Syagrius, near Soissons. After
his death in 511 his kingdom was divided among four sons who were
mere boys ranging from twelve to eighteen years of age. The young
princes extended the conquests of their father until they had
secured from the emperor Justinian title to the whole of Gaul. The
last survivor of the brother-kings was Clotaire I. Under his rule
the whole Frankish empire had been united in one; but on his
decease it was again divided among sons. This division cut the
kingdom into three separate sovereignties.

The reign of these brothers was one of horrible cruelty and
bloodshed. A second Clotaire survived them and brought the monarchy
under one sceptre. But power slipped fast from this royal
representative of the Merovingian race, and the mayor of the palace
(_major-domus)_ began to exercise an authority which in time
resulted in supremacy. When Pepin of Heristal, the greatest
territorial lord of Austrasia, took upon himself the office of
major-domus, he compelled the Merovingian King, at the battle of
Testry in 687, to invest him with the powers of that office in the
three Frankish states, Neustria, Austrasia, and Burgundy. This
being accomplished Pepin was practically dictator, and the
Merovingians, though allowed to remain on the throne, were simply
figure-heads from that time forth. Charles Martel was a son worthy
of Pepin of Heristal. His most notable achievement was the defeat
of the Saracen invaders at the battle of Tours, A.D. 732, which
ended the advance of Mahometanism through Western Europe.

Charles Martel died October 22, 741, at Kiersey-sur-Oise, aged fifty-two
years, and his last act was the least wise of his life. He had spent it
entirely in two great works: the reestablishment throughout the whole of
Gaul of the Franco-Gallo-Roman Empire, and the driving back, from the
frontiers of his empire, of the Germans in the North and the Arabs in
the South. The consequence, as also the condition, of this double
success was the victory of Christianity over paganism and Islamism.

Charles Martel endangered these results by falling back into the groove
of those Merovingian kings whose shadow he had allowed to remain on the
throne. He divided between his two legitimate sons, Pepin, called the
Short, from his small stature, and Carloman, this sole dominion which he
had with so much to