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Introduction.
all the German stem-tribes that descended upon the Roman provinces and took possession of them either by treaty or by conquest, none was destined to play a lasting role in European history except the Franks. Eastern and Western Goths, Vandals and Burgundians were to lose their power after a brief space and to vanish from their new settlements. But the Franks were to become the leading people in Europe, the patrons of the church, the founders of an almost universal monarchy.

In nothing is the civilizing effect of the conquered Romans on the conquering Germans so clearly to be seen as in the fact that, within half a century after the Franks had settled in Gaul, they proceeded to draw up a code of written laws. Not that the laws themselves contain much that is Roman—the conditions of life were too dissimilar—but it is easy to see in them the Roman desire for order and discipline. There is an effort to assimilate the old institution with the new, to adopt a new modus Vivendi under completely changed circumstances. Tribes that remained on purely German soil—take the Saxons for instance—needed no such rules and regulations; they managed for centuries to live without them. No. I. of our documents—the Salic Law—is particularly interesting from the fact that it illustrates a period