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 chap, xxxviii] OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 121 inhuman brother. Such an outrage might have exasperated the patience of the most peaceful sovereign ; yet the conqueror of Gaul dissembled the injury, released the tribute, and accepted the alliance and military service of the king of Burgundy. Clovis no longer possessed these advantages which had assured the success of the preceding war ; and his rival, instructed by adversity, had found new resources in the affections of his people. The Gauls or Eomans applauded the mild and im- partial laws of Gundobald, which almost raised them to the same level with their conquerors. The bishops were reconciled and flattered by the hopes, which he artfully suggested, of his approaching conversion ; and, though he eluded their accom- plishment to the last moment of his life, his moderation secured the peace, and suspended the ruin, of the kingdom of Burgundy. 47 I am impatient to pursue the final ruin of that kingdom, Final con- which was accomplished under the reign of Sigismond, the Burgundy son of Gundobald. The Catholic Sigismond has acquired the Franks, honours of a saint and martyr ; 48 but the hands of the royal [523] saint were stained with the blood of his innocent son, whom he inhumanly sacrificed to the pride and resentment of a stepmother. He soon discovered his error, and bewailed the irreparable loss. While Sigismond embraced the corpse of the unfortunate youth, he received a severe admonition from one of his attendants : "It is not his situation, king ! it is thine which deserves pity and lamentation ". The reproaches of a guilty conscience were alleviated, however, by his liberal donations to the monastery of Agaunum, or St. Maurice, in captives to the king of the Visigoths, who settled them in the territory of Toulouse. [For the Burgundian war we have, besides Gregory, who represents the Frank point of view, Marius of Aventioum, who represents the Burgundian point of view. Both used Burgundian annals : see Kurth, in the Revue des Questions historiques, Jan. 1890, 397 sqq. The Chronicle of Marius supplies the date and the main facts ; in Gregory's story there is a legendary element. See Kurth, Histoire poetique des Merovingiens, 253 sqq.] 47 In this Burgundian war I have followed Gregory of Tours (1. ii. c. 32, 33, in torn. ii. p. 178, 179), whose narrative appears so incompatible with that of Proeopius (de Bell. Goth. 1. i. c. 12, in torn. ii. p. 31, 32), that some critics have supposed two different wars. The Abbe Dubos (Hist. Critique, &c. torn. ii. p. 126-162) has distinctly represented the causes and the events. 48 See his life or legend (in torn. iii. p. 402). A martyr ! how strangely has that word been distorted from its original sense of a common witness. St. Sigismond was remarkable for the cure of fevers. [The Passio Sigismundi is printed in Jahn's Geschichte der Burgundionen, vol. 2, 504 sqq., and in Scr. rer. Meroving. (M.G.H.), ii. 333 sqq., ed. Erusch (1888).]