Arnulf, having distinguished himself in the war against the Slavs was elected by the nobles of the realm ( only the eastern realm, though Charles had ruled the whole of the Frankish lands ) and assumed his title of King of East Francia.

Expansion of the Frankish Empire: Blue = realm of Pippin III in 758, Red = expansion under Charlemagne until 814, Yellow = marches and dependencies

For the first time, the term " Kingdom ( Empire ) of the Germans " ( Regnum Teutonicorum ) was applied to a Frankish kingdom, although Teutonicorum at its founding originally meant something closer to " Realm of the Germanic peoples " or " Germanic Realm " than " realm of the Germans ".

In 771, Charlemagne reunited the Frankish domains after a further period of division, subsequently conquering the Lombards under Desiderius in what is now northern Italy ( 774 ), incorporating Bavaria ( 788 ) into his realm, defeating the Avars of the Danubian plain ( 796 ), advancing the frontier with Islamic Spain as far south as Barcelona ( 801 ), and subjugating Lower Saxony after a prolonged campaign ( 804 ).

Soon dispute plunged the surviving brothers into a civil war that was only settled in 843 by the Treaty of Verdun, which split the Frankish realm into three parts, to become the kernels of France and Germany, with Burgundy and the Low Countries between them.

Eventually, Clotaire II in 613 reunited the entire Frankish realm under one ruler.

The division of the Frankish realm by the Treaty of Verdun, carried out without any regard to linguistic and cultural continuities, induced conflicts in Western Europe until the 20th century.

Despite its nominal submission to the Merovingians, the ethnic make-up of new realm Aquitaine wasn ´ t Frankish, but Gallo-Roman north of the Garonne and main towns and Basque, especially south of the Garonne.

The location of the battle was close to the border between the Frankish realm and then-independent Aquitaine.

The Frankish realm under Charles Martel was the foremost military power of Western Europe.

The Frankish realm had begun to progress towards becoming the first real imperial power in Western Europe since the fall of Rome ; however, it continued to struggle against external forces such as the Saxons, Frisians, and internal opponents such as Odo the Great ( Old French: Eudes ), the Duke of Aquitaine.

Odo, who despite the heavy losses was reorganizing his troops, gave the Frankish leader notice of the impending danger knocking on the heartland of his realm, and appealed to the Franks for assistance, which Charles Martel only granted after Odo agreed to submit to Frankish authority.

Lynn White Jr., in his book " Medieval Technology and Social Change ", argues the adoption of the stirrup for cavalry was the direct cause for the development of feudalism in the Frankish realm by Charles Martel and his heirs.

Alsace remained under Frankish control until the Frankish realm, following the Oaths of Strasbourg of 842, was formally dissolved in 843 at the Treaty of Verdun ; the grandsons of Charlemagne divided the realm into three parts.

The rest was shared between Lothar's brothers Charles the Bald ( ruler of the West Frankish realm ) and Louis the German ( ruler of the East Frankish realm ).

Bishops had been involved in the government of the Frankish realm and subsequent Carolingian Empire frequently as the clerical member of a duo of envoys styled Missus dominicus, but that was an individual mandate, not attached to the see.

The dukes were the highest ranking officials in the realm, typically Frankish ( whereas the counts were often Gallo-Roman ), and formed the class from which the kings ' generals were chosen in times of war.

This Frankish unity or the memory of it seems to have lasted well into the period when their range was linguistically divided between High and Low German.

Frankish socio-political unity began with a confederation of tribes on the Lower and Middle Rhine, whom the Romans called ' Franci ', and possibly ended with the Treaty of Verdun in 843.

Over around a thousand years of socio-political unity, with the exception of the first few centuries, no common Frankish language existed.

In the late 6th century, the city re-emerged as the seat of a county and an archdiocese within the Merovingian kingdom of the Franks, but royal Frankish power was never strong.

Thus, southern Germany once more became part of the Frankish kingdom, as had northern Germany during the first years of the reign.

Eormenric ’ s name provides a hint of connections to the kingdom of the Franks, across the English channel ; the element " Eormen " was rare in names of the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy, but much more common among Frankish nobles.

Thus, there was a short-lived eleventh century attempt to re-establish an independent Galatia by native Galatians whose aristocracy and people appealed to Anglo-Saxon and Russo-Norman mercenaries of the Byzantine Varangian Guard and Frankish Crusaders alike in establishing a new kingdom.

After the death of the Frankish king Clovis I in 511, his four sons partitioned his kingdom including Austrasia.

After the 768 death of Frankish King Pepin the Short, his son Charles consolidated his control over his kingdom and became known as " Charles the Great " or " Charlemagne.

The German region developed out of the East Frankish kingdom, East Francia.

He defeated Alaric II at Vouillé in 507 and annexed Aquitaine, and thus Toulouse, into his Frankish kingdom.

The historian N. J. Higham offers another explanation for their attendance, arguing that Æthelberht sent the pair to the council because of shifts in Frankish policy towards the Kentish kingdom, which threatened Kentish independence, and that the two clergymen were sent to negotiate a compromise with Chlothar.

The inexperienced Guy led the Frankish army against Saladin's incursions into the kingdom, but neither side made any real gains, and Guy was criticized by his opponents for not striking against Saladin when he had the chance.

On his father's death in 814, he inherited the entire Frankish kingdom and all its possessions ( with the sole exception of Italy, which remained within Louis's empire, but under the direct rule of Bernard, Pepin's son ).

The civil war lasted ten years and was ended only by a peace treaty imposed by the Emperor Louis II, the only Frankish king to exercise actual sovereignty over the Lombard states, in 849, which divided the kingdom into two states: the Principality of Benevento and the Principality of Salerno, with its capital at Salerno on the Tyrrhenian.

After this, Pepin, though not a king, was the political ruler of the Frankish kingdom and left this position as a heritage to his sons.

In the 4th century, Roman power decreased and Nijmegen became part of the Frankish kingdom.

Louis ’ decision to jettison the agreement of 817 regarding the division of the empire by assigning a kingdom to his youngest son, Charles the Bald, in 829 was criticized by Gregory in a letter to the Frankish bishops.

Regardless of this claim, the vast bulk of the Frankish bishops maintained that the pope had no business interfering in the internal affairs of the kingdom, or in expecting the Frankish clergy to follow his lead in such matters.

Gregory ’ s pontificate witnessed the end of the iconoclasm controversy in the Byzantine Empire, while Gregory himself promoted the celebration of the feast of All Saints within the Frankish kingdom on both sides of the Rhine River.

The kingdom was formed when local leader Íñigo Arista led a revolt against the regional Frankish authority and was elected or declared King in Pamplona ( traditionally in 824 ), establishing a kingdom inextricably linked at this stage to their kinsmen the muwallad Banu Qasi of Tudela.

The Saxons long resisted both becoming Christians and being incorporated into the orbit of the Frankish kingdom, but they were decisively conquered by Charlemagne in a long series of annual campaigns, the Saxon Wars ( 772 – 804 ).

Saint Boniface () ( c. 7th century – 5 June 754 ), the Apostle of the Germans, born Winfrid, Wynfrith, or Wynfryth in the kingdom of Wessex, probably at Crediton ( now in Devon, England ), was a missionary who propagated Christianity in the Frankish Empire during the 8th century.

But the Vikings took advantage of the quarrels in the royal family caused after the death of Louis the Pious to settle their first colony in the south-west ( Gascony ) of the kingdom of Francia, which was more or less abandoned by the Frankish kings after their two defeats at Roncevaux.

* Breast-strap horse harness in use in Frankish kingdom.