In 656 died King Sigibert III., the first Meroving king of Austrasia who had been but a puppet in the hands of his Mayor of the Palace. At his death was made, a full century too soon, the first attempt of that great family which had of late held all real power to add the shadow to the substance by assuming the royal name. King Sigibert had only reached the age of twenty-seven when he died: his son and heir, named Dagobert after his grandfather, was but eight. Taking advantage of the boy’s youth, the Mayor Grimoald had him stolen away from his country by the hands of a bishop, and lodged him in an Irish monastery, where his head was shorn, and he was consecrated as a monk. [Sidenote: Usurpation of Grimoald, 656.] Having got rid of the rightful heir, Grimoald induced his partisans to raise his own son Childebert on the shield, and salute him as king of Austrasia. But the times were not yet ripe: Grimoald had many bitter enemies, and the majority of the people were not yet accustomed to the idea of dethroning the ancient house of the Merovings. Within a few days after the usurpation, Grimoald was seized by a band of Austrasian nobles, cast into fetters, and hurried off to Paris, where his captors laid him before the feet of king Chlodovech II. of Neustria, the brother of the deceased Sigibert. Chlodovech, a cruel and debauched young man, slew Grimoald with horrid tortures. It appeared as if the greatness of the house of Pippin and Arnulf was destined to be extinguished with the life of its chief: but the Fates willed otherwise. Within a few months of the execution of the great Mayor, king Chlodovech died, leaving the diadem to his little son Chlothar III. All the Frankish realms were once more under the nominal rule of a child, and the last chance of the survival of the kingly power was gone, in Neustria now as well as in the Eastern realm. The house of the Austrasian mayors was within a few years to raise its head once more. Meanwhile the minority of Chlothar III. was destined to be a time of storm and trouble. Before he had been four years on the throne his Austrasian subjects determined that they would once more have a king of their own, and not obey orders from Soissons or Paris. Accordingly they took Childerich, the younger brother of Chlothar, and crowned him as king of the Eastern realm. The joint reign of the boys Chlothar III. and Childerich I. lasted for ten years: at first the kingdoms were kept in a certain measure of peace by the queen-mother, Bathildis, an Anglo-Saxon lady of great virtue and ability. But after four years, worn out by the troublous task of reconciling the opposing factions of the nobility, she retired into a nunnery, and when her gentle influence was removed, trouble at once broke out.