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The kingdom of Thierry

In the division which follows the death of Clovis, although our sources insist on the levelling character of the batches, Thierry obtains “the lions share”, like known as Eugen Ewig. Its Teilreich includes/understands old Belgium first (with Trier), part of Belgium second (with Rheims and Châlons), the two Germanic ones (with Cologne and Mainz) and, beyond, a broad opening on the soils alamans on which the Francs, from Clovis and the fall campaigns of the kingdom of Cologne, exert a kind of protectorate; in north the old city of Tongres appears to constitute a kind of zone-plug where the influence of the Francs meets that of the Thuringiens and probably that of the Warnes. Are added to it the Auvergne and an Eastern fringe of the Aquitaine that it conquered for his father at the time of the war against the Visigoths into 507/508, with the cities of Clermont, Puy, Cahors, Albi, Rodez, undoubtedly Limoges, perhaps Javols.
With died of Clodomir (524), the secondary division between the surviving brothers leave him in more the cities of Auxerre and Troyes and half of that of Sens.

The kingdom of Thierry is composed thus of two whole of cities, very contrasted, only separated by a corridor formed from the cities of Bourges and Nevers: on the one hand, a unit which one can call “rhéno-native of the Moselle region” to which one will give before the end of the century the name of Austrasie and which, for the moment, is prolonged until in the south of the Paris basin; in addition, an “Aquitanian” group which largely covers the Massif Central and reaches practically the Rhone.

This political geography can give a feeling of extravagance in what it associates with the still wild grounds - or at least much romanisées than the remainder of Gaulle, Christian women certainly, but where one discovers for example worrying indices of human sacrifices, and cities of old woman and strong Gallo-Roman tradition. It is however of extreme importance, because it will allow into three or four generations the cultural unification of the frank territories.

Personality of the king

The personality of Thierry escapes to us. We are here, as in other cases, tributary of Gregoire de Tours who brushes, through his anecdotes, the portrait of a brutal and cynical warrior, perfect example of Mérovingien “large vicious child” according to the word of Louis Halphen. That one judges some: during a campaign against Thuringiens, Thierry plans to get rid of his Clotaire brother who is however his ally. He thus posts assassins on his passage. But their feet exceed under the curtain behind which it had them strong evil camouflaged. Clotaire realizes and enters of it a fury which his/her brother who makes pretense know about nothing does not manage to calm that by making him gift of a sumptuous silver dish. Clotaire hardly party, Thierry sends his Théodebert son to him, with mission of managing to bring back the dish, by being made it offer in gift in its turn. “To make turns of this kind, Thierry was very malignant”, comments on Gregoire. - which was to know some, of the tasty anecdotes on the kings!

We however foresee another Thierry who that it had, among wire of Clovis, more relief which miss his/her brothers allowed to say.

Thierry and Austrasie

This Thierry is interested in his kingdom. He probably installed his capital with Rheims, near to those of his brothers. Frédégaire, at the next century, will place it at Metz, but it is undoubtedly by anachronism. Many indices indicate that the king had in fact a preference for Trier.

The old imperial city was ruined by the ceaseless attacks of the Francs in Ve century, depopulated by the exodus of the Roman population. The impression prevails in the historians whom the situation brutally degraded there towards the end of the 5th century and which it is under the reign of Clovis that all this area, turned over to brutality, reached to nadir it desolation. Thierry surely wanted to rectify this situation and it understood that it would reach that point only while making use of Gallo-Roman frameworks. It is him which named with évêché of Trier Nizier, a former monk that Eugen Ewig believes originating in the Limousin. Nizier was an energetic, organizing character and builder, little carried to the concessions. During a long episcopate, it was a species of spiritual adviser for the king, then for his Théodebert son; he probably played a leading role in the royal entourage and gave again in his city an unquestionable gloss. The crypt mérovingienne of Saint-Maximin is certainly his work. It is impossible to say if its construction goes back in Thierry or only to Théodebert, but it is obvious that it could not be undertaken without the support of the king.
At the time of his first intervention in Auvergne, Thierry brought back with him, semi-hostages, of young people resulting from the local aristocracy to make some “nourished” at his court and “much from clerks to be used with the church as Trier”. We know at least one of them: Gallus, great-uncle of Gregoire de Tours, of which the weather will be a bishop of Clermont later. Simple deacon, it appears to have followed the court of Thierry in his displacements. Gregoire tells us that one day, accompanying the king in Cologne, he saw a temple there “where the barbarians of the vicinity came to make sacrifices and to gorge itself with meat and wine until vomitting some… They deposited there representations of human members whom they carved out of wood when some part of their body was reached by the disease”. Gallus, accompanied by another clerk, went to put fire at the deserted temple, but, alerted by smoke, the pagan ones discovered the flamer and ran to him known, the sword with the hand. Gallus managed to take refuge near the king who, learning what had occurred, alleviated the prosecutors “by soft words and thus calmed their foolish fury”. This edifying account takes under the feather of Gregoire a savor all martinienne, but it must contain a bottom of truth: Gallus - near which Gregoire had remained during his years of training - told, appears it, often the history by regretting with tears that he had not died martyr in the business.

