The Franks

How did the Franks rise to power in the fragmented Western Roman Empire? Tristan Hughes explores the dramatic story of the Franks, from their early battles against Romans and Burgundians to their consolidation of power under formidable kings like Clovis. Tristan is joined by Dr Ian Wood, Professor Emeritus of early medieval history at the University of Leeds and discovers the mysterious origins of the Franks, thrilling tales of Clovis's campaigns, and explore how they battled Romans, Burgundians, Visigoths and Alemanni to wrestle control over large parts of modern day France. Expect legends, myths and monsters, this is no ordinary kingdom. Presented by Tristan Hughes. The audio editor and producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Theme music from Motion Array, all other music from Epidemic Sounds The Ancients is a History Hit podcast. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tristan Hughes?

  Ever wondered why the Romans were defeated in the Teutoburg Forest? What secrets lie buried in prehistoric Ireland? Or what made Alexander truly great? With a subscription to History Hit, you can explore our ancient past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release every single week, covering everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 0:32Speaker 01

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• 1:04Tristan Hughes?

  This episode is sponsored by Smart Travel, a new podcast from NerdWallet. Now, you know that one friend who always finds the best travel deals, picks the right cards and somehow ends up in first class for the price of coach? Smart Travel is like that friend, but in podcast form. They cover all things travel finance, so you can stop stressing and actually start enjoying your trips. I'm lucky enough to travel a fair bit. You might have heard me talking about being on tour with the Ancients in Australia and New Zealand quite recently. Well, Smart Travel Podcast from NerdWallet was a great help. They dig into which airport lounges are really worth it and which are just an airport gate with better snacks and worse lighting.

• 1:49Tristan Hughes?

  And what actually happens when an airline loses your luggage for 12 days? And how to get real money back instead of a free drink and an apology? Plus, the tip I really needed: how to book flights without it turning into a part-time job? Travel smarter and spend less with help from NerdWallet. Follow Smart Travel wherever you get your podcasts.

• 2:24Tristan Hughes?

  It’s 486 A.D. The Western Roman Empire has completely fragmented. In Gaul, present-day France, the territory is divided up between Visigoths, Burgundians, Bretons, and a Roman rump state known as the Kingdom of Swanson. Ruling this kingdom was a figure called Siagrius. But now, Siagrius’s rule is under threat. His powerful neighbour to the east has brought him to battle. A new rising king on the European stage. His name was Clovis, king of the Franks, and a man who was about to transform Western Europe. It’s The Ancients on History Hit.

• 3:08Tristan Hughes?

  I’m Tristan Hughes, your host, and today we’re covering the story of the Franks, a Germanic people who forged one of the most successful kingdoms in Western Europe, following the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Now, if someone mentions the Franks, you might immediately think of the titanic name that is Charlemagne, and you’d be right. However, he’s a bit too medieval for our liking on the ancients. Forget Charlemagne, think earlier Franks rulers such as Childric and Clovis. This episode will focus on the rise of the Franks under these so-called Merovingian monarchs. We’ll explore how they battled Romans, Burgundians, Visigoths, and Allemans to wrestle

• 3:49Tristan Hughes?

  control over large parts of modern-day France as Rome’s grip over Western Europe faltered. It’s quite the story. Now, our guest today is the esteemed Dr Ian Wood, Professor Emeritus of Early Medieval History at the University of Leeds, and one of the leading experts on the early Franks and their rise to prominence. On my way up north for Christmas a few weeks back, I stopped at Ian’s lovely house to record this interview with him in person. It was a brilliant chat, and Ian’s leading expertise on this field of ancient history really shines through. I hope you enjoy.

• 4:35Tristan Hughes?

  Ian, it is wonderful to have you on the podcast today.

• 4:38Speaker 02

  Thank you for inviting me.

• 4:39Tristan Hughes?

  Well, thank you for inviting me to your house just outside of Leeds. It's wonderful to be up here. And of course, we're talking about the topic that you spent so many years researching, the Franks. Now, big question first of all, of all the barbarian peoples to establish kingdoms following the fall of the Western Roman Empire, could we say that the Franks are the most successful of all of those groups?

• 5:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, but that is simply a matter of they're the most long lasting. If you looked at the picture, shall we say, in 500, the real success story would have been the Ostrogoths, or possibly the Vandals.

• 5:17Tristan Hughes?

  They're in Italy and North Africa.

• 5:19Speaker 02

  They're in Italy and North Africa. The Ostrogoths get wiped out in the period between the 530s and 560s because the Byzantines come and reconquer Italy. The Vandals are wiped out in the 530s for exactly the same reason. So the Franks are lucky that they're not sort of in the direct line of Byzantine reconquest. The Visigoths in Spain suffer a little bit, but again, they're far enough away, not really to be badly hit by the Byzantines, but the coast of Spain is hit. The Franks, who are based way up in the sort of fringes of modern Belgium and north eastern France,

• 6:01Speaker 02

  that's the centre of their power, were just too far away for the Byzantines to really bother about. They're really not attacked by any barbarian group until the Arabs in the period after 7/11.

• 6:18Tristan Hughes?

