Читать книгу Claimants to Royalty - John Henry Ingram - Страница 18

The story of this claimant's adventures is, perhaps, the most romantic of all our heroes, but unfortunately it is one of the most unreliable. The Mezerays and other ancient writers, however, give the tale as authentic, and as they recount it so it is detailed here; fact and fiction being difficult in such cases to disentangle.

This pretender is styled in history Gondebaud, and would appear to have had some real claims to a royal origin, his mother having educated him from his earliest infancy as the king's son, and carefully preserved from the desecrating shears his flowing locks—a mark of regal birth amongst the ancient Franks.

Clotaire the First, who was then reigning at Soissons, refused to accept the imputed parentage, and the woman accordingly fled with the child to Paris, to claim the protection of Childebert, the king's brother, who was reigning there. Childebert, not having any male children of his own, took a liking to the boy, and was desirous of adopting him as his nephew, and educating him at his court; but when the putative father heard this he was greatly incensed, and wrote to his brother to send Gondebaud to him, as he would take care of him, adding that it was false to call him his son, which he was not; that educating him as a king's son was giving the boy honours to which he was not entitled, and might hereafter afford him an opportunity of deceiving the world. Clotaire's care was the more necessary as illegitimacy did not, amongst the ancient Franks, debar the offspring's right to the crown.

The king of Soissons having obtained possession of his supposed son, had his head shaved and sent him into a monastery. Dying, however, in 561, his eldest son, Cherebert, who succeeded him, took compassion upon Gondebaud, and, during the whole of his reign, treated him with fraternal kindness. Cherebert dying in 570, the crown passed to Sigobert, who ordered our hero to come to his court. He at once obeyed, was seized, his flowing locks again severed from his head, and he once more imprisoned in a monastery. Finding means of escape, the unfortunate youth fled into Italy, and made his way to the camp of Narses, the Emperor Justinian's famous general.

By Narses, Gondebaud was kindly received and promised succour; but just at the moment when he seemed on the point of being enabled to take the field against his presumed relatives, his protector died, and he was left once more a friendless wanderer. In the meantime, the Emperor Justinian had also died, and his successors, Justin the Second and Sophia, determined to give the remains of their renowned warrior, Narses, a superb funeral. Our claimant availed himself of the opportunity to make his court to the imperial couple, and travelled with the body to Constantinople, where he was extremely well received, his handsome figure and courtier-like manner obtaining him no little favour from the empress.

Gondebaud dwelt at the Constantinopolitan court during the reigns of Justin the Second and his successor Tiberius. With Maurice, general and subsequently successor of the latter, he served in several campaigns against the Persians, and apparently with credit. He would probably have ended his days honourably in the Eastern Empire had not a certain conspirator, Boson, tempted him to return to France with the information that his supposed brother Sigobert had been treacherously murdered; that the two infamous queens, Brunechild and Fredegonde, had completely disorganized the country with their crimes and quarrels; adding, that the time was ripe for his return, the people being only too desirous of submitting to his rule, and that the two kings who now divided the country between them, being childless, would not offer any great opposition to his claims. Deceived by these specious arguments, Gondebaud, after a sojourn of twenty years in the Orient, returned to France, taking with him good equipments and a large sum of money, advanced by his friend the Emperor Tiberius.

Landing at Marseilles, he was received by the bishop of that city with great honours, and the news of his arrival having spread abroad, coupled with the rumour that he was accompanied by enormous wealth, the result of having discovered the supposed hoard of Narses, caused large numbers of people, including many of high rank, to come to his camp to pay homage. In addition to their expectation of bountiful gifts from his hands, his visitors found Gondebaud good-looking, and apparently worthy of the warlike reputation he had obtained from having served under Narses and Maurice. The Duke of Toulouse and other independent nobles proffered their alliance; so that after all his tussles with fortune our hero seemed at last nearly certain of a kingdom. But at this critical moment the traitor Boson turned against him, and, seizing his treasures, compelled Gondebaud to fly, and take refuge in an impregnable island at the mouth of the Rhone.

After having thus endured the ups and downs of fickle fortune, this claimant, in hopes of ingratiating himself with the Franks, and at the suggestion of his ally Childebert, king of Metz, took upon himself the pseudo name of Clotaire, thus more distinctly marking his claim to the throne of his putative father Clotaire the First. But all the arts of the pretender were unavailable to obtain the assistance or recognition of Gontran, king of Orleans, who took up arms in defence of the real heir to the throne, the veritable Clotaire the Second, a child of tender years, and who, despite the fact that Gondebaud's forces were commanded by the best generals of the country, by fight or stratagem gradually deprived him of all his treasures, allies, and, finally, of his life. For the pretender's chief adherents finding that Gontran was determined to resist him to the uttermost, and probably seeing little prospect of his ultimately obtaining any permanent power in the country, determined to abandon Gondebaud to his fate; he was, however, so strongly fortified, and so well provided with every necessary of war in his stronghold, that his foes found the only method of dislodging him was by stratagem.

Gontran accordingly got Queen Brunechild, the mother of his adopted heir, Childebert, to write to our hero, under the pretence of her being secretly in his interest, and advise him to remove with all his treasure to Bordeaux, where he would have the command of both land and sea. Duped by this woman, the unfortunate claimant forsook his refuge, and put himself en route for Bordeaux. On the road he fell in with an ambuscade of the enemy's, which succeeded in stripping him of all the treasure he had accumulated, but did not prevent him arriving at his destination.

Bordeaux sustained a siege of some weeks on the pretender's account, but during the whole of that time traitors in and out of the city were bargaining for his betrayal. At last, his chief men, thinking to ransom their lives with his, persuaded the pseudo Clotaire to go outside the city to confer with the foe as to the terms of peace, and as soon as he was without the walls they closed the gates upon him, leaving him to his fate. He was seized by the besiegers and dragged on to a hillock outside their camp, where he was flung down by one of their commanders; and as the unhappy man was still rolling, the traitor Boson beat out his brains with a battle-axe. Thus perished this luckless pretender to the throne of the Franks, whether a son or not of Clotaire the First, equally unfortunate.