War, which was almost constant in those turbulent times, furnished the barbarian kings with occasional resources, which were usually much more important than the ordinary supplies from taxation.  The first chiefs of the Visigoths, the Ostrogoths, and the Franks, sought means of replenishing their treasuries by their victorious arms.  Alaric, Totila, and Clovis thus amassed enormous wealth, without troubling themselves to place the government finances on a satisfactory basis.  We see, however, a semblance of financial organization in the institutions of Alaric and his successors.  Subsequently, the great Theodoric, who had studied the administrative theories of the Byzantine Court, exercised his genius in endeavouring to work out an accurate system of finance, which was adopted in Italy.

Gregory of Tours, a writer of the sixteenth century, relates in several passages of his “History of the Franks,” that they exhibited the same repugnance to compulsory taxation as the Germans of the time of Tacitus.  The Leudes considered that they owed nothing to the treasury, and to force them to submit to taxation was not an easy matter.  About the year 465, Childeric I., father of Clovis, lost his crown for wishing all classes to submit to taxation equally.  In 673, Childeric II., King of Austrasia, had one of these Leudes, named Bodillon, flogged with rods for daring to reproach him with the injustice of certain taxes.  He, however, was afterwards assassinated by this same Bodillon, and the Leudes maintained their right of immunity.  A century before the Leudes were already quarrelling with royalty on account of the taxes, which they refused to pay, and they sacrificed Queen Brunehaut because she attempted to enrich the treasury with the confiscated property of a few nobles who had rebelled against her authority.  The wealth of the Frank kings, which was always very great, was a continual object of envy, and on one occasion Chilperic I., King of Soissons, having the Leudes in league with him, laid his hands on the wealth amassed by his father, Clotaire I., which was kept in the Palace of Braine.  He was, nevertheless, obliged to share his spoil with his brothers and their followers, who came in arms to force him to refund what he had taken.  Chilperic (Fig. 254) was so much in awe of these Leudes that he did not ask them for money.  His wife, the much-feared Fredegonde, did not, however, exempt them more than Brunehaut had done; and her judges or ministers, Audon and Mummius, having met with an insurmountable resistance in endeavouring to force taxation on the nobles, nearly lost their lives in consequence.

[Illustration:  Fig. 254.—­Tomb of Chilperic.—­Sculpture of the Eleventh Century, in the Abbey of St. Denis.]