While they were in Italy they had stretched hands across the Alps, and had come into touch again with their kinsmen, those Western Goths that had their Kingdom of Toulouse in Southern Gaul. But even before the Eastern Goths were pushed out of the Italian kingdom that they had conquered, the hold of the Western Goths on their kingdom in Gaul had been loosened, the extent of that kingdom had been diminished, and they were left with little on the northern side of the Pyrenees—that is, with little outside of what we now call Spain.
This loss was inflicted on them by that tribe or nation of Germanic barbarians of which I have several times made mention already, the Franks.
As of the Goths, so too of these Franks, there were more than one tribe or nation, but the tribe which is most important in the story is that of the Salian Franks. It was so called either because it came from the River Saal, or, more likely, because it came from the "salt," the "saline" sea. You may have heard of the "Salic Law," which provides that the right of succession to the throne shall not be given to a son by relationship through the mother with the previous occupant of the throne. It must come through the father—"in the male line," as is said. That was one of the ancient laws of these Salic, or Salian Franks.
About the middle of the fourth century, that is to say about, or a little after, 350, they were invading Gaul, in the north, but were checked and defeated, and after their defeat were allowed to settle north of the Rhine, under treaty with the Romans. Fifty years later, the Roman Empire had so much need of its legions to protect itself from the south, that the legions of the Rhine, like those of Britain, were withdrawn.
Clovis, King of the Franks
Upon that the Franks claimed, and took, their independence. Within another fifty years we find them established as far south as the River Somme. They had fought, as we have seen, with Romans and Visigoths against the Huns, the common enemy of them all, at Chalons, in 451. Only a few years later they were fighting with the Romans and against the Visigoths further south; but by 480 they asserted their independence, and the next year the famous Frankish King Clovis came to the throne, and under him the Franks took possession of nearly the whole of Gaul. He united all the tribes of the Franks under his sovereignty.
The only parts of Gaul which were not now under his rule were the kingdom of Burgundy, as it was called, after a German tribe, the Burgundi, coming from the east, like all the rest of them, and a piece of Provence, in the south, which is all that the Visigoths were able to retain on the north of the Pyrenees of their Kingdom of Toulouse.
Terrific and most picturesque warriors were these Franks, according to the accounts that we have of them, very tall men and strong, with long red or fair hair. For defence they had a wicker shield, light so that they could move it quickly. One of their chief weapons was the throwing axe, with which they were very accurate and expert. They had bows and arrows and a long spear. They wore breeches, close fitting, as far down as the knee, and a tunic that was belted about the waist with a broad leather girdle adorned with metalwork of iron and silver. Brooches kept it fastened.
Thus they came conquering; and the parent stock remarked above all the rest of the conquering and invading barbarians, because they came to stay. Doubtless many of the others stayed also, but not as conquerors.
There is one other tribe of barbarian invaders for us to notice—the Lombards.