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THE FRANKISH KINGDOMS. 511.

While Ripuaria was given to Theuderich, his brother Chlothar obtained the other old Frankish realm, the ancient territory of the Salian Franks from the Scheldt-mouth to the Somme, together with his father’s first conquests from the Gallo-Romans in the valley of the Aisne. His capital was Soissons, the old stronghold of Syagrius, in the extreme southern angle of his realm. The remaining two brothers, Chlodomer and Childebert, reigned respectively at Orleans and Paris, and ruled the lands on the Seine, Loire, and Garonne which Chlodovech had won from Syagrius and Alaric. Their kingdoms must have been far less strong, because far less thickly settled by the Franks, than those of Theuderich and Chlothar. Chlodomer’s dominion comprised the whole valley of the middle and lower Loire, and Western Aquitaine, including Bordeaux and Toulouse. Childebert had a smaller share—the Seine valley and the coasts of the Channel from the mouth of the Somme westward.

The four brother kings were all worthy sons of their wicked father—daring unscrupulous men of war, destitute of natural affection, cruel, lustful, and treacherous. But they were eminently suited to extend, by the same means that Chlodovech had used, the realms that he had left them. The times, too, were propitious, for during their lives was removed the single bar that hindered the progress of the Franks, the power of the strong Gothic realm that obeyed Theodoric the Great.