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91-569: As soon as the capitulary was composed, it was sent to the various functionaries of the Frankish Empire , archbishops , bishops , missi dominici and counts , a copy being kept by the chancellor in the archives of the palace. The last emperor to draw up capitularies was Lambert of Italy , in 898. At the present day not a single capitulary survives in its original form; but very frequently copies of these isolated capitularies were included in various scattered manuscripts, among material of

182-616: A Germanic people who lived near the Lower Rhine , on the northern continental frontier of the empire. They subsequently expanded their power and influence during the Middle Ages , until much of the population of western Europe, particularly in and near France , were commonly described as Franks, for example in the context of their joint efforts during the Crusades starting in the 11th century. A key turning point in this evolution

273-582: A century later. Many say that the Franks originally came from Pannonia and first inhabited the banks of the Rhine. Then they crossed the river, marched through Thuringia, and set up in each county district [ pagus ] and each city [ civitas ] longhaired kings chosen from their foremost and most noble family. The author of the Chronicle of Fredegar claimed that the Franks came originally from Troy and quoted

364-568: A city and its environs. Initially only in certain cities in western Gaul, in Neustria and Aquitaine, did the kings possess the right or power to call up the levy. The commanders of the local levies were always different from the commanders of the urban garrisons. Often the former were commanded by the counts of the districts. A much rarer occurrence was the general levy, which applied to the entire kingdom and included peasants ( pauperes and inferiores ). General levies could also be made within

455-417: A collection. He arranged them in four books: one grouped together the ecclesiastical capitularies of Charlemagne , another the ecclesiastical capitularies of Louis I , Charlemagne's son, another the secular capitularies of Charlemagne, and yet another the secular capitularies of Louis, bringing together similar provisions and suppressing duplicates. This collection soon acquired official status: after 829 Louis

546-405: A continuation of national identities within a mixed population when it stated that "all the peoples who dwell (in the official's province), Franks, Romans, Burgundians and those of other nations, live ... according to their law and their custom." Writing in 2009, Professor Christopher Wickham pointed out that "the word 'Frankish' quickly ceased to have an exclusive ethnic connotation. North of

637-489: A known military unit based on the Rhône . The Ripuarian territory on both sides of the Rhine thus became a central part of Merovingian Austrasia . This stretched to include Roman Germania Inferior (later Germania Secunda ), which included the original Salian and Ripuarian lands, and roughly equates to medieval Lower Lotharingia. It also included Gallia Belgica Prima (roughly medieval Upper Lotharingia), and further lands on

728-684: A mare's value was the same as that of an ox or of a shield and spear, two solidi and a stallion seven or the same as a sword and scabbard, which suggests that horses were relatively common. Perhaps the Byzantine writers considered the Frankish horse to be insignificant relative to the Greek cavalry, which is probably accurate. The Frankish military establishment incorporated many of the pre-existing Roman institutions in Gaul, especially during and after

819-478: A militarised nature. The Franks called annual meetings every Marchfeld (1 March), when the king and his nobles assembled in large open fields and determined their targets for the next campaigning season. The meetings were a show of strength on behalf of the monarch and a way for him to retain loyalty among his troops. In their civil wars, the Merovingian kings concentrated on the holding of fortified places and

910-653: A new edition has been commissioned by the Monumenta Germaniae Historica , to be prepared by Hubert Mordek and Klaus Zechiel-Eckes; the edition of the Collectio Ansegisi is superseded by the one published in the Capitularia Nova Series vol. 1 (ed. Gerhard Schmitz, 1996). Among the capitularies are to be found documents of a very varied kind. Boretius has divided them into several classes: These are additions made by

1001-446: A very different nature, ecclesiastical or secular. A number of them have been found in books which go back as far as the 9th or 10th centuries. Most recent editions note the manuscripts from which a capitulary has been collated. Such capitularies make provisions of a varied nature: it was necessary at an early date to classify them into chapters according to the subject. In 827 Ansegisus , abbot of St. Wandrille at Fontenelle, made such

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1092-443: Is both habitual and a national custom and they are proficient in this. At the hip they wear a sword and on the left side their shield is attached. They have neither bows nor slings, no missile weapons except the double edged axe and the angon which they use most often. The angons are spears which are neither very short nor very long. They can be used, if necessary, for throwing like a javelin , and also in hand to hand combat . In