  Wow. And that's going a bit further than I think we're going to cover today.

• 6:22Speaker 02

  So I mean, they're a lucky group. They're the most successful because they are the best placed for not being hit by other people.

• 6:28Tristan Hughes?

  Now, you've hinted at that geographical area, north western mainland Europe, but the first big question is also, I mean, who were the Franks? What do we know about where they came from?

• 6:38Speaker 02

  It's not easy because they sort of start to emerge in the sources in the late 3rd century, early 4th century. They're not like the Ostrogoths, the Vandals, or any of the Goths, or even like the Anglo Saxons. They do not move. They just appear.

• 6:58Speaker 02

  The first references to the Franks, they appear as maritime people, they're known for water, for swimming and so forth, and they're causing trouble in the Channel. After that, you start to hear Franks and Saxons causing problems in the Channel. You then hear about Saxons and Franks, so the order is reversed. And then the Franks tend to be linked to the south coast of the Channel, not the north coast, they cease to be active in the water after about 300.

• 7:30Tristan Hughes?

  So the south coast of the Channel, so that's modern day northern France, we talk about Normandy, that area.

• 7:34Speaker 02

  Or rather than Normandy, really Picardy and Artois. And I mean, we're really dealing much more with Belgium than we are with France initially.

• 7:45Tristan Hughes?

  Interesting. So Belgium, do we think that's kind of the heart place, that's the central focus of the Franks?

• 7:50Speaker 02

  They're on either side of the Channel, of the river Rhine. Some peoples who in Roman sources are outside the Roman Empire, like the Chatti, the Chatuari, the Sicambri, they're on the far side of the Rhine. They seem to become part of the Franks, though it's very rare that you get a clear statement. I mean, you do have a statement in the early 6th century that Clovis is a member of the Sicambri, so that we can say that the Franks incorporate the Sicambri.

• 8:24Tristan Hughes?

  It's almost a confederation, is that one of the ideas, a Germanic confederation?

• 8:28Speaker 02

  A confederation. And the name, what's it mean? It might mean free people, it might mean fierce people, but it's a confederate name. And in this confederation, obviously there are tribal groups, but it's pretty clear that a whole lot of the Franks, from those Franks who are inside the area of the Roman Empire, are actually sort of people who would have been called Romans or Roman troops, particularly federate troops in the 3rd and 4th centuries. So we can't actually distinguish between the Rhineland troops of Rome and the early Franks.

• 9:09Tristan Hughes?

  Before we delve into their relations with the Western Roman Empire, serving as troops and so on, I must ask, so that's the origins that we believe, you know, with these other Germanic peoples in the area of modern day Belgium? As the Franks become very successful later on, do they also start to apply their own beliefs as to their origins, almost mythical origins too?

• 9:29Speaker 02

  There are mythical origins. They only appear in one or two sources. So, I mean, the famous story basically comes in a source which we know as Fredegar. Fredegar is a name that was associated with a compilation of chronicles which is made around 660. Whether the person who made it was actually called Fredegar, we don't know. But in that, you have a story about the origins of the Franks ruling family. And a princess goes swimming and she has an encounter with a sea monster. And when she comes back on

• 10:07Speaker 02

  land, she has a baby who is called Meravec. This seems to be a legend which is perhaps a joke about the name. The name Meravec might mean sea-born, it might mean sea-cow, but the origin legend seems to be some sort of joke. Whether anybody believed it, we don't know. Fredegar, who tells that story, also tells another story about Childric, who marries a woman called Basina. She had been the queen of the Thuringians, so further east, and she likes the look of Childric, so she goes off and follows him. And, well,

• 10:49Speaker 02

  they get together and he says, "Okay, dear, let's have sex." And she says, "Not now, dear." And this goes on for several days. And then in the end, they do have sex, but she predicts that their offspring will be, first of all, lions and leopards, and then goes on down to dogs. And when you calculate the generations, it works out that the generation of dogs is the generation of Merovingian rulers who are alive at the time that the Fredegar compilation is made. So- Whether this was in any sense a broadly known story, or whether it's just a scurrilous

• 11:32Speaker 02

  tale to say, look, the Maravigen rulers at the moment are no better than dogs, we don't know. So, yeah, there are these legends. We have no idea whether they have any currency outside a handful of sources. You also get a legend that the Franks came from Pannonia, that's the area more or less where the Hungarian Austrian border, they almost certainly don't come from there, but their patron saint, Martin, came from there. So they probably claim to be Pannonians because their patron saint came from there. So the origin legends are really just stories which are making very, very precise points, often political

• 12:17Speaker 02

  points, and we have no idea whether they're broadly known about, whether it's a very small clique of people who are telling them and laughing about them, we just don't know.

• 12:28Tristan Hughes?

  It's interesting, you mentioned, so you had that historian, is it Fred Igar?

• 12:33Speaker 02

  Fred Igar.

• 12:34Tristan Hughes?

  Fred Igar. And it was interesting, having talked to Dr David Gwynne about the Goths earlier this year, he mentioned how the Goths, one of the key sources of information for learning about their early history is their Gothic historian who wrote Jordanes, isn't it, who wrote a lot of that down. Is there any equivalent for the early Franks that we have surviving? I mean, what are our main, are they mainly Roman sources that we have for the early Franks?

