A count, who was the chief officer of a county, was in fact the sovereign of a small state, and so on a smaller scale were a duke or a marquis.

And it was to these smaller bodies that the power naturally gravitated as it vanished from the throne.
This meant disintegration into helpless fragments, and this meant the end of a Frankish kingdom, unless some power should arise great enough to compel the crumbling state to become homogeneous.
It was a Romanized-Frankish family dwelling in the Valley of the Rhine which saved the kingdom of Clovis from this fate.

France had already fallen apart into an eastern and a western kingdom, known respectively as _Austrasia_ and _Neustria_.

A certain Duke of Austrasia, known as Pepin the Elder, was the forerunner of the Carlovingian line of kings.
With him the centralizing force began to work with saving power.

The one end kept in view was the restoration of the power of kingship--the strengthening of the power at the centre.