This text lets think that Thierry had, if not undertake with method, at least to support the christianization of the Rhenish Francs. It that were buried in a Christian context - a vault especially high in the atrium of the episcopal church of IVe century - the child and the young woman, apparently pagan, is accompanied hardly later by a funerary movable rich person, that all designates as members of the highest local aristocracy; a plausible assumption sees in the “Lady of Cologne” Wisigarde, been engaged the lombarde of Théodebert.

Thierry and the Germanic one

The political scene is the Germanic one. About Alamans, demolished militarily at the time of Clovis, undoubtedly weakened by a strong emigration in Rhétie and in the septentrional borders of the kingdom ostrogoth, one hardly speaks. They will provide later warriors to Théodebert for its Italian campaigns, but for the moment nobody thinks yet of integrating them in the regnum francorum. The great business, it is Thuringiens whose vast territory extends to the North-East from Alamans. The history, encumbered legends, is difficult to follow. According to Gregoire de Tours, the kingdom would be divided between three brothers whom it names Badericus, Herminefredus (Hermanfred) and Bertharius (Berthaire or Berthier), wire of Bessinus in which we can only recognize the Basin of the franque tradition, auprès whose exiled Childéric would have taken refuge and whose inaccurate wife was going to become the mother of Clovis. Apparently Thuringiens practiced a system of Reichteilung similar to that of the Francs, but the great longevity which one would need attrinuer for Basin chronologically made problem, unless one does not suppose, as do it various authors, a Ier Basin and a Basin II…
What is sure, it is that Hermanfred had as a wife a niece of Théodoric, terrible Amalaberge. If it is necessary to believe Gregoire of it, Hermanfred killed Berthaire, but to come to end from Badericus, it called upon its neighbor of the Thierry West by promising half of its kingdom to him. Victorious, he hastened to forget his promise. Then, the frank king, supported and accompanied by his Clotaire brother, engaged one second countryside. Thuringiens de Hermanfred were completely demolished in the battle and were massacred in mass at the edge of Unstrut, “so that the bed of the river was filled of a cluster of corpses and than the Francs passed on them as on a bridge to gain other bank”.
The king of Thuringiens perishes one does not know too much how, his wife and her children succeeded in escaping and took refuge in Ravenne. In the spoils brought back by Clotaire a very young niece of Hermanfred appeared, girl of Berthaire, that Clotaire married force later before it becomes holy Radegonde.

One undoubtedly should not take the history with the letter too much. She points out the forwarding of Clovis in Burgundy, called by Godégisile for évincer Gondebaud and even Radegonde, future holy, like formerly Clotilde, is raised by the assassin of its father before becoming a franque wife.

The true background of these events must be required in the death of Théodoric occurred into 526 and in the collapse of the ostrogothic power which followed it at once. Prestige, the methodical policy of alliances between cruel people and, if necessary, the military force of Théodoric had contained the franque expansion as of before the death of Clovis. But the dynamism mérovingien, attached in its dash, was not destroyed. The death of the king allowed at once Childebert and Clotaire to complete the conquest of the kingdom burgonde and to annex it, as it allowed them, with the assistance of Théodebert, to take again the hostilities to the Visigoths. It also made it possible Thierry to take again the dream of hegemony on the people of Germanic which was already that of his/her father and which only Carolingians, well later, managed to carry out, one knows at the price of which difficulties.

One will retain of certain that in 531, Thierry annexed Thuringie. It is the end of the kingdom thuringien. For that purpose, it had certainly to make alliance with the Saxon ones. In IXe century, still knew that Thierry was combined with a Saxon chief named Hadugat and that after the victory, the Saxon ones accepted part of the territory thuringien. Overcome would have been established as colonists on their own grounds.

With Xe century, Widukind, the Saxon monk-chronicler who transmitted to us certain traditional accounts of his people, shows the long resonance of these events into Germanic. Made Widukind of Amalaberge, marries of Hermanfred (Irminfridus), a girl of Clovis (Huga). Thierry (Thiadricus) lives in peace with his brother-in-law, but Amalaberge - which still plays the unpleasant part - managed to scramble them via its Iring accomplice who, at his instigation, advises in Hermanfred to return an ambassador of the frank king with an abusive message. Hermanfred thus makes say to his/her brother-in-law who he is only one slave. The war is inevitable. Thierry meets his adversary in a place named Runibergun where the battle lasts three days. Hermenfred has the lower part but manages to escape and is locked up in the town of Scithingi on Unstrut. Thierry is combined then with the Saxon ones - enemies of Thuringiens - who provide him nine thousand soldiers under the orders of nine chiefs. The head office of Scithingi is hard: six thousand Saxon is killed during an exit of besieged, but weakened Hermanfred is all the same constrained to negotiate. Iring, by fine wordss and at ransom price, obtains the peace of Thierry and his council. But the Saxon ones put at the current are outraged of this treason and, trained by the old Hathagatus chief, are thrown on the city which they take by storm. Once more, Hermanfred has only time to flee. New volte-face of Thierry: he reconciles himself with the winners, declares them " friends of Francs" and gives up the conquered grounds to them. He also arrives, with force promises, to buy Iring. This one made leave Hermanfred its hiding-place and the conduit to the camp of Thierry where he assassinates it under the eyes of the frank king. Thierry, reconsidering his word, reproaches him this murder at once. Then Iring, insane of remorse to have made its crime unnecessarily, throws on Thierry himself, plunges his sword in the body to him and covers its corpse of that of Hermanfred, so that this last “triumphed at least in death over the enemy who had overcome it alive”. Then it spawning time a way with blows of sword through the run Francs and disappears. But its memory remained alive, since time of Widukind still, the Milky Way is called the “way of Iring”.

