by close investment, and with all the alternations of success and reverse, all the intermixture of brilliant daring and obscure sufferings, that can occur when the assailants are determined and the defenders devoted. Not only a contemporary but an eye-witness, Abbo, a monk of St. Germain des Pres, has recounted the details in a long poem, wherein the writer, devoid of talent, adds nothing to the simple representation of events; it is history itself which gives to Abbo’s poem a high degree of interest. We do not possess, in reference to these continual struggles of the Northmen with the Gallo-Frankish populations, any other document which is equally precise and complete, or which could make us so well acquainted with all the incidents, all the phases of this irregular warfare between two peoples, one without a government, the other without a country. The bishop, Gozlin, died during the siege. Count Eudes quitted Paris for a time to go and beg aid of the emperor; but the Parisians soon saw him reappear on the heights of Montmartre with three battalions of troops, and he re-entered the town, spurring on his horse and striking light and left with his battle-axe through the ranks of the dumfounded besiegers. The struggle was prolonged throughout the summer; and when, in November, 886, Charles the Fat at last appeared before Paris, “with a large army of all nations,” it was to purchase the retreat of the Northmen at the cost of a heavy ransom, and by allowing them to go and winter in Burgundy, “whereof the inhabitants obeyed not the emperor.”
Some months afterwards, in 887, Charles the Fat was deposed, at a diet held on the banks of the Rhine, by the grandees of Germanic France; and Arnulf, a natural son of Carloman, the brother of Louis III., was proclaimed emperor in his stead. At the same time Count Eudes, the gallant defender of Paris, was elected king at Compiegne and crowned by the Archbishop of Sens. Guy, duke of Spoleto, descended from Charlemagne in the female line, hastened to France and was declared king at Langres by the bishop of that town, but returned with precipitation to Italy, seeing no chance of maintaining himself in his French kingship. Elsewhere, Boso, duke of Arles, became king of Provence, and the Burgundian Count Rodolph had himself crowned at St. Maurice, in the Valais, king of transjuran Burgundy. There was still in France a legitimate Carlovingian, a son of Louis the Stutterer, who was hereafter to become Charles the Simple; but being only a child, he had been rejected or completely forgotten, and, in the interval that was to elapse ere his time should arrive, kings were being made in all directions.
In the midst of this confusion, the Northmen, though they kept at a distance from Paris, pursued in Western France their cruising and plundering. In Rollo they had a chieftain far superior to his vagabond predecessors. Though he still led the same life that they had, he displayed therein other faculties, other inclinations, other views. In his youth he had made an expedition to England, and had there contracted a real friendship with the wise King Alfred the Great. During a campaign in Friesland he had taken prisoner Rainier, count of Hainault; and Alberade, countess of Brabant, made a request to Rollo for her husband’s release, offering in return to set free twelve captains of the Northmen, her prisoners, and to give up all the gold she possessed. Rollo took only half the gold, and restored to the countess her husband. When, in 885, he became master of Rouen, instead of devastating the city, after the fashion of his kind, he respected the buildings, had the walls repaired, and humored the inhabitants. In spite of his violent and extortionate practices where he met with obstinate resistance, there were to be discerned in him symptoms of more noble sentiments and of an instinctive leaning towards order, civilization, and government. After the deposition of Charles the Fat and during the reign of Eudes, a lively struggle was maintained between the Frankish king and the chieftain of the Northmen, who had neither of them forgotten their early encounters. They strove, one against the other, with varied fortunes; Eudes succeeded in beating the Northmen at Montfaucon, but was beaten in Vermandois by another band, commanded, it is said, by the veteran Hastings, sometime count of Chartres. Rollo, too, had his share at one time of success, at another of reverse; but he made himself master of several important towns, showed a disposition to treat the quiet populations gently, and made a fresh trip to England, during which he renewed friendly relations with her king, Athelstan, the successor of Alfred the Great. He thus