48 EARLY MEDIEVAL SPAINpeaceful co-existence, Leovigild finally reacted to crush the ephem-
eral kingdom of his son in 582, the probable year of Leander's return
from Constantinople and of Hermenigild's conversion. In that year,
as John of Biclar records, Leovigild began to raise an army to move
against his son. In campaigns in 583 and 584 he reduced city after
city that Hermenigild proved powerless to hold. The brief account in
John of Biclar can be supplemented by the triumphal coinage that
Leovigild issued in those cities to record his taking of Seville and
Italica.^35 During the siege of Seville in 583 his ally Miro, King of the
Sueves, who had been brought down by Leovigild willingly or other-
wise to assist, died. Gregory of Tours suggests that Miro and his Sueves
were there to help Hermenigild, but the contemporary Spanish tes-
timony of John of Biclar to the contrary is to be preferred.^36 Finally
Hermenigild himself was captured in 584 when Cordoba fell, and he
was exiled by his father to Valencia. By this time his wife and son were
in Byzantine hands, either as hostages or for safety - explicit testi-
mony to the rebel king's imperial links. The Queen Ingundis died at
Carthage en route for Constantinople but their son Athanagild sur-
vived the journey to the Byzantine capital. There, despite attempts by
his grandmother Queen Brunechildis to have him sent to her in
Francia, he remained and disappears from view.^37 As for the exiled
Hermenigild, he was killed in 585 at Tarragona by a certain Sis bert.
The reasons for this, and the degree of his father's involvement in his
death, are unknown. Certainly outsiders such as the two Gregorys
blamed him, and his second son and successor Reccared had Sisbert
put to death, but the matter remains obscure.^38 It has sometimes
been thought that John of Biclar and Isidore failed to do justice to
Hermenigild in their works out of deference to Reccared, whose
succession was only made possible by his brother's death and whose
own conversion to Catholicism might lose lustre if overmuch was
made of the earlier one. However, it is more likely that the political
instability that resulted from the frequent revolts and contested
successions which plagued the Visigothic kingdom, together with their
own convictions of the sinfulness of rebellion, prevented John and
Isidore from being able to see Hermenigild as anything more than an
unsuccessful 'tyrant' and usurper, and certainly not as a Catholic
martyr.
With the final suppression of his son's rebellion in 584, one last
achievement remained for Leovigild. This was the extinction of the
Suevic kingdom and its incorporation within the Visigothic realm.