Two captivating manuscripts in one book:
- History of the Franks: A Captivating Guide to a Group of Germanic Peoples Who Invaded the Western Roman Empire
- History of the Lombards: A Captivating Guide to a Group of Germanic Peoples Who Invaded Italy and Ruled Large Areas of the Italian Peninsula
After assimilating with the Romans in the imperial province of Gaul, the Franks established a unified dominion under King Clovis in the late 5th and early 6th centuries. Under Clovis's successors, the Frankish kingdom fractured. Warring factions of Franks, under the leadership of the royal descendants of Clovis, imprisoned or more often killed each other.
They forced the luckiest of their rivals into monasteries and removed potential royal wives by exiling them to convents.
The several kings of France not only fought each other but also fought off barbarian and Christian invaders. Their various domains were under continuous threat from warlike ethnic groups who pushed into Frankish territories from the west and south. It was not until the rise of a military genius by the name of Charles Martel in the 8th century that the Franks were able to recreate the unified country that Clovis had established.
This history of the Franks is peppered with assassinations, marriages for political alliance, deception, and intrigue. Battles fought between contending Frankish royal families and against foreign invaders involved strategies and tactics that would form the basis of subsequent knightly militarism in the Middle Ages.
The Franks were both a nasty lot of violent warmongers and generous patrons of the Christian church. They exhibited highly civilized behavior, such as codifying laws and founding monasteries. On the other hand, the kings, their wives, their children, and their aristocratic minions were in a constant struggle to maintain authority. Power was achieved at times through political maneuvering but most often through the simple means of murder.
Some of the topics covered in part 1 of this book include:
- Where the Franks came from before they moved into Roman Gaul
- How the Franks, through military skill and cunning, managed to acquire power
- How Clovis created a unified kingdom and why it dissolved in family squabbles
- The origin of Christian saints that are venerated today in France
- How an Irish monk founded a new kind of monasticism in France
Some of the topics covered in part 2 of this book include:
- The route the nomadic Lombards followed as they migrated from northern Germany to Italy.
- How the Lombards eventually turned against the Romans who invited them to settle in Italy.
- How the first Lombard king in Italy was murdered in 572 CE by his wife as revenge for the murder of her father.
- Why the Lombards reinstituted their kingship after ten years of managing without a king.
- The intricacies of Lombard strategic alliances that allowed them to expand their kingdom from the north of Italy to the southern tip of the Italian Peninsula.
- Why the Lombards gradually abandoned a heretical Christian sect and adopted orthodox Catholicism.
- ending Lombard rule in southern Italy.
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