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The Sons of Chlodovech—Theuderich conquers Thuringia, 531—Childebert and Chlothar conquer Burgundy, 532—Their war with the Visigoths—Theudebert invades Italy—Chlothar reunites the Frankish kingdoms, 558—Organisation of the Frankish realm—The great officials—Mayors of the Palace—Counts and Dukes—Local government, the Mallus—Legal and financial arrangement.

Chlodovech left four sons: one, Theuderich, borne to him by a Frankish wife in early youth; three, Chlodomer, Childebert, and Chlothar, the offspring of his Burgundian spouse, Chrotechildis. In accordance with the old Teutonic custom of heritage-partition, the four young men divided among themselves their father’s newly-won realms, though the division threatened to wreck the Frankish power in its earliest youth. Theuderich, the eldest son, took the most compact and most Teutonic of the parts of Chlodovech’s realm, the old kingdom of the Ripuarian Franks along the Rhine bank from Köln as far south as Basle, with the new Frankish settlements east of the Rhine in the valley of the Main. |The sons of Chlodovech.| He fixed his residence, however, not at Köln, the old Ripuarian capital, but in the more southerly town of Metz on the Moselle, an ancient Roman city, though one less hitherto famous than its greater neighbour Trier. In addition to Ripuaria Theuderich took a half share of the newly-conquered Aquitaine, its eastern half from Clermont and Limoges to Albi.