_The Carlovingians--The Great Siege of Paris by the Normans--The Germs
of Feudalism_
Chaos and misery followed the brilliant reign of Dagobert. In half a
century his race had faded into the feeble _rois faineants_,
degenerate by precocious debauchery, some of whom were fathers at
fourteen or fifteen years of age and in their graves before they were
thirty. The bow of power is to him who can bend it, and in an age when
human passions are untamed, the one unpardonable vice in a king is
weakness. Soon the incapable, impotent and irresolute Merovingians
were thrust aside by the more puissant Carlovingian race.
Charles Martel, although buried with the Frankish kings at St. Denis,
was content with the title of Duke of the Franks, and hesitated to
proclaim himself king. He, like the other mayors of the palace, ruled
through feeble and pensioned puppets when they did not contemptuously
leave the throne vacant. In 751 Pepin the Short sent two prelates to
sound Pope Zacchary, who, being hard pressed by the Lombards, lent a
willing ear to their suit, agreed that he who was king in fact should
be made so in name, and authorised Pepin to assume the title of king.
Chilperic III., like a discarded toy, was relegated to a monastery at
St. Omer, and Pepin the Short anointed at Soissons by St. Boniface
bishop of Mayence, from that sacred "ampul full of chrism" which a
snow-white dove had brought in its mouth to St. Remi wherewith to
anoint Clovis at Rheims. In the year 754 Stephen III., the first pope
who had honoured Paris by his presence, came to ask the reward of his
predecessor's favour and was lodged at St. Denis. There he anointed
Pepin anew, with his sons Charles and Carloman, and compelled the
Frankish chieftains, under pain of excommunication, to swear
allegiance to them and their descendants.
The city of Lutetia had much changed since the messengers of Pope
Fabianus entered five centuries before. On that southern hill where
formerly stood the Roman camp and cemetery were now the great basilica
and abbey of St. Genevieve. The amphitheatre and probably much of the
palace of the Caesars were in ruins, all stripped of their marbles to
adorn the new Christian churches. The extensive abbatial buildings and
church, resplendent with marble and gold, on the west, dedicated to
St. Vincent, were henceforth to be known as St. Germain of the Meadows
(des Pres), for the saint's body had been translated from the chapel
of St. Symphorien in the vestibule to the high altar of the abbey
church a few weeks before the pope's arrival at St. Denis. The
Cite[28] was still held within decayed Gallo-Roman walls, and the
Grand and Petit Ponts of wood crossed the arms of the Seine. On the
site of the old pagan temple to Jupiter by the market-place stood the
church Our Lady: to the south-east stood the church of St. Stephen.
The devotion of the _Nautae_ had been transferred from Apollo to St.
Nicholas, patron of shipmen, Mercury had given place to St. Michael,
and to each of those saints oratories were erected. Other churches and
oratories adorned the island, dedicated to St. Gervais, and St. Denis
of the Prison (_de la chartre_), by the north wall where, abandoned
by his followers, the saint was visited by his divine Lord, who
Himself administered the sacred Host. A nunnery dedicated to St. Eloy,
where three hundred pious nuns diffused the odour of Jesus Christ
through the whole city, occupied a large site opposite the west front
of Notre Dame. Near by stood a hospital, founded and endowed a century
before by St. Landry, bishop of Paris, for the sick poor, which soon
became known as the Hostel of God (_Hotel Dieu_). The old Roman palace
and basilica had been transformed into the official residence and
tribunal of justice of the Frankish kings. On the south bank stood the
church and monastery of St. Julien le Pauvre. A new Frankish city was
growing on the north bank, bounded on the west by the abbey of St.
Vincent le Rond, and on the east by the abbey of St. Lawrence. Houses
clustered around the four great monasteries, and suburbs were in
course of formation. The Cite was still largely inhabited by opulent
merchants of Gallo-Roman descent, who were seen riding along the
streets in richly decorated chariots drawn by oxen.
[Footnote 28: The term Cite (_civitas_) was given to the old Roman
part of many French towns.]
Charlemagne during his long reign of nearly half a century (768-814)
was too preoccupied with his noble but ineffectual purpose of
cementing by blood and iron the warring races of Europe into a united
_populus Christianus_, and establishing, under the dual lordship of
emperor and pope, a city of God on earth, to give much attention to
Paris. He did, however, spend a Christmas there, and was present at
the dedication of the church of St. Denis, completed in 775 under
Abbot Fulrad. It was a typical Frankish prince whom the Parisians saw
enthroned at St. Denis. He had the abundant fair hair, shaven chin and
long moustache we see in the traditional pictures of Clovis. Above
middle height, with large, bright piercing eyes, which, when he was
angered shone like carbuncles, he impressed all by the majesty of his
bearing, in spite of a rather shrill and feeble voice and a certain
asymmetrical rotundity below the belt.
[Illustration: ST. JULIEN LE PAUVRE.]
Abbot Fulrad was a sturdy prince and for long disputed the possession
of some lands at Plessis with the bishop of Paris. The decision of the
case is characteristic of the times. Two champions were deputed to act
for the litigants, and met before the Count of Paris[29] in the
king's chapel of St. Nicholas in the Palace of the Cite, and a solemn
judgment by the cross was held. While the royal chaplain recited
psalms and prayers, the two champions stood forth and held their arms
outstretched in the form of a cross. In this trial of endurance the
bishop's deputy was the first to succumb; his fainting arms drooped
and the abbot won his cause.
[Footnote 29: The Carlovingians had been careful to abolish the office
of mayor of the palace.]