1183-597: Is doubtless a collection of the instructions sent at various times to the agents of these domains); the partitions of the kingdom among the king's sons, as the Divisio regnorum of 806, or the Ordinatio imperii of 817; the oaths of peace and brotherhood which were taken on various occasions by the sons of Louis the Pious, etc. The merit of clearly establishing these distinctions belongs to Boretius. He has doubtless exaggerated

1274-462: Is generally believed to mean 'The Chamavi who are Franks' (despite the letter p). Further up the river the word "Francia" is clearly marked, indicating a country name on the bank opposite to Nijmegen and Xanten . The Salians were first mentioned by Ammianus Marcellinus , who described Julian 's defeat of "the first Franks of all, those whom custom has called the Salians", in 358. Julian allowed

1365-599: Is on the River Danube , settling near the Sea of Azov . There they founded a city called Sicambria. (The Sicambri were the most well-known tribe in the Frankish homeland in the time of the early Roman empire, still remembered though defeated and dispersed long before the Frankish name appeared.) The Trojans joined the Roman army in accomplishing the task of driving their enemies into the marshes of Mæotis, for which they received

1456-540: Is the forerunner of the nation state of France. However, in various historical contexts, such as during the medieval crusades, not only the French, but also people from neighbouring regions in Western Europe , continued to be referred to collectively as Franks. The crusaders in particular had a lasting impact on the use of Frank-related names for Western Europeans in many non-European languages. The name Franci

1547-531: The Augustan History , a collection of biographies of the Roman emperors . None of these sources presents a detailed list of which tribes or parts of tribes became Frankish, or concerning the politics and history, but to quote James (1988 , p. 35): A Roman marching-song joyfully recorded in a fourth-century source, is associated with the 260s; but the Franks' first appearance in a contemporary source

1638-717: The Strategikon , supposedly written by the emperor Maurice , or in his time, the Franks are lumped together with the Lombards under the heading of the "fair-haired" peoples. If they are hard pressed in cavalry actions, they dismount at a single prearranged sign and line up on foot. Although only a few against many horsemen, they do not shrink from the fight. They are armed with shields, lances, and short swords slung from their shoulders. They prefer fighting on foot and rapid charges. [...] Either on horseback or on foot they are impetuous and un- disciplined in charging, as if they were

1729-678: The Battle of Tertry in 687, each mayor of the palace , who had formerly been the king's chief household official, effectively held power until in 751, with the approval of the Pope and the nobility, Pepin the Short deposed the last Merovingian king Childeric III and had himself crowned. This inaugurated a new dynasty, the Carolingians . The unification achieved by the Merovingians ensured

1820-685: The Battle of Vouillé , he established Frankish hegemony over most of Gaul, excluding Burgundy , Provence and Brittany , which were eventually absorbed by his successors. By the 490s, he had conquered all the Frankish kingdoms to the west of the River Maas except for the Ripuarian Franks and was in a position to make the city of Paris his capital. He became the first king of all Franks in 509, after he had conquered Cologne. Clovis I divided his realm between his four sons, who united to defeat Burgundy in 534. Internecine feuding occurred during

1911-597: The Lombards . These capitularies formed a continuation of the Lombard laws, and are printed as an appendix to these laws by Boretius in the folio edition of the Monumenta Germaniae, Leges, vol. iv. Franks The Franks ( Latin : Franci or gens Francorum ; German : Franken ; French : Francs ) were a western European people during the Roman Empire and Middle Ages . They began as

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2002-669: The River Loire everyone seems to have been considered a Frank by the mid-7th century at the latest (except Bretons ); Romani (Romans) were essentially the inhabitants of Aquitaine after that". Apart from the History of the Franks by Gregory of Tours , two early sources relate the mythological origin of the Franks: a 7th-century work known as the Chronicle of Fredegar and the anonymous Liber Historiae Francorum , written

2093-546: The Somme river . Chlodio is often seen as an ancestor of the future Merovingian dynasty. Childeric I , who according to Gregory of Tours was a reputed descendant of Chlodio, was later seen as administrative ruler over Roman Belgica Secunda and possibly other areas. Records of Childeric show him to have been active together with Roman forces in the Loire region, quite far to the south. His descendants came to rule Roman Gaul all

