The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire · ¶319

The wealth of the Merovingian princes consisted in their extensive domain. After the conquest of Gaul, they still delighted in the rustic simplicity of their ancestors; the cities were abandoned to solitude and decay; and their coins, their charters, and their synods, are still inscribed with the names of the villas, or rural palaces, in which they successively resided.

Edward Gibbon · Project Gutenberg #733 (Milman edition) — public domain
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