Pepin the Short, was King of the Franks from 751 until his death in 768. He was the first Carolingian to become king.
Pepin the Younger, miniature, Anonymi chronica imperatorum, c. 1112–1114
Coronation in 751 of Pepin by Boniface, Archbishop of Mainz
Muslim troops leaving Narbonne in 759, after 40 years of occupation
Pepin's expedition to Septimania and Aquitaine (760)
The Carolingian dynasty was a Frankish noble family named after Charles Martel and his grandson Charlemagne, descendants of the Arnulfing and Pippinid clans of the 7th century AD. The dynasty consolidated its power in the 8th century, eventually making the offices of mayor of the palace and dux et princeps Francorum hereditary, and becoming the de facto rulers of the Franks as the real powers behind the Merovingian throne. In 751 the Merovingian dynasty which had ruled the Franks was overthrown with the consent of the Papacy and the aristocracy, and Pepin the Short, son of Martel, was crowned King of the Franks. The Carolingian dynasty reached its peak in 800 with the crowning of Charlemagne as the first Emperor of the Romans in the West in over three centuries. Nearly every monarch of France from Charlemagne's son Louis the Pious till the penultimate monarch of France Louis Philippe have been his descendants. His death in 814 began an extended period of fragmentation of the Carolingian Empire and decline that would eventually lead to the evolution of the Kingdom of France and the Holy Roman Empire.
Carolingian denier of Lothair I, struck in Dorestad (Middle Francia) after 850
Carolingian family tree, from the Chronicon Universale of Ekkehard of Aura, 12th century