Childeric I

Childeric I (died about 481/482 AD) was a 5th-century Frankish ruler in what is now northern France, during the period when this part of Roman Gaul became permanently disconnected from the central Roman government (in 461), and the last emperor based in Italy was dethroned (in 476). He is the ancestor of the early medieval Merovingian dynasty, and father of Clovis I, who would go on to acquire effective control over all or most of the small Frankish kingdoms of the time, and unite a significant part of Gaul under Frankish rule.

Childeric was described as a king , both on his Roman-style seal ring, which was buried with him in Tournai, and in fragmentary later records of his life, but scholars have different interpretation of the term in northern Gaul in this period. He and the Frankish forces loyal to him seem to have coordinated with the Roman forces during a period when Roman chains of command were no longer stable. According to a common, but not universally accepted interpretation of a letter written by Saint Remigius, Childeric, or at least one or more of the relatives of Clovis, even held an official position within a Roman-style administration in northern Gaul. The family background of Childeric is uncertain but he was reputed to be a descendant of Chlodio, and as a leader of Frankish troops based within the Roman emperor he may, like several Gaulish military leaders in his generation, have served when younger under the powerful Roman military leader and statesman Aëtius, who died in 454. His burial site, which has been discovered in Tournai in Belgium, contained a wide range of artefacts signifying Roman-style authority.

The only definitely near-contemporary source to mention him is the 6th-century History of the Franks of Gregory of Tours, which mentions him twice, once concerning a legend about him spending time in exile, and once in a compressed account of conflicts mainly near the river Loire, which at the time represented a zone of confrontation against the expanding power of the Visigoths in what is now southwestern France. Both of these passages associate Childeric with the Gallo-Roman general Aegidius. Two later works which drew upon Gregory also mention Childeric, the Chronicle of Fredegar, and the Liber Historiae Francorum. They are considered less reliable overall for this period, and many scholars believe they misunderstood Gregory by making Childeric and Aegidius competitors or enemies. However they added information which may reflect other sources which the authors had available. Another brief mention of Childeric which may derive from near-contemporary material is the medieval biography of Saint Genevieve of Paris, the Vita Genovefae. It mentions that Childeric had a great love for the saint, and it portrays him as someone who held military control of the countryside around the Paris region.

Ancestry and background Golden bee or fly jewellery from the tomb of Childeric I in Tournai. Drawn by Jacob van Werden and engraved by Cornelis Galle the Younger Gregory of Tours, whose 6th-century History of the Franks is one of the only near-contemporary sources to mention Childeric, names the father of Childeric as Merovech. The Merovingian dynasty was named after Merovech but no information about his life has survived. Gregory mentioned that some people in his time said that Merovech was descended from Chlodio, who took control of some Roman populated areas including Cambrai in the early 5th century.

Later medieval sources do not always agree about Childeric's ancestry, including the name of his father. In modern times it has been suggested for example that Childeric descended from Merovech on his mother's side. The Fredegar chronicle (III.10) says that Merovech was born after a sea beast attacked the wife of Chlodio while she was swimming, making it uncertain whether Chlodio or the monster was the father.

It is possible that Childeric is the young Frankish prince who Priscus Panites mentioned as visiting Rome as an ambassador to Rome in the period leading up to the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains in 451. Priscus described the prince as just beginning to grow a beard, and as having fair hair flowing over his shoulders. The prince was involved in an inheritance dispute which Attila used as an excuse to invade Gaul. The older brother was supported by Attila, while the younger brother was supported by Rome and even adopted by Aetius, the Roman military leader who defeated Attila in the battle. There were however several Frankish kingdoms at the time, so this is not considered certain.

The Liber Historiae Francorum claims that Childeric ruled 24 years, implying based on normal assumptions about his death date in about 481, that he began his reign in the late 450s. However the accuracy of this source for such information is doubted by scholars.

Connection to Roman military Although there are very few records of Childeric, several associate him with his contemporary, the Gallo-Roman noble Aegidius, who was assigned as Roman military commander for Gaul around 457, when Majorian replaced Avitus as emperor.

