Franks were among the Germanic peoples who sometimes traded with the Roman Empire and at other times attacked its borders. Roman sources mention the Franks from the A.D. 200’s. The two major branches of the Franks were the Salians and the Ripuarians. The Salians settled in the Low Countries on the lower Rhine, near the North Sea. The Ripuarians moved into the region around what are now the cities of Trier and Cologne, Germany, on the middle Rhine.
In 486, Clovis, a king of the Salian Franks, began to take over the regions of Gaul (roughly modern France) that were ruled by the Romans and other Germanic peoples. He replaced Burgundian, Roman, and Visigoth realms with his own kingdom, which stretched from east of the Rhine River to the Pyrenees Mountains. When Clovis died in 511, the Franks, though a small minority in Gaul, had such a firm hold on the region that it came to be called Francia, or France, after them.
Clovis had belonged to a powerful Frankish family called the Merovingians. His descendants ruled as kings until 751, when another Frankish family, known as the Carolingians, replaced them. The most famous Carolingian king was Charlemagne. As leader of the Franks from 768 to 814, Charlemagne created an empire far larger than that of Clovis. In 800, Pope Leo III crowned him emperor of the Romans. Although Charlemagne’s descendants ruled until 987, the Frankish empire began to break up soon after his death in 814.
See also Carolingian Empire ; Charlemagne ; Charles Martel ; Clovis I ; Merovingian dynasty .
