Frank | People, Definition, & Maps (2024)

Frank, member of a Germanic-speaking people who invaded the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. Dominating present-day northern France, Belgium, and western Germany, the Franks established the most powerful Christian kingdom of early medieval western Europe. The name France (Francia) is derived from their name.

The Franks emerged into recorded history in the 3rd century ce as a Germanic tribe living on the east bank of the lower Rhine River. Linguistically, they belonged to the Rhine-Weser group of Germanic speakers. At this time they were divided into three groups: the Salians, the Ripuarians, and the Chatti, or Hessians. These branches were related to each other by language and custom, but politically they were independent tribes. In the mid-3rd century the Franks tried unsuccessfully to expand westward across the Rhine into Roman-held Gaul. In the mid-4th century the Franks again attempted to invade Gaul, and in 358 Rome was compelled to abandon the area between the Meuse and Scheldt rivers (now in Belgium) to the Salian Franks. During the course of these drawn-out struggles the Franks were gradually influenced by Roman civilization. Some Frankish leaders became Roman allies (foederati) in the defense of the Roman frontier, and many Franks served as auxiliary soldiers in the Roman army.

The Vandals launched a massive invasion of Gaul in 406, and in the ensuing decades the Franks took advantage of the overstrained Roman defenses. They solidified their hold on what is now Belgium, took permanent control of the lands immediately west of the middle Rhine River, and edged into what is now northeastern France. The firm establishment of the Franks in northeastern Gaul by the year 480 meant that both the former Roman province of Germania and part of the two former Belgic provinces were lost to Roman rule. The small Gallo-Roman population there became submerged among the German immigrants, and Latin ceased to be the language of everyday speech. The extreme limit of Frankish settlement at this time is marked by the linguistic frontier that still divides the Romance-speaking peoples of France and southern Belgium from the Germanic-speaking peoples of northern Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany.

In 481/482 Clovis I succeeded his father, Childeric, as the ruler of the Salian Franks of Tournai. In the following years Clovis compelled the other Salian and Ripuarian tribes to submit to his authority. He then took advantage of the disintegration of the Roman Empire and led the united Franks in a series of campaigns that brought all of northern Gaul under his rule by 494. He stemmed the Alemannic migrations into Gaul from east of the Rhine, and in 507 he drove southward, subduing the Visigoths who had established themselves in southern Gaul. A unified Frankish kingdom in northern Gaul was thus established and secured. Clovis converted to Catholicism, and the mass adoption of orthodox Christianity by the Franks further served to unite them into one people. It also won them the support of the orthodox clergy and the remaining Gallo-Roman elements in Gaul, since most other Germanic tribes had adopted Arianism.

Clovis belonged to the Merovingian dynasty, so named for his grandfather Merovech. Under Clovis’s successors, the Merovingians were able to extend Frankish power east of the Rhine. The Merovingian dynasty ruled the Frankish territories until they were displaced by the Carolingian family in the 8th century. The Carolingian Charlemagne (Charles the Great, reigned 768–814) restored the western Roman Empire in cooperation with the papacy and spread Christianity into central and northern Germany. His empire disintegrated by the mid-9th century.

In succeeding centuries the people of the west Frankish kingdom (France) continued to call themselves Franks, although the Frankish element merged with the older population. In Germany the name survived as Franconia (Franken), a duchy extending from the Rhineland east along the Main River.