"The Church, our common mother,"
he wrote, "rejoiceth to have born unto God so great a king. Continue,
glorious and illustrious son, to cheer the heart of this tender mother;
be a column of iron to support her, and she in her turn will give thee
victory over all thine enemies."
Clovis was not a man to omit turning his Catholic popularity to the
account of his ambition. At the very time when he was receiving these
testimonies of good-will from the heads of the Church he learned that
Gondebaud, disquieted, no doubt, at the conversion of his powerful
neighbor, had just made a vain attempt, at a conference held at Lyons,
to reconcile in his kingdom the Catholics and the Arians. Clovis
considered the moment favorable to his projects of aggrandizement at the
expense of the Burgundian King; he fomented the dissensions which
already prevailed between Gondebaud and his brother Godegisile, assured
to himself the latter's complicity, and suddenly entered Burgundy with
his army. Gondebaud, betrayed and beaten at the first encounter at
Dijon, fled to the south of his kingdom, and went and shut himself up in
Avignon.
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