d her royal paramour to such subjection
that he had her crowned with great pomp in his capital of Soissons.
Beginning with this marriage, atrocities did not cease until the entire
family became 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"._]

Her rival and lifelong enemy Brunehild, who had vied with her in crimes
and vices, met with a far more terrible end. After many years of further
struggle she fell into the hands of Chlotar II., a son of Fredegond, who
inflicted upon her a terrible punishment. Having charged her with the
murder of at least ten Merovingian princes, he caused her, though a
matron of seventy, to be frightfully tortured for several days; then she
was placed on a camel and led for shame through the camp. Finally, she
was tied to the tail of a wild horse and dragged to death: the hoofs of
the horse crushed the limbs of the sinful queen into a shapeless mass. I
know of no poem in the whole range of German literature which gives a
more ghastly picture of that realistic scene of atrocity than one in
which Ferdinand Freiligrath relates:

"How once in the fields of the river Marne near Chalons
Chlotar, the son of Chilperic, had the sinful Brunehild
Tied by her silver hair to a wild stallion;
To drag her galloping through the Prankish camp.
The neighing stallion started, and the hind hoofs struck
The aged form, breaking and wrenching limb from limb.
Dishevelled flew her whitened hair about her bloody brow.
The pointed pebbles drank her royal blood; and shuddering
Beheld the blood-accustomed Franks the horror of the judgment
Of their wrathful king Chlotar.
The glow of the red fires burning before every tent
Fell ghastly on the pain-distorted countenance.
With icy shower now the Marne washed from it the dust
The camel which had borne her through the ranks was spattered
with her blood...."
(H. S.)

We gladly leave the chapter of the Prankish nation under the
Merovingians, for it is stained with the uninterrupted tragedy of brutal
superstition, lust, perjury, treason, incest, murder of the closest
blood relatives, malice, and cruelty. Such scenes as the Langobard
Alboin's deeds and death, Brunehild's