• 12:56Speaker 02

  Almost all our sources are Gregory of Tours histories, it's sometimes called History of the Franks.

• 13:05Tristan Hughes?

  And who is he? Who is he?

• 13:06Speaker 02

  Gregory is Bishop of Tours, 560s through to 594. He writes something that he calls either the histories or the Ten Books of Histories. In modern tradition, it's called the History of the Franks. That is not the name he gave it. He does have a lot to say about the Franks because as Bishop of Tours, he's a bishop within the Franks kingdom. And so as he gets to sort of into the sixth century, he mainly concentrates on the Franks. But he is not telling a story about the Franks particularly. He's telling a story about the working out of God's plan, which just happens to end up more or less in the city of Tours.

• 13:47Speaker 02

  Everything before Gregory is really only one-off references in Roman sources.

• 13:54Tristan Hughes?

  I'm saying like the Franks rated here, all their interactions with the Franks.

• 13:59Speaker 02

  So Gregory is the first person who gives us a Franks story, and he doesn't really know very much about them. He has access to two historians, Renatus Prophetorius Frigeritus and Sopisius Alexander, neither of whose works had survived. They seem to have been writing in the mid-fifth century, so a century and a half, a century and a quarter before Gregory. And they clearly mentioned the Franks. So Gregory picks up, he extracts the passages from their histories on the Franks. But basically, they just sort of say the Franks are where we know they are. And then there are one or two references in a writer called Sidonius Apollinaris,

• 14:43Speaker 02

  who is a senator and bishop of Clermont in the 460s. And he mentions the Franks a couple of times, but basically for a story of the Franks, you have to wait until Gregory. Gregory tells us more or less everything we know about Chiloveric, who is the first ruler for whom we have anything certain. He's supposedly the son of Meravec, and we don't really know very much about Chiloveric, except a few wars and we have his tomb.

• 15:12Tristan Hughes?

  We have some interesting archaeology as well.

• 15:14Speaker 02

  We have some very interesting archaeology. The tomb of Chiloveric, which was found in 1653.

• 15:21Tristan Hughes?

  Wow, that's early.

• 15:22Speaker 02

  It's a major discovery by Charles Schifflé, who did an amazing job and who published it. And that's a very interesting tomb. It has a vast hoard of, or it had, not very little of it survives. A lot of it was plundered already at the time of it, was dug up. And then what wasn't originally was part of the Low Countries, so part of the Habsburg treasure, and then it gets to Louis XIV, and it gets into the Cabinet de Medaille, and then in the eighteen thirty, somebody puts a brick through the glass of the Cabinet de Medaille and steals a whole lot of it and melts it down. Though fortunately, a lot of

• 16:03Speaker 02

  it had actually been copied. In fact, we know that there was a copy in gold of the whole treasure made at the time, and we don't know where it is. So somebody may actually one day find this copy. But that was really interesting because it's got some very, very fine, or had some very, very fine jewellery, very fine buckle, a load of Byzantine coins, and then a signet ring. And it was the signet ring which allowed us to say that this was Childric's tomb.

• 16:36Tristan Hughes?

  If you Wikipedia just or just Google in Childric, that's one of the first things that comes up, that image of the ring of Childric. And I think we'll get to that. I mean, to do it chronologically, shall we now go from the earliest stories of the Franks, so you're saying settled near the Rhine, this kind of confederation of Germanic peoples and names that I'd recognised from centuries earlier with Arminius, that the Brooke Terry and so on. So what do we know about the Franks and their relations with the Roman Empire? Before the time of the Western Roman Empires fall, before the time of Childric, what do we know about the relationship between the Franks and the Romans?

• 17:11Speaker 02

  Well, the earliest references, I've already mentioned, are to them as people causing trouble in the channel. And presumably those Franks were Franks who were just to the east of the Rhinemouth. So although most of the Franks that we know about will be to the west of the Rhinemouth, the earliest ones are presumably just to the east of the Rhinemouth, and they're indistinguishable from the Saxons. When you next sort of, when they start to be firmly apparent in the sources, after that, you start to hear about them on the continent and particularly their fighting

• 17:52Speaker 02

  in one or two episodes in the 460s, particularly there's an attack on the Franks, a place called the Vicos Helena, we don't know where it is, which is about 460.

• 18:02Tristan Hughes?

  An attack on the Franks by the Romans?

• 18:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, and the Vicos, this Vicos Helena must be in Artois. This is a battle, but how big it is, we don't know.

• 18:13Tristan Hughes?

  And this is, because that's very late, that's post Attila, Aetius and all of that stuff. So that's very late.

• 18:18Speaker 02

  Yes, I mean, the Franks are not big players at the Battle of the Catalonian Plains. That doesn't mean that they weren't.

• 18:26Tristan Hughes?

  That's Attila's battle against Aetius.

• 18:27Speaker 02

  In the vast Confederacy which is fighting against Attila, there may have been some Franks, but no, I mean, we really don't hear about them except for the Vicos Helena. And then there's one reference to a Frank at Angers. So there are two references really on the Franks being active before we get to Childric.

