Leudast’s wickedness. 49. The plots he formed against us and how he was himself brought low. 50. Prediction of the blessed Salvius about Chilperic. HERE END THE CHAPTERS HERE BEGINS THE FIFTH BOOK WITH HAPPY AUSPICES. AMEN I am weary of relating the details of the civil wars that mightily plague the nation and kingdom of the Franks; and the worst of it is that we see in them the beginning of that time of woe which the Lord foretold: “Father shall rise against son, son against father, brother against brother, kinsman against kinsman.” They should have been deterred by the examples of former kings who were slain by their enemies as soon as they were divided. How often has the very city of cities, the great capital of the whole earth, been laid low by civil war and again, when it ceased, has risen as if from the ground! Would that you too, O kings, were engaged in battles like those in which your fathers struggled, that the heathen terrified by your union might be crushed by your strength! Remember how Clovis won your great victories, how he slew opposing kings, crushed wicked peoples and subdued their lands, and left to you complete and unchallenged dominion over them! And when he did this he had neither silver nor gold such as you now have in your treasuries. What is your object? What do you seek after? What have you not in plenty? In your homes there are luxuries in abundance, in your storehouses wine, grain and oil abound, gold and silver are piled up in your treasuries. One thing you lack: without peace you have not the grace of God. Why does one take from another? Why does one desire what another has? I beg of you, beware of this saying of the apostle: “But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another.” Examine carefully the books of the ancients and you will see what civil wars beget. Read what Orosius writes[BT] of the Carthaginians, who says that after seven hundred years their city and country were ruined and adds: “What preserved this city so long? Union. What destroyed it after such a period? Disunion.” Beware of disunion, beware of civil wars which destroy you and your people. What else is to be expected but that your army will fall and that you will be left without strength and be crushed and ruined by hostile peoples. And, king, if civil war gives you pleasure, govern that impulse which the apostle says is urgent within man, let the spirit struggle against the flesh and the vices fall before the virtues; and be free and serve your chief who is Christ, you who were once a fettered slave of the root of evil. [1. Sigibert’s son, Childebert, not yet five years old, is made king. Chilperic seizes Brunhilda and keeps her in exile at Rouen.]