Love your videos. I’ve always been interested in the kingdom of Soissons and there’s so frustratingly little information out there about it. This was a great one, very informative.

Me, curled in a ball and crying: "SOISSONS WAS REAL! SOISSONS WAS REAL!"

It does stand though that there was a Roman strongman seated in Soissons projecting power as a de facto independent despot, and I think that’s what people generally mean when speaking about Soissons.

While I may not be able to point to the Realm of Syagrius on a map, I can always point to it on my heart. Checkmate historians

The key thing is to look at what a "king" actually was in this (broader) period. Rather than being supreme, independent ruler of a coherent geopolitical unit - the modern view - they are instead the leader of a group of people. Thus you could have a situation such as Ireland or 6th/7th century England, where "kings" with sometimes really quite small spheres of influence could exist, while at the same time coming under the authority of High Kings, Bretwaldas and other similar overlords. Likewise, during the Roman period, client kings (e.g. Prasutagus, Herod) were permitted to wield authority over their nominal realms, while still being fully within the Empire. Therefore it was quite possible to have "kings" with overlapping geographical areas of rule and fluid relationships between them. Soissons was not a country, in the modern sense, so much as the direction of loyalty held by some or all of the people living in the areas reached by the ruler's authority. That was probably why Clovis was so successful and the state he established endured. He centralised power and wiped out his rivals, rather than relying on holding together more traditional networks of subordinate rulers.

The real kingdom of sossoins was the friends we made along the way

i don't think I've ever seen a video that even comes anywhere close to the quantity/quality of information on the kingdom of Soissons as this. thank you for this awesome video!

This is a very interesting topic. One element that you don't talk about is roman forts archeology. It appears that many roman forts in Gaul and on the German Limes (in surprising locations) were occupied into the 480's. Kingdom is probably the wrong term but the use and organization of these forts implies that the legacy organization and administration of army continued to that time event if manned mostly by Franks. The was some sort of Roman style administration even if it existed from inertia. The end of that form and use seems to roughly correspond to the defeat of Syagrius.

I remember writing a final paper for one of my history courses about warlords in the Late Roman Empire and mentioned Syagrius previously, interesting to think his "kingdom" may have never been. Great video, I appreciate the attention to details and elucidating on your sources, which sadly many other channels don't do.

If it did exist it was definitely just a “garrison state” that wasn’t formally organized into a kingdom. Encountering other cultures who call any post-Roman state as “kingdom of Rome” or their leader as “king of the Romans” is common as a simplified misnomer, I.e. in early Arabic sources the Roman Empire in the east is referred to as “the kingdom of Rome” and the emperor as “king of the Romans”

During an excavation in London, archaeologists discovered lead with the name Syagrius stamped into it.

It's great to see you tackling that subject again, I can never get enough of that era. I think it may well fascinate me even more than the Roman Empire itself.

I saw the title and actually went, in real life, "What? No!"

maybe the real Soissons was the warlords we made along the way

Syagrius was not King of the Romans because romans didn't use kingship titles but he was probably the only teritorial ruler of gallo-roman descent remaining in a Gaul run by warlords of germanic descent so in a way he was the last roman ruler in Northern Gaul.

i've been suddenly and dramatically low on good listening material, glad to see you back

Hadn't heard from you in a while. Great to see you are back.

Good one, Mike! And worth the wait! As we learn more about the late Roman Empire and the post Roman world we see there were no clear cut lines delineating Roman from no longer Roman. There was no "Yesterday we were Roman and today we are not".

Love to see a new upload, really appreciate the deep dives from this channel. Always learn something new

Welcome back Mike! Merry Christmas and Happy New Years to you and your family, and thanks for all the great learning you facilitate. Cheers!

My man doesn’t take the easy way out. I love it, this was really interesting.

I always thought of it like that 24 hour period in 1991 where the entire Soviet Union was just Kazakstan

Your content is so fascinating!! all the info i had on the Soissons before this video came from a wikipedia rabbit hole I traveled down a year or so ago! Thanks for taking the time to make this content to help inform us all more !

