In the year 751, the Franconian caretaker Pippin the Younger completed his family’s long journey to power: He had the last Merovingian king in the Franconian Empire, Childerich III., Shaved his head and put him in the monastery. The Carolingian rule began with Pippin.
A member of that sex, Grimoald the Elder, had tried to usurp power about a hundred years earlier. The caretaker of the Austrasia sub-kingdom persuaded King Sigibert III. to adopt his own son and thus secure his successor. Or … was everything completely different? The alleged coup of the Grimoald results from a short entry in the Carolingian royal catalog, which has been handed down in two versions and can be translated in different ways. The course of the story depends on the stroke of a monk’s pen – was Grimoald a skilled politician or an unscrupulous coupist?
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