The number and the names of the tribes united in this
confederation are uncertain. A chart of the Roman Empire, prepared
apparently at the end of the fourth century, in the reign of the emperor
Honorius--which chart, called _tabula Peutingeri_, was found among the
ancient MSS. collected by Conrad Peutinger, a learned German
philosopher, in the fifteenth century--bears, over a large territory on
the right bank of the Rhine, the word _Francia_, and the following
enumeration: "The Chaucians, the Ampsuarians, the Cheruscans, and the
Chamavians, who are also called Franks;" and to these tribes divers
chroniclers added several others, "the Attuarians, the Bructerians, the
Cattians, and the Sicambrians."
Whatever may have been the specific names of these peoplets, they were
all of German race, called themselves Franks, that is "freemen," and
made, sometimes separately, sometimes collectively, continued incursions
into Gaul--especially Belgica and the northern portions of Lyonness--at
one time plundering and ravaging, at another occupying forcibly, or
demanding of the Roman emperors lands whereon to settle.
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