[Sidenote: Brunhildis attacks Neustria.] The moment that the pacific Guntram was dead, Brunhildis and her son, freed from all restraint, set out to punish the intrigues of Fredegundis, and by invading Neustria to make an end of her and her boy Chlothar. But the fortune of war declared in favour of the Western Franks. At Droisy, near Soissons, the army of Childebert was defeated with the loss of no less than 30,000 men, and Neustria was saved from conquest. The war continued without definite result, for Childebert was prevented from using his full strength by a rebellion beyond the Rhine, among the Warni in Suabia. Probably his superior force must in the end have carried the day, but the entire aspect of affairs was suddenly changed by his unexpected death in 596, at the early age of twenty-six. He left two infant sons, Theudebert and Theuderich, to the care of their grandmother, who found herself, though she was now verging on old age, once more called upon to assume the regency. The death of Childebert was to the kingly authority a fatal blow, from which it never recovered. His own long minority had raised the counts and dukes to a pitch of power which they had never gained before, and all the efforts of Brunhildis had not succeeded in fully holding them down. The equally long minority of his sons was the last blow to the kingship. Their grandmother struggled with all her might to retain the power for the kingly race, and to curb her unruly subjects. But though she worked with untiring energy and zeal, and kept the reins of government in her own grasp for some time, the treacherous nobles, bent on their own aggrandisement at the expense of the royal authority, were at last too much for her. [Sidenote: Second Regency of Brunhildis.] Of the two sons of Childebert II. Theudebert, the elder, became king of Austrasia, Theuderich, the younger, king of Burgundy, the legacy of his uncle Guntram. It was an uneasy inheritance to which they succeeded, for Fredegundis saw her opportunity, and urged the Neustrians forward against her great-nephews. At Lafaux near Laon the Austrasians suffered a great defeat, and all the lands as far as the Meuse fell into the hands of the queen of Neustria. But in the moment of triumph, her son’s throne being now firmly established, and her rival’s power on the decline, the wicked Fredegundis died at Rouen. Her countless murders and cruelties met no chastisement on earth, and the son for whom she had risked so much was destined to carry out to a successful end the schemes in pursuit of which she had so long striven, and to unite all the Frankish realms under his sceptre (597).