When he was just fifteen years old, Clovis, who was born in Lutetia (Paris) in or around 466, succeeded his father Childeric. His court had partially converted, but to the Arian form of Christianity that the Roman Catholic Church had condemned as heretical in 325. Clovis encountered Catholicism when he wed Clotilde, a princess of the Burgundian Kingdom.

Clovis conquered the Romans of Sygiarus at the Battle of Soissons in 486, when he was just twenty years old, and the Thuringians in the east in 491. By marrying his sister Audofleda to their King Theoderic the Great, he established a relationship with the southern Ostrogoths.

After defeating the Visigoths, Clovis returned to Tours, where he was met by the Emperor of the east who presented the victorious King with the purple tunic of a consul.

With the Visigoths defeated and his realm secure, Clovis elected to rule his united empire from Paris. On Christmas Day in 508, following protracted discussions with the Roman Catholic Church, he finally converted to Catholicism in a small church close to modern-day Reims and was baptized there by Saint Remigius.

His “conversion”, would not only ensure the loyalty of the conquered provinces but also the recognition by Anastasius, the Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, who was as interested in the success of those who shared his brand of Christianity. 

At the time of Clovis’ passing in 511, his Kingdom included a sizable portion of the area to the east of the Rhine as well as the most of what is now France, from the Pyrenees to the north into the Netherlands. The Kingdom of the Burgundians and Ostrogoths still reigned only in the far south and east.

The united kingdom that Clovis left behind had a capital in Paris, a codified version of Roman law that is now known as the Salian Frank Law, and it was larger in area than the contemporary nation of France.