French Israelism is the pseudohistorical belief that people of Frankish

Franks

The Franks were a confederation of Germanic tribes first attested in the third century AD as living north and east of the Lower Rhine River. From the third to fifth centuries some Franks raided Roman territory while other Franks joined the Roman troops in Gaul. Only the Salian Franks formed a...

 descent are also the direct lineal descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes

Ten Lost Tribes

The Ten Lost Tribes of Israel refers to those tribes of ancient Israel that formed the Kingdom of Israel and which disappeared from Biblical and all other historical accounts after the kingdom was destroyed in about 720 BC by ancient Assyria...

 of Israel, and it is often accompanied by the belief that the Merovingian dynasty

Merovingian dynasty

The Merovingians were a Salian Frankish dynasty that came to rule the Franks in a region largely corresponding to ancient Gaul from the middle of the 5th century. Their politics involved frequent civil warfare among branches of the family...

 is directly descended from the line of King David

Davidic line

The Davidic line refers to the tracing of lineage to the King David referred to in the Hebrew Bible, as well as the New Testament...

.

One of the earliest scholars to claim that he could trace the ten lost tribes of Israel to France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 was the French Huguenot

Huguenot

The Huguenots were members of the Protestant Reformed Church of France during the 16th and 17th centuries. Since the 17th century, people who formerly would have been called Huguenots have instead simply been called French Protestants, a title suggested by their German co-religionists, the...

 writer, Jacques Abbadie

Jakob Abbadie

Jakob Abbadie , also known as Jacques or James Abbadie, was a Protestant divine and writer. He became dean of Killaloe, in Ireland.-Life:...

, who fled French Roman Catholic persecution

Anti-Protestantism

Anti-Protestantism is an institutional, ideological or emotional bias, hatred or distrust and against some or all forms and divisions of Protestantism and its followers.- History :...

 and later settled in London, England. In his important 1723 work, The Triumph Of Providence, he wrote:
The claim became the foundation for the Priory of Sion

Priory of Sion

The Prieuré de Sion, translated from French as Priory of Sion, is a name given to multiple groups, both real and fictitious. The most notorious is a fringe fraternal organisation, founded and dissolved in France in 1956 by Pierre Plantard...

 hoax created by Pierre Plantard

Pierre Plantard

Pierre Athanase Marie Plantard was a French draughtsman, best known for being the principal perpetrator of the Priory of Sion hoax, by which he claimed from the 1960s onwards that he was a Merovingian descendant of Dagobert II and the "Great Monarch" prophesied by Nostradamus.-Surname:Pierre...

 and Philippe de Chérisey

Philippe de Chérisey

The marquess Philippe de Chérisey was a French writer, radio humorist, and actor...

 in the 1960s, and it was further popularized in 1982 with the book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail

The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail

The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail is a book by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln....

, and in 2003 with the DaVinci Code.