But the growth of French power menaced utter ruin to this interesting
race. Clovis had succeeded about the year 485 of our era, in
destroying the last remnants of Roman domination in Gaul. The
successors of these conquerors soon extended their empire from the
Pyrenees to the Rhine. They had continual contests with the free
population of the Low Countries, and their nearest neighbors. In the
commencement of the seventh century, the French king, Clotaire II.,
exterminated the chief part of the Saxons of Hanover and Westphalia;
and the historians of those barbarous times unanimously relate
that he caused to be beheaded every inhabitant of the vanquished
tribes who exceeded the height of his sword. The Saxon name was
thus nearly extinguished in those countries; and the remnant of
these various peoples adopted that of Frisons (Friesen), either
because they became really incorporated with that nation, or
merely that they recognized it for the most powerful of their
tribes. Friesland, to speak in the language of that age, extended
then from the Scheldt to the Weser, and formed a considerable
state. But the ascendency of France was every year becoming more
marked; and King Dagobert extended the limits of her power even
as far as Utrecht. The descendants of the Menapians, known at
that epoch by the different names of Menapians, Flemings, and
Toxandirans, fell one after another directly or indirectly under
the empire of the Merovingian princes; and the noblest family
which existed among the French--that which subsequently took the
name of Carlovingians--comprised in its dominions nearly the
whole of the southern and western parts of the Netherlands.

Between this family, whose chief was called duke of the Frontier
Marshes (_Dux_Brabantioe_), and the free tribes, united under