Between 507 and 511 Hermanfrid married
Amalaberga, daughter of
Amalafrida who was the daughter of
Theodemir. Amalberga was the niece of
Theodoric the Great, who received a number of "silver-white" horses from Hermanfrid. It is unclear when Hermanfrid became king, but he is called king (
rex thoringorum) in a letter by Theodoric dated to 507. He first shared the rule with his brothers Baderic and Bertachar, but later killed Bertachar in a battle in 529, leaving the young
Radegund an orphan. According to
Gregory of Tours, Amalaberga now stirred up Hermanfrid against his remaining brother. Once she laid out only half the table for a meal, and when questioned about the reason, she told him "A king who owns only of half of his kingdom deserved to have half of his table bare." Thus roused, Hermanfrid made a pact with the king of
Metz,
Theuderic I, to march against Baderic. Baderic was overcome by the
Franks and beheaded, but Hermanfrid refused to fulfill his obligations to Theuderic, which led to enmity between the two kings. In 531 or 532, Theuderic, his son
Theudebert I, and his brother King
Clotaire I of
Soissons attacked the Thuringii. The Franks won a
battle near the river Unstrut and took the royal seat at Scithingi (modern
Burgscheidungen). Hermanfrid managed to flee, but the Franks captured his niece Radegund (see
Venantius Fortunatus,
De excidio Thoringae) and his nephews. Gregory mentions that certain people had ventured to suggest that Theuderic
might have had something to do with it. Radegund was then forced to marry King Clotaire, while Hermanfrid's wife Amalaberga fled to the
Ostrogoths with her children
Amalafrid and
Rodelinda. She was later captured by the
Byzantine general
Belisarius and sent to
Constantinople, where Amalafrid later became an imperial general and Rodelinda was married to the Lombard king
Auduin. The Thuringian kingdom ended with Hermanfrid. The area east of the
Saale River was taken over by
Slavic tribes, north Thuringia by the Saxons. The fall of the Thuringian dynasty became the subject of numerous epic treatments, the best known of which is in the
Rerum gestarum saxonicarum libri tres by
Widukind of Corvey, a Saxon foundation
myth written in 967.
Rudolph of Fulda tells a related story. In this version, it is the
Saxons under Duke
Hadugato, as allies of the Franks, who win the great battle on the Unstrut. ==About the sources==