the descendants of Dagobert's one-time advisers Pippin and Arnulf, had maintained an almost uninterrupted ascendancy throughout the seventh century. Pippin I's son Grimoald and grandson Pippin II were both mayors of the palace in Austrasia. Pippin II managed by the battle of Tertry in 687 to unite both Neustria and Austrasia under his own puppet Merovingian king. But the power struggles in northern Gaul seriously weakened the power of the Merovingians and their mayors. In the south regional identities were being forged. The Aquitanians had their own duke; the patricius of Provence was virtually an independent ruler; the aristocrats of Burgundy paid little attention to the Franks in the north. The various Germanic peoples beyond the Rhine who had still been under Frankish overlordship in Dagobert's day were asserting their independence. And even in northern Gaul the Merovingians and their mayors were often powerless to stop the activities of local aristocratic families, resting as they did on their own land and on the control of church land through their family monasteries and, occasionally, dynastic bishoprics.
It was Pippin II's illegitimate son Charles Martel who began the reunification of Gaul, and who gave his name to the dynasty, the Carolingians. With his own puppet Merovingian king he reunited northern Gaul and began the reconquest of other former possessions of the Merovingian kings. He is best known for his victory in 732-3 over the Arabs of 'Abd ar-Rahman, who were approaching Tours, intending to loot the wealthy shrine of St Martin. Some have seen this battle, almost certainly wrongly, as a great turning-point in history, in which Charles thwarted the Arab conquest of western Europe. But it is perhaps a major turning-point in Gallic history, for it demonstrated Charles's superiority over Duke Eudo of the Aquitanians, and began the series of campaigns which not only drove the Arabs back beyond the Pyrenees but, more importantly, established the Franks once more as rulers of southern Gaul. The campaigns lasted decades. Charles Martel led several campaigns into Burgundy and Aquitaine. His son Pippin III campaigned in Burgundy and Provence, and restored those provinces to his rule. It took ten years of warfare in the
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