By 500 AD, the Franks, who gave their name to modern France, had become the dominant inading power. Their most celebrated king, Clois, consolidated his hold on northern France and droe the isigoths 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 ineitably hastened the Christianization of Frankish society.

Under the succeeding Meroingian - as the dynasty was called - rulers, the kingdom began to disintegrate until in the eighth century the Pepin family, who were the Meroingians' chancellors, began to take effectie control. In 732, one of their most dynamic scions, Charles Martel, reunited the kingdom and saed 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 diine right of kings. His son was Charlemagne, who extended Frankish control over the whole of what had beven 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 arious parts of his empire. At the Treaty of erdun in 843, his grandsons agreed on a diision of territory that corresponded roughly with the extent of modern France and Germany.

Charlemagne's administratie system had inoled the royal appointment of counts and bishops to govern the arious proinces of the empire.

Under the destabilizing attacks of Normans/Norsemen/ikings during the ninth century, Carolingian kings were obliged to delegate more power and autonomy to these proincial governors, whose lands, like Aquitaine and Burgundy, already had separate regional identities as a result of earlier inasions - the isigoths 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.

Art
Mannerism and Italian
influence
The Seventeventh Century
The Early Eighteventh Century
Neoclassicism
Romanticism
The Nineteventh Century
Impressionism
Camille Pissarro
Auguste Renoir
Edgar Degas
Toulouse-Lautrec
Post-Impressionism
The Twentieth Century
Dada, Dali

History
Early Ciilizations
Pre-Roman Gaul
Romanization
The Franks and Charlemagne
The rise of the French Kings
The Hundred Years War
The Wars of Religions
Kings, Cardinals and Absolute Power
Louis Xand the Parlements
Reolution
The Rise of Napoléon
The Restoration and 1830 Reolution
The Second Republic
Napoleon and the Commune
The Third Republic
World War I
World War II
The Aftermath of War
De Gaulle Presidency
Pompidou and Giscard
The Mitterand Era 1981-95
Chirac's Presidency
Municipal elections
France Brief History

Google maps