France: Ancient Gaul to Feudalismthe Birth of France

Ancient Gaul to Feudalismthe Birth of France

Some of the earliest anthropological and archaeological remains in Europe have been found in France, yet little is known of France before the Roman conquest (1st cent. b.c.). The country was known to the Romans as Gaul. It was inhabited largely by Celts, or Gauls, who had mingled with still older populations, and by Basques in what became the region of Gascony. Some of the Gallic tribes undoubtedly were Germanic. Settlements on the Mediterranean coast, notably Marseilles, were established by Greek and Phoenician traders (c.600 b.c.), and Provence was colonized by Rome in the 2d cent. b.c. The conquest of Gaul by Julius Caesar (58–51 b.c.; see Gallic Wars) became final with the defeat of Vercingetorix. Early in the course of the following five centuries of Roman rule Gaul accepted Latin speech and Roman law, developed a distinct Gallo-Roman civilization, and produced many large and prosperous cities. Lugdunum (Lyons) was the Roman capital.

Christianity, introduced in the 1st cent. a.d., spread rapidly. From the 3d cent., however, the internal decline of the Roman Empire invited barbarian incursions. Among the Germanic tribes that descended upon fertile Gaul, the Visigoths, Franks, and Burgundii were the most important. Rome and its governors in Gaul sought, by alliances, to play the barbarians off against each other. Thus Aetius defeated (a.d. 451) the Huns under Attila with the help of the Franks. But in 486 (10 years after the traditional date for the fall of Rome) the Franks, under Clovis I, routed Syagrius, last Roman governor of Gaul. Clovis, who had made himself ruler of all the Franks, then defeated the Visigoths and, after accepting Christianity (496), conquered the Alemanni. He extinguished the Arian heresy (see Arianism) and founded the dynasty of the Merovingians—but he failed to provide for the unity of Gaul when, as was customary, he divided his lands among his sons at his death.

Throughout the 6th and 7th cent., Gaul was torn by fratricidal strife between the Merovingian kings of Neustria and of Austrasia, the two realms that ultimately emerged from Clovis's division and were united only for brief periods under a sole ruler. Especially after Dagobert I (d. 639), Merovingian rule sank into indolence, cruelty, and dissipation. Gaul was depopulated, the cities were left in ruins, commerce was destroyed, and the arts and sciences were ignored. In the 8th cent. the only remnant of Roman civilization, the church, was threatened by extinction when the Saracens invaded Gaul.

In the meantime a more rigorous dynasty, the Carolingians, had come to rule Austrasia as mayors of the palace in the name of the decadent Merovingian kings, and had united (687) Austrasia with Neustria. In 732, the Carolingian Charles Martel decisively defeated the Saracens between Poitiers and Tours. His son, Pepin the Short, dethroned the last Merovingian in 751 and proclaimed himself king with the sanction of the pope. Pepin's son was Charlemagne.

Crowned emperor of the West in 800, Charlemagne expanded his lands by conquest. He gave his subjects an efficient administration, created an admirable legal system, and labored for the rebirth of learning, piety, and the arts. But his son, Emperor Louis I, could not maintain the empire he inherited. At Louis's death (840), his three sons were fighting each other. In 843 the brothers, Charles II (Charles the Bald), king of the West Franks, Louis the German, and Emperor Lothair I, redivided their territories (see Verdun, Treaty of). Charles was recognized as the ruler of the lands that are now France.

The Carolingians had only superficially transcended the economic, social, and political fragmentation of the land. The weakness of central authority was a major reason for the development of feudalism and the manorial system. Raids by Norsemen, beginning in the late 8th cent., contributed to the decline of royal authority; in 885–86, the Norsemen even besieged Paris. The authority of the kings was increasingly usurped by feudal lords. Among the most powerful of these were the dukes of Aquitaine and of Burgundy and the counts of Flanders, of Toulouse, of Blois, and of Anjou. In 911 the Norse leader Rollo was recognized as duke of Normandy.

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The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2024, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

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