Whatever became of the Roman Army in the West

[elagababbalus]

in short, the Romans outsourced their military to Germans due to financial and manpower shortages and by allowing Germans to serve under their own ethnic leaders rather than Romans they outsourced, by fits and starts, the political structure that gave the empire its relevance. That said Procopius states that in Gaul their was a Roman army serving under their own standards in the mid 6th century after the end of the Western Empire. Presumably they would have served the Frankish kings as they served the emperor and any distinctions would have evaporated in the gradual transition from Gaul to Francia. From recall Gregory of Tours doesn't mention any such soldiers in his account so they must have disappeared by the time he wrote his history in the late 6th century