Thank you for all your informative videos! :)

NOW it's a happy new year!! Been waiting for the newest upload 😅

I find that whenever I get into a new area of historical Intrest a video is published on it thanks for this and great video.

Excellent work as always, mate.

The (maybe) Kingdom of Soissons has always fascinated me so dearly. Thank you for making such a detailed and well-written video!

This is a really really nice video, thanks man

Any chance of a video of this sort pertaining to the supposed Alanic polity in Gaul? My non-academic searching has turned up practically nothing but passing mentions in relation to the Hunnic invasion and Frankish expansion.

Awesome, awesome videos, awesome channel, i'm binge watching everything. Awesome work, thank you.

Great work on a a part of history obscured by time. Thanks for doing the digging.

Found your channel just a few weeks ago, watched a couple of videos and subscribed. I like your presentation and the venture into (for me) little-known waters, thanks for making interesting stuff for this fellow history enthusiast.

Absolutely outstanding video -- this is one of the most interesting periods of time in the shifting world, and this is *hands down* the most detailed and best researched and most thorough and thoughtful YT video on the subject -- incredible

TYVM for another upload ☃🇨🇦😁

Hey, you remade this video, finally I thought I needed to use the internet archive every time and you also made it way more organised. Does that mean that there will be remakes of other old videos?

Great presentation. Much appreciated!

great topic, thank you

The transformation of the late Western Roman Empires army is fascinating. Its basically all Germanic Barbarian Federati. In the Punic Wars The Roman Republic raised vast numbers against Carthage. But when we get to the 5th & 6th centuries these armies are quite small. Even The Emperor's Justinian campaigns to reclaim Italy with Belasarius were small. This reduction in the ability of Romes Western Military is something ive struggled to understand. Is it because of Constantine shifting the Capital & focus to the East? Was it economic as you mentioned in this video? With Constantine lll leaving Britannia. It seems that Western Europe ( & Italy) were vastly different from the days Agustus,Hadrian & after the Crisis of the 3rd Century. I guess it just seems Rome could have held on to Italy at least! But its like one Historian stated about this time period the Eastern Emperor's at times didn't give a flip about italy or the old Capitals of Rome or Ravenna. Well done shedding light on a difficult but fascinating period of such change. Thank you!

first! love the vids btw

Great video Michael. did you edit some of your playlists i swore there were more?

Any update on when the Galonus video will be posted? I am checking your channel every day in anticipation 😅

great video man, been interested in this for a while now. Would u reccomend any papers/sources on the Row Grave Culture and the militarization of the Gallo-Roman aristocracy in the region, is it mostly the one from MacGeorge on Late Roman Warlords?

Thats a very cool video! I love these end of Western Rome deep dives. I was wondering thoug, do you plan on doing something on the early western slavs and their migrations?

Excellent video. Oddly enough , it is possible that another, smalller, roman rumpstate survived for a while in Treviri under Arbogast ( the junior) . We have only two sources but recent archaeologic discoveries seem to indicate that the Franks definitly occupied the town only after 500 CE

Definitely a “last of the Romans” moment.

Damn that video was two years ago?! That's when I started listening to you lol

It is also highly interesting to look at Dalmatia in this time period. Between eastern Roman and Osteogothic influence, the growing independence of coastal cities and that whole thing with Nepos.

Thank you so much for covering this period. As a French person, it's a very poorly-known topic in France with a lot of 19th-century misconceptions like Clovis being the first king of France and Syagrius being a Roman, etc. still being believed by the public. Even historical educators have a tendency to repeat some clichés. The transition from Antiquity to the Middle Ages is covered very quickly and somewhat archaically in middle school curricula from what I remember. It's usually covered during the first year of a history bachelor's in university, but I followed a more literary-oriented curriculum. And then, since I chose to focus on Mediterranean history, most of my knowledge on late Antiquity/the early Middle Ages comes from online research, where, as I said, information can be not up to date on the latest in academic history.

