CLOVIS, king of the Franks: b. about 465; d. Paris, 27 Nov. 511. He succeeded his father, Childeric, in the year 481, as chief of the warlike tribe of Salian Franks. He united with Ragnacaire, Icing of Cambray, declared war upon Syagrius, the Roman governor at Soissons, and utterly routed the Romans near Soissons, in 486. Soissons was then made the capital of the new kingdom of the Salian Franks. Clovis married Clotilda of Burgundy (q.v.), who had been educated in the Christian faith and was desirous that her husband also should become a Christian. When he was hard pressed in a battle against the Alemanni at Tolbiac in 496, Clovis called on the God of ClotiIda and the Christians. Consequently, when the victory was won, and territory of the Alemanni submitted to him, he was solemnly baptized at Ftheims, 25 Dec. 496, with several thousand Franks, men and women. Hostilities soon broke out between Alaric, king of the Visigoths, and Clovis. In the battle fought at Vougle: near Poitiers, the latter gained a com plete victory, slaying his enemy with his own hand. After this victory Clovis received the
honor of the consulship from the Emperor Anastasius. In the last year of his reign Clovis had called a council at Orleans, from which are dated the peculiar privileges claimed by the kings of France in opposition to the Pope. His plans for a unified Frankish kingdom, for which he labored unscrupulously all his life, were frustrated in his own last testament, which divided the newly organized realin among his four sons. Consult Gregory of Tours, 'His toria Francorum> (Bk. II, ed. by Arndt for the 'Monumenta Germanim Historica,) Hanover 1885); Junghaus, ‘Geschichte der frankischen Kiinige Childerich und Chlodwig' (GOttingen 1857) ; Schultze, 'Deutsche Geschichte von der Urzeit bis zu den Karolingen0 (Vol. II, Stutt gart 1896); Kurth, 'Clovis' (2d ed., Paris 1901).