War between the new Western Provinces was already endemic and instead of choosing an heir on his death in 511AD, the first King Clovis divided Francia into four territories with their own capital cities and gave one to each of his sons beginning centuries of civil war. Francia was united and divided only to be divided again, the right to elect a new ruler used to change dynasties until 987 when the House of Capet ruled the Kingdom of France in relative peace,
With global crop failure and famine barely a generation before (probably from a dust cloud that shut out the sun from a large volcano in the Tropics) the Frankish Kings imposed new taxes to fund an army the Counts were already providing. It didn’t go down well. After a riots in the South and North East in 574AD, the Chief Tax Collector Parthenius was lynched and tax was abolished. The Kings now had to support their kingdoms from the land alone, effectively handing power to the Counts and local landowners gathering wealth from their peasant farmers. The system of administration collapsed and by the 7th Century only 10% of the peasantry were free.