The Rise of the Franks - a mighty host of warlords; forefathers of the western world and forgers of medieval civilisation, under the totemic leadership of history’s most glorious King: Charlemagne. It is a tale rich in fantasy and myth, transporting us into a distant age and the dark debris of a crumbling Roman empire; landscapes scarred by ruins, clashing queens, poisonings, sorcery, bloody battles, ice castles, and axe-wielding warriors, more reminiscent of King Arthur, Game of Thrones and the Lord of the Rings than real life. Once insignificant, terrifying barbarians from the peripheries of Gaul, with flaming red hair and formidable moustaches, they would emerge from the ashes of the Roman Empire in the 4th century AD, and become the heirs of the Caesars. But how? The answer lies in warring barbarian strongmen, the collision of old gods and the new, a mighty Christian martyr, a mysterious ancient bloodline born of perhaps Jesus Christ himself, the emperors of old, and a sea monster; and a battle to determine dominion of the West… Join Tom and Dominic as they launch into one of the greatest stories in all of European history: the rise the Franks. Europe’s mightiest warriors, warlords and kings, whose legacy would reshape the world forever. _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett + Aaliyah Akude Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the story of the Franks about?
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Did you know that our Sunday Times bestselling book, The Rest Is History Returns, is now out in paperback? From finding out who British history's biggest lad was to tracing the admittedly hazy ancient origins of Raiders of the Lost Ark, it's filled cover to cover with more curious historical moments than you can crack a lasso at, plus puzzles and a pub quiz.
The Rest Is History Returns, available now in all good bookshops. Zachary was still shaking his head. Welcome to Thailand. Now let me school you. What you and Sarai could do and get away with in Boulder can't be done here in Phuket. Not if she's going to save face and honor her father. She's a good girl. And here in Thailand, good girls don't fool around with or get involved with farangs.
What the hell is a farang? It's the Thai word for Europeans or non-Thai men. It's mostly used to describe white guys. Since we're black, you and I are actually farang dam. Alexander stared at his twin for a moment. Well, damn, he said, suddenly laughing. Laughing with him, Zachary shrugged. Farang is also the word for guava fruit. Go figure.
So that, Dominic, was Guilty Pleasures by Deborah Mello. I'm sure you'll have read it. It's a romance novel describing the rivalry between two American brothers, both of them black, as we heard, Alexander and Zachary the Hammer Barrett. And they're both absolute fitness fanatics like me. And they're both obsessed by the beautiful Sarai Montrai, who is a personal trainer of
and the former Miss Thailand.
So of all the introductory readings we've ever had on the rest of history, that's probably the weirdest. What's going on?
Well, I'm sure what will have stuck out for you was the use of this phrase, Farang Dam, which literally means Black Franks. And it was first used in the 60s to describe Black American servicemen who were being stationed in Thailand during the Vietnam War.
Yeah.
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Chapter 2: Who were the Franks and where did they come from?
Yeah.
And you might say it's propaganda, but I don't think so. So this poet writes, these monsters have red hair which descends from the top of the skull in a knot while the back of their head is shaved and shines baldly.
So they look Scottish.
Yes, I suppose. They're clean shaven, this poet writes, except for locks of hair which descend from the nose and are combed. So again, this is something we've talked about before on the podcast, the inability of the Romans to find a word for what we would call moustaches.
A lock of hair which descends from the nose. Yeah. Surely the Romans must be aware that hair grows under your nose.
No, they don't have a word for it. And also the detail that they comb it. And then this brilliant detail. The clothes they wear over their immense genitals are exceedingly tight. Right. So.
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Chapter 3: What role did Julian play in the history of the Franks?
Yeah. Yeah. Like a kind of like a prog rocker or something from the 1970s.
Yes, and also like prog rockers, they have fearsome throwing axes.
Right, and massive moustaches. So yeah, it's very Genesis circa 1973.
So the Franks are not, I guess, a tribe in the way that the Romans of earlier centuries would have recognised the tribe. They're a kind of confederation.
That is a pattern that has been developing over the course of the centuries because the impact of Roman gold, of Roman military techniques, but also of the desire of the Romans to understand barbarian peoples in a way that corresponds to the Roman world vision has kind of been creating ever larger tribal entities across the Rhine.
The Romans have basically invented these peoples in a way.
I think the Germanic peoples start to recognize the Roman standards as the measure to which they should conform. And so they start to mold themselves into people like the Romans, which of course makes them actually, ironically, much more menacing. So the Alemanni who we mentioned, I mean, that is all the men. That's all the people who've been gathered together.
They're a particularly large confederation. The Franks compared to the Alemanni are not as large, certainly not as large as the most famous confederations of all. So the Goths, the Visigoths, the Western Goths, the Ostrogoths, the Eastern Goths. Compared to them, they're low rent. And I think that that is why Julian and other Roman emperors
And generals are prepared to kind of install them along the frontier as foederati, as allies. And as I said, this is a process that doesn't begin with Julian. It goes back to the third century. So from the late third century, we have a funerary inscription in which the buried warrior has written, I belong to the Frankish nation, but as a soldier under arms, I am a Roman.
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Chapter 4: How did the Franks become allies of Rome?