• 18:53Tristan Hughes?

  Well, let's go to Childric then. This feels like the first major player in the story of the Franks, isn't it? So what's the story with Childric and how he really emerges onto the scene?

• 19:03Speaker 02

  Well, Childric is supposedly the son of Maryvek. He comes to the fore as a warlord. He falls foul of the aristocracy, apparently having sex with too many of the aristocrats' wives.

• 19:21Tristan Hughes?

  Classic tale, yeah.

• 19:22Speaker 02

  It's standard, almost sort of Roman luxuria, a luxurious story. And theoretically, he goes off into exile in Constantinople and then comes back.

• 19:35Speaker 02

  That story is told by Frederick and Frederick says that when he's exiled, he makes an arrangement with a chap called Wehamad, who's a Frank, and they cut a coin in half. And Wehamad says, when you get the other half of the coin and put them together, you can come back. So there seems to be some possibility that he really was driven out. And the fact of all the Byzantine coins in the tomb suggests that there is very strong Byzantine relations. Some of the objects in the tomb, some of the garnet work, look a little bit like East Germanic materials. So that might go with the fact that he marries a Thuringian.

• 20:21Speaker 02

  But really, we know very, very little about him, apart from the fact that he supposedly sets himself up. He is a rival to a chap called Digidius, who's a Roman general in the Loire Valley. And then when he dies, he is buried in Tournay.

• 20:42Tristan Hughes?

  That's interesting. So there are not many major events or battles that we know of during his reign, but he's still an important figure. But it's interesting that you highlight that Roman general there. So for the context, as the Franks kingdom is there and Childric is there, and it's a strong entity, it feels like at this stage, you know, the Roman, what was Gaul, it is crumbling, it is seems to be being divided up between these various, dare we say, warlords almost, kind of creating their own little kingdoms in what was once Roman Gaul.

• 21:10Speaker 02

  There's an interesting issue here, because at some point, these people, most of whom would have seen themselves as very, very Roman, we would classify as warlords. But the Burgundians, well, the ruler of the Burgundians goes on calling himself Magus de Melitum through until 522. They receive the office of Magus de Melitum from the East Roman Empire. They are straightforward Roman agents. So if you read a modern history book, they will say the kings of the Burgundians. That's not what they saw. They saw something much closer to what we would regard as the British Commonwealth now. You know, just as places in the Commonwealth are going their

• 21:53Speaker 02

  own way, but they they liked Queen Elizabeth, even if they don't necessarily like King Charles. This is a world where people still thought they had Roman office.

• 22:03Tristan Hughes?

  So was that Oduaqua as well, when he toppled the last emperor?

• 22:06Speaker 02

  Oduaqua, and he is exactly the same. He sees himself as a patrician of the Roman Empire. And he governs for the empire. It's not until the empire attacks Oduaqua that he actually starts to claim independence in coinage and stuff. It's exactly the same with the Ostrogoths and with the Vandals. They see themselves as agents of the Roman state until Justinian messes it all up. I mean, it's the Byzantines who destroy the sort of sub-Roman Commonwealth of the West. It's not the barbarians.

• 22:41Tristan Hughes?

  It is interesting, and it too here also Childric, as you say, with that that influence from his time in Byzantine Constantinople too.

• 22:46Speaker 02

  And he's presumably in some sense a Roman general. I mean, we just don't know enough about the transformation of the frontier troops. Because what you have to remember is that after Constantine, the Roman army is divided into the limitarne, who are the frontier troops, the committartenses, who are the crack troops who are moved back from the frontier but who are moved around. Now, when the committartenses get moved to deal with a crisis in Italy above all, the limitarne stay where they are. The same is true, as far as we can see, of the Franks.

• 23:30Speaker 02

  Childric is the chap who is a general, whose main power block must have been people who had once been Roman troops.

• 23:41Tristan Hughes?

  This is so interesting, and we actually mentioned this, the military question next, before we go on to Clovis, right at the start of our chat. Now, if anyone's played Rome Total War when growing up, you'll see the Franks, one of their special units is these axe throwers, and this idea that the axe is this really big weapon for the Franks. But is that actually the case?

• 24:00Speaker 02

  Part of that is because the axe is called in Latin a Franciscus. And so everybody thought that that went with Franks, just as there's a type of sword called a sax. And so everybody thought it went with Saxons. Well, actually, if you look at the distribution of Franciscus and Saxes, they don't simply map onto Franks and Saxons. There are weapon burials, you get Franks being buried with, sometimes with Franciscus, certainly sometimes with Saxes with swords, but above all, they're buried with spears. Your standard barbarian weapon in a grave.

• 24:42Speaker 02

  And of course, that doesn't necessarily tell you how they were fighting, but in a grave will be a spear.

• 24:47Tristan Hughes?

  Spear is a big weapon in Germania, isn't it? Well, let's move on then from Childric. So Childric dies. When abouts are we talking, late 5th century at that time?

• 24:54Speaker 02

  He dies as far as we can see in 481.

• 25:01Tristan Hughes?

