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BrunhildaHer name has many forms, Brunhilda is the German form, it also happens to be the most common in English. In French, she is Brunehaut. She is also called Brunilda, Brunichildis, Brunechildis, Brunichild, Brunechilde, Brunichilda, Brunhild, Brunhilde, Brünnhilde, Brünhild, Brynhild, or Brynhildr. (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2004). (circa 543 – 613) was a Frankish queen who ruled the eastern kingdoms of Austrasia and Burgundy in the names of her sons and grandsons. Initially known as a liberal ruler of great political acumen, she became notorious for her cruelty and avarice.

Life

First marriage

Sigebert's father, Clotaire I, had reunited the four kingdoms of the Franks, but when he died, Sigebert and his three brothers divided them again. According to Gregory of Tours, Sigebert's marriage to a Visigothic princess was a criticism of his brothers' choices in wives. Instead of marrying low-born and promiscuous women, Sigebert contracted a princess of education and morals.

In response to Sigebert's noble marriage, his brother King Chilperic of Soissons sent to Spain for Brunhilda's sister, Galswintha. Gregory of Tours suggests that he proposed because he envied his brother's marriage to Brunhilda.Gregory, IV.28. However, Galswintha ordered him to purge his court of prostitutes and mistresses and he soon grew tired of her. He and his favourite mistress, one Fredegund, conspired to murder her within the year. He then married Fredegund. Brunhilda so detested Fredegund for the death of her sister—and this hatred was so fiercely reciprocated—that the two queens persuaded their husbands to go to war.Gregory IV.47 Sigebert persuaded their other brother, the elder Guntram of Burgundy, to mediate the dispute between the queens. He decided that Galswintha's dower of Bordeaux, Limoges, Cahors, Béarn, and Bigorre should be turned over to Brunhilda in restitution. However, Chilperic did not easily give up the cities and Brunhilda did not forget the murder. Germanus, Bishop of Paris, negotiated a brief peace between them. Between 567 and 570, Brunhilda bore Sigebert three children: Ingund, Chlodosind, and Childebert.

The peace was then broken by Chilperic, who invaded the Sigebert's dominions. Sigebert defeated Chilperic, who fled to Tournai. The people of Paris hailed Sigebert as a conqueror when he went there with Brunhilda and their children. Germanus wrote to Brunhilda, asking her to persuade her husband to restore the peace and to spare his brother. Chroniclers of Germanus' life say that she ignored this; certainly Sigebert set out to besiege Tournai. Fredegund responded to this threat to her husband by hiring two assassins, who killed Sigebert at Vitry with poisoned daggers (scramasaxi, according to Gregory). Brunhilda was captured and imprisoned at Rouen.

Second marriage

In an effort to nullify the marriage, Chilperic had Merovech tonsured and sent to the monastery of Le Mans to become a priest. Merovech fled to the sanctuary of St Martin at Tours, the church of Gregory (who is thus an eyewitness to these events),Gregory V.14 and later Champagne. He finally returned to Tours in 578, where his father found him and killed him.Gregory V.18

First regency

Brunhilda ruled Austrasia until Childebert came of age in 583, at the traditional Merovingian majority of thirteen.

Relations with King Guntram

Many of the dukes opposed strongly her influence over her son the kings. Three of them—Rauching, Ursio, and Berthefrid—conspired to assassinate Childebert, however, their plot was found out. Rauching was killed and Ursio and Berthefrid fled to a fortress. Upon this, Guntram immediately begged for Childebert, Brunhilda, and Childebert's new sons to take refuge at his court. This they did and soon Ursio and Berthefrid were killed. In 587, Guntram, Childebert, and Brunhild settled the Pact of AndelotGregory IX.20 securing for Childebert the Burgundian succession and a continuing alliance of the two realms for the rest of Guntram's life.

In that same year, King Reccared I of the Visigoths sent embassies to both Childebert and Guntram, the former accepting them and consolidating an alliance and the latter refusing to see them for some reason or another. Thus, when Brunhilda and Childebert negotiated a marriage for the king's sister Chlodosind with the king of Spain, it was rejected by Guntram and abandoned. In 592, Guntram died and Childeberte, as per the treaty, succeeded to his kingdom, immediately making war on Clotaire of Neustria.

