The Period oj Invasions 187 THE DOMINIONS OF THE FRANKS UNDER THE MEROVINGIANS This map shows how the Prankish kingdom grew up. Clovis, while still a young man, defeated the Roman general Syagrius in 486, near Soissons, and so added the region around Paris to his possessions. He added Alemannia on the east in 496. In 507 he made Paris his capital and conquered Aqui- tania, previously held by the West Goths. He also made a beginning in adding the kingdom of the Burgundians to his realms. He died in 511. His successors in the next half century completed the conquest of Burgundy and added Provincia, Bavaria, and Gascony. There- were many divisions of the Prankish realms after the time of Clovis, and the eastern and western portions, called Austrasia and Neustria, were often ruled by different branches of the Merovingians, as Clovis's family was called from his ancestor Meroveus, the supposed founder of his line and in founding an empire far more important than the kingdoms of the West and East Goths, the Vandals, or the Lombards. When the Franks are first heard of in history they were settled along the lower Rhine, from Cologne to the North Sea. In the early part of the fifth century they had occupied the district which forms today the kingdom of Belgium, as well as the regions
