Changes

When the authority of Rome was collapsing in western Europe in the fourth and fifth centuries BC, wave after wave of Germanic tribes – and some non-Germanic tribes – attempted to fill the void. Vandals, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, and Burgundians were just some of the better known warbands that attempted to carve out kingdoms for themselves from the corpse of the decaying Roman Empire. Most of these Germanic kingdoms were ephemeral, often collapsing just as quickly as they rose, but one people impacted Western Europe more profoundly and over a much longer time period – the Franks.