What do you make of the folk genealogy recorded in Carolingian times, giving a pedigree of “Kings of the Romans” thus: Allanius > Paulus > Egetius > Egegius > Siagrius? Could there have been a popular tradition connecting Syagrius’ regime with the earlier Alan kingdom at Orleans, and/or the command of the Count Paulus described by Gregory?

Excellent work. But your presentation which I found very helpful and illuminating (you hit evidentiary questions I had not considered before) does not give us any strong reason not to accept Gregory's account. His own near family members were active in Eastern Gaul at that time and before so just wildly assuming that "Gregory did not know much about the 5th century and so made it up." Gregory was a pupil of Avitus of Clermont, best described as a member of Sidonius' descendants. Gregory was well familiar with Sidonius' writings and so knew something about the Syagrids (remember the Syagrids can be traced unequivocally through Sidonius' letters to an Afranius Syagrius of Lyon - Sidonius' native city whose daughter married Tonantius Ferreolus, also a man of considerable stature (Prefect) possibly descended from the family of the disgraced usurper Jovianus (think of the meaning of Iovianus and Tonantius) Tonantius was also related through his own wife to the Aviti and therefore to Sidonius. There was apparently a direct line of Syagrii as well as one of them (an aristocrat in the Burgundian kingdom) had learned German and adopted German customs in service of his new overlords. I do not think it is necessarily clear that Aegidius himself was a Syagrid but his son's mother may well have been. It really does not matter. Sidonius was Clermon'ts most notable figure with the possible exception of Avitus himself, and it seems clear given the almot hereditary descent of the bishopric (look how detailed Gregory's knowledge of that is!) after Sidonius. Given that Syagrius was a cognomen and one probably not of ancient Roman origin, it has really only been seen in Gaul and I have never seen ANYONE suggest that there were more than a few of them at a time, though by the 7th century they intermarried sufficiently that the name appeared in a couple of other Gallo-Roman families as well, Gregory's uncle Gallus was bishop of Clermont Ferrand suggesting ties with a branch of Galla Placida's mother's family that was still surviving in Gaul at that time. Again, one of Sidonius' letters goes to a member of that family. We don't know all of the twists and turns between Sidonius time and Gregory's though it beggars the imagination to suggest Gregory did not know the preceding 4 generations of his family, particularly as he mentions several of them. It seems on balance unlikely that Gregory was unaware of his ties to the Apollinari (who despite the exile of some of them by Theodoric of Austrasia continued to do rather well - cf Arcadius of Bourges who carried the ultimatum about Clodomer's children to Chlotilda at Tours and his son Felix also bishop of Bourges. And just in case he forgot (which is unlikely) he was (again) taught by Avitus of Clermont, perhaps son or nephew of said Felix. So I find it hard to agree that he was not very well familiar with the family of the shadowy "Kingdom of Soissons" Nor since clearly there were many other Gallo Romans who would have been familiar with these families and individuals, and who will have read Gregory's histories (clearly Fredegar did) in the absence a) of Gregory having a motive to invent Syagrius out of whole cloth and b) having a realistic opportunity of getting away with it, I do not think there is a sound basis to assume he was wrong. Granted there is little evidence but there is no reason at this stage to assume out of hand, particularly since Fredegar and others did not later provide a different account (as sometimes happened) that Gregory would have gotten away with it. As to the scope of his "kingdom" or power relations, granted Gregory and later historians say so little that there is a great deal of possible variability in these matters. Nor did Gregory manage to get a chronicle of events of that region before Clovis conquest of it (beyond whatever Remigius might have left) But I think there is still not a good reason to just throw out Gregory's statement about a Syagrius, son of Aegidius exercising some sort of political power based solely on the idea that he did not know what was happening before 500 in that region. Particularly when it is effectively certain he will have known who was who in the Gallo Roman family concerned. Respectfully.

