whole of modern France and the Low Countries, and much of modern West Germany, and to any other barbarian monarch his wealth must have seemed quite enormous.

Dagobert was the son of Chlothar II, who had reunited the Frankish kingdom in 613 after torturing to death the dominant figure in Frankish politics for twenty years, his aged aunt Brunhild. In 622 Chlothar II made Dagobert king in Austrasia, the north-eastern portion of the Frankish kingdom, while he himself kept the rest of Gaul under his direct rule, residing in Neustria, the region centred on Paris. Dagobert's chief advisers were two Austrasian aristocrats, Arnulf, bishop of Metz, and Pippin, who was made mayor of Dagobert's palace. (It was a marriage arranged between Arnulf's son and Pippin's daughter that was to form the powerful dynasty known later as the Carolingians.) Chlothar II died in 629, and Dagobert became sole king. According to the chronicler Fredegar, a contemporary, the first years of his reign over Gaul were very auspicious. Fredegar clearly approved of the way in which Dagobert tried to put local aristocrats, the real powers in the provinces, in their place. He tells us of a royal visit to Burgundy, for instance, which caused great alarm to bishops and aristocrats, and joy to the oppressed; 'such was his great good-will and eagerness that he neither ate nor slept, lest anyone should leave his presence without having obtained justice'. For Fredegar things went sour when Arnulf retired and Dagobert left Pippin's side to take up residence in Neustria. 'He forgot the justice he had once loved.' One of his foreign campaigns illustrates his internal problems. He sent an expedition of Austrasian Franks to Bohemia, against the Wends, a Slavic people. The Wends were led by Samo, an enterprising Frankish merchant, who had so impressed the Wends that he ruled them, and his twelve Wendish wives, for thirty-five years. Dagobert's Austrasians were defeated, not, according to Fredegar, because of the strength of the Slavs but rather through the demoralization of the Austrasians, who apparently felt that Dagobert had deserted them by going to live in Neustria. Samo's Wends were encouraged by this victory, and by an alliance with the Sorbs, another Slavic people, and began raiding in Frankish territories further west. In 631

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