=1.= If any one's father shall have been slain, the sons shall have half the compounding money [wergeld]; and the other half, the nearest relatives, as well on the mother's as on the father's side, shall divide among themselves.[68] =2.= But if there are no relatives, paternal or maternal, that portion shall go to the fisc.[69] FOOTNOTES: [39] St. Martin was born in Pannonia somewhat before the middle of the fourth century. For a time he followed his father's profession as a soldier in the service of the Roman emperor, but later he went to Gaul with the purpose of aiding in the establishment of the Christian Church in that quarter. In 372 he was elected bishop of Tours and shortly afterwards he founded the monastery with which his name was destined to be associated throughout the Middle Ages. This monastery, which was one of the earliest in western Europe, became a very important factor in the prolonged combat with Gallic paganism, and subsequently a leading center of ecclesiastical learning. [40] Childeric I., son of the more or less mythical Merovius, was king from 457 to 481. Clovis became ruler of the Salian branch of the Franks in this latter year. The tomb of Childeric was discovered at Tournai in 1653. [41] Aegidius and his son Syagrius were the last official representatives of the Roman imperial power in Gaul; and since the fall of the Empire in the West even they had taken the title of "king of the Romans" and had been practically independent sovereigns in the territory between the Somme and the Loire, with their capital at Soissons, northeast of Paris. [42] Alaric II., king of the Visigoths, 485-507. [43] The battle of Soissons in 486, with the defeat and death of Syagrius, insured for the Franks undisputed possession southward to the Loire, which was the northern frontier of the Visigothic kingdom. [44] The Campus Martius was the "March-field," i.e., the assembling place of the Frankish army. It was not regularly in any one locality but wherever the king might call the soldiers together, as he did every spring for purposes of review. In the eighth century the month of May was substituted for March as the time for the meeting. [45] In the words of Hodgkin (_Charles the Great_, p. 12), "the well-known story of the vase of Soissons illustrates at once the German memories of freedom and the Merovingian mode of establishing a despotism. As a battle comrade the Frankish warrior protests against Clovis receiving an ounce beyond his due share of the spoils. As a battle leader Clovis rebukes his henchman for the dirtiness of his accoutrements, and cleaves his skull to punish him for his independence." [46] The Alemanni were a German people occupying a vast region about the upper waters of the Rhine and Danube. They had been making repeated efforts to acquire territory west of the Rhine--an encroachment which Clovis resolved not to tolerate. [47] The battle was fought near Strassburg, in the upper Rhine valley.