Chlodwig extinguished the last remnant of Roman rule in Gaul, in the year 486, as we have related in Chapter VII. He was then only 20 years old, having succeeded to the throne at the age of 15. Shortly afterwards he married the daughter of one of the Burgundian kings. She was a Christian, and endeavored, but for many years without effect, to induce him to give up his pagan faith. Finally, in a war with the Alemanni, in 496, he promised to become a Christian, provided the God of the Christians would give him victory. The decisive battle was long and bloody, but it ended in the complete rout of the Alemanni, and afterwards all of them who were living to the west of the Rhine became tributary to the Franks. [Sidenote: 511.] Chlodwig and 3,000 of his followers were soon afterwards baptized in the cathedral at Rheims, by the bishop Remigius. When the king advanced to the baptismal font, the bishop said to him: "Bow thy head, Sicambrian!--worship what thou hast persecuted, persecute what thou hast worshipped!" Although nearly all the German Christians at this time were Arians, Chlodwig selected the Athanasian faith of Rome, and thereby secured the support of the Roman priesthood in France, which was of great service to him in his ambitious designs. This difference of faith also gave him a pretext to march against the Burgundians in 500, and the Visigoths in 507: both wars were considered holy by the Church. His conquest of the Visigoths was prevented, as we have seen, by the interposition of Theodoric. He then devoted his remaining years to the complete suppression of all the minor Frank kings, and was so successful that when he died, in 511, all the race, to the west of the Rhine, was united under his single sway. He was succeeded by four sons, of whom the eldest, Theuderich, reigned in Paris; the others chose Metz, Orleans and Soissons for their capitals. Theuderich was a man of so much energy and prudence that he was able to control his brothers, and unite the four governments in such a way that the kingdom was saved from dismemberment. The mother of Chlodwig was a runaway queen of Thuringia, whose son, Hermanfried, now ruled over that kingdom, after having deposed his two brothers. The relationship gave Theuderich a ground for interfering, and the result was a war between the Franks and the Thuringians. Theuderich collected a large army, marched into Germany in 530, procured the services of 9,000 Saxons as allies, and met the Thuringians on the river Unstrut, not far from where the city of Halle now stands. Hermanfried was taken prisoner, carried to France, and treacherously thrown from a tower, after receiving great professions of friendship from his nephew, Theuderich. His family fled to Italy, and the kingdom of Thuringia, embracing nearly all Central Germany, was added to that of the Franks. The northern part, however, was given to the Saxons as a reward for their assistance. [Sidenote: 530. AUSTRIA AND NEUSTRIA]