Ripuarian

In his expedition against the Arians, he had found a faithful ally in his relative Sighebert, the old and infirm king of the Ripuarian Franks.

Having obtained The wars of Clovis. possession of that part of Gaul which lay between the Seine and the Loire, Clovis turned his attention to his eastern neighbours, and was soon engaged in a struggle with the Alamanni which probably arose out of a quarrel between them and the Ripuarian Franks for the possession of the middle Rhine.

From the end of the fifth century Cologne belonged to the Franks and was long occupied by the Ripuarian kings.

In the old domain of the Ripuarian Franks, the provinces on the other side of the Rhine from Cleves to the Moselle, and the Grafschaft of Mark, Essen, Werden, and Berg, had already in the middle ages freed themselves from bondage: those who had not property as landowners were freemen with leases for life.

The Salian Franks had, in the fifth century, conquered northern Gaul from the Batavian coast to the Somme River; the Ripuarian Franks formed a state along the Rhine, the Maas, and the Moselle, with Cologne as a capital.