2184-622: The 260s, the armies under the Germanic Batavian Postumus revolted and proclaimed him emperor and then restored order. From then on, Germanic soldiers in the Roman army, most notably Franks, were promoted from the ranks. A few decades later, the Menapian Carausius created a Batavian–British rump state on Roman soil that was supported by Frankish soldiers and raiders. Frankish soldiers such as Magnentius , Silvanus , Ricomer and Bauto held command positions in

2275-591: The 450s and 460s, Childeric I , a Salian Frank, was one of several military leaders commanding Roman forces with various ethnic affiliations in Roman Gaul (roughly modern France). Childeric and his son Clovis I faced competition from the Roman Aegidius as competitor for the "kingship" of the Franks associated with the Roman Loire forces (according to Gregory of Tours , Aegidius held the kingship of

2366-485: The 6th century following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, as well as establishing leadership over all the Frankish kingdoms on or near the Rhine frontier. The dynasty subsequently gained control over a significant part of what is now western and southern Germany. It was by building upon the basis of this Merovingian empire that the subsequent dynasty, the Carolingians , eventually came to be seen as

2457-484: The Byzantine historians do not assign them to the Franks. The evidence of Gregory and of the Lex Salica implies that the early Franks were a cavalry people. In fact, some modern historians have hypothesised that the Franks possessed so numerous a body of horses that they could use them to plough fields and thus were agriculturally technologically advanced over their neighbours. The Lex Ribuaria specifies that

2548-647: The Capitularies made in 1835 by Georg Pertz , in the Monumenta Germaniae Historica (folio edition, vol. I, of the Leges), was not much of an advance on that of Baluze. A fresh revision was required, and the editors of the Monumenta decided to reissue it in their quarto series, entrusting the work to Dr Alfred Boretius. In 1883 Boretius published his first volume, containing all the detached capitularies up to 827, together with various appendices bearing on them, and

2639-610: The Church councils and especially spurious provisions very similar in character to those of the same date found in the False Decretals . Despite these spurious items, the collection as a whole was accepted as authentic, and the four books of Ansegisus and the three of Benedictus Levita were treated together as a single collection in seven books. Modern historians, however, are careful to avoid using Books Five, Six, and Seven for purposes of reference. Early editors chose to republish

2730-525: The Frankish realm. Chief among these was the standing army under the command of the Patrician of Burgundy . In the late 6th century, during the wars instigated by Fredegund and Brunhilda , the Merovingian monarchs introduced a new element into their militaries: the local levy . A levy consisted of all the able-bodied men of a district who were required to report for military service when called upon, similar to conscription . The local levy applied only to

2821-472: The Franks for 8 years while Childeric was in exile). This new type of kingship, perhaps inspired by Alaric I , represents the start of the Merovingian dynasty which succeeded in conquering most of Gaul in the 6th century, as well as establishing its leadership over all the Frankish kingdoms on the Rhine frontier. Aegidius died in 464 or 465. Childeric and his son Clovis I were both described as rulers of

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2912-461: The Franks fought primarily as a tribe, unless they were part of a Roman military unit fighting in conjunction with other imperial units. The primary sources for Frankish military custom and armament are Ammianus Marcellinus , Agathias and Procopius, the latter two Eastern Roman historians writing about Frankish intervention in the Gothic War . Writing of 539, Procopius says: At this time

3003-495: The Franks in the matter of the execution of Frankish prisoners in the circus at Trier by Constantine I in 306 and certain other measures: Ubi nunc est illa ferocia? Ubi semper infida mobilitas? ("Where now is that ferocity of yours? Where is that ever untrustworthy fickleness?"). Latin feroces was used often to describe the Franks. Contemporary definitions of Frankish ethnicity vary both by period and point of view. The formulary of Marculf written about 700 AD described

3094-425: The Franks knew little about their background and that they may have felt some inferiority in comparison with other peoples of antiquity who possessed an ancient name and glorious tradition. [...] Both legends are of course equally fabulous for, even more than most barbarian peoples, the Franks possessed no common history, ancestry, or tradition of a heroic age of migration. Like their Alemannic neighbours, they were by