  481. And so who is this big figure who succeeds Childric?

• 25:06Speaker 02

  So Childric's son is called Clovis. And for Clovis, we are almost entirely dependent on Gregory of Tours.

• 25:14Tristan Hughes?

  Interesting.

• 25:16Speaker 02

  There are one or two things in Fredegar which add to the picture and make it very much more complicated. And there are one or two things in contemporary writers. There's a bishop called Evitas of Vienne who writes to Clovis. And there is a figure in Ostrogothic Italy, Cassiodorus, who writes to Clovis. But the sources for Clovis are primarily Gregory. Now, that causes a huge problem because Gregory's Clovis is a construct. Because Gregory is a Catholic bishop and because according to Gregory, the Franks do well, basically, because they're the first Catholic people.

• 26:02Speaker 02

  And because Clovis is the first Catholic ruler, Gregory constructs a history of Clovis as a convert who wins all his battles after his conversion.

• 26:15Tristan Hughes?

  Is this almost like, is it Eusebius with Constantine the Great and the idea of him seeing the sign?

• 26:19Speaker 02

  Well, it's a lot more suspect than that.

• 26:21Tristan Hughes?

  Oh, okay.

• 26:22Speaker 02

  I mean, what Gregory does is he gives Clovis a 30-year reign. And he divides that reign up into five-year blocks. So Clovis supposedly comes to the throne in 481. He has his first major victory in 486 against Siagrius, the son of Aegidius, the Roman general. Then supposedly in 501, Clovis defeats the Burgundians. 506, he defeats the Alamani. 511, he dies. That's Gregory's scheme.

• 27:01Speaker 02

  And because he wants all the victories basically to come after Clovis's conversion, he puts the conversion in 496 when Clovis is fighting the Alamani. Now, there's a big problem with that story about Clovis fighting the Alamani because, according to Gregory, this is the great victory over the Alamani. Unfortunately, Cassiodorus provides us with evidence to show that the Franks had a victory over the Alamani in 506, not 496. So what do you do? Do you say there are two victories? Do you say that the first one didn't exist? And what do you do also? Do you shift the baptism late?

• 27:46Speaker 02

  Or do you leave the baptism early? In my view, and I mean, there's big debate about this, the baptism can't be earlier than 508. That doesn't, however, mean that Clovis was converted in 508. Whereas most people who know about Constantine do know that he gets converted a long time before his baptism, which is on his deathbed. Almost all Franks historians assume that Clovis is converted immediately before the baptism. Well, it's probably not the case. And there's an annoying little passage in Fredegar which causes complete havoc, which no historian is prepared to talk about.

• 28:31Speaker 02

  Because Fredegar says that the godfather of Clovis was Alaric II, who happens to be the Arian king of the Visigoths.

• 28:44Tristan Hughes?

  Right, yes, so that's not the Alaric I, the famous one who sacks Rome in 410.

• 28:49Speaker 02

  No, no, no, this is his son who will be killed by Clovis in 507. So if you accept Fredegar, and there are hints in sources that actually Clovis did have an Arian period before his Catholic baptism.

• 29:05Tristan Hughes?

  As Arians, that's another form of Christianity.

• 29:08Speaker 02

  This is the form of Christianity that basically the Goths follow, and then later the Lombards will follow. And the only real distinction is that in the Trinity, where the Orthodox say that the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Ghost are all equal. The Arians say Father is superior to the Son, the Son is superior to the Holy Ghost. And the basic argument is Father is obviously older than the Son. So because we're told that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son, the Holy Ghost must come after the other two. But anyway, basically, that's what the Goths are following. I mean, my view is, yes, it's almost certain that Clovis has an Arian period.

• 29:53Speaker 02

  But Gregory of Tours writes it out of the history because he wants this ideal model that Clovis, and he actually describes Clovis as a new Constantine. Clovis has his experience in battle when he converts, like Constantine converts in the Milvian Bridge, and all the victories follow from that. So basically, Gregory's Clovis is a construct.

• 30:20Speaker 02

  We don't know how much of it's a construct. Is it only the baptism? The only three things in Clovis's reign that we can be sure about outside Gregory is the war against the Burgundians in 500 rather than 501. The victory against the Alamoans in 506, sorry, four things, in 506, which is recorded in Cassiodorus. The victory against the Visigoths in 507, when Clovis defeats Alaric II.

• 30:53Tristan Hughes?

  And they're based in, they're, they're south western France.

• 30:55Speaker 02

  They're south western, they're in Aquitaine.

• 30:57Tristan Hughes?

  Aquitaine, yeah.

• 30:57Speaker 02

  And then the summoning of the Council of Orleans in 511.

• 31:00Tristan Hughes?

  Wow.

• 31:01Speaker 02

  So everything else, we're dependent on Gregory. And then there's a nasty little, one other nasty little thing in the Libra Pontificalis, which says that...

• 31:12Tristan Hughes?

  Is that another source?

• 31:13Speaker 02

  This is the, the history of the popes.

• 31:14Tristan Hughes?

  Right.

• 31:16Speaker 02

  Written at some point after the 530s, I would push it closer to the 560s, but most people would say 530s. There's a nasty little statement that Clovis sent a votive crown to a pope who wasn't pope at the time of Clovis's death.