So there you have this idea that you can be both a Frank and a Roman. Even under Constantine, a Frank is registered as having served as a general in the Roman army. And I think that reflects the fact that there is something in this trade-off for both peoples. Because just as the Franks get the benefits of Roman civilization, you know, wine and central heating and all that kind of stuff.
So the Romans get these fearsome guys with their very tight pants and their throwing axes to fill a massive manpower shortage. There are a lack of people who want to serve in the Roman army and the Franks are kind of brilliant at that. And the broader question of who the Franks are, where they come from, this is one that the Franks themselves later will struggle to answer.
So one story which will develop much later is that they come from a place called Pannonia, which is basically the Great Plains of Hungary. But I think that's unlikely because it's telling that that's where the Goths come from. So basically, the Franks are identifying themselves with the Goths.
And then much later, there's an even more improbable claim that the Franks came from Troy, which, of course, is where the Romans also came from.
Yeah, of course.
So they're equating themselves to the Romans. So basically, I think what that tells you is that the Franks are pretty low rent as a group of people. They don't have a distinguished ancestry. They can't really remember where they come from. And even the name that they give themselves. So Franks means literally the brave ones, the war hungry ones. Yeah.
In due course, they will say that the Franks means the free ones, but that is actually under the Romans exactly what they are not. They're not free. They are subordinate.
So it's a window, isn't it, into the Roman world in this period where the empire has come under enormous pressure on the frontiers. And as a part of that, the army is becoming ever more the domain of... Historians are a little bit wary of using these terms now, aren't they? Like barbarians. Basically, Germanic peoples are now serving the army in large numbers.
In the frontier zones, lots of Germanic peoples who've been settled, kind of slightly military settlements. A lot of the officers are Germanic. backgrounds and whatnot. The emperors by now are less and less your kind of pampered Italians, and they're more and more your kind of bulk and strong men and things. And it's a sort of story about the militarization of the Roman Empire, isn't it, I guess?
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Chapter 5: Who is Martin and why is he significant?
And that is, of course, the unmistakable prose of very much a... I don't think friend is the right word, but he's an associate, isn't he? He's an associate of the rest of his history. And that is the acclaimed novelist, renowned novelist, Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code. And Sully Teabing there, for people who are just absolutely baffled...
He's explaining how Christ's descendants have intermarried with the Merovingian bloodline. And this is the royal dynasty that comes to rule the Franks. And they're basically all descended from Jesus and Mary Magdalene. And like so many things in this story, this absolutely definitely happened, didn't it, Tom? Yeah.
So people who haven't read The Da Vinci Code or seen it or read The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail, which is the book purporting to be history on which The Da Vinci Code was based. The theory in this is that Jesus and Mary Magdalene get married. They have children. This is a holy bloodline, sangraal, the holy blood.
And that, as Lee T. Bing says, that it marries into Frankish royalty and they create this family called the Merovingians. And you may wonder where has this come from? And the answer is that there's a Frankish chronicle which is written in the 7th century, which claims that the Merovingians, who are absolutely a historical dynasty, will be looking at them.
that they took their name from a guy called Merovech, who was a Frankish king whose mother had been out for a swim in the ocean, where she had encountered a mysterious sea creature that was part sea monster, part human, and part bull.
It's kind of hard to picture that, isn't it? It is. Part bull. Which bit of him is bull? Which bit of him is human and which is sea monster?
I don't think that is explained. But according to the Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, which informs Dan Brown's novel, this sea creature was actually a fish and an early Christian symbol for Jesus was a fish. Yeah, still is. And so that proves that the Merovingians are actually... So this creature was Jesus. Yeah, descended from Jesus.
That's a shock, isn't it, if that's what Jesus looks like.
So that's the theory, but there is an alternative and I would say likelier explanation.
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Chapter 6: What miracles did Martin perform?
And the lands that for 500 years pretty much had been ruled by the Caesars are now subject to a Germanic warlord who's got his long hair. He's got his genitals bolting out of his tight pants. He's got his bees. He's got all this kind of stuff. And, you know, it's quite the transformation.
But the counter argument might run like this, that these guys have been serving in the Roman army now for generations. I mean, not talking about decades, we're talking about more than a century.
that perhaps to a lot of people they would look pretty Romanized, that they know how the Roman Empire works because they've been in it for so long, that actually they are not replacing Roman authority, but they're simply succeeding to it, and that possibly to a lot of people, provincial elites and whatnot, these just look like the Imperial Army or people who were once in the Imperial Army have basically moved in and reasserted control.
Isn't that how it might look?
Well, we know for a fact that it does because we have a letter that is written by the Bishop of Reims in northern Gaul, a guy called Remigius, who is clearly Roman. You can tell that from his name. Also very, very holy. He's a man who supposedly can raise the dead back to life.
And he writes to Clovis when Clovis succeeds his father, Childeric, essentially hailing Clovis not as a king, but as the new governor of the Roman province of northeastern Gaul. And we have the letter that he writes to him. And he says, the bestowal of your favor must be pure and honest. You must honor your bishops and must always incline yourself to their advice.
And this is exactly as he would have written to a Roman governor.
Well, it says it's no surprise you've begun just as your forefathers had always done. Yes. So there's no sense there of like, this is a huge rupture.
Absolute continuity.
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