=42.= Then Clovis made war on his relative Ragnachar.[58] And when the latter saw that his army was defeated, he attempted to flee; but his own men seized him and his brother Richar and brought them bound before Clovis. Then Clovis said: "Why have you disgraced our family by allowing yourself to be taken prisoner? It would have been better for you had you been slain." And, raising his battle-ax, he slew him. Then, turning to Richar, he said, "If you had aided your brother he would not have been taken;" and he slew him with the ax also. Thus by their death Clovis took their kingdom and treasures. And many other kings and relatives of his, who he feared might take his kingdom from him, were slain, and his dominion was extended over all Gaul. [Sidenote: The death of Clovis (511)] =43.= And after these things he died at Paris and was buried in the basilica of the holy saints which he and his queen, Clotilde, had built. He passed away in the fifth year after the battle of Vouille, and all the days of his reign were thirty years. 7. The Law of the Salian Franks When the Visigoths, Lombards, and other Germanic peoples settled within the bounds of the Roman Empire they had no such thing as written law. They had laws, and a goodly number of them, but these laws were handed down from generation to generation orally, having never been enacted by a legislative body or decreed by a monarch in the way that laws are generally made among the civilized peoples of to-day. In other words, early Germanic law consisted simply of an accumulation of the immemorial custom of the tribe. When, for example, a certain penalty had been paid on several occasions by persons who had committed a particular crime, men came naturally to regard that penalty as the one regularly to be paid by _any one_ proved guilty of the same offense; so that what was at first only habit gradually became hardened into law--unwritten indeed, but none the less binding. The law thus made up, moreover, was personal rather than territorial like that of the Romans and like ours to-day. That is, the same laws did not apply to all the people throughout any particular country or region. If a man were born a Visigoth he would be subject to Visigothic law throughout life, no matter where he might go to live. So the Burgundian would always have the right to be judged by Burgundian law, and the Lombard by the Lombard law. Obviously, in regions where several peoples dwelt side by side, as in large portions of Gaul, Spain, and northern Italy, there was no small amount of confusion and the courts had to be conducted in a good many different ways.