CLOVIS (old Ger. Choldwig, i.e., "famous warrior;" modern Ger. Ludwig, Fr. Louis), king of the Franks, was b. 465 A.D., and by the death of his father, Childeric, became king of the Salian Franks, whose capital was Tournay. His first achievement was the overthrow of the Gallo-Romans under Syagrius, near Soissons. He then took possession of the whole country between the Somme and the Loire, and established himself in Sois:ons. In 493, he married Clotilda, daughter of a Burgundian prince. His wifo was a Christian, and earnestly desired the conversion of her Inisband, who, like most of the Franks, was still a heathen. In a great battle with the Alemanni, at Tolbiac, near Cologne, C. was hard pressed, and as a last resource, invoked the god of Clotilda, offer ing to become a Christian, on condition of obtaining a victory. The Alemanni were routed, and on Christmas day of the same year, C. and several thousands of his army were christened by Remigius, bishop of Rheims. Most of the weEtern Christian princes were Arians, but C. was strictly orthodox, and, in consequence, was saluted by pope
Anastasius as the "Most christian king." In 507, love of conquest concurring with zeal for the orthodox faith, C. marched to the s.w. of Gaul against the heretic Visigoth, Alaric 11., whom he defeated and slew at Vongle, near Poitiers, taking possession of the whole country as far as Bordeaux and Toulouse; but was checked at Arles, in 507, by Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths. C. now took up his residence in Paris, where lie died in 511. His great aim was the subjugation of all the Frankish princes, and the union of the whole Frankish people into a single powerful kingdom. The means he employed to secure this end were cruel and unscrupulous, but the end itself would have been very beneficial, if he had not frustrated it at his death by redividing the newly organized realm among his four sous, and exposing it to the very perils from which he himself had rescued it.