Syagrius

Syagrius "kingdom".

Syagrius (430 – 486 or 487) was the son of Aegidius,^[1] the last Roman magister militum per Gallias. Syagrius preserved his father's rump state between the Somme and the Loire around Soissons after the collapse of central rule in the Western Empire, the so-called "Kingdom" of Syagrius, as Gregory of Tours understood it, applying the Frankish term for an independent leader, rather than a Roman term,^[2] or merely dux of the Gallo-Romans. Syagrius governed this Gallo-Roman enclave from the death of his father in 464 until 486, when whatever remained of Roman Gaul was overrun by the territorial expansion of the Frankish kingdom of Clovis I.

The End of Roman Gaul

Despite being isolated from the surviving portions of the Roman Empire, Syagrius managed to maintain a pretence of Roman authority in northern Gaul for twenty years, and his state survived longer than the Western Empire itself, the last Emperors being overthrown or killed in 476 and 480. Syagrius managed to hold off the neighbouring Salian Franks led by Childeric, although the means by which this feat was accomplished have been lost to history. However, it is known that Childeric had previously come to the aid of the Gallo-Romans, joining a certain officer named Paul in operations against the Saxons who at one point seized Angers.

Upon Childeric's death in 486 his son Clovis succeeded him. While Childeric had seen no need to overthrow the last Roman foothold in the west, Clovis quickly decided on an expansionist policy and his army crossed such a frontier as there was and then marched on Syagrius's capital at Soissons. Little is known of the subsequent clash, the Battle of Soissons, but the result was a major victory for Clovis. With Syagrius's defeat, the province of Belgica Secunda passed to the Franks.

While this may not have been the end of Clovis's campaign, the outcome was no longer in doubt and the Franks methodically occupied the remaining Gallo-Roman territory. In the aftermath, a defeated Syagrius sought refuge with Alaric II, king of the Visigoths, based at Toulouse, but was instead imprisoned and repatriated to Clovis, and was murdered in 487, stabbed in secret according to Gregory of Tours.^[3]

His regime represented the last recorded instance of native Gallo-Roman authority in Gaul; in fact he was known to the Germanic barbarians as the "King of the Romans".

Descendants

Despite the assassination of Syagrius, the family evidently prospered under Frankish rule. King Guntram sent Count Syagrius on a diplomatic mission to the Byzantine Empire in 585. A descendant, Syagria, made a large donation of land to the monks of Novalesa Abbey in 739. "The last known member of the Syagrii was an abbot of Nantua who was mentioned in 757."^[4]

See also

• Last of the Romans

The captured Syagrius is brought before Alaric II who orders him sent to Clovis I

Notes

References

• Fleuriot, Léon, Les origines de la Bretagne (Paris:Éditions Payot), 1980.
• Gibbon, Edward, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch. XXXVIII.
• Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks, book II (On-line text).
• Musset, Lucien. The Germanic Invasions: The Making of Europe 400-600 AD. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1965. ISBN 1-56619-326-5

External links

• Encyclopaedia Britannica 1911: Syagrius
• La bataile de Soissons (486): Syagrius (pdf file)