaces, with their splendid
mingling of strength and beauty, fragments of which still linger to

convince us of our inferiority, these were awe-inspiring to the Frank
and filled him with longings to drink deep at this fountain of
civilization. The heroic strain brought by Clovis was quickly enfeebled
and debauched by luxury. The court of the Merovingian king became a
miserable assemblage of half-Romanized barbarians covered with the
frayed and worn-out mantle of imperialism. It