More Merovingian- Kingdom of Soissons

[Flavivs Aetivs]

Syagrius was the descendant of Aegidius who was (like most of the late 5th century characters) one of Aetius' generals.

A rough history of what happened is that Aegidius supported Avitus and Majorian, but upon their deaths broke away because of the stupidity of the Italic aristocracy and the resentment between the Italic and Gallic government. He died around 465 (after repulsing a Gothic invasion a few years before) and Syagrius took over.

It's probable Aegidius had an alliance with the Aremoricans to his West, and it is known that he had close ties with the Franks (probably as a result of Merovaeus being Aetius' adopted son). For a while Aegidius had control of the Salian Frankish kingdom, but lost control to Childeric II (I think) upon his death in 465.

It controlled lands from Aurelianum (Orleans) to Novidunum (Soissons), so basically the fertile Seine and Loire valleys, which would have supplied Grain to his army. The forces he had were probably mostly Frankish, Alemannic, or Visigothic, maybe with whatever he could scrounge up from the local possessores. Their equipment would have been moderately Roman, but likely was dominated by barbarian influence (we're talking Banded helmets rather than ridge helmets, that sort of thing.)

That's all I know. I honestly don't know of many sources for it, other than Gregory of Tours who describes the kingdom of Syagrius as a Romano-Frankish (Book 2, somewhere after chapter 7, maybe 23?) one when telling of Clovis' defeat of Syagrius.