When Soissons was reached, and all the booty had been placed in the midst of the host, the king said:  “Valiant warriors, I pray you not to refuse me, over and above my share, this vase here.”  At these words of the king, those who were of sound mind among the assembly answered:  “Glorious king, everything we see here is thine, and we ourselves are submissive to thy commands.  Do thou as seemeth good to thee, for there is none that can resist thy power.”  When they had thus spoken, a certain Frank, light-minded, jealous, and vain, cried out aloud as he struck the vase with his battle-axe, “Thou shalt have naught of all this save what the lots shall truly give thee.”  At these words all were astounded; but the king bore the insult with sweet patience, and, accepting the vase, he gave it to the messenger, hiding his wound in the recesses of his heart.  At the end of a year he ordered all his host to assemble fully equipped at the March parade, to have their arms inspected.  After having passed in review all the other warriors, he came to him who had struck the vase.  “None,” said he, “hath brought hither arms so ill-kept as thine; nor lance, nor sword, nor battle-axe are in condition for service.”  And wresting from him his axe he flung it on the ground.  The man stooped down a little to pick it up, and forthwith the King, raising with both hands his own battle-axe, drove it into his skull, saying, “Thus didst thou to the vase of Soissons!” On the death of this fellow he bade the rest begone, and by this act made himself greatly feared.

A bold and unexpected deed has always a great effect on men:  with his Frankish warriors, as well as with his Roman and Gothic foes, Clovis had at command the instincts of patience and brutality in turn; he could bear a mortification and take vengeance in due season.  While prosecuting his course of plunder and war in Eastern Belgica, on the banks of the Meuse, Clovis was inspired with a wish to get married.  He had heard tell of a young girl, like himself of the Germanic royal line, Clotilde, niece of Gondebaud, at that time king of the Burgundians.  She was dubbed beautiful, wise, and well-informed; but her situation was melancholy and perilous.  Ambition and fraternal hatred had devastated her family.  Her father, Chilperic, and her two brothers, had been put to death by her uncle Gondebaud, who had caused her mother, Agrippina, to be thrown into the Rhone, with a stone round her neck, and drowned.  Two sisters alone had survived this slaughter:  the elder, Chrona, had taken religious vows; the other, Clotilde, was living almost in exile at Geneva, absorbed in works of piety and charity.