Childeric, son of  Merovech, came to power around 455, and was confronted with the  disappearance of the Roman administrative structure from western Europe, a process that is usually referred to as the fall of the Roman Empire. Those who were already holding office started states for themselves and we know from a letter that Childeric’s career started as Roman Governor of the old Province of Belgica Secunda. (This is the western part of modern Belgium and the northern part of modern France). Childeric had established his capital at Tournai on lands he had received as a foederatus (a military ally who received money and lands in exchange for fighting for Rome) in what was then the province of Belgica Secunda.

Merovee I and Childeric I followed the pagan cult of ‘Arduinna of the Ardennes’

Childeric I (437-482), helped the Romans defeat the Visigoths.

 Basina (438-477) was Queen of Thuringia, she was the daughter of King Basin. This gave her the title of Saxon Princess. Basina married King Basinus and  became the Queen of Thuringia. Although she was married to King Basinus, she knew she had to be with Childeric I, who was the King of the Salian Franks, which at the time was a German tribe. She followed him back to where he lived and asked for his hand in marriage. Together, she and Childeric had four children; Clovis I, Audofleda, Lanthilde, and Aboflede.

Basina was a descendant/prophet from the Jesus/Mary Magdalene line, with magical powers after having had a vision regarding her and Childeric I. 

To the south, a man named Aegidius was in control of Lugdunensis Quarta and other parts of Central Gaul. In 457, Aegidius sided with the new Emperor in Italy, Majorian, who wanted to restore Roman control in all of Gaul. Aegidius hired Frankish allies.

A treasure of coins from Lienden in the Netherlands, discovered in 2017 and dating back to the reign of Majorian, proves that Childeric paid local Frankish leaders. In other words: Childeric’s network was strengthened with money from the Late Roman network.

However, Majorian’s attempt to restore Roman power came to nothing and he was killed in 461. This was the end of Roman influence in Gaul. Still, the ties between the Franks and Aegidius had been created and in 463, Aegidius would employ Franks in a conflict with the Kingdom of Tolosa in Aquitania. This post-Roman state was ruled by an elite of Visigothic descent. Although Childeric is not specifically mentioned, he almost certainly would have been among the Frankish warriors fighting for Aegidius.

Childeric’s presence in the south is attested in the year 464: according to the Life of Saint Genevieve, he besieged and captured Lutetia (modern Paris).

He kept the city for 10 years. (466-476) His son Clovis was born there.

Childeric again fought against the Kingdom of Tolosa, as an ally of a local leader named Paulus of Angers and on another occasion, he attacked Saxon pirates in the valley of the Lower Loire. 

The Franks captured the city of Agrippina over the Rhine, and they called it Cologne, as if tenant farmers lived there. They killed many of the Roman people from Aegidius’ part of Gaul there. Then they came to the city of Trier, over the river Moselle, and they laid waste to those lands and captured and set fire to that same city. Afterwards, King Childeric drove back a very large army of the enemies of the Franks and came through to the walls of the city of Orleans, and devastated the surrounding countryside. 

Adovagrius, leader of the Saxons, came through the sea with a fleet of ships up to the walls of the city of Angers, and he set that land ablaze,  great losses were inflicted on the city of Angers; afterwards, Adovagrius accepted hostages from Angers and from the other cities. Therefore, with Adovagrius having turned back from Angers, King Childeric of the Franks, having set an army to confront him, came there, he killed Paulus, who was count there, and he captured that same city and burned down the city with fire, from there he returned home.

The Germanic general Odoacer, who was in Roman service, deposed Romulus Augustus in 476. Barbarian leaders had been deposing Emperors before, keen to put their own candidates on the throne.

Childeric helped Odoacer of Italy defeat the Alemani when they invaded Italy in 476/80 A.D, Odovacer paid Childeric in golden solidi, minted in the east.

Clovis was about four years old when Childeric left Paris to help Odoacer defend Noricum Ripense.

When Childeric returned home after defeating the Alamanni he tried to counter the threat but was killed. Basina would have taken the young children off to Tournay to safety, deep within Frankish territory.

Childeric died around 481 and was buried in Tournai.

Among the grave gifts was a fibula of a very rare type, used by the highest Roman officials only. Childeric was buried with his horses, which was an old German custom. His ring identified him as rex, “King”. In other words, the founder of the Merovingian dynasty and creator of the new independent Kingdom was both a Roman and a German.

Clovis later moved the capital first to Soisson and then Paris and over time the location of his father’s tomb was lost. It was rediscovered on May 27th, 1653, by one Adrien Quinquin who was doing some work on the church of Saint-Brice when his shovel suddenly turned up a cache of gold coins. Further excavation revealed a tomb full of treasures, among them a throwing axe, a spear, a long sword called a spatha and a short scramasax with scabbard, both richly ornamented with gold and garnet cloisonné, a solid gold torc bracelet, part of an iron horseshoe with nails still in it, belt and shoe buckles and horse harness fittings also decorated in cloisonné gold and garnets, a leather purse containing more than a hundred gold and silver coins, the most recent bearing the image of the Byzantine Emperor Zeno (474-491 A.D.), a gold bull’s head with a solar disc on its forehead, a crystal ball and a gold signet ring.

