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Gaul
The Celtic lands Caesar conquered, from the Pyrenees to the Rhine
Gaul was the Roman name for the lands of the Celtic Gauls, stretching from the Pyrenees to the Rhine and from the Atlantic to the Alps, and it survives as the founding legend of France. Julius Caesar's account of conquering it, which opens with the line that all Gaul is divided into three parts, was a staple of Latin schooling for centuries. Under Rome, Gaul grew into a rich, urban, Latin-speaking heartland of the empire, and its spoken Latin became French. Gaul was never a single native state, but its outline, bounded by sea, mountains, and the Rhine, fed centuries of argument over France's "natural frontiers" and still shapes how the French picture their ancestors.
Transalpine Gaul, the land beyond the Alps, covered about 494,000 square kilometers, with the Rhine on the east, the Pyrenees on the southwest, and coasts on the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, and the North Sea. Its great rivers, the Rhône, Garonne, Loire, and Seine, carried trade between the Mediterranean and the north, and its forests, farmland, and iron made it wealthy. The Romans also used the name Cisalpine Gaul, Gaul on their side of the Alps, for the Po valley of northern Italy, settled by Celtic tribes. Today the core of Gaul is France. It also covered Belgium, Luxembourg, the western Swiss plateau, the German lands west of the Rhine, and the southern Netherlands, and northern Italy when Cisalpine Gaul is counted.
Rome conquered Cisalpine Gaul by the early 2nd century BCE and the Mediterranean coast, later Gallia Narbonensis and the root of the name Provence, in the 120s BCE. Between 58 and 50 BCE Julius Caesar subdued the rest, breaking the last great revolt, led by Vercingetorix, at Alesia in 52 BCE. Augustus divided the new lands into the provinces of Aquitania, Lugdunensis, and Belgica, and Lugdunum, today Lyon, became their chief city. Later emperors split the Rhine frontier off as the two Germanies. During the 3rd-century crisis a breakaway Gallic Empire ruled from 260 to 274. As Western Roman authority collapsed in the 5th century, Visigoths, Burgundians, and Franks divided Gaul, and the Frankish king Clovis united most of it after 486, giving France its name.