became, from day to day, more reputable as well as more formidable in France, insomuch that Eudes himself was obliged to have recourse, in dealing with him, to negotiations and presents. When, in 898, Eudes was dead, and Charles the Simple, at hardly nineteen years of age, had been recognized sole king of France, the ascendency of Rollo became such that the necessity of treating with him was clear. In 911, Charles, by the advice of his councillors, and, amongst them, of Robert, brother of the late king, Eudes, who had himself become count of Paris and duke of France, sent to the chieftain of the Northmen Franco, archbishop of Rouen, with orders to offer him the cession of a considerable portion of Neustria and the hand of his young daughter Giscle, on condition that he became a Christian and acknowledged himself the king’s vassal. Rollo, by the advice of his comrades, received these overtures with a good grace, and agreed to a truce for three months, during which they might treat about peace. On the day fixed, Charles accompanied by Duke Robert, and Rollo, surrounded by his warriors, repaired to St. Clair-sur-Epte, on the opposite banks of the river, and exchanged numerous messages. Charles offered Rollo Flanders, which the Northman refused, considering it too swampy; as to the maritime portion of Neustria, he would not be contented with it; it was, he said, covered with forests, and had become quite a stranger to the plough-share by reason of the Northmen’s incessant incursions; he demanded the addition of territories taken from Brittany, and that the princes of that province, Berenger and Alan, lords, respectively, of Redon and Del, should take the oath of fidelity to him. When matters had been arranged on this basis, “the bishops told Rollo that he who received such a gift as the duchy of Normandy was bound to kiss the king’s foot. ‘Never,’ quoth Rollo, ‘will I bend the knee before the knees of any, and I will kiss the foot of none.’ At the solicitation of the Franks he then ordered one of his warriors to kiss the king’s foot. The Northman, remaining bolt upright, took hold of the king’s foot, raised it to his mouth, and so made the king fall backward, which caused great bursts of laughter and much disturbance amongst the throng. Then the king and all the grandees who were about him, prelates, abbots, dukes, and counts, swore, in the name of the Catholic faith, that they would protect the patrician Rollo in his life, his members, and his folk, and would guarantee to him the possession of the aforesaid land, to him and his descendants forever. After which the king, well satisfied, returned to his domains; and Rollo departed with Duke Robert for the town of Rouen.”
The dignity of Charles the Simple had no reason to be well satisfied; but the great political question which, a century before, caused Charlemagne such lively anxiety, was solved; the most dangerous, the most incessantly renewed of all foreign invasions, those of the Northmen, ceased to threaten France. The vagabond pirates had a country to cultivate and defend; the Northmen were becoming French.
No such transformation was near taking place in the case of the invasions of the Saracens in Southern Gaul; they continued to infest Aquitania, Septimania, and Provence; their robber-hordes appeared frequently on the coasts of the Mediterranean and the banks of the Rhone, at Aigues-Mortes, at Marseilles, at Arles, and in Camargue; they sometimes penetrated into Dauphine, Rouergue, Limousin, and Saintonge. The author of this history saw, at the commencement of the present century, in the mountains of the Cevennes, the ruins of the towers built, a thousand years ago, by the inhabitants of those rugged countries, to put their families and their flocks under shelter from the incursions of the Saracens. But these incursions were of short duration, and most frequently undertaken by plunderers few in number, who retreated precipitately with their booty. Africa was not, as Asia was, an inexhaustible source of nations burning to push onward, one upon another, to go wandering and settling elsewhere. The people of the north move willingly towards the south, where living is easier and pleasanter; but the people of the south are not much disposed to migrate to the north, with its soil so hard to cultivate, and its leaden skies, and into the midst of its fogs and frosts. After a course of plundering in Aquitania or in Provence, the Arabs of Spain and of Africa were eager to recross the Pyrenees or the Mediterranean, and regain their own lovely climate, and their life of easefulness that never palled. Furthermore, between Christians and Mussulmans the religious antipathy was profound.