• 31:38Tristan Hughes?

  Cheeky, right.

• 31:39Speaker 02

  So do we have to move Clovis's death date later? I think not, because that would cause so much internal problem for how you recalibrate the whole of the rest of Franks history. But I mean, basically Clovis is a constructor of Gregory of Tours. And historians have to work with that.

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• 32:52Tristan Hughes?

  Now, I don't think we have time to go through absolutely every battle, and there are quite a few. But let's do the first one, because this is interesting. You mentioned Siagrius and Agomono's Swassons. And this is before we've conversed as well. This is interesting. So what is this early story, pre-conversion, which really kind of sets Clovis on the map, expanding Franks power right at the beginning?

• 33:14Speaker 02

  Okay, so Siagrius is the son of Agedius. Agedius has a very complicated history back in the 460s, 470s. And when Agedius dies, his son Siagrius takes over. Historians attributed Siagrius what they called "a kingdom of Swasso". Well, he's defeated at Swasso by Clovis, according to Gregory, so we can probably link him with Swasso. Whether there's a real kingdom there or not, we don't know. Ed James magnificently debunked the whole issue of the Kingdom of Swasso.

• 33:54Speaker 02

  I mean, we simply do not know how big Siagrius's area is. And that has an impact on the expansion of Clovis. Because if Siagrius has somewhere which is sort of spreads from the Silver Carbonaria, the forest, which runs basically down from Brussels down to Tournay, and Childric is buried in Tournay, which is right on the edge of the Silver Carbonaria. Most people would say that Silver Carbonaria is an early frontier for the Franks. If Siagrius has the land from there all the way over to Brittany, he's got a big kingdom.

• 34:36Speaker 02

  If he's just a warlord in Swasso, he's got a small kingdom.

• 34:43Speaker 02

  And so depending on how big you make Siagrius's power affects how big you make Clovis's early expansion. Because if Clovis beats up somebody who is just in Soissons and sort of the acreage outside, that's no big deal. If he gets everything right the way over to Rennes and Angers, then that is a big deal. And we don't know the answer to that.

• 35:10Tristan Hughes?

  Should we be imagining a kind of a very Roman styled army, you know, with largely spears, fighting against other Roman styled armies at that time? Or do we know what we should be envisaging with these types of clashes?

• 35:22Speaker 02

  That is the big question that military historians refuse to look at. There's a transition going on. There's a transition going on in the sense that, I mean, anybody who knows anything about the Roman army knows it's a standing army, that it's being paid and that, what is it? John Lydus talks about something in the region of 400,000 Roman troops in the whole of the Roman world in the time of Diocletian Constantine. Obviously, that divides into east and west, and obviously it divides into Comitatus and Limita Ne. But anyway, there's a standing army.

• 36:00Speaker 02

  By the 400s, 450s, Valentinium the Third is having problems paying that army. One of the problems with the barbarian settlement, and I mean, I'm one of the people who doesn't think that the barbarians overthrow the Roman Empire, they settle. But one of the troubles with their settlement is they deprive the empire of tax revenue. And once the empire loses tax revenue, it loses the ability to pay troops. So basically speaking, troops are ceasing to be paid. Now, at what moment these magistrimilitum figures are no longer paying their troops?

• 36:45Speaker 02

  We don't know. Does Gondabad, the magistremilitum, among the Gondians, who is there as magistremilitum up to 516, is he paying his troops or not? Is Siagrius paying his troops or not?

• 37:00Speaker 02

  Is Childric paying his troops? Because if he's got some sort of Roman command, he may well be. By the time we get to around 600, which is when we start to have statements about the army in Franks law, legal material, well, it's really 7th century rather than 600. The army is an army of obligation. Now, army of obligation means that any male can be called up. Now, that's led historians to assume that there were vast, great barbarian armies rampaging all over the place. Well, that's problematic.

• 37:43Speaker 02

  By definition, I think in the Bavarian law code, I think an army is 32 men. It's a really small number. It's the same in Anglo-Saxon England. An army is a very, very small group. Now, of course, some armies are bigger than that.

• 38:00Tristan Hughes?

  Yes, I'm not imagining Clovis conquering France with 32 men.

• 38:03Speaker 02

  That's right. No, no. But, but, I mean, we're dealing with a transition. I think Clovis probably still has quite big armies.

• 38:14Speaker 02

  After Clovis, well, one of the things about the period after Clovis's sons is that the Franks don't really have any major campaigns. There's one or two campaigns into Italy, one or two campaigns into Saxony, but they don't have really very much in the way of major campaigns. So they don't need to call an army. Now, there are some Franks civil wars in the 570s and 600s. And Gregory of Tours thinks that these involve lots of people. I think he's telling a whopper, because I think that he, Tours is one of the places that suffers.

• 38:58Speaker 02

  But even in Gregory of Tours, the armies are, and by this time, they're armies of obligation, and they're armies that are summoned according to the city, according to the civitas. So the comes, the secular leader of the city, because basically all these areas are civitatis, city units, which also become dioceses. The comes will call an army when necessary.

