The History of France Author:William Grimshaw Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: also the province between the Durance and the Rhone, and Savoy. The Visigoths occupied the rest of the country, from the Loire, to the Alps and Pyrenees. The you... more »ng king Alaric then reigned over the Visigoths ; Gondebald and Gondegesile, over the Burgundians. Italy was in the possession of Theoderic, king of the Ostrogoths ; the Roman Empire, the seat of which was Constantinople, was subject to Anastasius; who, less hostile to the Franks, than to Theoderic, and the other chieftains by whom the empire had been dismembered, was desirous of being at amity with Clovis. The ordinary residence of the Roman general, who had then the charge of Gaul, was Soissons; where, he was attacked by Clovis, and entirely defeated; after which overthrow,-the Roman power, in Gaul, before rapidly declining, was totally extinct. , In the age immediately preceding the irruption of the Franks, learning flourished in Gaul; and this country had as extensive a commerce, as any part of the Roman empire, Italy excepted. Marseilles was the chief emporium of its commerce. The Gauls had long been completely Romanized ; and the Latin was the common language of the nation. .. Clovis being, at this time, a pagan, his marriage with Clotilda, a Christian princess, niece of Gondebald, one of the Burgundian kings, was an event, very gratifying to the Gauls, lately subjected by Clovis; they being themselves of the Christian faith. The Visigoths and Burgundians were Christians of the Arian sect; the Gauls, recently brought under the dominion of Clovis, were of the Roman Catholic persuasion. But the marriage of his niece, to Clovis, was not altogether pleasing, to the Burgundian prince. The ambassador of the former, had not proceeded far, with Clotilda, in her journey towards his kingdom, when, the princess, having...« less