In Ier century, tribes installed on Right Bank of the lower Rhine operated maritime and terrestrial raids in the Roman Empire. These tribes did not train people yet, with his ethnic characters, its history and its habits.  

In IIIe century, some of these tribes were linked against the Romans to form a league of warriors whom one called the “Franci”. Their forwardings devastators Beats some (into 258 and 276) caused a very major crisis, that the Romans surmounted with difficulty.  

However, at the end of IIIe century, the franques tribes, overcome by the Maximien emperor, were installed by the Romans on left bank of the Rhine and were subjected to the payment of a tribute, while the other groups continued to live independent beyond the files, the strengthened border which defended the Empire.

Francs, federate of Rome
During the great invasion of the Vandals in 406-407, the Francs defended, at the sides of the Roman armies, the files Rhenish against the waves of German thorough towards the west by the projection of Huns. They contributed notably to the defeat of Attila to the battle of the Catalauniques fields, into 451.   At the same time, they operated a slow descent towards the south, occupying current Belgium, the north of France as well as Roman cities, as Tournai or Cambric in the west, Cologne or Trier in the east.  

The tomb of the king of the Saliens Francs, Childéric, discovered in Tournai in 1653, as well as the recent excavations carried out in this city testify to the composite character of franque civilization with the O C century. The king was buried like a barbarian prince, with his weapons and of splendid parts of partitioned goldsmithery of Eastern origin. One practiced the ritual sacrifice several horses, buried near the tomb royal. In the latter, the Roman influence appears by the deposit of many Roman gold coins, which probably constituted balances it frank warriors. A sigillary ring represents the king with his long hair, badge of the royalty at the Merovingian ones, and covered paludamentum, the coat of the Roman generals.  

Clovis and the franque conquest
When in 481 Clovis succeeded his Childéric father, there was no more Roman Emperor in Occident, and Beats it was almost entirely with the hands of the Barbarians. Burgondes and Visigoths had founded in the valley of the Rhone and in Beats southernmost two powerful kingdoms which seemed ready to extend their hegemony on the worldwide. North of the Sum, the Saliens Francs remained divided, and the Rhenish Francs were threatened in the east by Alamans.  

During his long reign, Clovis extended his domination on most of Gaule, beating the Romain Syagrius, overriding the Visigoths and Alamans. At the end of its life, after having eliminated its old allies, it gathered all the Francs under its authority. The frank, famous warriors for their bravery and the quality of their armament, were been useful by the twisted intelligence of their king. Clovis, pagan king, understood which party it could draw from the support of the catholic Gallo-Romen vis-a-vis Burgondes and to the Visigoths ariens, i.e. followers of a schismatic form of Christianity. He thus converts with Catholicism, and its conquests were facilitated by the bishops. With its death, the frank kingdom extended from the Pyrenees in Weser, of Brittany in Burgundy, not understood.  
 
Preexistent executives (Life century)

On their territory, the Francs very few and were unequally distributed. The franques establishments revealed by archeology are relatively dense north of the Sum and in the Rhineland, they are done rarer between Somme and the Loire. To the south of the Loire, the franque presence is limited to the garrisons which held the country. The areas located on Right Bank of the Rhine were the subject of a slow colonization to the VI E and VII E centuries.  

The Roman heritage and the fusion of the elites
Masters of Beats, the Merovingian ones remained cruel kings. Their power was allotted to the magic powers of their blood. With their death, the kingdom was divided so that each son can reign, the assassinations temperate person the principle of the divisions. However, Clovis and his successors also regarded themselves as the heirs to the emperor; the tribal royalty was thus moulted gradually in a territorial royalty which was run in the Roman mould. While the oral language evolved quickly, the Merovingian ones adopted the writing and Latin like official language: the salic law (which applied to Saliens) was written at the end of the reign of Clovis. The Francs left in place the Roman administrative system, naming counts and judges in the cities, maintaining the roads and raising the taxes, as a long time as they had the means of them.  

Importance of Christianity
To control, they were pressed on the Gallo-Roman bishops, of which much enjoyed a great prestige and a strong authority in their cities. In the middle of the VII E century, the episcopate had become the result of a successful administrative career: the Eloi goldsmith (towards 588-660), initially treasurer of king Dagobert - who reigned from 629 to 639 -, obtained from the son of this last, Clovis II - king de Neustrie and of Burgundy from 639 to 657 -, the bishopric of Boundary-line-Turned.  