Childeric's grave also shows the insignia of a Roman military commander.

Further back in time, some historians such as Guy Halsall have speculated that Childeric was probably old enough to have begun a Roman military career in the service of Flavius Aetius (d. 434), who defeated Attila in Gaul in 451. Halsall notes that Childeric's military career appears to have played out far from the Frankish homelands, in areas where he was fighting for Roman interests.

Aetius died in 454, and was himself strongly associated with the Huns of Attila (died 453) both as an ally, and later as an enemy who he defeated in Gaul in 451 at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains. Among those who served under Aëtius were the Gallo-Roman emperors Avitus and Majorian, the king-maker Ricimer who had Majorian enthroned in 457, and Aegidius himself, who rejected the legitimacy of the new emperor in Rome after the murder of Majorian by Ricimer in 461—effectively separating northern Gaul from Italian control.

Exile legend The first and by far the largest of the two parts of Childeric's life which Gregory (II.12) reports is the story of his exile and marriage. He says that as king he was excessively wanton and began to dishonour the daughters of his fellow Franks. They ejected him from his position and wanted to kill him, and so he escaped to "Thuringia" (a term which sometimes seems to represent the Tongeren region in this part of Gregory's work). He left an ally among the Franks to try to calm them and prepare the situation for his return. He and his friend agreed that he would receive a secret signal when the time was right, and Childeric went to stay with king Basinus and his wife, Basina. According to Gregory, it was eight years before Childeric received this signal to return. When he left Thuringia, Basina left her husband to come with Childeric. Gregory narrates: "I know your worth," said she, "and that you are very strong, and therefore I have come to Hve with you. For let me tell you that if I had known of anyone more worthy than you in parts beyond the sea I should certainly have sought to live with him." In those days the Franks captured the city of Agrippina on the Rhine, and they called it Cologne, as though coloni inhabited it. They killed many of the Romans belonging to Aegidius’s party there. Aegidius himself escaped by fleeing. They then came to the city of Trier on the river Moselle, devastating those lands, and captured the city after setting it on fire. After these events Aegidius, king of the Romans, died.

In fact there are no clear source which give an exact date for the Frankish takeover of Cologne and Trier.

The Battle(s) of Orleans (probably about 463)

In a passage normally considered to have come from a lost collection of annals, Gregory (II.18-19) gave a sequence of events which are very difficult to interpret. Modern scholars consider it to be "only loosely connected to together, and ambiguous in terms of chronology and cause and effect".

In the first part, Childeric is said to have been in battle at Orleans. This is generally equated to the Battle of Orléans (463), which other sources (Hydatius, Marius of Avranches, and the Gallic Chronicle of 511) all report as a battle where Frederic, the brother of the Visigothic king Theoderic II, was killed fighting Aegidius and the Franks, although none of these sources mention Childeric. It then lists several other events including the death of Aegidius which is known from other sources to have happened about 465. The passage begins as follows:

Mortuus est autem Egidius et reliquit filium Syagrium nomine. Quo defuncto, Adovacrius de Andecavo vel aliis locis obsedes accepit. After his [Aegidius'] death, Adovacrius received hostages from Angers and from other places.

This battle of Orleans was part of the Gothic war against Aegidius, in which the Visigoths are believed to have attacked Aegidius in northern Gaul as allies of the Roman king-maker Ricimer and his puppet emperor Libius Severus, who granted the Visigoths the coastal region of Narbonne. The other sources report what appears to be the same conflict as follows: The Gallic Chronicle of 511 says that Frederic died near the Loire, and specifies that he was fighting Franks. The chronicle of Marius of Avenches specifies that Frederic died in a battle between Aegidius and Franks, near Orleans, between Loire and Loiret. Hydatius reported the death of Frederic in a set of entries under a heading for the year 461, but where the headings for the years 462-464 are not marked. It said that Frederic the brother of King Theoderic, rose up against Aegidius, count of both branches of the military service. Both he and the people with him were killed. This happened in the Armorican region, which in this period was the region between the Loire and Seine. Later in the same series of 461-464 entries by Hydatius one entry notes that "on the thirteenth day before the Kalends of August, a Monday, the sun was seen diminished" which is an eclipse dated to 464. Soon after this an entry says that Aegidius died "some say by ambush or treachery, others that he was deceived by poison. When he was gone, the Goths soon invaded the regions which he had been defending in the Roman name".

