emperors. The Romans created two provinces: Upper and Lower Germany. The dividing line was marked and maintained by a major base at Mainz. Lower Germany, which faced the Ripuarii, later became Germania Secunda. Roman cities in this region included Castra Vetera (Xanten), Cologne, and Bonn. Long before the Franks, the Romanized Ubii had been the main Germanic people within the region of Cologne since early Roman imperial times. They had been allowed to move from the other side of the Rhine. Colonia Agrippinenses (Cologne) was placed among them as a Roman colony to assist them "keep the gate against intruders." While the Ubii had moved under pressure from the Suebi to their east, other related tribes under similar pressure from more distant neighbours had moved in to replace them on the right bank of the Rhine, including the Bructeri, Tencteri, Sicambri and Usipetes. These remained in contact with the province of the Ubii, as is described by Tacitus concerning the Batavian revolt. It is thought that all of these relatively Romanized Germanic tribes may have contributed to the origins of the Ripuarii in later centuries. The Ripuarian Franks lost their independence almost as soon as they entered the historical record, being subsumed in the Frankish core province of Austrasia. Apart from Roman military lists and mention by Jordanes in Getica of some unknown Ripuarii who fought as auxiliaries of Flavius Aetius in the Battle of Chalons in 451, the first mention of the Ripuarii comes from Gregory of Tours, in Historia Francorum. He says that the Salian Frank Clovis, first king of all the Franks and first king to convert to Christianity, subjected the previously independent Ripuarians. Without naming the people as Ripuarian, but referring to Cologne and its vicinity, Gregory of Tours explains how they voluntarily gave up their sovereignty to Clovis. The region of Cologne was under the rule of Sigobert the Lame, an old campaigner who had fought side by side with Clovis in the wars against the Alamanni. He was called "the lame" because of a wound he had received at the Battle of Tolbiac, 496, the same year as Clovis' conversion to Catholicism. Clovis believed he had won by calling on the name of Christ and now had a mandate from God to Christianize all Neustria. This was a long process not free from resistance. In 509 he sent a messenger to Chloderic to state