A Country With No Name Yet

Looking for France on this map? You won’t find it. Not the country, not even the word. Dozens of peoples instead. And “Gaul”? The name comes from the people looking in from outside: the Romans. This is the ground it grows on.

So who lives here? The Arverni in the middle. The Aedui next door, with a card nobody else has: Rome protects them. The Remi, loyal too. The Parisii, in a little town called Lutetia. And south, a strip of land Roman long before Caesar.

And where do they live? Not in huts deep in the woods. By 52 BC Gaul already has fortified towns and well-laid roads — Rome will often just resurface them. Those towns go by a name you meet in the very first lesson.

Now Rome. How do you hold sixty peoples who don’t much like each other? Not by parking a legion in every village. By carving, counting, naming — and by giving the locals a good reason to play along: citizenship. Here is the machinery.

1. The south, Roman before Caesar

   Annexed around 120 BC. Rome is at home there before the rest falls.
2. 52 BC: Caesar takes the rest

   Six years of campaigns, one a year. The whole of Gaul tips over.
3. Augustus carves it up

   Count the inhabitants, then: four provinces, some sixty cités. Lyon the capital.
4. AD 48: Gauls in the Senate

   The emperor Claudius, born in Lyon, speaks for them. It passes. The Aedui sit down first.
5. 212: citizens

   Caracalla: every free man in the Empire. Beaten in 52 BC, citizens in 212.

And they build. The same kit in every county town: a neat grid, two big streets crossing, a forum, temples, a theatre, baths, and water arriving from miles away. Look how long it goes on.

Jump five centuries. The last emperor of the West was deposed in 476. Who is in charge? Four men, and not one is called emperor. Two kings from elsewhere, one who still calls himself Roman, one Frank. The last man’s son will scoop the lot.

• A
  Alaric

  King of the Goths, south of the Loire

  An Arian Christian, like his people.
• G
  Gundobad

  King of the Burgundians, beyond the Rhône

  Arian too. He killed his brother; the dead man’s daughter is Clotilde.
• S
  Syagrius

  “King of the Romans”, according to Gregory of Tours

  A Roman general. He holds Soissons, and the land up to the Loire.
• C
  Childéricdied around 481

  King of the Franks, around Cambrai and Tournai

  His grave was overflowing with jewels. His son is called Clovis.

The Franks. Warriors from the north, led by kings you can spot a mile off: long hair, picked from the noblest family. Gregory of Tours calls them the long-haired kings. Childéric’s son takes over around 481. Fifteen years old.

Two and a half centuries on, same people, different problem: the king is no longer the boss. The boss is his steward. And the steward has a son, who has a son. Watch this family climb, one step at a time.

1. PépinCharles’s father.
2. Charles MartelMayor of the palace since 720.
3. PépinCrowned king in 751. The first of the family.
4. CharlesKing in 768. They will call him Charlemagne.

And after that? In 800, in Rome, a pope sets a crown on Charles’s head: there is an emperor in the West again. Less than two centuries later, his descendants rule no more than a kingdom from the Meuse to the Ocean.

One last thing, and the most important. Everything you have just read, somebody wrote down. A victor, a bishop, a monk. Not one of them was neutral. Not one knew what came next. Guess who is holding the pen.