Brunhilda of Austrasia

Even after Fredegund's death in 597, the feud was continued by her son, Chlothar II, who in 613 defeated Brunhilda in battle and had her executed by being pulled apart by four horses.

According to historian and bishop Gregory of Tours, Sigebert's marriage to a Visigothic princess was a criticism of his brothers' choices in wives.

Gregory of Tours suggests that he proposed because he envied his brother's marriage to Brunhilda;[3] however, Galswintha ordered him to purge his court of courtesans and mistresses and he soon grew tired of her.

He decided that Galswintha's dower of Bordeaux, Limoges, Cahors, Béarn and Bigorre should be turned over to Brunhilda in restitution.

Fredegund responded to this threat to her husband by hiring two assassins, who killed Sigebert at Vitry-en-Artois with poisoned daggers (scramsaxi, according to Gregory).

[8] Brunhilda now tried to seize the regency of Austrasia in the name of her son Childebert II, but she was resisted fiercely by her nobles and had to retire briefly to the court of Guntram of Burgundy before obtaining her goal.

To reinforce her positions and the crown's prestige and power, she convinced Guntram, newly heirless, to adopt Childebert as his own son and heir.

[9] In 579, she married her daughter Ingunda, then only thirteen, to the Visigothic prince Hermenegild, allying her house to that of the king of her native land.

However, Hermenegild converted to Catholicism and he and his wife both died in the ensuing religious wars which tore apart the Visigothic kingdom in Spain.

In that same year, King Reccared I of the Visigoths sent embassies to both Childebert and Guntram, the former accepting them and consolidating an alliance and the latter refusing to see them.

In 592, Guntram died and Childebert, per the treaty, succeeded to his kingdom, immediately making war on Clotaire II of Neustria, Chilperic's son by Fredegund.

It is at this point that Brunhilda, now in her later fifties and having survived all the previous tribulations, began to display that ruthlessness which led to her especially violent demise.

Brunhilda first took Protadius as lover and, desiring to promote him to high office, conspired to have Berthoald, the mayor of the palace, killed.

Clotaire, in accordance with Brunhilda's bidding, sent his own mayor Landric (a former paramour of Fredegund) to meet Berthoald, who had only a small contingent of men with him.

Brunhilda and Protadius soon persuaded Theuderic to return to war with Theudebert, but the mayor was murdered by his warriors, who did not wish to fight to assuage the ego of the queen.

Desiderius finally enraged her with a pointed sermon on chastity preached in 612 before her and Theuderic, with whom she then hired three assassins to murder the bishop at the village now-called Saint-Didier-sur-Chalaronne.

The mayor of the palace of Austrasia, Warnachar, fearing that at his young age he would fall under the influence of his great-grandmother, brought him before a national assembly, where he was proclaimed king by the nobles, who then did homage to him ruling over both his father's kingdoms.

But Warnachar and Rado, mayor of the palace of Burgundy, along with Pepin of Landen and Arnulf of Metz, resentful of her regency, abandoned the cause of Brunhilda over the young king and joined with her old antagonist Clotaire II, promising not to rise in defence of the queen-regent and recognising Clotaire as rightful regent and guardian of Sigebert.

They fled as far as the city of Orbe (in today French Switzerland), hoping to enlist the aid of certain German tribes, but Clotaire's minions caught up with them by Lake Neuchâtel.

The young king and his brother Corbo were both killed: thus ended the long and bloody feud between Austrasia and Neustria, and, reuniting the two kingdoms, Clotaire held the entire realm of the Franks.

According to the Liber Historiae Francorum:Then the army of the Franks and Burgundians joined into one, all shouted together that death would be most fitting for the very wicked Brunhilda.

Then in 597 he found her useful in resolving a problem that needed redress in the Frankish kingdom, that is, the continued pagan worship of idols and trees, practices which her bishop, Syagrius of Autun, had not sufficiently addressed.

Brunhilda was buried in the abbey of St. Martin at Autun that she founded in 602 on the spot where the bishop of Tours had cut down a beech-tree that served as an object of pagan worship.

She is also credited with founding the castle of Bruniquel and having a Roman road resurfaced near Alligny-en-Morvan (where the name of a nearby hill Terreau Bruneau is believed to be derived from hers).

The part of Mauves-sur-Loire known as la Fontaine Bruneau is named after Brunhilda who may have cooled herself with the fountain's water when she suffered heat exhaustion.