the Saxons offered to help Dagobert against the Wends if he remitted the 500 cows they had paid yearly--to the Austrasians--since the time of Chlothar I; Dagobert agreed, but to little effect, said Fredegar, for in the following year, the Wends were attacking again.
Dagobert was rather more successful within Gaul. He mollified the Austrasians by giving them as king his infant son Sigibert, with two of their number as regents; later he persuaded his magnates to accept that his other son Clovis would be heir to Neustria and Burgundy. In 635 his army defeated the Basques who were invading Gascony from their Pyrenean homes, and he forced King Judicael of Brittany to come to terms. According to Fredegar, Judicael came to Dagobert's palace at Clichy, near Paris, but refused to eat with Dagobert because of the king's sins; he dined instead with the head of the royal bureaucracy, Audoen, later the saintly bishop of Rouen. Dagobert died in 638, and was the first French king to be buried in the church of Saint-Denis, which he had enlarged and 'magnificently embellished with gold, gems and precious things'. There was no succession dispute, even though Dagobert's sons were both minors. Sigibert continued to rule in Austrasia, and Clovis took over in Neustria and Burgundy, both under regents.
Dagobert has been claimed as the last Merovingian king to be effective ruler over the whole Frankish kingdom, but the nature of his rule shows up some of the problems of the Merovingians. Neustria was the centre of royal power, and the favourite royal villas were none of them far from Paris. Dagobert made one trip to Burgundy, and clearly impressed Burgundians (such as Fredegar himself) with his power and his goodwill. But for most of the time the local aristocracy in Burgundy and the rest of southern Gaul were able to carry on their lives and their administration undisturbed by the king. Dagobert may never have visited Aquitaine, although he no doubt kept in touch with developments there through such men as Desiderius, a court official who succeeded his brother as bishop of Cahors (and whose correspondence survives). Despite Dagobert's military successes, the south-west of Aquitaine was
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