BURGUNDIANS. The first mention of the Burgundians is in Pliny (Nat. Hist., IV, 99) prior to their settlement beyond the Vistola. Of perhaps Scandinavian origin, certainly of Germanic stock, their migration toward richer and warmer regions took place in the 2nd century: they clashed with the Gepids and Vandals, and from this clash were pushed onto the Danube and the Rhine; around the middle of the century, amid continuous struggles with the Romans, Alemanni, and Chatti—often auxiliaries of the empire—the Burgundians were settled in the region of the Main, outside the borders of the empire. However, swept along in the wake of the barbarian avalanche of Alans, Vandals, and Suebi, which at the end of the 4th century burst into Gaul, they too crossed those borders and settled in the Rhine region, around Mainz and Worms, where they were found at the imperial proclamation of Jovinus in 411.
Having overstepped into Belgica, in the counties of Metz and Trier, in 437 they were punished by Aetius, who defeated them, killing their king Gundicarius, or Guntiarius, according to the saga of the Nibelungen. Yet in 443, while some of the surviving bands passed into Spain with the Visigoths, others obtained from Aetius himself permission to settle in the region around Lake Geneva. Initially federates of the empire, they established their kingdom there, extorting from the original Roman inhabitants the "tertia" of the lands and of the cultivator-slaves. Latinized and converted to Catholicism, they left their name to the region (Burgundy or Bourgogne).
Christianity among the Burgundians entered with an Arian tinge, but soon, through the work of St. Avitus of Vienne (q.v.), they became Catholics. Clotilde, daughter of the king of the Burgundians, was Catholic when she married Clovis, king of the Franks, and likely played a part in the conversion of her husband and his people, which occurred in 496.
The Burgundians' expansive tendency led them to seize Lyon in the mid-5th century, from which Majorian soon expelled them, though only temporarily. The year that chronology assigns as the last of the Western Empire saw the Burgundians, allied with the Romans, fighting alongside the Visigoths of Euric.
Among the Germanic invading peoples, the Burgundians were not among the strongest, as shown by their limited power, which was also, and perhaps above all, due to the constitutional weakness of royal power: a result of the control exercised by their comrades-in-arms and the patrimonial divisions within the royal family itself. Nevertheless, toward the end of the 5th century, the Burgundians managed to extend the territory they held: an incursion into Liguria in 490 was repelled by the Ostrogoths. But then the growing power of the neighboring kingdoms of the Franks and Goths, and the kinship ties established with the Frankish king Clovis and his intervention, undermined the Burgundian kingdom. For a few years, Gundobald succeeded in restoring power in his hands; then, almost immediately, the fortunes of the kingdom declined, increasingly caught in the vast Franco-Gothic game. Allied with the Franks, continuing the policy of his father, Sigismund, son of Gundobald, was taken prisoner in battle by the sons of Clovis, while Theodoric attacked the kingdom from the south. A few years later, the Franks, returning to the attack, deposed the last king and divided the Burgundian kingdom among the heirs of Clovis. From then on, alongside Austrasia and Neustria, "Burgundy" or Bourgogne would be an integral part of the Merovingian kingdom, thus merging into the formation of France.