Francia: A Visual History

Francia was the realm of the Franks, a Germanic people who under Clovis (481-511) conquered most of Gaul and converted to Catholic Christianity. The Merovingian kings ruled a repeatedly partitioned kingdom until the mayors of the palace, the Carolingians, took over: Charles Martel defeated the Arabs at Tours in 732, Pepin the Short became king in 751, and Charlemagne conquered the Lombards, Saxons and Avars and was crowned emperor by the Pope on Christmas Day 800. The Treaty of Verdun in 843 divided the empire among his grandsons into West Francia (France), East Francia (Germany) and Lotharingia.

When it existed: the era ribbon

The bold bar is Francia (Frankish kingdoms). The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

Frankish territory

Timeline of the Francia (Frankish kingdoms)

1. 481
   Clovis becomes king
2. 496
   Baptism of ClovisTraditional date; possibly 508.
3. 507
   VouilleVisigoths driven from Aquitaine.
4. 732
   Battle of Tours
5. 751
   Pepin crowned; Merovingians deposed
6. 774
   Lombard kingdom conquered
7. 800
   Charlemagne crowned emperor
8. 814
   Charlemagne dies at Aachen
9. 843
   Treaty of Verdun

Clovis and the Merovingians

Clovis, king of the Salian Franks from 481, defeated the last Roman commander in Gaul at Soissons in 486, the Alemanni and the Visigoths at Vouille in 507, and was baptised a Catholic, aligning the Franks with the Gallo-Roman church against the Arian Goths. His sons and grandsons partitioned and repartitioned the kingdom into Neustria, Austrasia and Burgundy amid feuds immortalised by Gregory of Tours. By the 7th century the kings were 'do-nothing' figureheads and the mayors of the palace held power.

Charles Martel and Pepin

Charles Martel, mayor of Austrasia, reunited the kingdom and in 732 defeated an Umayyad raiding army near Tours and Poitiers. His son Pepin the Short deposed the last Merovingian with papal approval in 751, was anointed king, and defended the Pope against the Lombards, donating central Italy to the papacy.

Charlemagne and Verdun

Charlemagne (768-814) conquered the Lombard kingdom, subdued the Saxons in 30 years of war and forced conversion, destroyed the Avar khaganate and established the Spanish March. Crowned emperor in Rome in 800, he ruled from Aachen, promoted the Carolingian Renaissance of learning and issued capitularies through counts and missi. Louis the Pious could not hold the inheritance together; after civil war his sons divided it at Verdun in 843, the founding act of France and Germany.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• Western Roman Empire (395 to 476)
• Visigothic Kingdom (418 to 720)
• Umayyad Caliphate (661 to 750)
• Avar Khaganate (567 to 822)
• Holy Roman Empire (800 to 1806)
• Kingdom of France (Middle Ages) (987 to 1498)
• Byzantine Empire (395 to 1453)
• Abbasid Caliphate (750 to 1258)

Wars of the same era and region

• Roman-Germanic wars (113 BC to 476)

8 surprising things about the Francia (Frankish kingdoms)

1. The Merovingian kings wore their hair long as a sign of royalty; deposed kings were tonsured and sent to monasteries.
2. Charlemagne was probably about 1.84 metres tall, confirmed by measuring his bones, and could not write though he tried to learn.
3. The Carolingian minuscule script developed under Charlemagne is the basis of modern lower-case letters.
4. Charlemagne received an elephant, Abul-Abbas, from Harun al-Rashid and a water clock that dropped bronze balls.
5. The name 'France' comes from the Franks, and 'frank' meaning free comes from their legal privileges in Gaul.
6. The Song of Roland, the great French epic, is based on a minor ambush of Charlemagne's rearguard by Basques in 778.
7. Charlemagne had Saxon leaders beheaded at Verden in 782, allegedly 4,500 in one day.
8. The Treaty of Verdun's three-way split, with a middle kingdom from the Netherlands to Italy, created border disputes that lasted until the twentieth century.

Sources

• Merovingian dynasty Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Francia Wikipedia
• Charlemagne World History Encyclopedia
• Chris Wickham, The Inheritance of Rome (2009) Allen Lane

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