Gundobad
Gundobad (; ; 452 – 516) was King of the Burgundians (473–516), succeeding his father Gundioc of Burgundy. Previous to this, he had been a patrician of the moribund Western Roman Empire in 472–473, three years before its collapse, suc ...
, was king of Burgundy. He ruled Burgundy after the death of Sigismund, his elder brother, in 524 until 534.
Life
According to
Gregory of Tours
Gregory of Tours (born ; 30 November – 17 November 594 AD) was a Gallo-Roman historian and Bishop of Tours during the Merovingian period and is known as the "father of French history". He was a prelate in the Merovingian kingdom, encom ...
, Sigismund married the daughter of the OstrogothKing Theodoric. They had a son, Sigeric. Later, the widowed Sigismund remarried, and his second wife maltreated and insulted her stepson. The Queen persuaded Sigismund that Sigeric planned to kill his father and seize the throne. Sigismund ordered the young man to be taken while drunk and drowned in a well.Kasten, Brigitte. "Stepmothers in Frankish legal life", ''Law, Laity and Solidarities'' (Susan Reynolds, ed.), Manchester University Press, 2001,
The murder of Sigeric in 523 caused tension between the Ostrogoths and the Burgundians. The sons of Clovis took advantage of the political situation to attack the Burgundian kingdom, which now stood alone. Sigismund and Godomar led the Burgundian defense but lost the battle. Sigismund was defeated by the
Franks
file:Frankish arms.JPG, Aristocratic Frankish burial items from the Merovingian dynasty
The Franks ( or ; ; ) were originally a group of Germanic peoples who lived near the Rhine river, Rhine-river military border of Germania Inferior, which wa ...
; he, his wife and his two sons were captured through treachery by Clovis's eldest son, Chlodomer, King at
Orléans
Orléans (,"Orleans" (US) and Theuderic I, King at
Metz
Metz ( , , , then ) is a city in northeast France located at the confluence of the Moselle (river), Moselle and the Seille (Moselle), Seille rivers. Metz is the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Moselle (department), Moselle Departments ...
, marched on Burgundy in 524. On June 25, 524, Godomar led the Burgundians to victory over the Franks in the Battle of Vézeronce, in which Chlodomer himself fell. The Franks then retreated and gave up the fight for Burgundy for the time being.
Three years after Sigismund's death, Godomar had his body recovered and subsequently buried in the Chapel of St. John in the Abbey of Saint-Maurice d'Agaune, the monastery that the Sigismund had founded and to which he had subsequently retreated for some time after the death of his son.
When the Franks made another attempt at conquest in 532, Godomar II was unable to repel them. He was defeated by them in the Battle of Autun, which meant the end of his reign and the end of the kingdom, which the Merovingians definitively incorporated into their empire and finally divided among themselves in 534. His further fate is not known.