The conversion of the Francs to the Christianity - which was however particularly late in the east - and the respect of the Roman heritage supported the bringing together of the elites. The royal court, crucible of their fusion, attracted the young aristocrats of any origines, which came to the palate to be “nourished there” and to serve the king before being to with it sent in province as counts or bishops.  

To the VII E century, the mixed marriages and the fashion of the Germanic names made disappear the last oppositions between Barbares and Gallo-Romen. At that time, one designated under the name of “Francs” the free men - they were very few - apart from any consideration of ethnic origin.  

Slow decline of the Mediterranean economy
The Merovingian ones were fascinated by Roman civilization, its cities and its activities. To the VI E century, all seemed to continue as in the past. The Mediterranean remained the nerve center of the economy: the main roads of the international business still connected the East to the Occident by the Italian, provençaux and Spanish ports. Oil, the spices, the wine still forwarded by Marseilles towards Aquitaine, the Paris basin and England. The Occident exported corn, salt, tin. The monetary workshops struck gold triens, imitated Byzantine currency. Actually, the urban activities blanched, and the volume of the exchanges with the East did not cease decreasing. The advance of the Moslems in the Mediterranean to the VII E century carried the blow of thanks to an economy for a long time dying woman.  
 
Company and lifestyle

Though not very many, the Francs imposed their civilization on the populations which lived north of the Loire. In spite of the principle of the personality of the laws (each one raises of the right of its ancestors, the Roman law applies to the Gallo-Romen, the law gombette in Burgondes, etc), the franque law was essential between the Loire and the Rhine. Like all the cruel laws, it rested on the principle of the family responsibility rights duties.  

The parentèle
The parentèle dealt with the safety of its members and acted as a group of reprisals. One regarded it as person in charge of the payment of the fine of compensation, the wergeld, which it was necessary to pour with the injured part so that this one gave up being avenged. It made respect the property rights, regulated the marriages and the conclusion of the pacts of friendship, which guaranteed peace and safety on the local plan. This social system, extremely far away from the Roman system, was adapted to a compartmentalized rural company.  

A rural lifestyle
The Francs lived in the countryside, immersed in a difficult nature, whose unforeseeable forces terrified them. Their villages were insulated, formed by a few units of exploitation. Around the dwelling house out of wooden, the huts were used of secondary habitat for the slaves, and as domestic workshops for the women. Beyond the kitchen garden and cultivated fields began the field of the forest, omnipresent and essential to the survival of the group. One found the game, the fruits there, the wood which was used with construction, the heating, the clothes industry of the tools. One made there feed the herds of pigs.

Certain villages were inhabited by free peasants, but many were those which lived on the great fields of Roman origin, which had passed to the hands of the king, of the Church or the aristocrats. Protected by their Masters, these peasants éatient slaves or colonists, who enjoyed only one extremely reduced freedom.  
 
The emergence of a new world (VIIe century)

To the VII E century, on the great septentrional fields, the productions started to increase, and the population increased slowly. This rise was accompanied by a reorganization of domanial management and a greater subjection of labor. It brought about a resumption of the local exchanges, which fit gradually in more remote circuits, directed towards north and the east.  

The diffusion of the sceattas, a silver money of low value struck in England and Plank, then the appearance, towards 675, of the frank money sum of money illustrate the starter of a new economy and the swing, towards north, of the economic center of gravity of Europe.

Evangelization
The religious contacts multiplied with British Isles. Irish monks, among whom Colomban, evangelized Beats it North. They were relayed at the end of the century by Anglo-Saxon missionaries. The evangelization was done according to a hierarchical model which consolidated the power of the aristocracy.  On their fields, the aristocrats set up private churches which reinforced the subjection of their dependant. They were at the origin of the majority of the monastic foundations of the VII E century: largely equipped in land goods, these monasteries supported the action of the aristocracy vis-a-vis a weakened royalty, at one moment when the increasing insecurity forced many free men to be recommended to powerful to gain their protection.

Decline of the royalty
Although Clotaire II and its Dagobert son had reunified the frank kingdom (613-639) and that they held it with a firm hand, they could not stop the decline of the royal authority, undermined by the divisions and the successions of minors.