Merovech is the semi-legendary founder of the Merovingian dynasty of the Salian Franks, which later became the dominant Frankish tribe. He is proposed to be one of several barbarian warlords and kings that joined forces with the Roman general Aetius against the Huns under Attila at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains in Gaul in 451. His grand-son Clovis I became the founder of the Frankish kingdom. The family of Childeric and Clovis, the first Frankish large-scale royal dynasty called themselves Merovingians after him, and this was known to historians in the following centuries, but no more contemporary evidence exists. The most important such written source, Gregory of Tours, recorded that Merovech was said to be descended from Chlodio, a roughly contemporary Frankish warlord who pushed from the Silva Carbonaria in modern central Belgium as far south as the Somme, north of Paris in modern-day France.
Name
The name Merovech is related to Marwig, lit. "famed fight".
Historical accounts
There is little information about him in the later histories of the Franks. Gregory of Tours only names him once as the father ofChilderic I but remained vague about his relationship to Chlodio. The Chronicle of Fredegar recounts that Merovech was born after Chlodio's wife encountered a sea creature while bathing in the sea; according to Fredegar it remained unclear whether Merovech's father was the creature or Chlodio.Another theory considers this legend to be the creation of a mythological past needed to back up the fast-rising Frankish rule in Western Europe. Clodio is said to have been defeated by Flavius Aëtius at Vicus Helena in Artois in 448. Ian S. Wood would therefore place his son somewhere in the second half of the fifth century. A contemporary Roman historian, Priscus writes of having witnessed in Rome a “lad without down on his cheeks as yet and with fair hair so long that it poured down his shoulders, Aetius had made him his adopted son”. Priscus writes that the excuse Attila used for waging war on the Franks was the death of their king and the disagreement of his children over the succession, the elder being allied with Attila and the younger with Aetius. As Chlodio died just before Attila's invasion, this seems to suggest that Merovech was in fact Chlodio's son.
