Being Arian Christians, the Vandals persecuted with furious zeal the orthodox party, the followers of Athanasius. Moved by the entreaties of the African Catholics, the Emperor Justinian sent his general Belisarius to drive the barbarians from Africa, and to restore that province to the bosom of the true Catholic Church. The expedition was successful, and Carthage and the fruitful fields of Africa were restored to the empire, after having suffered the insolence of the barbarian conquerors for the space of one hundred years. The Vandals remaining in the country were gradually absorbed by the old Roman population, and after a few generations no certain trace of the barbarian invaders could be detected in the physical appearance, the language, or the customs of the inhabitants of the African coast. The Vandal nation had disappeared; the name alone remained. [Illustration: CLOVIS AND THE VASE OF SOISSONS (After a drawing by Alphonse de Neuville.) [Footnote: The story of the Vase of Soissons illustrates at once the customs of the Franks and the power and personal character of their leader Clovis. Upon the division at Soissons of some spoils, Clovis asked his followers to set aside a rule whereby they divided the booty by lot, and to let him have a certain beautiful vase. One of his followers objected, and broke the vase to pieces with his battle-axe. Clovis concealed his anger at the time, but some time afterwards, when reviewing his troops, he approached the man who had offended him, and chiding him for not keeping his arms bright, cleft his head with a battle-axe, at the same time exclaiming, "Thus didst thou to the vase of Soissons."]] THE FRANKS UNDER THE MEROVINGIANS (A.D. 482-752).--The Franks, who were destined to give a new name to Gaul and form the nucleus of the French nation, made their first settlement west of the Rhine about two hundred years before the fall of Rome. The name was the common designation of a number of Teutonic tribes that had formed a confederation while dwelling beyond the Rhine. The Salian Franks were the leading tribe of the league, and it was from the members of their most powerful family, who traced their descent from Merovæus, a legendary sea-king of the Franks, that leaders were chosen by the free vote of all the warriors. After the downfall of Rome, Clovis, then chief of the Franks, conceived the ambition of erecting a kingdom upon the ruins of the Roman power. He attacked Syagrius, the Roman governor of Gaul, and at Soissons gained a decisive victory over his forces (A.D. 486). Thus was destroyed forever in Gaul that Roman authority established among its barbarous tribes more than five centuries before by the conquests of Julius Cæsar.