At last, after endless divisions, reconquests, and reunions of the different parts of the Frankish territory, the whole Frankish dominion was again, in the second half of the eighth century, joined together under the Austrasian, the purely German, house of the _Karlings_. The Dukes and Kings of that house consolidated and extended the Frankish dominion in every direction. Under Pippin and Charles the Great, the power of the ruling race was more firmly established over the dependent states, such as Bavaria and Aquitaine. ♦Pippin conquers Septimania. 752. | Conquests of Charles the Great. 768-814.♦ Under Pippin the conquest of the Saracen province of Septimania extended the Frankish power over the whole of Gaul; and under Charles the Great, the Frankish dominion was extended by a series of conquests in every direction. Of these, his Italian conquests were rather the winning of a new crown for the Frankish king than the extension of the Frankish kingdom. But the conquest of _Saxony_ at the one end and of the _Spanish March_ at the other, as well as the overthrow of the Pannonian kingdom of the Avars, were in the strictest sense extensions of the Frankish dominions. ♦German character of the Frankish power.♦ The Frankish power which now plays so great a part in the world was a power essentially German. The Franks and their kings, the kings who reigned from the Elbe to the Ebro, were German in blood, speech, and feeling; but they bore rule over other lands, German, Latin, and Celtic, in many various degrees of incorporation and subjection. ♦The three great powers of the eighth century; Romans, Franks, Saracens.♦