Carolingian Empire (800–888)

In mid 7th century, Austrasian nobles St. Arnulf, bishop of Metz and Pippin I of Landen joined together in a marriage alliance.  Pippin, mayor of the palace, became one of the most powerful figures in the kingdom after helping the Merovingian king Chlotar overthrow Queen Brunhilde and then assume the Frankish throne in 613.

As a mayor of the palace he enjoyed the support of numerous lay and clerical vassals established on ecclesiastical properties and he could equally reckon with the help of his family, including the Austrasian nobles allied to his clan by marriage.

Grimoald later succeeded his father as mayor. Grimoald ext expanded his own based of power by acquiring territory and in what was to become good Carolingian fashion forging alliances with monasteries and their monks.

In 751 Pippin III became king after deposing Childeric III, the last member of the Merovingian dynasty.

Pippin III proved to be resourceful and energetic king whose conquest of Aquitainem two successful expeditions against Lombards and promotion of religious reform demonstrated the potential and direction of the new dynasty.

Charlemagne, his son succeeded and was sole ruler of the Franks. At its peak, the realm, which with his imperial coronation in 8000 came to be regarded as the Christian-Roman Empire in the West, comprised portions of modern East Europe and most of the western are of the Continent.

After his death, the Carolingian Empire ceased to expand, settling into a defensive posture against the new nomadic threat from the north and continuing invasions from the east.
Carolingian Empire (800–888)

Merovingian dynasty

In the centuries of Byzantine decline, two Frankish dynasties, the Merovingians and the Carolingians, tapped the dynamic energy on the war band to form powerful new armies.

The Merovingian kings descended from the Sicambrian Franks, a Judaeo-Teuton people who by this time had settled large parts of France and Germany.

From the late fourth century a Frank, Clovis (r.c. 481-511) of the Merovingian dynasty, established a dominion which, under his successors, beyond Roman Gaul into Germany and north Italy.

Creators of the most effective and longest lasting successor state to emerge on the post-Roman world, the Merovingians rose to prominence under Clovis, who first forged various Frankish people into a unified kingdom.

He pushed forward to defeat, in 486, Syagrius king of Soissons, possibly the last commander of an outpost of the Roman Empire, before going on to crush the Burgundians and the Visigoths in the south.

Clovis combined great military success with skillful marriage alliances to build a dynasty that lasted two centuries, far longer than any earlier dynasty in the region.

For most of the two centuries after the death of Clovis, the Merovingians kings were among the most powerful and important of the rulers who came to power in Europe after the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

Although the Merovingian dynasty’s political system was in clear decline by the seventh century, Frankish control was secured by the emergence of a Carolingian dynasty.
Merovingian dynasty