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ssss1.Trier, Köln, and Mainz.

The Franks were now divided into two main hordes; the Salians—who took their name from Sala, the old name of the river Yssel—dwelt from the Scheldt-mouth to the Somme, and from the Straits of Dover to the Meuse. The Ripuarians, whose name is drawn from the fact that they inhabited the bank (ripa) of the Rhine, lay along both sides of the great river from its junction with the Lippe to its junction with the Lahn, and extended as far east as the Meuse. Each of these two tribes was ruled by many kings, all of whom claimed to descend from the house of the Merovings, a line lost in obscurity, whose original head may, perhaps, have been the chief who in the third century first taught union to the various tribes who formed the Frankish confederacy.

The Franks were one of the more backward of the Teutonic races, in spite of their long contact with Roman civilisation along the Rhine. Kings and people were still heathens. They had not learnt like the Goths to wear armour or fight on horseback, but went to war half-naked, armed only with a barbed javelin, a sword, and a casting-axe or tomahawk, called the Francisca after the name of its users. Unlike Goth and Vandal they had not learnt the advantages of political union, but obeyed many petty princes instead of one great lord. All Roman writers reproach them for a perfidy which exceeded that of the other barbarians. The Saxons, we are told, were cruel, the Alamanni drunken, the Alans rapacious, the Huns unchaste, but the special sin of the Frank was treachery and perjury.