id author title date pages extension mime words sentences flesch summary cache txt en-wikipedia-org-1970 Gaul - Wikipedia .html text/html 5504 661 68 Gaul (Latin: Gallia)[1] was a region of Western Europe first described by the Romans.[2] It was inhabited by Celtic tribes, encompassing present day France, Luxembourg, Belgium, most of Switzerland, and parts of Northern Italy, the Netherlands, and Germany, particularly the west bank of the Rhine. While the Celtic Gauls had lost their original identities and language during Late Antiquity, becoming amalgamated into a Gallo-Roman culture, Gallia remained the conventional name of the territory throughout the Early Middle Ages, until it acquired a new identity as the Capetian Kingdom of France in the high medieval period. In his Gallic Wars, Julius Caesar distinguishes among three ethnic groups in Gaul: the Belgae in the north (roughly between the Rhine and the Seine), the Celtae in the center and in Armorica, and the Aquitani in the southwest, the southeast being already colonized by the Romans. Main articles: Roman Gaul, Gallo-Roman culture, History of France, and Gallic Empire ./cache/en-wikipedia-org-1970.html ./txt/en-wikipedia-org-1970.txt