part 2, chapter 2.

AUSTRASIA AND NEUSTRIA, OR NEUSTRASIA.

"It is conjectured by Luden, with great probability, that the Ripuarians were originally called the 'Eastern' people to distinguish them from the Salian Franks who lived to the West. But when the old home of the conquerors on the right bank of the Rhine was united with their new settlements in Gaul, the latter, as it would seem, were called Neustria or Neustrasia (New Lands); while the term Austrasia came to denote the original seats of the Franks, on what we now call the German bank of the Rhine. The most important difference between them (a difference so great as to lead to their permanent separation into the kingdoms of France and Germany by the treaty of Verdun) was this: that in Neustria the Frankish element was quickly absorbed by the mass of Gallo-Romanism by which it was surrounded; while in Austrasia, which included the ancient seats of the Frankish conquerors, the German element was wholly predominant. The import of the word Austrasia (Austria, Austrifrancia) is very fluctuating. In its widest sense it was used to denote all the countries incorporated into the Frankish Empire, or even held in subjection to it, in which the German language and population prevailed; in this acceptation it included therefore the territory of the Alemanni, Bavarians, Thuringians, and even that of the Saxons and Frises. In its more common and proper sense it meant that part of the territory of the Franks themselves which was not included in Neustria. It was subdivided into Upper Austrasia on the Moselle, and Lower Austrasia on the Rhine and Meuse. Neustria (or, in the fulness of the monkish Latinity, Neustrasia) was bounded on the north by the ocean, on the south by the Loire, and on the southwest [southeast?] towards Burgundy by a line which, beginning below Gien on the Loire, ran through the rivers Loing and Yonne, not far from their sources, and passing north of Auxerre and south of Troyes, joined the river Aube above Arcis."

_W. C. Perry, The Franks, chapter 3._

"The northeastern part of Gaul, along the Rhine, together with a slice of ancient Germany, was already distinguished, as we have seen, by the name of the Eastern Kingdom, or Oster-rike, Latinized into Austrasia. It embraced the region first occupied by the Ripumarian Franks, and where they still lived the most compactly and in the greatest number. ... This was, in the estimation of the Franks, the kingdom by eminence, while the rest of the north of Gaul was simply not it--'ne-oster-rike,' or Neustria. A line drawn from the mouth of the Scheldt to Cambrai, and thence across the Marne at Chateau-Thierry to the Aube of Bar-sur-Aube, would have separated the one from the other, Neustria comprising all the northwest of Gaul, between the Loire and the ocean, with the exception of Brittany. This had been the first possession of the Salian Franks in Gaul. ... To such an extent had they been absorbed and influenced by the Roman elements of the population, that the Austrasians scarcely considered them Franks, while they, in their turn, regarded the Austrasians as the merest untutored barbarians."

_P. Godwin, History of France: Ancient Gaul,