Southern Gaul, that is to say, Aquitania, Vasconia, Narbonness, called Septimania, and the two banks of the Rhone near its mouths, were not comprised in these partitions of the Frankish dominions. Each of the copartitioners assigned to themselves, to the south of the Garonne and on the coasts of the Mediterranean, in that beautiful region of old Roman Gaul, such and such a district or such and such a town, just as heirs-at- law keep to themselves severally such and such a piece of furniture or such and such a valuable jewel out of a rich property to which they succeed, and which they divide amongst them. The peculiar situation of those provinces at their distance from the Franks’ own settlements contributed much towards the independence which Southern Gaul, and especially Aquitania, was constantly striving and partly managed to recover, amidst the extension and tempestuous fortunes of the Frankish monarchy. It is easy to comprehend how these repeated partitions of a mighty inheritance with so many successors, these dominions continually changing both their limits and their masters, must have tended to increase the already profound anarchy of Roman and Barbaric worlds thrown pell-mell one upon the other, and fallen a prey, the Roman to the disorganization of a lingering death, the barbaric to the fermentation of a new existence striving for development under social conditions quite different from those of its primitive life. Some historians have said that, in spite of these perpetual dismemberments of the great Frankish dominion, a real unity had always existed in the Frankish monarchy, and regulated the destinies of its constituent peoples. They who say so show themselves singularly easy to please in the matter of political unity and international harmony. Amongst those various States, springing from a common base and subdivided between the different members of one and the same family, rivalries, enmities, hostile machinations, deeds of violence and atrocity, struggles and wars soon became as frequent, as bloody, and as obstinate as they have ever been amongst states and sovereigns as unconnected as possible one with another. It will suffice to quote one case which was not long in coming. In 424, scarcely thirteen years after the death of Clovis and the partition of his dominions amongst his four sons, the second of them, Clodomir, king of Orleans, was killed in a war against the Burgundians, leaving three sons, direct heirs of his kingdom, subject to equal partition between them. Their grandmother, Clotilde, kept them with her at Paris; and “their uncle Childebert (king of Paris), seeing that his mother bestowed all her affection upon the sons of Clodomir, grew jealous; so, fearing that by her favor they would get a share in the kingdom, he sent secretly to his brother Clotaire (king of Soissons), saying, ‘Our mother keepeth by her the sons of our brother, and willeth to give them the kingdom of their father. Thou must needs,