MacGeorge has however noted that the "usual reconstruction amalgamates all these notices to create the 'Battle of Orleans', won by Aegidius and Frankish allies, or federates, under Childeric", which is then "adduces as proof of an alliance between Aegidius and Childeric (often extended to Syagrius)". However, she gives several reasons that this amalgamation has been doubted by some scholars.

The passage also twice mentions Adovacrius implying that he led Saxons to the Angers area before the battle in Orleans, and started taking hostages after the death of Aegidius.

Battle near Bourges (probably about 469)

In the next part of the passage, a battle between Goths and Britons is reported near Bourges, which is south of Orleans and the Loire. Childeric is not specifically mentioned, but another leader named Count Paul seems to have been leading Frankish and Romans forces. Déols is near modern Chateauroux, south of Bourges, and both are south of Orleans and would not have been "beyond the Loire".

Although modern scholars tend to interpret the passage to mean that Aegidius, Count Paul and Childeric were leaders on the same side, both the Chronicle of Fredegar and the Liber Historiae Francorum interpreted Gregory to mean that Childeric killed Count Paul, and as historian Edward James has pointed out "there were at least two factions among the Romans, and Paul's Romans were not necessarily Aegidius's Romans, nor, indeed, was Childeric ever necessary an ally of Aegidius".

Battle in Angers (possibly c. 470)

Next in the listing of events given by Gregory is a battle at Angers with the Saxons who had been previously mentioned.

As further evidence James, along with many other historians, has emphasized that that a letter by Saint Remigius to Clovis seems to indicate that his relatives had administered the Roman province of Belgica Secunda which included Tournai, Cambrai, Reims, and Soissons. This reading of the letter has however been questioned. The Latin only says , and Woudhuysen and Barrett translate this as "you have undertaken the waging of another war [or perhaps "a successful war"]; it is not a novelty, for you have been just as your kin always were". There is for example no mention of Belgica in the original, and no explicit mention of Childeric. Halsall has also pointed out that one powerful relative of Clovis who is explicitly mentioned by Gregory of Tours is Ragnachar, who was king of Cambrai until Clovis killed him.

Marriage, children, and death Gregory of Tours, in his History of the Franks, mentions several siblings of Clovis within his narrative, apparently thus children of Childeric: Clovis I (died 511), whose mother was Basina. Audofleda, Queen of the Ostrogoths, wife of Theodoric the Great. Gregory III.31 also mentions their daughter Amalasuntha. Lanthechild. Gregory II.31 mentions she had been an Arian but converted to Catholicism with Clovis. Albofleda (died approximately 500). Gregory II.31 mentions that she died soon after being baptized with Clovis.

Childeric is generally considered to have died in 481 or 482 based on Gregory's report (II.43) that his son Clovis had ruled 30 years when he died about 511.

Tomb Childeric's tomb was discovered in 1653 not far from the 12th-century church of Saint-Brice in Tournai, now in Belgium. Numerous precious objects were found, including jewels of gold and garnet cloisonné, gold coins, a gold bull's head, and a ring with the king's name inscribed. Also present were some 300 golden winged insects (usually viewed as bees or cicadas), which had been placed on the king's cloak.

Origin of Napoleonic bees

When Napoleon was looking for a heraldic symbol to trump the Capetian fleur-de-lys, he settled on Childeric's bees as symbols of the French Empire. The minutes of a meeting of the Conseil d'État held at Saint-Cloud in June 1804 suggest that it approved the symbolism of the bees on a suggestion by Cambacérès. The design was made by Vivant Denon, Director of the Louvre.