n.
Member of a Germanic-speaking people who invaded the western Roman Empire in the 5th century.
The Franks lived east of the Rhine River in the 3rd century and came under Roman influence. They gained control of northern Gaul by 494 and southern Gaul by 507, and the conversion of their leader Clovis I to Catholic Christianity won them the support of the clergy and the Gallo-Roman population in Gaul. The Franks established one of the most powerful kingdoms of the early Middle Ages, ruling lands in present-day France (to which they gave their name), Belgium, and western Germany. The Merovingian dynasty to which Clovis belonged was succeeded by the Carolingian dynasty , whose most notable ruler, Charlemagne , created a great empire across Christian Europe. The division of the realm in the 9th century and the subsequent dissolution of a unified Frankish empire foreshadowed the formation of the modern countries of western Europe.