3185-744: The Franks to remain in Texuandria as fœderati within the Empire, having moved there from the Rhine-Maas delta. The 5th century Notitia Dignitatum lists a group of soldiers as Salii . Some decades later, Franks in the same region, possibly the Salians, controlled the River Scheldt and were disrupting transport links to Britain in the English Channel . Although Roman forces managed to pacify them, they failed to expel

3276-475: The Franks, hearing that both the Goths and Romans had suffered severely by the war ... forgetting for the moment their oaths and treaties ... (for this nation in matters of trust is the most treacherous in the world), they straightway gathered to the number of one hundred thousand under the leadership of Theudebert I and marched into Italy: they had a small body of cavalry about their leader, and these were

3367-594: The Franks, who continued to be feared as pirates. The Salians are generally seen as the predecessors of the Franks who pushed southwestwards into what is now modern France, who eventually came to be ruled by the Merovingians (see below). This is because when the Merovingian dynasty published the Salian law ( Lex Salica ) it applied in the Neustrian area from the river Liger ( Loire ) to the Silva Carbonaria ,

3458-436: The Pious . Following Louis the Pious's death, however, according to Frankish culture and law that demanded equality among all living male adult heirs, the Frankish Empire was now split between Louis' three sons. Germanic peoples, including those tribes in the Rhine delta that later became the Franks, are known to have served in the Roman army since the days of Julius Caesar . After the Roman administration collapsed in Gaul in

3549-487: The Pious refers to it, citing book and section. New capitularies were naturally promulgated after 827, and so it was that by 858 there had appeared a second collection in three books, compiled by an author calling himself Benedictus Levita . His avowed aim was to complete the work of Ansegisus and bring it up to date. However, the author not only included prescriptions from the capitularies, but introduced other documents into his collection: fragments of Roman laws, canons of

3640-555: The Rhine became so frequent that the Romans began to settle the Franks on their borders in order to control them. The Franks appear to be mentioned in the Tabula Peutingeriana , an atlas of Roman roads . (It is a 13th-century copy of a 4th or 5th century document that reflects information from the 3rd century.) Several tribal names are written at the mouth of the Rhine. One of these says Hamavi; Quietpranci , which

3731-607: The Roman Province of Belgica Secunda , by its spiritual leader in the time of Clovis, Saint Remigius . Clovis later defeated the son of Aegidius, Syagrius , in 486 or 487 and then had the Frankish king Chararic imprisoned and executed. A few years later, he killed Ragnachar , the Frankish king of Cambrai, and his brothers. After conquering the Kingdom of Soissons and expelling the Visigoths from southern Gaul at

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3822-424: The Roman army during the mid 4th century. From the narrative of Ammianus Marcellinus it is evident that both Frankish and Alamannic tribal armies were organised along Roman lines. After the invasion of Chlodio , the Roman armies at the Rhine border became a Frankish "franchise" and Franks were known to levy Roman-like troops that were supported by a Roman-like armour and weapons industry. This lasted at least until

3913-584: The Romans under their own names, both as allies providing soldiers, and as enemies. The term is first used to describe the tribes working together to raid Roman territory. Frankish peoples subsequently living inside Rome's frontier on the Rhine river are often divided by historians into two groups – the Salian Franks to the west, who came south via the Rhine delta ; and the Ripuarian or Rhineland Franks to

4004-459: The Salians they appear in Roman records both as raiders and as contributors to military units. Unlike the Salii, there is no record of when, if ever, the empire officially accepted their residence within its borders. They eventually succeeded to hold the city of Cologne, and at some point seem to have acquired the name Ripuarians, which may have meant "river people". In any case a Merovingian legal code

4095-479: The archaeological evidence. The Lex Ribuaria , the early 7th century legal code of the Rhineland or Ripuarian Franks, specifies the values of various goods when paying a wergild in kind; whereas a spear and shield were worth only two solidi , a sword and scabbard were valued at seven, a helmet at six, and a "metal tunic" at twelve. Scramasaxes and arrowheads are numerous in Frankish graves even though

4186-520: The banks of the Danube and the Ocean Sea. Again splitting into, two groups, half of them entered Europe with their king Francio. After crossing Europe with their wives and children they occupied the banks of the Rhine and not far from the Rhine began to build the city of "Troy" (Colonia Traiana-Xanten). According to historian Patrick J. Geary , those two stories are "alike in betraying both the fact that

