and also in parts of
Aquitania Prima and Novempopulana, but after the defeat of their king
Alaric II. by the Franks under Clovis in 507, they were supplanted by
their conquerors. Clovis and his successors extended their authority
nominally to the Pyrenees, but, as Guizot has remarked, "the conquest of
Aquitania by Clovis left it almost as alien to the people and king of
Franks as it had formerly been." Subsequently during the Merovingian
period it was contended for by the feeble rulers of the various Frankish
kingdoms, and was frequently partitioned among them; but the Aquitanians
had little difficulty in effectually resisting this authority, although
they did not establish themselves as a separate kingdom. About 628,
indeed, they gathered around Charibert, or Haribert, a brother of the
Frankish king, Dagobert I., in the hope of national independence; but
after his death in 630 they returned to their former condition. But this
effort, although a failure, brought about a certain measure of concord
between the two principal races inhabiting the district, and so prepared
the way for the stubborn resistance which, subsequently, the Aquitanians
were able to offer to the Franks.

The first line of dukes began about 660 with one Felix, who, like his
successor, Lupus, probably owned allegiance to the Frankish kings, and
whose seat of government was Toulouse. About the end of the 7th century
an adventurer named Odo, or Eudes, made himself master of this region.
Attacked by the Saracens he inflicted on them a crushing defeat, but
when they reappeared, he was obliged to invoke the aid of Charles
Martel, who, as the price of his support, claimed and received the
homage of his ally. Odo was succeeded by his son Hunald, who after
carrying on a war against the Franks under Pippin the Short, retired to
a convent, leaving both the kingdom and the conflict to Waifer, or
Guaifer. For some years Waifer strenuously carried on an unequal
struggle with the Franks, but he was assassinated in 768, and with him
perished the national independence, although not the national
individuality, of the Aquitanians. In 781 Charlemagne bestowed Aquitaine
upon his young son, Louis, and as Louis was generally described as a
king, Aquitaine is referred to during the Carolingian period as a
kingdom, and not as a duchy. When Louis succeeded Charlemagne as emperor
in 814, he granted Aquitaine to his son Pippin, on whose death in 838
the Aquitanians chose his so