, one of his concubines, who
had the queen strangled and then occupied her place. This blond-haired
woman of low birth, with most alluring charms and versed in all the arts
to arouse passion, soon reduced her royal paramour to such subjection
that he had her crowned with great pomp in his capital of Soissons.
Beginning with this marriage, atrocities do not cease until the entire
family becomes extinct. But to this very day to quote the words of a
French poet "The fair, the blonde, the terrible Fredegond is unforgotten
and sung in lurid songs from Austrasia to Perigord."

Brunehild undertook to avenge her sister; the terrible struggle began
between the Prankish slave girl and the daughter of the King of the
Visigoths, a dramatic strife which has left an enduring memory in the
annals of the history of crime. A son of Chilperic joins his father's
enemy, and, with his aid, Sigebert is victorious everywhere; but when,
in his city of Vitry, he is on the point of being raised upon the shield
as king over the land of his brother, Sigebert is assassinated by two
emissaries of Fredegond, who thus once more saves her husband by crime.
The widowed Brunehild was at the time in Paris with her five-year-old
son Childebert, and, as it seemed, at the mercy of Chilperic. But upon
the news of Sigebert's death, Gundovald, an Austrasian chief, brought
Childebert from Paris and had him proclaimed king. Brunehild was exiled
to the basilica of Saint Martin's Cathedral, at Rouen. The oath of
Fredegond upon sacred relics that she will not harm the fugitives is
violated at once. She murders two sons of Chilperic, also Bishop
Tractesetatus, who had solemnized the marriage. Brunehild saved herself
by flight, and an even more sanguinary civil war ensues, in the course
of which Chilperic too is murdered. At last the flagitious murderess
Fredegond, at the age of sixty, equally dreaded and abhorred by friend
and foe, dies strange to say by a natural death.

[Illustration 4:
_FREDEGOND WATCHING THE MARRIAGE OF CHILPERIC AND GALSWINTHA
After the painting by L. Alma-Tadema_
_Chilperic had taken a most unwilling bride, Galswintha, daughter of a
king of the Visigoths and younger sister of Brunehild, notwithstanding
the fierce jealousy of one of his concubines, Fredegond, who soon had
the new queen strangled and then occupied her place. This blond-haired
woman of low birth, with most alluring charms and versed in all the arts
to arouse passion, soon reduce