4277-402: The canon of the councils, and made them obligatory for all Christians in the kingdom. These embodied political decrees which all subjects of the kingdom were bound to observe. They often bore the name of edictuin or of constitutio, and the provisions made in them were permanent. These capitularies were generally elaborated by the king of the Franks in the autumn assemblies or in the committees of

4368-545: The collection of Ansegisus and Benedictus as they found it. It was a distinguished French scholar, Étienne Baluze , who led the way to a fresh classification. In 1677 he brought out the Capitularia regum francorum , in two folio volumes, in which he published first the capitularies of the Merovingian kings, then those of Pepin the Short , of Charles and of Louis the Pious, which he had found complete in various manuscripts. For works after 840, he also published as supplements

4459-481: The collection of Ansegisus. Boretius, whose health had been ruined by overwork, was unable to finish the project, which was continued by Victor Krause. He collected in a second volume the scattered capitularies dated after 828. A detailed index of both volumes was drawn up by Karl Zeumer and Albrecht Werminghoff. It listed all the essential terms. A third volume, prepared by Emil Seckel , was to include Benedictus Levita's collection. To satisfy modern critical requirements,

4550-441: The conquests of Clovis I in the late 5th and early 6th centuries. Frankish military strategy revolved around the holding and taking of fortified centres ( castra ) and in general these centres were held by garrisons of milities and laeti , who were descendants of Roman soldiers with Germanic origin, granted a quasi-national status under Frankish law. These milites continued to be commanded by tribunes. Throughout Gaul,

4641-483: The continuation of what has become known as the Carolingian Renaissance . The Carolingian Empire was beset by internecine warfare, but the combination of Frankish rule and Roman Christianity ensured that it was fundamentally united. Frankish government and culture depended very much upon each ruler and his aims and so each region of the empire developed differently. Although a ruler's aims depended upon

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4732-467: The date of the beginning of the conquest of Gaul. The Byzantine authors present several contradictions and difficulties. Procopius denies the Franks the use of the spear while Agathias makes it one of their primary weapons. They agree that the Franks were primarily infantrymen, threw axes and carried a sword and shield. Both writers also contradict the authority of Gallic authors of the same general time period ( Sidonius Apollinaris and Gregory of Tours ) and

4823-453: The days of the scholar Procopius (c. 500 – c. 565), more than a century after the demise of the Western Roman Empire, who wrote describing the former Arborychoi , having merged with the Franks, retaining their legionary organization in the style of their forefathers during Roman times. The Franks under the Merovingians melded Germanic custom with Romanised organisation and several important tactical innovations. Before their conquest of Gaul,

4914-491: The descendants of Roman soldiers continued to wear their uniforms and perform their ceremonial duties. Immediately beneath the Frankish king in the military hierarchy were the leudes , his sworn followers, who were generally 'old soldiers' in service away from court. The king had an elite bodyguard called the truste . Members of the truste often served in centannae , garrison settlements that were established for military and police purposes. The day-to-day bodyguard of

5005-570: The difference between the Capitula missorum and the Capitula per se scribenda; among the first are to be found provisions of a general and permanent nature, and among the second temporary measures are often included. But the idea of Boretius is nonetheless fruitful. In the capitularies there are usually permanent provisions and temporary provisions intermingled; and the observation of this fact has made it possible more clearly to understand certain institutions of Charlemagne, e.g. military service. After

5096-421: The east bank of the Rhine. Gregory of Tours (Book II) reported that small Frankish kingdoms existed during the fifth century around Cologne , Tournai , Cambrai and elsewhere. The kingdom of the Merovingians eventually came to dominate the others, possibly because of its association with Roman power structures in northern Gaul, into which the Frankish military forces were apparently integrated to some extent. In

5187-443: The east, who eventually conquered the Roman frontier city of Cologne and took control of the left bank of the Lower Rhine in that region. Childeric I , a Salian Frankish king, was one of several military leaders commanding Roman forces with various ethnic affiliations in the northern part of what is now France. He and his son Clovis I founded the Merovingian dynasty which succeeded in unifying most of Gaul under its rule during

