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History of the Franks

St Gregory of Tours, tr. Dalton, 1927

Book 5, Prologue

My heart is mournful as I recount the divers civil wars which so grievously wear down the race and the dominion of the Franks. Herein, worst sign of all, we seem even now to perceive the time begin which the Lord foretold as the beginning of sorrows: ‘The father shall rise up against the son, and the son against the father; brother shall rise up against brother, and kinsman against kinsman.’¹ Yet the examples of former kings should have affrighted them, who, through their divisions, were slain by their enemies. How oft fell the city of cities and great head of all the world² through her civil wars; but when these ended, she arose once more as out of the ground! Would that you, O kings, were practised in such wars as those in which your fathers toiled in the sweat of their brows, that so the peoples, in awe of your unity, might be subjected by your might! Remember all that Clovis did, the beginner of your victories, who slew enemy kings, shattered the dangerous outland nations, and subdued the races of Gaul, over whom he handed down to you a dominion whole and unimpaired. And when he accomplished this, he had neither silver nor gold, such as ye now have in your treasuries. What deeds are yours, what desires? Wherein have you not abundance? For in your houses too much abound things of delight, your store-houses are overfilled with corn, wine, and oil; in your treasuries gold and silver are heaped in piles. But one thing lacks: because you keep not peace you have not the grace of God. Wherefore does each one of you despoil his brethren of their own? Wherefore does the brother lust after the brother’s goods? Listen, I beseech you, to the warning of the apostle: ‘But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another.’³ Search diligently that which was written by the ancients, and you shall see what issue comes of civil wars. Seek that which Orosius writes of the Carthaginians, when he records the ruin of their city and all their land after flourishing seven hundred years; he adds these words: ‘What preserved their State so long? Concord. What destroyed it after all that time? Discord.’⁴ Beware of discord, beware of civil wars that crush both yourselves and your people. To what else can you look but this, that when your armies are fallen, you be left without succour and straightway fall in ruin, overborne by hostile nations. If thou, O king, hast delight in civil war, practise that war which, according to the apostle, is waged in the heart of every man, that the Spirit may strive against the flesh,⁵ that vices may yield before virtues, and thou thyself, as one set free, mayst serve thy head, which is Christ, even thou who once in thy chains didst serve the root of all evil.

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