Clovis is important in the historiography of France as "the first king of what would become France. Clovis succeeded his father, Childeric I , as a king of the Salian Franks in , and eventually came to rule an area extending from what is now the southern Netherlands to northern France , corresponding in Roman terms to Gallia Belgica northern Gaul.
At the Battle of Soissons , he established his military dominance of the rump state of the fragmenting Western Roman Empire , which was then under the command of Syagrius. By the time of his death in , Clovis had conquered several smaller Frankish kingdoms in the northeast of Gaul, stretching into what is now Germany. Clovis also conquered the Alemanni in eastern Gaul and the Visigothic kingdom of Aquitania in the southwest.
These campaigns added significantly to Clovis's domains and established his dynasty as a major political and military presence in western Europe. Clovis is also significant because of his baptism in , [ 4 ] largely at the behest of his wife, Clotilde , who would later be venerated as a saint for this act, celebrated today in both the Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox Church.
The adoption by Clovis of Catholicism as opposed to the Arianism of most other Germanic tribes led to widespread conversion among the Franks, and eventually to religious unification across what is now modern-day France, the Low Countries and Germany.
The alliance between the Franks and Catholicism eventually led to Charlemagne 's crowning by the Pope as emperor in , and to the subsequent birth of the early Holy Roman Empire in the middle of the 10th century.