• 39:25Speaker 02

  Now, most Merovingian cities are reckoned nowadays to have populations, or at least the urban centres, to have populations between about 10,000 and 20,000. Now, they've got the peripheral area as well. But if you're talking about 10,000, 20,000, how many troops can you actually summon from a city? And usually, in the Merovingian period, when we're hearing about armies being mustered, we're dealing with three or four cities. So I think we're dealing with something which might just hit 1,000. But, you know, you've got to come right the way down from your Roman numbers.

• 40:10Speaker 02

  You can trace this back to the problems of the barbarian settlements. The barbarians are not huge numbers.

• 40:17Tristan Hughes?

  By the time we get to the end of Clovis's reign, so defeating Siagrius, then beating the Alamans, the Visigoths, the Bagundians, how large a territory now is the Franks kingdom?

• 40:29Speaker 02

  Well, at the moment of Clovis's death, it's basically the whole of modern northern France, but not including Brittany. It's Belgium. He doesn't rule over Burgundy, so the Bagundians are still independent, but they are paying some sort of tribute.

• 40:52Tristan Hughes?

  The clients, clients, we always kind of think of it.

• 40:54Speaker 02

  He controls the area of Aquitaine down as far as what is called Septimania. So he doesn't really control the area sort of south of Toulouse.

• 41:06Speaker 02

  But as soon as he dies, the whole of that block collapses.

• 41:11Tristan Hughes?

  Oh goodness, right.

• 41:12Speaker 02

  So when Clovis dies, he leaves four sons. One of them is adult and capable. But he was the son of a, Gregory says, concubine, but Gregory clearly doesn't like Pteric's mother. Gregory likes the mother of the other three sons, who Clovis had probably only married at some point after 500. So those kids, those three kids are less than 10 years old when Clovis dies.

• 41:48Speaker 02

  Now, in any sensible kingdom, Feudric would have taken over the whole of the power block. But Crota Cildis, Clovis's widow, arranges for the kingdom to be divided into four. Now, if you look at any of the standard histories before 1977, they will say that the division of the kingdom was Franks tradition. That's absolute rubbish. There is no evidence for any Frank ever dividing his kingdom before Clovis's death. The likelihood is that Crota Cildis arranges the division to ensure the survival of her three children.

• 42:33Speaker 02

  And the likelihood is that she does it with the Roman aristocracy, because the kingdom is divided into what we call Thail Riker Divided Kingdoms, four of them, and the division was made according to the city units. And Feudric gets the biggest, and the best, and the ancestral one, that is the Eastern Kingdom.

• 42:57Tristan Hughes?

  So that will be Belgium, the Belgium area.

• 42:58Speaker 02

  Belgium, and looking east, and it also means that he's got the area that can expand. The others get Orleans, Paris, and Soissons. They're too weak to control Aquitaine, so the Goths at this moment after 508, the Visigoths are being protected by the Ostrogoths. So Feudric the Great sends an army to protect his nephew, and the Ostrogoths recreate Visigothic Aquitaine. So for the next 30 years, the Franks are actually on the back foot, and you have to

• 43:40Speaker 02

  wait until the 540s before the expansion starts. Well, except in Burgundy in the 530s, but elsewhere the expansion starts in the 540s.

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• 45:08Tristan Hughes?

  I mean, there's still so much more we can talk about. I've only got a couple more questions, but I will ask, because you did mention there, Paris. But is it around this time with the Frank that Paris really starts becoming more significant? Is it already important, or does it become more important later?

• 45:24Speaker 02

  I mean, it's not a really major Roman center. It's not a provincial capital. Julian had been there, the Emperor Julian had been there. So it was a place that had attracted an emperor. And clearly, you know, the île de la Cité, the little island in the middle of the Seine, was an attractive, defensible place and so forth. But basically speaking, Paris isn't one of the great cities. We wouldn't even think that it was great in Clovis's lifetime, because it's not a place that he does anything in his lifetime, but it's where he dies. And it's where his widow, Crota Kildis, has him buried.

• 46:09Speaker 02

  And so Paris becomes one of the capitals of the Merovingians because it's where Clovis had been buried and it's then where two of the great saints of the Franks world are associated, one the legendary martyr Saint Denis, who is up at Saint-Denis, and the other Saint Genevieve, who is buried more or less next to Clovis, just next to the Sorbonne at Ponting.

• 46:44Tristan Hughes?

  Have their tombs been found?

• 46:45Speaker 02

  We know what church it ought to be, but it was pulled down in the revolution. There had been some attempts at the excavation, there was nothing special in the crypt there. After, of course, everything was dispersed in the revolution, but people tried to collect Genevieve and reposition her and she is up there. But it's that that makes Paris special and from then on, Paris will either be a Merovingian royal capital, where there'll be a king there, or sometimes it is a place that if there's, say, three Merovingian kings, they might agree for Paris to be a mutual centre for

• 47:28Speaker 02

  all three of them, so that it is actually sort of outside the standard division.

• 47:33Tristan Hughes?

