Carlings

Lothar died soon after, in 986; and though his son Louis V. was crowned, he only lived a year, and when he died in 987, the great counts and dukes met in consultation with the chief of the clergy, and agreed that, as the Counts of Paris were the real heads of the State, and nobody cared for the Carlings, it would be better to do like the Germans, and pass over the worn-out Carlings, who spoke old Frank, while the Paris Counts spoke the altered Latin, which came to be called French.

The Carlings, on the other hand, had few possessions, but unlimited pretensions to empire, and stood forth as the opponents of the growing spirit of feudalism, the subdivision of property and jurisdiction, and as the upholders of unity, centralisation, and Roman traditions.

Hugh Capet, Duke of France, mounted the throne of the Carlings in 987.

With the successors of Charles the Great the dynasty of the Carlings began its downward course.