The Frankish Kingdom was a major post-Roman polity in Western Europe, ruled by the Merovingian and later Carolingian dynasties. From its core in Gaul, it expanded across much of modern France, the Low Countries, and western Germany. In the Umayyad period, Frankish forces under Charles Martel defeated an Umayyad army near Tours (732), marking a key limit to further Umayyad expansion north of the Pyrenees.