It promised in marriage his Theodebert son to Wisigarde, a girl of the king of Lombards Wacho which played a key role in the creation of a state lombard in Pannonia. In north, it Maria her Thodechilde daughter with the king of Warnes Herménégisèle.

Thierry and Auvergne

In Auvergne, Thierry ran up against the Aquitanian irredentism or, at least, the illusory desire of independence of part of the aristocracy gallo-romaine.
The business started with a episcopal takeover by force. On a date difficult to determine, a counter-offensive gothe had taken again at least the cities of Rodez and Albi. Gregoire de Tours tells us the mishaps of the bishop Quintien, African exiled as a Gaulle because of the Vandales and who had become bishop of Rodez. Driven out its city by the party pro-Visigoth, it took refuge with Clermont whose bishop appears to be set up by the combined Burgondes of Thierry. With died of Euphraise into 515, the clergy elected it for its successor, but a plot warped, according to Gregoire, by the women of the family Apollinaire reversed it and installed in its place the former count, wire of Sidoine Apollinaire, which, a few years earlier, had joined with Alaric and had remained to him faithful to the point to take along a quota auvergnat to be made massacre with the battle of Vouillé. Appollinaire, isolated of the capacity, counted obviously on the return of the Visigoths.
It was undoubtedly the occasion of a first intervention of Thierry, impossible to date. It does not appear to have been too brutal. At this point in time it took along in Austrasie a group of Gallo-Roman hostages of which it especially thought of making the faithful ones and to use them for the restoration of its kingdom. For the remainder, it was satisfied to restore Quintien, Apollinaire having died a few months after its catch of évêché. Auvergne remained under the administration of a count, Hortensius, of Gallo-Roman origin and undoubtedly regarded as a sure man.

The second business was harder. The noise having run that Thierry, guerroyant in Thuringe, had found death there, Arcadius, wire of Apollinaire, urged Childebert to take possession of Auvergne. It is difficult to seize the reasons for Arcadius: did it count on an alliance between Francs and Visigoths or he, any policy with share did not think, that with his immediate material interests? Always it is that Childebert, charmed aubaine, engaged a campaign which, according to Gregoire, turned to the miracle, then with its failure, the head office of Clermont from now on being held by Gallus, “nourished” and faithful of Thierry. One announced his return before the city was not taken and Childebert, not very eager of in découdre with his half-brother, gave up Auvergne to lead a forwarding in Espagne.
On its return, it tried, in.liaison.with Clotaire, to involve Thierry in the war against Burgondes. This one refused. Married to a girl of Sigismond, Thierry appears to be always remained faithful to alliance burgonde of his jeunesse.
But the Francs which depended on him said: “If you refuse to go with your brothers to Burgundy, we leave you and we rather prefer to follow them”. But him, which noted that Auvergnats were inaccurate for him, retorted: “Follow me and I will lead you in a country where you will take as much gold and money which your cupidity can wish; you will carry of them herds, slaves, clothing in abundance. But only do not follow them. ” Quite lighting text on the war leader (Heerkönig) that Thierry remains fundamentally for his, in spite of the political intentions which one can justifiably lend to him. The fidelity of the Francs is fundamentally related to its capacity to lead forwardings rich in butin.
Gregoire has pathetic accents to describe us misfortunes of Auvergne delivered to plundering. All the country was devastated, the principal invested centers and vici : Thiers, Vollore, Chastel-Marlhac and even Brioude, the town of holy Julien. There only remained “the empty ground that the Barbarians could not carry with them”.
Thierry surely sought to preserve the future. He saved Clermont and prohibited to attack which that is in a radius of eight miles around the city; in the same way seems it to have established a zone of seven thousand around Brioude. These protected places - and undoubtedly of others - had to be used as refuges with the populations to escape from the massacres and the captivity. That, undoubtedly, is not enough. Auvergne until had not known a true barbarian invasion there. “From this moment, judges Michel Rouche, it is sure that the Gallo-Roman nobility, followed by a good part of the population, regarded the Francs as enemies”. The mother and aunt d' Arcadius were stopped with Cahors and “were condemned to the exile”; their goods were confiscated. As for Arcadius itself, “the author of this sceleratess”, it managed to take refuge with Bourges - which belonged to Childebert; later, he became bishop of the city and ends even up being honoured under the name of holy Arcade. The count Hortensius was replaced by Sigivald, a relative of the king, with the title of duke.

The death of the king

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