The first king to succeed in bringing the peoples of Gaul under one rule was Clovis (c.466-511), a descendant of the legendary Merovech, founder of the Merovingian dynasty. In 561, when Clovis’ youngest son, Chlotar I, died, Gaul was divided among his four sons. The kingdoms (Austrasia, Neustria, Burgundy and Aquitaine) constantly warred against each other and squandered their resources, until by the seventh century the Merovingian monarchy was ineffectual.
Power in Gaul gradually fell into the hands of Pepin II, head of a landowning family of the Austrasia region, who ruled as mayor of the palace in the Merovingian court. Pepin’s son, Charles Martel, solidified the Carolingian family’s hold when his army routed the invading Arab cavalry at Poitiers in 732. The Moslems never succeeded in gaining a foothold in Gaul after that, although they controlled the Mediterranean Sea and remained a constant threat.
At this time in northern Italy, the Lombards, eager to expand their territory into central Italy, threatened the papal holdings. For a time the church succeeded in holding them off, but the pope feared eventual defeat unless he received outside assistance. The required support came from the Carolingian court. Charles Martel’s son, Pepin III (known as Pepin the Short) entered into an agreement with the pope, promising military protection in exchange for holy sanction for the Carolingian rule. The last Merovingian king, Childeric III, had been deposed by Pepin in a bloodless coup, and Pepin was anxious that his usurpation of the crown become legitimate in the eyes of the church.
Thus Pepin became “king by the grace of God,” and he duly protected Rome against the Lombards, mounting a campaign against them and donating the lands he won to the church. Pepin’s son, Charles (Charlemagne), when he assumed the throne, would continue this close relationship between his court and Rome and would impose the Christian faith upon all the subjects of his expanded Frankish empire.
Charlemagne’s successor, his son Louis I, lacked his father’s strength, and although he, in his turn, wore the imperial crown, he could not hold the kingdom together. Upon his death, civil war broke out among his sons, and peace was restored only by splitting the empire into three separate kingdoms (the precursors of modern France, Italy and Germany). This division (the Treaty of Verdun, 843) set the seal on the dissolution of Charlemagne’s expanded kingdom. The disparate peoples which he had struggled so hard to unify were quick to reassert their independence, and Europe became a continent not of one kingdom, but of many.