5278-761: The emperors of the Western Roman Empire . As such, the Carolingian Empire gradually came to be seen in the West as a continuation of the ancient Roman Empire. This empire would give rise to several successor states, including France, the Holy Roman Empire and Burgundy , though the Frankish identity remained most closely identified with France. After the death of Charlemagne , his only adult surviving son became Emperor and King Louis

5369-405: The first time. It seems likely that the term Frank in this first period had a broader meaning, sometimes including coastal Frisii . The Life of Aurelian , which was possibly written by Vopiscus, mentions that in 328, Frankish raiders were captured by the 6th Legion stationed at Mainz . As a result of this incident, 700 Franks were killed and 300 were sold into slavery. Frankish incursions over

5460-556: The king of the Franks to the barbarian laws promulgated under the Merovingians, the Salic law , the Ripuarian or the Bavarian . These capitularies have the same weight as the law which they complete; they are particular in their application, applying, that is to say, only to the men subject to that law. Like the laws, they consist chiefly of scales of compensation, rules of procedure and points of civil law. They were solemnly promulgated in

5551-448: The king was made up of antrustiones (senior soldiers who were aristocrats in military service) and pueri (junior soldiers and not aristocrats). All high-ranking men had pueri . The Frankish military was not composed solely of Franks and Gallo-Romans, but also contained Saxons , Alans , Taifals and Alemanni . After the conquest of Burgundy (534), the well-organised military institutions of that kingdom were integrated into

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5642-637: The less Romanised regions of Gaul. On an intermediate level, the kings began calling up territorial levies from the regions of Austrasia (which did not have major cities of Roman origin). All the forms of the levy gradually disappeared, however, in the course of the 7th century after the reign of Dagobert I . Under the so-called rois fainéants , the levies disappeared by mid-century in Austrasia and later in Burgundy and Neustria. Only in Aquitaine, which

5733-474: The local assemblies where the consent of the people was asked. Charlemagne and Louis the Pious seem to have made efforts to bring the other laws into harmony with the Salic law. By certain of the capitularies of this class, the king adds provisions affecting, not only a single law, but all the laws in use throughout the kingdom. These capitularies were elaborated by councils of bishops; the Frankish kings sanctioned

5824-559: The men. His contemporary, Agathias, who based his own writings upon the tropes laid down by Procopius, says: The military equipment of this people [the Franks] is very simple ... They do not know the use of the coat of mail or greaves and the majority leave the head uncovered, only a few wear the helmet. They have their chests bare and backs naked to the loins, they cover their thighs with either leather or linen. They do not serve on horseback except in very rare cases. Fighting on foot

5915-419: The missi sent only on a given circuit ( capitula missorum specialia ). These instructions sometimes hold good only for the circuit of the missus; they have no general application and are merely temporary. With the capitularies have been incorporated various documents; for instance, the rules to be observed in administering the king's private domain (the celebrated Capitulare de villis vel curtis imperii, which

6006-419: The more general levies were composed of pauperes and inferiores , who were mostly farmers by trade and carried ineffective weapons, such as farming implements. The peoples east of the Rhine  – Franks, Saxons and even Wends  – who were sometimes called upon to serve, wore rudimentary armour and carried weapons such as spears and axes . Few of these men were mounted. Merovingian society had

6097-471: The name of Franks (meaning "fierce"). A decade later the Romans killed Priam and drove away Marcomer and Sunno , the sons of Priam and Antenor, and the other Franks. The most important contemporary sources mentioning the early Franks include the Panegyrici Latini , Ammianus Marcellinus , Claudian , Zosimus , Sidonius Apollinaris and Gregory of Tours . The Franks are first mentioned in

6188-539: The new emperors of Western Europe in 800, when Charlemagne was crowned by the pope. In 870 , the Frankish realm came to be permanently divided between western and eastern kingdoms, which were the predecessors of the later Kingdom of France and Holy Roman Empire respectively. It was the inhabitants of western kingdom who eventually came to be known as "the French " ( French : Les Français , German : Die Franzosen , Dutch : De Fransen , etc.) and this kingdom

6279-412: The only ones armed with spears, while all the rest were foot soldiers having neither bows nor spears, but each man carried a sword and shield and one axe. Now the iron head of this weapon was thick and exceedingly sharp on both sides, while the wooden handle was very short. And they are accustomed always to throw these axes at a signal in the first charge and thus to shatter the shields of the enemy and kill

