Difference between revisions 61704540 and 62282968 on enwiki

[[Image:Charlemagne.jpg|left|125px]]
The '''Franks'''  were one of several west [[Germanic tribe]]s who entered the late [[Roman Empire]] from [[Frisia]] as ''[[foederati]]'' and established a lasting [[realm]] in an area that covers most of modern-day [[France]] and the region of [[Franconia]] in [[Germany]], forming the historic kernel of both these two modern countries. The conversion to Christianity of the pagan Frankish king [[Clovis]] was a climacteric event in the history of Europe.

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 [[dynasty|dynasties]] of leaders succeeded each other, first the [[Merovingians]] and then the [[Carolingians]].