  You mentioned just a bit earlier how that expansion, it begins again, or there's a bit of difficulty when it's divided up, but then with the Visigoths and everything. But what is the spark that ultimately leads, once again, to the Franks rising to the fore? I know ultimately you get the likes of Charlemagne and it feels like a bit too much history for us to cover today, but what happens as the sixth century progresses and you really get the kind of this zenith of the Merovingians?

• 47:57Speaker 02

  First of all, Feuderic, the eldest son of Clovis, he's very competent, he has an even more competent son, Feudebert, and he has a competent son, Feudibald, and they are very, very successful.

• 48:11Tristan Hughes?

  What a trio, by the way, Feuderic, Feudebert, Feudibald.

• 48:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're very successful and they have some major entries actually even into Italy, they actually controlled Venice for a while.

• 48:22Tristan Hughes?

  Oh, wow.

• 48:23Speaker 02

  So they're successful in the east. Of the other three sons of Clovis, one of them, Clodma, is killed in battle against the Burgundians. But the other two last long enough to start being highly competent and they start the expansion again once you get into the 540s. So in a sense, in terms of the uninterrupted expansion, it's Clovis's sons and particularly the younger sons, it's the ones you have to wait until they come of age, which means the 540s and not the 510s or 520s.

• 49:02Tristan Hughes?

  I must admit, as a Joe Blogs, looking at this from the outside, if someone had mentioned the Franks, my mind might immediately go to that very much medieval period, and that is probably correct, but then names like Charlemagne and the Carolingians. But we haven't even reached Charlemagne at the moment and learning more about figures like Childric and Clovis and that immediate aftermath of the Roman Empire in the West, but also their involvement with those other people, those successors of the Romans. It's really interesting. This is a fascinating period and the story of almost like the rise of the Franks, the early Franks, the figures like the Merovingians, it's a fascinating story, the literature, knowing the biases for the literary sources that we have surviving, and this incredible archaeology that we have surviving too. What an area to study.

• 49:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, let me just sort of throw a spanner in the works just to end, so to speak. And even more important than that is what happens in the church. In my reading, the church is basically established not in the fourth century, even in the early fifth, it's the late sixth and seventh. And in Western Europe, the church gets massive amounts of land and that, by my estimate, is about a third of the land of Western Europe. And kings weren't bothered about it and they weren't bothered about the church actually having to pay taxes because they're not fighting and they're not having to pay troops.

• 50:30Speaker 02

  Changes when Islam comes in, they suddenly have to find ways of creating troops, but the church gets all this land. And what you essentially get in the

• 50:41Speaker 02

  Late 6th, early 7th century is the mirror image of what happens in the Renaissance and Reformation. The disestablishment of the Church of the 16th century is exactly the reverse of the landed establishment of the Church of the 6th and 7th centuries. And so if you're thinking about what makes Europe, it's actually the establishment of the Church in the late 6th and 7th centuries, rather than the barbarians.

• 51:08Tristan Hughes?

  And other Franks monarchs, are they key in that creation?

• 51:12Speaker 02

  They're allowing it. They're perfectly happy with it. Because they're not fighting anybody. Then they occasionally fight each other. They're not having any problem about it. And so when you get to the Carolindians look back and say, oh, the Merovingians are all weedy and so forth. Well, yeah, they could afford to be weedy because until the forces of Islam crossed the Pyrenees, there was nobody to fight. And so they can afford to be a holy dynasty which backs holiness.

• 51:43Tristan Hughes?

  So much to talk about. You've given us a fascinating introduction, overview of the Franks and how they emerge onto the stage with figures like Childric, Clovis and his many sons. This has been fantastic. You have in front of you a couple of your books that you've written on the topic. I feel it would be amiss if we don't mention them. So what are these two books we have here?

• 52:02Speaker 02

  Okay, I wrote The Merovingian Kingdoms back 1980s, I think 1984. Oh, no, 1994, sorry. It's sort of probably still the biggest of the books in English on the Merovingians. One or two good books have come out since, but it was really the sort of first book in English that tried to offer a thorough narrative right the way through the Merovingian period. The other one I've got here is a much more recent, it's a teeny little book. It's called The Transformation of the Roman West. It's 2018. And it's really the book which sets out the whole issue of the endowment of the church.

• 52:44Speaker 02

  And it goes through all the statistics and how we know that the scale of church and nation. And also goes through the statistics for the Roman army and the barbarians and so forth.

• 52:56Tristan Hughes?

  Well, there must have books for anyone wanting to learn more about, you know, post-Western Roman Empire, the Franks, the Merovingian kingdoms and so on. Ian, this has been absolutely brilliant chat. Once again, thank you so much for inviting me here to your living room in your house. And it just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today.

• 53:11Speaker 02

  Pleasure. Cheers.

• 53:17Tristan Hughes?

  Well, there you go. There was the esteemed Professor Ian Wood talking through the rise of the Franks under monarchs like Childric and Clovis, and how they forged that great kingdom in what is modern day France. I hope you enjoy today's episode. Thank you for listening. Please follow The Ancients on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favour. And don't forget, you can also listen to us and all of History Hit's podcasts ad free and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you subscribe at historyhit.com/subscribe. That's enough from me and I'll see you in the next episode.