From Barbarians to the Franks

At the beginning of the 5th century, the Roman Empire was already no longer very Roman. To defend what it could still control, it settled certain “barbarian” peoples as allies. In 443, the general Aetius established the Burgundians in Sapaudia, a vast territory stretching from Lake Geneva to Savoy. From this base, the Burgundians gradually expanded southward, to the gates of Provence. To the east, the Ostrogoths gained the upper hand from 488 onward by settling in Italy. Between these two Germanic powers, Oisans and the upper Romanche valley, where Mizoën lies, found themselves in a border zone, without it being possible to say with certainty who exerted real influence over these mountain villages. Meanwhile, in the north, another power was rising: the Franks. Their leader Clovis, after his conversion to Christianity, set out to bring Gaul under his rule. As early as 500, he defeated the Burgundians without immediately annexing their kingdom. It was only in 534 that the sons of Clovis definitively divided the Burgundian kingdom among themselves. From that moment on, Oisans entered the regnum Francorum, integrated into the “Kingdom of Burgundy” (534–843). Christianity began to penetrate the mountains, probably slowly, in a period of transition in which the last remnants of the Roman world gave way to a new political and religious order.