two murderers, hired by queen Fredegundis, came before him with a pretended message, and stabbed him while he listened to their words (575).

The death of Sigibert changed the whole aspect of affairs in Gaul, and raised his assassin from the depth of despair to the height of fortune. The Austrasian army dispersed when its commander was slain, and the Neustrian counts flocked to Tournay to do homage again to Chilperich. Queen Brunhildis, who lay at Paris with Sigibert's infant son and heir Childebert, was seized and imprisoned by the partisans of the Neustrian king. Her little four-year-old son only escaped from his uncle's clutches by being let down in a basket from his mother's prison window, and received by a faithful adherent, who rode away with him to Metz. If Chilperich had laid hands on the boy, the Austrasian royal house would have been ended in the promptest way.

The East-Frankish counts and dukes, when the news of Sigibert's death reached them, resolved not to submit to his murderer, but to take a step unheard of heretofore in the annals of the Merovings. When they found that the boy Childebert had escaped, they bound his father's diadem about his brows, and saluted him as king. Hitherto the Franks had always lived under the strong hands of a grown man, and the provincial governors had been as powerless as the meaner people under the autocratic sway of the ruler; but in the long minority that would follow the accession of a four-year-old child, they found their opportunity for lowering the royal power, and dividing many of its privileges among themselves. From this point begins the degradation of the kingly office, which was to be the rule henceforth among them; and the counts and dukes, as well as the great officers of the palace, were destined to acquire, in the early years of Childebert, a control over the central power which they had never hitherto possessed.

Meanwhile the fate of the little king's mother, Brunhildis,

had been a strange one. Chilperich had seized her treasures, and thrown her into prison at Rouen. There she caught the eye of Merovech, her captor's eldest surviving son,1 who was charged by his father with the command of an Adventures of army destined to attack the Austrasian king's Brunhildis. dominions beyond the Loire. Merovech was so infatuated by the beauty of the captive queen that, braving his father's displeasure, he delivered her from her dungeon, and induced Praetextatus, bishop of Rouen, to marry them in his cathedral. King Chilperich immediately flew to Rouen in great wrath, and at his approach the newly-married pair took sanctuary under the bishop's protection. After some hesitation the king of Neustria promised to spare their lives, but, when hist son surrendered himself, he took him away to Soissons, and shortly afterwards tonsured him, and compelled him to become a monk. Brunhildis escaped to Austrasia, whither her husband strove to follow her. He fled from his monastery, and had almost reached the frontier, when the emissaries of his stepmother, Fredegundis, caught him, and murdered him (577).

In Austrasia there now commenced a struggle between the liberated queen-mother and the great officers of state, for the guardianship of the little six-year-old king. The struggle was an obstinate one; for if the Frankish nobles were hampered by the autocratic traditions of the kingship, Brunhildis, on the other hand, was a foreigner, and met with little support save among the Gallo-Roman clergy and officials, who found some protection, under the shield of the king, from the arrogance and violence of their Frankish fellow-subjects. In Neustria or Aquitaine, where the Roman elements were stronger, Brunhildis might have done more, but her lot was cast in Austrasia, where the Germans were entirely preponderant.

1 Theudebert, the eldest, had fallen in battle in the preceding year.

To protect the young Childebert against the attacks of Chilperich, his mother allied herself with the boy's uncle, Guntram, king of Burgundy. Guntram, who had no children of his own, designated Childebert heir to all his dominions, and took up his cause with vigour. But he was not a very warlike prince, and it was as much as he could do to protect his own realm against the active and ruthless king of Neustria. Though Burgundy and Austrasia were allied, Chilperich succeeded in conquering their united armies, under the Burgundian general, Mummolus, and seizing Tours, Poictiers, and all the north of Aquitaine. He would probably have carried his arms further if internal troubles had not arisen to check him. The Bretons of Armorica burst into rebellion, and had to be put down, and other risings were excited by his ruthless and excessive taxation. But his worst vexations were those of his own household, caused by the strife of his elder sons with Atrocities of their stepmother, Fredegundis. All through these Fredegundis. years the wicked queen had been fearfully active. Theudebert and Merovech, the eldest of her husband's family, were dead, but their brother, Chlodovech, still stood between Fredegundis' children and the throne. In 580 the plague swept all over Gaul, and two sons of Fredegundis' were carried off by it. She accused their step-brother of having caused their death by witchcraft, and got her husband to permit her to execute him. But when her last child died, two years later, the wretched woman's rage and grief led her into the wildest outbursts of cruelty. She accused numbers of persons about the court of magic arts practised against her boy, and burnt them alive, or broke them on the wheel. Many other acts of murder and treachery are attributed to her, notably the death of Praetextatus, bishop of Rouen, whom she detested for the part he had taken in the marriage of Merovech and Brunhildis, and her crimes fill many a page in the gloomy annals of Gregory of Tours. A legend tells how two holy bishops once stood before the gate of the palace at Soissons. 'What seest thou over this house?' said one. 'I see nothing but the red