The Frankish Merovingian dynasty was named after a mythical ancestor, Merovech. Its first important king, Clovis I (AD ?481-?511), ruled a small territory centred on Tournai (in modern Belgium). Clovis conquered neighbouring kingdoms in north-east Gaul as well as the Visigothic kingdom in the south west and created a realm that reached from the Channel to the Pyrenees with its capital at Paris.

According to Germanic custom, Clovis’s kingdom was divided among his four sons. In spite of warfare among the new kings, Burgundy (534) and Provence (536) were conquered and, under Theodebert I (reigned 534-48), so were territories of the Frisians, Saxons, and Thuringians in modern Germany. The Merovingians built many great palaces and churches. Dagobert I (reigned 623-38), one of their strongest kings, established the shrine of Saint-Denis north of Paris as the royal burial place of French kings.

The later Merovingian kings, known as the rois fainéants or ‘slothful kings’, were ineffective and government was dominated by powerful nobles. After the death of the Merovingian king Theuderic III (reigned 721-37), the kingdom was dominated by a powerful family, the Carolingians, which eventually took formal power in 751 when the first Carolingian king, Pippin I, was crowned.