Clovis succeeded his father Childeric I as king of the Salian Franks at fifteen. Through a series of military campaigns he united the Frankish tribes and defeated the Romans, the Alemanni, the Burgundians, and the Visigoths, establishing the Merovingian kingdom that would become France.
Married to the Christian Burgundian princess Clotilde (St. Clotilde), he had refused her urging to embrace her faith. At the Battle of Tolbiac against the Alemanni (c. 496), his army on the verge of defeat, he cried out: 'O Christ, whom Clotilde calls Son of the living God, who givest victory to those who hope in thee, I implore thee — give me victory now and I will be baptized.' The tide turned; the Alemanni fled.
On Christmas Day 496 (or possibly 508) he was baptized at Reims by St. Remigius with three thousand of his warriors. The baptism of Clovis made the Frankish kingdom the first major Catholic Christian state in Western Europe — and the Frankish alliance with the papacy three centuries later (the Donation of Pepin, the coronation of Charlemagne) flows directly from this moment.
He moved his capital to Paris in 508 and founded the Basilica of the Holy Apostles (later renamed Sainte-Geneviève) where he and Clotilde were buried. The kings of France from his time to Louis XVI counted themselves the heirs of 'the eldest daughter of the Church,' the title of the French monarchy.