Second regency

In 599, her eldest grandson, Theudebert, at whose court she was staying, exiled her. She was found wandering near Arcis in Champagne by a peasant, who brought her to her Theuderic. The peasant was rewarded with the bishopric of Auxerre. Theuderic welcomed her and readily fell under her influence, which was inclined to vengeful war with Theudebert at the time. Soon the brothers were at war.

It is at this point that Brunhilda begins to display that ruthlessness which led to her especially violent demise. Brunhilda first took to herself Protadius as lover and, desiring to promote him to high office, conspired to have Berthoald, the mayor of the palace, killed. In 604, she convinced Theuderic to send Berthoald to inspect the royal villae along the Seine. Clotaire, probably alerted by men of Brunhilda's bidding, sent his own mayor Landric (ironically, a former paramour of Fredegund) to meet Berthoald, who had only a small contingent of men with him. Realising that he had been the victim of courtly plotting, Berthoald, in the ensuing confrontation, overchased the enemy till he was surrounded and killed. Protadius was promptly put in his place.

Brunhilda and Protadius soon persuaded Theuderic to return to war with Theudebert, but the mayor was murdered by his warriors, who did not wish to fight to assuage to ego of queen. The man who ordered Protadius' execution, Duke Uncelen, was soon arrested by Brunhilda and tortured and executed. He was not the first ducal victim of the queen's revenges.

It was also during these later regencies that Desiderius, Bishop of Vienne (later Saint Didier) publicly accused her of incest and cruelty. Desiderius finally enraged her with a pointed sermon on chastity preached in 612 before her and Theuderic, with whom she hired three assassins to murder him at the village now called Saint-Didier-sur-Chalaronne.

In that year, at the battle of Tolbiac, Theuderic defeated and captured Theudebert, whom the queen was now claiming was in fact the son of a cobbler, and brought him and his royal paraphernalia to his Brunhilda, who had him put up in a monastery. She probably had him murdered (along with his son Merovech) to allow Theuderic to succeed to both thrones unhindered. This he did and died of dysentery in his Austrasian capital of Metz in late 613.

Third regency

But Warnachar and Rado, mayor of the palace of Burgundy, along with Pepin of Landen and Saint Arnulf, bishop of Metz, abandoned the cause of Brunhilda and the young king and joined with Clotaire, promising not to rise in defence of the queen-regent and recognising Clotaire as rightful regent and guardian of Sigebert. Brunhilda, with Sigebert, met Clotaire's army on the Aisne, but the dukes yet again betrayed her: the Patrician Aletheus, Duke Rocco, and Duke Sigvald deserted her and she and her king had to flee. As far as the Orbe they got, hoping to enlist the aid of certain German tirbes, but Clotaire's minions caught up with them by the lake Neuchâtel. The young king and his brother Corbo were killed. Thus ended the long and bloody feud between Austrasia and Neustria, and reuniting the two kingdoms, Clotaire then had the entire realm of the Franks. Clotaire accused Brunhilda of the death of ten kings of the FranksThe identity of the ten kings comes from the Fourth Book of the Chronicle of Fredegar. It is usually said to include Sigebert I, Chilperic I, Theudebert II, Theuderic II, Sigebert II, Merovech (Chilperic's son), Merovech (Theuderic's son), Corbo (Theuderic's son), and Childebert (Theuderic's son) and the sons of Theudebert.and many churchmen, including Desiderius. According to the Liber Historiae Francorum:

"Then the army of the Franks and Burgundians joined into one, all shouted together that death would be most fitting for the very wicked Brunhilda. Then King Clotaire ordered that she be lifted on to a camel and led through the entire army. Then she was tied to the feet of wild horses and torn apart limb from limb. Finally she died. Her final grave was the fire. Her bones were burnt."

Religion

Brunhilda was buried in the Abbaye de St. Martin at Autun that she founded in 602 on the spot where the bishop of Tours had cut down a beech-tree that served as an object of pagan worship. The abbey was destroyed in 1793 and Brunhilda's sarcophagus is now in the Musée Lapidaire in Avignon.

Brunhilda commissioned the building of several churches and the abbey of St. Vincent at Laon (founded in 580). She is also credited with founding the castle of Bruniquel and having a Roman road resurfaced near Alligny-en-Morvan (where the name of a nearby hill Terreau Bruneau is believed to be derived from hers). The part of Mauves-sur-Loire known as la Fontaine Bruneau is named after Brunehaut who may have cooled herself with the fountain's water when she suffered heat exhaustion.

In legend

Notes