6370-409: The only people in the world who are not cowards. While the above quotations have been used as a statement of the military practices of the Frankish nation in the 6th century and have even been extrapolated to the entire period preceding Charles Martel 's reforms (early mid-8th century), post-Second World War historiography has emphasised the inherited Roman characteristics of the Frankish military from

6461-485: The political alliances of his family, the leading families of Francia shared the same basic beliefs and ideas of government, which had both Roman and Germanic roots. The Frankish state consolidated its hold over the majority of western Europe by the end of the 8th century, developing into the Carolingian Empire. With the coronation of their ruler Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Leo III in 800 AD, he and his successors were recognised as legitimate successors to

6552-513: The political centre of gravity in the kingdom gradually shifted eastwards to the Rhineland. The Frankish realm was reunited in 613 by Chlothar II , the son of Chilperic, who granted his nobles the Edict of Paris in an effort to reduce corruption and reassert his authority. Following the military successes of his son and successor Dagobert I , royal authority rapidly declined under a series of kings, traditionally known as les rois fainéants . After

6643-481: The region for about a decade before they were subdued and expelled by the Romans. In 287 or 288, the Roman Caesar Maximian forced a Frankish leader Genobaud and his people to surrender without a fight. In 288, the emperor Maximian defeated the Salian Franks , Chamavi , Frisii and other Germanic people living along the Rhine and moved them to Germania inferior to provide manpower and prevent

6734-431: The reign of Louis the Pious , the capitularies became long and diffuse. Soon (from the 10th century onwards) no provision of general application emanates from the kings. Henceforth the kings only regulated private interests by charters; it was not until the reign of Philip Augustus that general provisions again appeared, but when they did so they bore the name "ordinances" ( ordonnances ). There were also capitularies of

6825-498: The reigns of the brothers Sigebert I and Chilperic I , which was largely fuelled by the rivalry of their queens, Brunhilda and Fredegunda , and which continued during the reigns of their sons and their grandsons. Three distinct subkingdoms emerged: Austrasia , Neustria and Burgundy, each of which developed independently and sought to exert influence over the others. The influence of the Arnulfing clan of Austrasia ensured that

6916-626: The scene by the 8th century. Merovingian armies used coats of mail , helmets, shields , lances , swords , bows and arrows and war horses . The armament of private armies resembled those of the Gallo-Roman potentiatores of the late Empire. A strong element of Alanic cavalry settled in Armorica influenced the fighting style of the Bretons down into the 12th century. Local urban levies could be reasonably well-armed and even mounted, but

7007-413: The settlement of other Germanic tribes. In 292, Constantius , the father of Constantine I defeated the Franks who had settled at the mouth of the Rhine. These were moved to the nearby region of Toxandria . Eumenius mentions Constantius as having "killed, expelled, captured [and] kidnapped" the Franks who had settled there and others who had crossed the Rhine, using the term nationes Franciae for

7098-609: The sixth century a fairly recent creation, a coalition of Rhenish tribal groups who long maintained separate identities and institutions." The other work, the Liber Historiae Francorum , previously known as Gesta regum Francorum before its republication in 1888 by Bruno Krusch, described how 12,000 Trojans, led by Priam and Antenor , sailed from Troy to the River Don in Russia and on to Pannonia , which

7189-463: The spring assemblies. Frequently we have only the proposition made by the king to the committee, capitula tractanda cum comitibus, episcopis, et abbatibus, and not the final form which was adopted. These are the instructions given by Charlemagne and his successors to the missi dominici sent into the various parts of the empire. They are sometimes drawn up in common for all the missi of a certain year ( capitula missorum generalia ); sometimes for

7280-422: The still-pagan trans-Rhenish stem duchies on the orders of a monarch. The Saxons , Alemanni and Thuringii all had the institution of the levy and the Frankish monarchs could depend upon their levies until the mid-7th century, when the stem dukes began to sever their ties to the monarchy. Radulf of Thuringia called up the levy for a war against Sigebert III in 640. Soon the local levy spread to Austrasia and

7371-545: The stretch of the Rhine from roughly Mainz to Duisburg , the region of the city of Cologne , are often considered separately from the Salians, and sometimes in modern texts referred to as Ripuarian Franks. The Ravenna Cosmography suggests that Francia Renensis included the old civitas of the Ubii , in Germania II ( Germania Inferior ), but also the northern part of Germania I (Germania Superior), including Mainz . Like

