Kingdom of the Burgundians | ||||||||||
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The First Kingdom of the Burgundians, after the settlement in Savoy from 443.
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Government | Monarchy | |||||||||
King | ||||||||||
• | 411-437 | Gunther | ||||||||
• | 532-534 | Godomar | ||||||||
History | ||||||||||
• | Gunther is granted land on the left bank of the Rhine by Honorius | 411 | ||||||||
• | Godomar is defeated by Childebert I and Clothar I at the Battle of Autun | 534 | ||||||||
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Today part of |
various countries
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The Kingdom of the Burgundians or First Kingdom of Burgundy was a kingdom established by the Germanic Burgundians in the Rhineland and then in Savoy in the 5th century.
The Burgundians, an East Germanic tribe, may have migrated from the Scandinavian island of Bornholm to the Vistula basin in the 3rd century AD. The first documented, though not historically verified King of the Burgundians, Gjúki (Gebicca), lived in the late 4th century.
In 406 the Alans, Vandals, the Suevi - and possibly the Burgundians - crossed the Rhine and invaded Roman Gaul. The Burgundians settled as foederati in the Roman province of Germania Secunda along the Middle Rhine.
In 411 AD, the Burgundian king Gunther (or Gundahar or Gundicar) in cooperation with Goar, king of the Alans, set up Jovinus as a puppet emperor. Under the pretext of Jovinus' imperial authority, Gunther settled on the western (i.e., Roman) bank of the Rhine, between the river Lauter and the Nahe, seizing the settlements of Borbetomagus (present day Worms), Speyer, and Strasbourg. Apparently as part of a truce, the Emperor Honorius later officially "granted" them the land. The Burgundians established their capital at Borbetomagus. Olympiodorus of Thebes also mentions a Guntiarios who was called "commander of the Burgundians" in the context of the 411 usurping of Germania Secunda by Jovinus. (Prosper, a. 386)