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620-639] Chlotar II's son Dagobert (629-639), however, was still a king in something more than name. Although he had a brother Charibert he succeeded in reigning alone over the whole Frankish kingdom. He even subjected it to the authority of a single Mayor of the Palace, by name Aega. He made royal progresses through Austrasia, through Neustria, and through Burgundy, sitting in judgment each day, and doing strict justice without respect of persons. In Aquitaine he left to his brother Charibert the administration of the counties of Toulouse, Cahors, Agen, Périgueux, and Saintes, thus making him a kind of warden of the marches on the Basque frontier. But on the death of Charibert in 632, he took over the government of this district also — and up to about 670 Aquitaine remained under the rule of the Frankish kings. After that date it broke away, and the local nobles founded independent dynasties.

Dagobert caused many estates which had been usurped by the seigniors and the Church to be restored to the royal domain. He kept up a luxurious court, which gave, it must be said, anything but a good example in regard to morals. He was a patron of the arts and took great delight in the rich examples of goldsmith's work produced by his treasurer Eligius (Eloi), whom he afterwards appointed bishop of Noyon. Many abbeys were founded in his reign. There was a revival of missionary activity, too, and St Amandus preached the Gospel to the Basques in the south and to the inhabitants of Flanders and Hainault in the north. Throughout the whole of the kingdom the royal authority was paramount. The duke of the Basques came to court to swear allegiance, and Judicaël, chief of the Domnonée, was seen at the royal residence at Clichy. Dagobert intervened not unsuccessfully in the affairs of the Visigoths in Spain, and in those of the Lombards in Italy. He had also relations with the Empire of Constantinople, taking an oath of perpetual peace with Heraclius in 631; and the two rulers took concerted action against the Bulgarian and Slavonic tribes who raided by turns the Byzantine Empire and the regions of Germany which were under the suzerainty of the Franks. Towards the close of his life, in 634, Dagobert was obliged to give to the Austrasians a king of their own in the person of his eldest son Sigebert. Ansegis, son of Arnulf and of a daughter of Pepin, was appointed Mayor of the Palace and governed in the name of this child in conjunction with Cunibert, bishop of Cologne. In spite of this, when Dagobert died (19 January 639), in his villa at Épinay, men held him to have been a very great prince. And his fame was to grow still greater owing to the contrast between his reign and the period which followed it.

This new period, which extends from 639 to 751, is marked by the lamentable decadence of the Merovingian race. It is with justice that the sovereigns who then reigned are known as the rois fainéants. It was a dynasty of children; they died at the age of 23, 24, or 25, worn out by precocious debauchery. They were fathers at sixteen, fifteen, and