7462-468: The unreliable collection of Ansegisus and Benedictus Levita, with warning about the untrustworthy character of the latter. He followed these with the capitularies of Charles the Bald , and of other Carolingian kings, either contemporaries or successors of Charles, which he had discovered in various places. A second edition of Baluze was published in 1780 in 2 folio volumes by Pierre de Chiniac. The edition of

7553-487: The use of siege engines . In wars waged against external foes, the objective was typically the acquisition of booty or the enforcement of tribute. Only in the lands beyond the Rhine did the Merovingians seek to extend political control over their neighbours. Monumenta Germaniae Historica Too Many Requests If you report this error to the Wikimedia System Administrators, please include

7644-468: The way to there, and this became the Frankish kingdom of Neustria , the basis of what would become medieval France. Childeric's son Clovis I also took control of the more independent Frankish kingdoms east of the Silva Carbonaria and Belgica II. This later became the Frankish kingdom of Austrasia , where the early legal code was referred to as "Ripuarian". The Rhineland Franks who lived near

7735-532: The western kingdom founded by them outside the original area of Frankish settlement. In the 5th century, Franks under Chlodio pushed into Roman lands in and beyond the " Silva Carbonaria " or "Charcoal forest", which ran through the area of modern western Wallonia . The forest was the boundary of the original Salian territories to the north and the more Romanized area to the south in the Roman province of Belgica Secunda , which now lies in northern France. Chlodio conquered Tournai , Artois , Cambrai , and as far as

7826-470: The works of Virgil and Hieronymus : Blessed Jerome has written about the ancient kings of the Franks, whose story was first told by the poet Virgil: their first king was Priam and, after Troy was captured by trickery, they departed. Afterwards they had as king Friga, then they split into two parts, the first going into Macedonia, the second group, which left Asia with Friga were called the Frigii, settled on

7917-597: Was called the Lex Ribuaria , but it probably applied in all the older Frankish lands, including the original Salian areas. Jordanes , in his Getica mentions a group called the "Riparii" as auxiliaries of Flavius Aetius during the Battle of Châlons in 451, and distinct from the "Franci": "Hi enim affuerunt auxiliares: Franci, Sarmatae, Armoriciani, Liticiani, Burgundiones, Saxones, Riparii, Olibriones  ..." But these Riparii ("river dwellers") are today not considered to be Ripuarian Franks, but rather

8008-524: Was fast becoming independent of the central Frankish monarchy, did complex military institutions persist into the 8th century. In the final half of the 7th century and first half of the 8th in Merovingian Gaul, the chief military actors became the lay and ecclesiastical magnates with their bands of armed followers called retainers. The other aspects of the Merovingian military, mostly Roman in origin or innovations of powerful kings, disappeared from

8099-773: Was in 289. [...] The Chamavi were mentioned as a Frankish people as early as 289, the Bructeri from 307, the Chattuarri from 306 to 315, the Salii or Salians from 357, and the Amsivarii and Tubantes from c. 364 to 375. The Franks were described in Roman texts both as allies ( laeti ) and enemies ( dediticii ). About the year 260, during the Crisis of the Third Century , one group of Franks penetrated as far as Tarragona in present-day Spain, where they plagued

8190-857: Was not a tribal name, but within a few centuries it had eclipsed the names of the original peoples who constituted the Frankish population. Following the precedents of Edward Gibbon and Jacob Grimm , the name of the Franks has been linked with the English adjective frank , originally meaning "free". There have also been proposals that Frank comes from the Germanic word for " javelin " (such as in Old English franca or Old Norse frakka ). Words in other Germanic languages meaning "fierce", "bold" or "insolent" (German frech , Middle Dutch vrac , Old English frǣc and Old Norwegian frakkr ) may also be significant. Eumenius addressed

8281-507: Was when the Frankish Merovingian dynasty based within the collapsing Western Roman Empire first became the rulers of the whole region between the rivers Loire and Rhine . From this starting point they imposed power over many other post-Roman kingdoms both inside and outside the old empire. Although the Frankish name does not appear until the 3rd century, at least some of the original Frankish tribes had long been known to

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