There were many important French abbeys in the Middle Ages, but few as large or as rich as St. Pierre in Moissac. The story is that King Clovis, having defeated the heathen Visigoths in the year 506, declared that he would found an abbey with a thousand monks to commemorate the thousand men he lost in battle. He asked God to help him decide just where the abbey would be built: he hurled his javelin, and the place where it landed—well, even though it was a marsh, that was the place. The monks forever after had serious moisture problems, but they rarely had money problems, with the King of France as their protector.