By 500 AD, the
Franks
, who gave their
name to modern
France, had become
the dominant
invading power.
Their most
celebrated king,
Clovis
, consolidated his
hold on northern
France and drove the
Visigoths out of the
southwest into
Spain. In 507 he
made the until-then
insignificant little
trading town of
Paris his capital
and became a
Christian, which
inevitably hastened
the
Christianization
of Frankish society.
Under the
succeeding Merovingian
- as the dynasty was
called - rulers, the
kingdom began to
disintegrate until
in the eighth
century the Pepin
family, who were the
Merovingians'
chancellors, began
to take effective
control. In 732, one
of their most
dynamic scions, Charles
Martel ,
reunited the kingdom
and saved western
Christendom from the
northward expansion
of Islam by
defeating the
Spanish Moors at the
battle of
Poitiers .
In 754 Charles's
son, Pepin, had
himself crowned king
by the pope, thus
inaugurating the Carolingian
dynasty and
establishing for the
first time the
principle of the
divine right of
kings. His son was Charlemagne
, who extended
Frankish control
over the whole of
what had been Roman
Gaul, and far
beyond. On Christmas
Day in 800, he was
crowned emperor of
the Holy Roman
Empire , though
again, following his
death, the kingdom
fell apart in
squabbles over who
was to inherit
various parts of his
empire. At the
Treaty of Verdun in
843, his grandsons
agreed on a division
of territory that
corresponded roughly
with the extent of
modern France and
Germany.
Charlemagne's
administrative
system had involved
the royal
appointment of
counts and bishops
to govern the
various provinces of
the empire. Under
the destabilizing
attacks of
Normans/Norsemen/Vikings
during the ninth
century, Carolingian
kings were obliged
to delegate more
power and autonomy
to these provincial
governors ,
whose lands, like Aquitaine
and Burgundy
, already had
separate regional
identities as a
result of earlier
invasions - the
Visigoths in
Aquitaine, the
Burgundians in
Burgundy, for
example.
Gradually the
power of these
governors
overshadowed that of
the king, whose
lands were confined
to the Île-de-France.
When the last
Carolingian died in
987, it was only
natural that they
should elect one of
their own number to
take his place. This
was Hugues Capet,
founder of a dynasty
that lasted until
1328.
