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122 saints carried in front of his troops. He was a fantastical and violent man, of a strange and complex character; and it is no very flagrant calumny when Gregory of Tours calls him the Nero and the Herod of his time. From all these characteristics it can well be imagined that the struggle which he carried on against Brunhild and her son was fierce and merciless.

He wrested from them a number of towns, among them Poitiers and Tours, and it was [thus that Gregory became, to his intense disgust, the subject of this debauched monarch, with whom he was constantly at odds. It may well be supposed that Chilperic had stirred up much wrath and many enmities and it is not surprising that he died by violence. One day as he was returning from Chelles where he had been hunting, a man came close to him and stabbed him twice with a dagger (584). Who his assassin actually was, remained unknown.

While Chilperic succeeded in imposing his authority upon the western Franks in the territories which formed the most recent Frankish conquests — known a little later as Neustria, from the word niust "the newest" — Brunhild made strenuous efforts to preserve intact all the prerogatives of the royal power in the eastern region, Austrasia. Exceedingly ambitious, eager to secure her authority by every possible means, it was she who in the name of her son Childebert II (575-596) actually held the reins of power. The great men of the kingdom threw themselves into an embittered struggle against her. Supported by Chilperic and Neustria they refused to give obedience to a woman and a foreigner. Ursio, Bertefried, Guntram-Boso and duke Rauching placed themselves at their head and attacked the adherents of the royal house, chief among whom was Lupus of Champagne. Brunhild tried in vain to separate the combatants; the rebels answered brutally, "Woman, get you gone, let it suffice you to have ruled during your husband's lifetime; now it is your son who reigns and it is not under your protection but under ours that the kingdom is placed. Get you hence, or we shall trample you under the hoofs of our horses." By vigorous action, however, the queen succeeded in re-establishing order. She formed an alliance with Guntram king of Burgundy, who at Pompierre adopted his nephew Childebert and recognised him as his heir (577). The pact was renewed ten years later at Andelot (28 November 587). Brunhild got rid of the most turbulent of her nobles by the aid of the assassin's knife; and she suppressed the revolt of Gundobald, a bastard son of Chlotar I, whom the nobles had brought back from Constantinople to set up in opposition to Guntram and Childebert. Besieged in the little town of Comminges situated in a valley of the Pyrenees, Gundobald was forced to surrender, and a Frankish count dashed out his brains with a great stone (585). Finally Brunhild besieged Ursio and Bertefried in a strong castle in Woevre. The former perished in the flames of the burning castle; the latter took refuge at Verdun in the chapel of the bishop Agericus,