I never viewed it as a "Kingdom" but an area where this dude who had an army claimed to "rule" and was probably exaggerated for the sake of story, as middle age scholars tend to do

On the map just after 28 min (and on the thumbnail) you've got a map showing the modern borders, but for some reason Geneva has been annexed into France. (But everything else on the map seems ok).

To be frank, it's quite complicated.

5:14 “Twenty years took just as long to pass back then as it does now” best line lol!

I'm surprised when mentioning the militarization of the area in the 4th C, you didn't mention the villas especially as Halsall talks about in that book. While a significant number had been deoccupied since the 3rd C crisis those that remained became heavily fortified (by the standards of the time) with palisades, ditches and even watch towers not unlike latter early medieval maison forte used by a similarly militarized aristocracy. It would have added more credence to the social changes during the period.

Did you reupload this?

thank you mister historian ... its like you read my mind

DAMN.... that was damn good sir!

Ive always tried to get info on the kingdom of syagrius..ans was surprised how such a kingdom would not have more media based on it. A roman homdout state decades past romes end..has to be something worth having more info on

When I saw this I was thinking "didn't you already cover this?"... well you answered that... you did and this is a followup

I remember seeing a map of this kingdom controlling also a part of southren britain,

Amazing

Some observations about graves, like grave goods, feel a little bit modern and secularized in thought.

My ancestors Merovaeus, Childerich and Chrodwig had been officers in the roman army. Chrodwig ( francised into Clovis) spoke latin and knew Publius Vergilius Maro's Bucolica, Georgica and Aeneid.

I did come across this article once, where the author suggested that Sygarius referring to himself as Rex was the excuse Clovis needs, since that meant he was no longer part of the Empire and was basically a usurper at that point. I don't recall the source but it does seem reasonable.

For some reasons, KZfaq stopped showing notifications from your channel. I even had to check subscription part.

I once saw a picture of the banner (or flag) of Soissons with the only symbol on it being that of a wild boar, which is a celtic symbol. But I don't find any confirmation, so does anybody know what the banner or flag of Soissons was (if they had one)? Thanks, also for this very interesting video.

This is why I think we've been too quick to abandon the term "dark ages". The events and culture of the time would certainly have been rich and nuanced, but they are hidden from us as though by a pall.

Thank you for this, makes it even more fun for me when I do my own Rise of the Merovingians in CK3 keep those Carolingians out!

We need a movie on this.

I can't be the only person who saw the word "Soissons" and kept thinking of the "Le Poisson" song that the chef sings in The Little Mermaid

The Franks more and more rather than a barbaric horde appear to have been the rightful continuators of Roman statehood in (northern) Gaul, in the context of a deep cultural shift to a much simpler, poorer and localized way of life. A case of (very much unhappy) degrowth.

Where's the old version? Want to compare.

I refer to it retroactively as the “Despotate of Syagrius,” rather than calling it a kingdom with a French name

"hey babe, wake up, The Historian's Craft put out another video."

They may said otherwise, but it will always exist in my heart....Ave Roma.

This video is a reupload, right? New maps or something?

What did the Frank say to the Goth? Are you going to finish your Soisson?

took me entirely too long to realize that Soissons is not the same as Soixante

Much depends on one's definition of king and kingdom.

Could it be that Soissons was a remnant of Magnus Maximus's territory post his defeat? The imperial usurper had his base in Britain and Gaul.

Coeval with King Arthur and a very similar story that must, somehow, be related.

Maybe there was a river called Axone and there lived people called from the axone (des axone) so then it were saxons after all

There is speculation that the Frankish kingdom of Neustria is the former Kingdom of Soissons. In this theory, Neustria means "New Western Province".

The kingdom of Soissons is definitely real. We literally just conquered Myzea. Those poor bastards never stood a chance.

Gregory didn't have all the info of the century before, but You should have known that the Franks also were bases in the south of the Netherlands.

