WITH THE DECLINE OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE and the withdrawal of the legions from the frontiers, ancient Gaul was split into several separate kingdoms. The Burgundians occupied the Saône valley; the Alemanni were settled in what is now Alsace; an island of Gallo-Romans under the rule of a Roman general, or magister militum, survived between the Somme and the Loire; the large section of western Europe that stretched from the Loire to the Straits of Gibraltar was held by the Visigoths; and northern Gaul had been occupied by the Salian Franks as far as the Somme. This German tribe, the ancestors of the French nation, still spoke a barbarous teutonic dialect, still sacrificed to Thor and Odin, still retained some of the old Germanic traditions, and were still convinced that their gods derived satisfaction from human sacrifice.

The King of the Franks, when first the nation emerges from the mists of legend into the daylight of history, was Merouechus, or Merovech, or MÉrovÉe, the reputed son of a sea god and the founder of the Merovingian dynasty. His grandson Chlodovech or Clovis ruled from 466 to 511 and was the true founder of the regnum Francorum or the kingdom of France. In 486 he attacked and defeated his neighbours the Gallo-Romans under their general Syagrius who called himself 'Rex Romanorum'. In 496 he defeated the Alemanni and was baptised an

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