Childebert had turned off to another quest, and the old Visigothic possessions north of the Pyrenees were retaken without much trouble (531). The enterprise which had called away Childebert was a new attempt to conquer Burgundy, in which his brother Chlothar had promised to join him. [Sidenote: Burgundy conquered, 532.] In the spring of 532 the kings of Paris and Soissons united their forces, and marched up the valley of the Yonne. They laid siege to Autun, and when Gondomar the Burgundian monarch came to its relief, beat him with such decisive results that he fled into Italy and abandoned his kingdom. A few sieges put the victorious Frankish brethren in possession of the whole Burgundian realm as far as the borders of the Ostrogoths on the Alps and the Drôme. When Burgundy had been conquered, the Franks began to prepare for a new campaign against the Visigoths, in which Theuderich intended to share no less than his brothers. But this scheme was frustrated by the death of the king of Ripuaria early in the year 533. He left a son, Theudebert, already a grown man and a good warrior, but in true Merovingian fashion the uncles of the heir made a vigorous attempt to seize and divide his realm. It was only the prompt and enthusiastic way in which the Ripuarians rallied around their young king that saved him from the fate of his cousins, the princes of Orleans. Not merely, however, did Theudebert hold his own, but he compelled his uncles to give him a share of the newly-conquered Burgundy, when the partition of that country was finally made. Theudebert was, in fact, well able to take care of himself, and soon showed that he was as unscrupulous and enterprising, if not quite so bloodthirsty, as his father and uncles. Yet he was, for a Meroving, not an unfavourable specimen of a monarch, and the chroniclers tell us that he ruled his kingdom with justice, venerated the clergy, built churches, and gave much alms to the poor. That as a politician he was shifty and treacherous was soon to be shown by his dealings with Italy. [Sidenote: Theudebert invades Italy, 535.] In 535 the emperor Justinian, on the eve of his invasion of the Ostrogothic kingdom, bribed the three Frankish monarchs, by a gift of 50,000 solidi, to attack Italy from the rear. Uncles and nephew alike were ready to take the money and join in the plunder of the peninsula. But in the next year the Gothic king Witiges, eager to free himself from a second war, offered to cede Provence and Rhaetia to the Franks if they would make peace with him, and grant him the aid of their arms. The three kings gladly agreed, and lent him an auxiliary force of 10,000 men, who joined the Goths in recovering Milan. Theudebert and Childebert are said to have cheated Chlothar of his third of the gains, the former having got the money and the latter the land which Witiges made over.