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The Franks formed one of several west Germanic tribes who entered the late Roman Empire from Frisia as foederati and established a lasting realm in an area that covers part of today's France, and Germany ( Franconia), forming the historic kernel of both these two modern countries.
The Frankish realm underwent many partitions and repartitions, since the Franks divided their property among surviving sons, and lacking a broad sense of a res publica, they conceived of the realm as a large extent of private property. This practice explains in part the difficulty of describing precisely the dates and physical boundaries of any of the Frankish kingdoms and who ruled the various sections. The contraction of literacy while the Franks ruled compounds the problem: they produced few written records. In essence however, two dynasties of leaders succeeded each other, first the Merovingians and then the Carolingians.
The word frank meant "free" in the Frankish languageThe Frankish language can refer to: the language spoken by the Franks, a Germanic people active in the Roman era, often now called Old Frankish a West Franconian dialect of modern German spoken in Alsace and Lorraine, regions in France the Franconian lang. Freedom did not extend to women or to the population of slaves that moved with the free Franks. Initially two main subdivisions existed within the Franks: the SalianThe Salian Franks were a subgroup of the Franks. They are distinguished from the Riparian Franks riparian means river while salian means 'salty', i. associated with the sea). The adjective Salian as applied to the Frankish people is the origin of the name ("salty") and the RipuarianThe Riparian Franks ( river Franks) were a subgroup of the Franks. They are distinguished from the Salian Franks salian means 'salty', i. associated with the sea) Ancient Germanic peoples. ("river") Franks. By the 9th century8th century 9th century 10th century other centuries) Events Beowulf might have been written down in this century, though it could also have been in the 8th century Viking attacks on Europe begin Oseberg ship burial around 813-around 915 period of serious, if not earlier, this division had in practice become virtually non-existent, but continued for some time to have implications for the legal system under which a person could go on trial.
The earliest Frankish history remains relatively unclear. Our main source, the Gallo-Roman chronicler Gregory of Tours, whose Historia Francorum (History of the Franks) covers the period up to 594, quotes from otherwise lost sources like Sulpicius Alexander and Frigeridus and profits from Gregory's personal contact with many Frankish notables. Apart from Gregory's History there exist some earlier Roman sources, such as Ammianus and Sidonius Apollinaris
Modern scholars of the period of the migrations have suggested that the Frankish people emerged from the unification of various earlier, smaller Germanic groups ( Usipeti , Tencteri , Sugrambri and Bructeri) inhabiting the Rhine valley and lands immediately to the east, a social development perhaps related to the increasing disorder and upheaval experienced in the area as a result of the war between Rome and the Marcomanni, which began in 166, and subsequent conflicts of the late 2nd century and the 3rd century. For his part, Gregory states that the Franks originally lived in Pannonia, but later settled on the banks of the Rhine. A region in the northeast of the modern-day Netherlands—north of the erstwhile Roman border—bears the name Salland , and may have received that name from the Salians.
Around 250, a group of Franks, taking advantage of a weakened Roman Empire, penetrated as far as Tarragona in present-day Spain, plaguing this region for about a decade before Roman forces subdued them and expelled them from Roman territory. About forty years later, the Franks had the Scheldt region under control and interfered with the waterways to Britain; Roman forces pacified the region, but did not expel the Franks.