The treasure still includes Byzantine coins, jewels from Childéric’s sword and scramasax (a large knife used in war and hunting), a Frankish ax blade, the fibula that would hold the paludamentum (dress cloak or cape worn by Roman military commanders), and golden bees or cicadas with cloisonné garnet wings (garnet insets) that were used to decorate either the royal coat or the harness of the King’s horse.

The signet ring was the proverbial smoking gun that identified the tomb as Childeric’s. It’s a heavy gold ring 27mm (one inch) in diameter (Childeric had some large fingers). On top is an oval bezel bearing the effigy of a beardless man with long hair parted in the center. He wears a paludamentum (a draped cloak fastened at one shoulder worn by Roman military leaders and emperors in statuary and on coinage) and holds a spear in his right hand. Around the head is the inscription CHILDERICI REGIS (Childeric King).

More than 300 golden bees with red glass wings were also found that are thought to have adorned Childeric’s ceremonial cloak. Centuries later, when Napoleon Bonaparte was about to be crowned Emperor of the French, he turned to the most ancient French monarch for iconography that would connect him to Royal History while bypassing the Bourbons and their fleur-de-lys. (The symbol of the fleur-de-lys is also of Merovingian origin).

Napoleon adopted Childeric’s heraldry as his own. His coronation robe was embroidered with 300 gold bees and bees became the symbol of the new French Empire.

When Childeric’s treasure was discovered, Tournai was part of the Spanish Netherlands, governed by Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria, younger brother of Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III. The bulk of Childeric’s grave goods went to the Archduke who ordered his physician Jean-Jacques Chifflet to document every piece thoroughly. Chifflet’s meticulous study, complete with extremely detailed engravings of the artifacts, was published in 1655 as Anastasis Childerici I. Francorvm Regis, sive Thesavrvs Sepvlchralis Tornaci Neruiorum (The Resurrection of Childeric the First, King of the Franks, or the Funerary Treasure of Tournai of the Nervians). Depending on ancient sources and comparisons with other artifacts, Chifflet made some errors and misidentified some of the pieces, but his careful recording of every object is today considered the first scientific archaeological publication.

Archduke Leopold brought Childeric’s treasure with him to Vienna when he left the Spanish Netherlands in 1656. Upon his death in 1662, he bequeathed his extensive gallery of art and artifacts, including Childeric’s grave goods, to his nephew, Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I. In 1665, Leopold I gifted the Childeric treasure to King Louis XIV in gratitude for his military aid against the Ottoman Empire in Hungary the year before. Louis, reportedly unimpressed by the 5th century version of luxury goods, had them stored in his Cabinet of Medals in the Louvre palace. After the French Revolution, Childeric’s treasure became part of the Cabinet of Medals of the Imperial Library, later the Royal Library, now the National Library.

During the night of November 5th 1831, thieves broke into the Cabinet of Medals of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and stole more than 2,000 gold objects for a total weight of 80 kilos, including all of Childeric’s treasure. Accounts of what happened afterwards differ because many of the records were destroyed during the Paris Commune of 1871. The theft was a huge scandal and the police were under great pressure to come up with results. They even enlisted the aid of the legendary Eugène-François Vidocq, head of the Sûreté, Paris’ first-of-its-kind plainclothes detective bureau that he had founded in 1812. Vidocq had quit in 1827 but was reappointed head of the Sûreté in early 1832 and he and his team were on the Childeric case.

Eight months after the theft, the police busted a gang of thieves and found 20 ingots of gold in their hideout. Upon interrogation the thieves admitted they had melted down the pure gold objects into ingots while those with inlaid stones or that were harder to melt down for whatever reason were put in sacs of leather and immersed in the Seine either at the Pont Marie or the Pont de la Tournelle. (The bridges are in the same spot on the Seine. The Pont Marie connects the Île Saint-Louis to the Right Bank; the Pont de la Tournelle is its mirror, connecting the island to the Left Bank.) When the police dragged the river, they found eight bags holding around 1,500 pieces of the 2,000 stolen, 75 of the 80 kilos. Added to the ingot weight, the recovered objects were determined to be the entirety of the burgled treasure and the case was closed. 

Childeric’s treasure was almost entirely lost. Authorities recovered two coins, two bees and the gold and garnet cloisonné fittings from Childeric’s sword and scramasax. The signet ring was gone, only surviving as reproductions made by the Habsburgs and in imprints taken of the seal. Chifflet’s recorded data and illustrations are virtually all that remains of this historic treasure.

One of the recovered artifacts from the 1831 theft at the Bibliothèque Nationale is actually in the United States right now. The Rennes patera, an early 3rd century Roman shallow libation bowl made of no less than three pounds of very pure solid 23-carat gold, somehow survived being melted down in the thieves’ initial orgy of ingot production. It was loaned by the National Library to the Getty Villa in Malibu for the Ancient Luxury and the Roman Silver Treasure from Berthouville exhibition and will be in California through August 17th before returning to Paris.