88 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE period of invasions, beginning with the advent of the Hun? Expansion and the battle of Adrianople, we have to note the Franks expansion of the Frankish people to the death into Gaul of Clovis in 5 1 1 . There were two branches of the Franks, the Salians dwelling along the North Sea and the Ripuarians who lived along the Rhine. Both had expanded across the Roman frontier even before the battle of Adrian- ople, but had been defeated. The Ripuarians were driven back across the river, while the Salians were allowed to remain as allies of the Empire in the extreme northeast of Gaul. By the beginning of the fifth century they ceased to recognize Rome's authority, and the Ripuarians, too, came west of the Rhine once more. Aetius checked the advance of the Salians for a time, but they soon had spread as far south as the Somme River, and made Tournai their capital. The Ripuarians gradually wrenched from the Empire the important cities of Cologne, Bonn, Aix-la-Chapelle, Juliers, Treves, and their surrounding country. South of the Ripuarians on the Rhine came the Thurin- gians and then the Alamanni, who occupied Alsace, the Political region between the Vosges Mountains and the of Gau?at Rhine, and extended eastward through the Black this time Forest to the Lake of Constance. Farther south, in the upper Saone and Rhone Valleys and in Savoy on the west slopes of the Alps, were the Burgundians. What the French call "le massif central, 1 ' an elevated and barren region whose eastern boundary is formed by the Cevennes Mountains, occupies a considerable portion of south-central France and separates both southeastern from southwestern France and the Mediterranean littoral from the interior. The Visigoths had at first been west of this central plateau, but had now also expanded south of it and occupied most of the Mediterranean coast region. To the north their kingdom reached the Loire. The remainder of Gaul, between the Loire and Somme Rivers, had not yet been conquered by the German invaders. A certain Syagrius had inherited it in 464 from his father ^Egidius, a lieutenant of the Ro- man emperor at that time, and was known as the "Roman