I have a very interesting ((Schizo)) theory, that could explain alot: What if Aegidius and Syagrious, were somehow familially related to Childeric and Clovis here? (Perhaps by their time: *Romano-Gaullo* fizzled out and was replaced mainly with *Romano-Francae* ((Roman-Frankish)) instead) And the situation is a misinterpreted "Great Sallic"(civil)-War here between them *not* "a Foreign" War (of conquest/invasion)? Making the Kingdom of Soissons, more as a: ""Romano-Francae Successor Kingdom"" than a ""True Roman, honest"" one. ((Thus it would explain why Emperor Zeno *especially* didnt respond to him as he did)) (This would explain at that here, why both were also crowned; "King of the Franks" too). And the "Great Sallic War" between them here, being more than a simple Crown dispute between Royal blood. but one, that also defined them *culturally as a whole people* (Perhaps, I should also note here; I have absolutely no proof of anything here. Its all just assumptions and presumptions) That Aegidius was the older brother of Childeric, who styled himself more in his roman roots instead of his frankish ones. And Childeric here, being vice versa in this aspect. Maybe This carried over to both their sons to a great degree; Syagrius and Clovis (Also making the both of them Cousins here btw) ((On a sidenote: I've also just come to realize post writing this, that it would also make them earnest Merovingians)) Syagrius wanting to make the frankish people a true cultural romanized one, while Clovis wanted their people to remain still a cultural Germanicized one. And In those 8 years; some type of a Familial dispute happened, which started it all. Aegidius being originally more popular with the men than Childeric here (due to inadvertantly antagonizing them); he was able to seize the kingship from him during that time. This would later also explain, why Clovis was so recklessly (neigh desperately) adamant in his demands to the Visigoths, of Syagrious's return as he was. (As Syagrious would've been a legitimate claimant by blood, whose father was also a beloved leader with great influence)

Were the barbarians on the obelisk of Theidosius purposefully defaced or was that merely weather erosion?

I've never Heard of it

Tous ces anciens royaumes francs soit sont vrais, soit sont des légendes. 🤓

As a Roman Foederatus, Odacer would have been heavily integrated into Roman culture and politics. Therefore, despite being "King of Italy" he would have been a de facto Western Roman emperor just like the rump states.

"Your feeling about Soisson are not real." "They are real to me!"

IT'S REAL TO ME GODDAMNIT

The thing about "successor states", is only TIME can determine whether or not they survive to form a legitimate government Literally ALL roman governor's in the outer-colonies/territories declared THEMSELVES Emperor's/rulers of their respected lands, only the people didnt approve of that and "dethroned" their rulers The reason i say this is cause i felt it matches to u saying how if this kingdom DID exist, most likely didnt last long I felt THIS was the most likely scenario, that they DID exist, just not for very long/not in the way we/one might think

When I was a young Roman history freak, somewhere in the 80s, I used to imagine this "Roman kingdom" as just that, a micro-sized version of the Roman Empire defended by classical "lorica segmentate" type legionaries surrounded by hordes of horned-helmets-wearing barbarians bent on the destruction of civilization. Very romantic, and very wrong, but this was part of the reason why the idea of this Roman "anachronism" seemed so appealing. In reality, of course, the difference between "Roman" and "barbarian" would have almost completely faded in Gaul by the mid-5th century. Economic decline, cultural transformation, the adoption of Christianity and the chaos of the invasions had transformed Roman society in many ways, and as far as military power is concerned, any self-designated kinglets would probably have had to rely on motley troops of poorly armed local militia and/or mercenaries. Still, here I am reading about the subject, happy to expand my knowledge. I probably wouldn't have bothered to look for it, were it not for my badly misinformed imagination that got me interested in the first place!

This "Soissons"...is it in the room with us now?

It was real to me!

Soissons was most likely not a kingdom, but a city-state ruled by a Roman officer turned despot. That's my two cents on this topic.

yes it did.