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While the king of Ripuaria was warring in Germany, his younger brothers had assaulted Burgundy. In 523 Childebert and Chlodomer attacked the unpopular king Sigismund, the slayer of his own son, as we have elsewhere related.[15] They beat him in battle, took him prisoner, and threw him with his wife and son down a well. |Frankish invasion of Burgundy.| But Gondomar, brother of Sigismund, restored the forture of war in the next year, and routed the Franks at Véséronce, in a battle where Chlodomer was slain (524). Before pursuing the Burgundian war the brothers of the dead man resolved to plunder his realm. The king of Orleans had only left infant children, so Childebert and Chlothar found no difficulty in overrunning his lands on the Loire. The three young boys, to whom the realm should have fallen, were captured and brought before their uncles. Childebert, the ruffian who was of a milder mood, proposed to spare their lives, but Chlothar actually dragged them away while they clung to his brother’s knees, and cut the throats of the two eldest with his own hands. The youngest was snatched up and hidden by a faithful servant, and lived to become a monk, and leave his name to the ‘monastery of Chlodovald’ (St. Cloud).


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