Clovis I

He was the son of Childeric I and Basina.

Childeric I (c. 440– c. 481) was the Merovingian king of the Salian Franks from 457 until his death, and the father of Clovis. He succeeded his father Merovech as king, traditionally in 457 or 458. With his Frankish warband he was established with his capital at Tournai, on lands which he had received as a foederatus of the Romans, and for some time he kept the peace with his allies. In about 463 in Orléans, in conjunction with the Roman General Aegidius, who was based in Soissons, he defeated the Visigoths, who hoped to extend their dominion along the banks of the Loire River. After the death of Aegidius, he first assisted Comes ("count") Paul of Angers, together with a mixed band of Gallo-Romans and Franks, in defeating the Goths and taking booty. Odoacer reached Angers but Childeric arrived the next day and a battle ensued. Count Paul was killed and Childeric took the city. Childeric, having delivered Angers, followed a Saxon warband to the islands on the Atlantic mouth of the Loire, and massacred them there. In a change of alliances, he also joined forces with Odoacer, according to Gregory of Tours, to stop a band of the Alamanni who wished to invade Italy. The stories of his expulsion by the Franks, whose women he was taking; of his eight-year stay in Thuringia with King Basin and his wife Basina; of his return when a faithful servant advised him that he could safely do so by sending to him half of a piece of gold which he had broken with him; and of the arrival in Tournai of Queen Basina, whom he married, come from Gregory of Tours' Libri Historiarum (Book ii.12). He died in 481 and was buried in Tournai, leaving a son Clovis, afterwards king of the Franks.

The Battle of the Catalaunian Plains (or Fields), also called the Battle of Châlons (also spelled Chalons or Chalon) or Battle of the Campus Mauriacus, took place in 451 between a coalition led by the Roman general Flavius Aetius and the Visigothic king Theodoric I on one side and the Huns and their allies commanded by Attila on the other. It was one of the last major military operations of the Western Roman Empire and marks the apex of the career of Flavius Aetius.