ime passed with one figurehead king following another, none really shining with wisdom, except possibly for Dagobert. Fratricidal battles and murders ravaged the kingdom at the top. When the masters are corrupt, the servants are, too. In the course of a couple of generations, a general devil-may-care attitude had overcome the government. And what is weak-ened can be taken..

Up to the 7th century, counts had been recruited locally, but the future Carolingians, who had made themselves indispensable to the figurehead kings, put in people from Austrasia, Allemannia and Bavaria. True, the Gallo-Roman countries were Frankish, but up to that point they were much less so than the east. Germanic influence grew under the graaves (counts), who had increased powers. They immediately took authority over a num-ber of rural and religious communities by means of taxes, lands, lay abbeys, etc.

Worse yet, the few decades of governmental decline had allowed this bevy of new counts to form the habit of inheriting their fathers' rights and duties along with various benefits and income, and it did not matter whether the counts were competent enough administrators to deserve those privileges. - At this point it should be remembered that the previous government had distributed the titles of count, marquis and others according to the respon-sibilities assigned. For example, a count was a military leader responsible for high and low justice in his administrative district during his time in of-fice. The strict sense of the term is preserved in the "Court of Counts" which serves as a kind of general accounting office, overseeing administra-tive units and exposing abuses and corruption. The title of marquis was a military rank that indicated responsibility for defending a sector of border-lands, or marches, adjacent to a hostile kingdom. These titles and functions could be given to someone else by decree of the king in the event that the count or marquis neglected his duty. In that case, the sanction would be harsh or even fatal. To compensate for the risks and functions of these various responsibilities, certain benefits were attached to the titles. These benefits were generally land and/or exclusive rights to commercial activi-ties, which met the financial obligations and living necessities befitting the man "in charge." - It is easy to understand, then, how dangerous the new order of things was, when these rights and responsibilities began to pass legally to the inheritors of a grandee with no consideration of competence and in full knowledge that they were bound to mulct their benefits for all they were worth.

Charles Martel had increased his fortune considerably through the sécularization of the benefits granted his ancestors. He was not the only one to do so, and there were many who did not approve of this new form of succes-sion. Eucher, the first bishop of Orleans canonized since Saint Aignan, was sent into exile for protesting against the inheritance of titles and benefits.
But the kingdom had started down the slippery slope: the "benefits" at-tached to titles were to become hereditary fiefdoms; feudalism was on its way.

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Meanwhile, the Moslem Saracens, who had already been occupying Spain for some time, crossed the Pyrenees and began to invade southern Gaul. The king Eudes of Aquitaine successfully resisted these incursions for a while, but he was eventually overrun. He then did something that you normally avoid if you want to remain king in your own castle. He called upon the king of the Franks for help. This amounted to the Visigothic kingdom's submitting to the kingdom of Neustria. France was on its way to being born.

Charles Martel took it upon himself to stop Abd-al-Rahman at Poitiers.
Now, Charles was not the king. He was not even part of the Merovingian dynasty. He was only the mayor of the palace at the time, but he was the de facto head of state of the Frankish kingdom.

Charles Martel, a strong man reigning without a title, had his son Pépin crowned at the age of 13 in AD 754. The Carolingian era had begun.

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After Pepin the Short died in 767, his son Charlemagne wanted to improve the status of learning in his lands and sought to build as many schools as possible and train teachers of high quality.

Charlemagne assembled in Aix-la-Chapelle a team of scholars from all over Europe. They were dominated by the great figure of Alcuin, a British monk, to whom Charlemagne had given the abbey of Saint-Martin. On the eve of his coronation in 800, Charlemagne visited Saint-Martin-de-Tours, where he consulted with his advisor Alcuin, the abbot of the monastery.

The abbey had become a rather sleepy place even though it had more than 200 monks. The scholarly abbot set about to enhance its prestige. He took over the abbey school and created two courses: an elementary course and a course of study in the seven "liberal arts," namely grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy.

From all over Europe, students flocked to the abbey of Saint-Martin. It would remain a cultural beacon throughout the first half of the 9th century. Alcuin also set up a scriptorium for calligraphy and illuminating manuscripts. Artists from Rheims and Aix-la-Chapelle came and enriched the pictorial techniques taught at the abbey workshop. It was to produce true masterpieces such as the Alcuin Bible, the Moutier-Grandval Bible, and the famous Bible of Charles the Bald.

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Another follower of Charlemagne was Théodulphe. At first a member of the scholarly counselors at the court of Aix, Theodulphe was named bishop of Orleans in about 798. In addition to this important post, he was made abbot of Micy and of Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire. Theodulphe was a brilliant theologian, a scholar imbued with the culture of antiquity, and a poet. He initiated intense cultural activity in his diocese and made Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire a center of learning, especially in the classics. He created two monastic schools: one outside the abbey for the secular clergy and another, inside, for future monks.
The schools studied ancient documents; and the scriptorium, which had been in existence before his arrival, produced some remarkable works.

Near the abbey, Theodulphe was proprietor of the domain of Germigny. In about 806, he had a sumptuously decorated residence built there. : The floors were of marble, the walls were painted to depict heaven and earth, and an oratorium was decorated with magnificent Byzantine mosaics.

After the death of Charlemagne, his son Louis-le-Pieux visited Saint-Benoit in 818 and exiled Theodulphe, who had fallen into disfavor. His villa was later burned by the Vikings, whom we call the Normans (northmen), who were the next wave of invaders.

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At the beginning of the 9th century, the abbeys engaged in trade: they sold some of their products, bought and resold others at a profit. In 829, the abbey of Micy obtained from Louis the Pious a salt mine at the mouth of the Loire, on the Atlantic. Some church lands were far away (the church of Le Mans owned land in Burgundy and Provence), as were foreign es-tablishments held in the region (Saint-Germain-des-prés, the church of Rheims, etc..); this encouraged trade with distant parts. The monasteries were veritable agribusinesses as well as industrial and commercial enterprises. Some were past masters in construction.

At about this time, an abbot named Witizza brought under a single rule the orders of Saint Benedict and the Irish Saint Colomba. Under the name Benoît-d'Aniane, he promoted the Benedictine monastic reform that would result in the abbey of Cluny and all its affiliated abbeys.

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The death of Louis the Pious in 840 plunged the Loire countries into inse-curity. His succession fell to his son, Charles-the-Bald, who obtained all of western Francia at the treaty of Verdun in 843. But his nephew, Pépin II, who claimed Aquitaine, acquired title to the province with the treaty of Fleury-sur-Loire.
After a lot of shuffling and dealing, Charles the Bald finally imposed his son, Charles-l'Enfant (Charles the Younger), in Aquitaine and married his elder son, Louis-le-Bègue,(Louis the Stammerer) to the daughter of Erispoé, sovereign of Brittany.
Finally, having mended all his diplomatic fences, or so he thought, Charles the Bald, grandson of Charlemagne, was crowned in Orleans in 848.

A new period of quarrels and feuds followed among the powerful men of the kingdom, especially since some old families had acquired a lot of influ-ence in the Loire country, such as the family of Anjou-Touraine, whose representative was Robert-le-Fort (Robert the Strong), count of Orléans.

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