Paris had grown but slowly under the Frankish kings. They lived ill at
ease within city walls. Children of the fields and the forests, whose
delight was in the chase or in war, they were glad to escape from
Paris to their villas at Chelles or Compiegne. But the civil power of
the Church grew apace. In the early sixth century the abbots of St.
Germain des Pres at Paris held possession of nearly 90,000 acres of
land, mostly arable, in various provinces: their annual revenue
amounted to about L34,000 of our money: they ruled over more than
10,000 serfs. From a list of the lands held in Paris in the ninth
century by the abbey of St. Pierre des Fosses,[30] and published in
the _Tresor des pieces rares ou inedites_, we are able to form some
idea of the vast extent of monastic possessions in the city. The names
of the various properties whose boundaries touch those of the abbey
lands are given: private owners are mentioned only four times, whereas
to ecclesiastical and monastic domains there are no less than ninety
references. These monastic settlements were veritable garden cities,
where most of our modern fruits, flowers and vegetables were
cultivated; where flocks and herds were bred, and all kinds of
poultry, including pheasants and peacocks, reared. Guilds of craftsmen
worked and flourished; markets were held generally on saints' days,
and pilgrimages were fostered. Charlemagne was an honest coiner and a
protector of foreign traders; he was tolerant of the Jews, the only
capitalists of the time, and under him Paris became the "market of the
peoples," and Venetian and Syrian merchants sought her shores.
[Footnote 30: St. Pierre was subsequently enriched by the possession
of the body of St. Maur, brought thither in the Norman troubles by
fugitive monks from Anjou, and the monastery is better known to
history under the name of St. Maur des Fosses. The entrails of our own
Henry V. were buried there. Rabelais, before its secularisation, was
one of its canons, and Catherine de' Medicis once possessed a chateau
on its site. Monastery and chateau no longer exist.]
In Gallo-Roman days few were the churches outside the cities, but in
the great emperor's time every villa[31] is said to have had its
chapel or oratory served by a priest. Charlemagne was a zealous patron
of such learning as the epoch afforded, and sought out scholars in
every land. English, Irish, Scotch, Italian, Goth, and Bavarian--all
were welcomed. The English scholar Alcuin, master of the Cloister
School at York, became his chief adviser and tutor. He would have
every child in his empire to know at least his paternoster, and every
abbot on election was required to endow the monastery with some books.
The choice of authors was not a wide one: the Old and New Testaments;
the writings of the Fathers, especially St. Augustine, the emperor's
favourite author; Josephus; the works of Bede; some Latin authors,
chiefly Virgil; scraps of Plato translated into Latin--a somewhat
exiguous and austere library, but one which reared a noble and valiant
line of scholars and statesmen to rule the minds and bridle the savage
lusts of the coming generations of men. Under Irish and Anglo-Saxon
influences the cramped, minute script of the Merovingian scribes grew
in beauty and lucidity; gold and silver and colour illuminated the
pages of their books. The golden age of the Roman peace seemed
dawning again in a new _Imperium Christianorum_.
[Footnote 31: The villa of those days was a vast domain, part
dwelling, part farm, part game preserve.]
Towards the end of his reign the old emperor was dining with his court
in a seaport town in the south of France, when news came that some
strange, black, piratical craft had dared to attack the harbour. They
were soon scattered, but the emperor was seen to rise from the table,
and go to a window, where he stood gazing fixedly at the retreating
pirates. Tears trickled down his cheeks and none dared to approach
him. At length he turned and said: "Know ye my faithful servants,
wherefore I weep thus bitterly? I fear not these wretched pirates, but
I am afflicted that they should dare to approach these shores, and
sorely do grieve when I foresee what evil they will work on my sons
and on my people." His courtiers deemed they were Breton or Saracen
pirates, but the emperor knew better. They were the terrible Northmen,
soon to prove a bloodier scourge to Gaul than Hun or Goth or Saracen;
and to meet them Charlemagne left an empire distracted by civil war,
and a nerveless, feeble prince, Louis the Pious, Louis the Forgiving,
fitter for the hermit's cell than for the throne and sword of an
emperor.
In 841 the black boats of the sea-rovers for the first time entered
the Seine, and burnt Rouen and Fontenelle. In 845 a fleet of one
hundred and twenty vessels swept up its higher waters and on Easter
Eve captured, plundered and burnt Paris, sacked its monasteries and
churches and butchered their monks and priests. The futile Emperor
Charles the Bald bought them off at St. Denis with seven thousand
livres of silver, and they went back to their Scandinavian homes
gorged with plunder--only to return year by year, increased in numbers
and ferocity. Words cannot picture the terror of the citizens and
monks when the dread squadrons, with the monstrous dragons carved on
their prows, their great sails and threefold serried ranks of
men-of-prey, were sighted. Everyone left his home and sought refuge in
flight; the monks hurried off with the bodies of the saints, the
relics and treasures of the sanctuary, to hide them in far-away
cities. In 852 Charles' soldiers refused to fight, and for two hundred
and eighty-seven days the pirates ravaged the valley of the Seine at
their will. Never within memory or tradition were such things known.
Rouen, Bayeux, Beauvais, Paris, Meaux, Melun, Chartres, Evreux, were
devastated; the islands of the Seine were whitened by the bones of the
victims, and similar horrors were wrought along the other rivers of
France. In 858 a body of the freebooters settled on the island of
Oissel, below Rouen, and issued forth _en excursion_ to spoil and slay
and burn at their pleasure: the once rich city of Paris was left a
cinder heap; the abbey of St. Genevieve was sacked and burnt, Notre
Dame, St. Stephen, St. Germain des Pres and St Denis alone escaping at
the cost of immense bribes. Charles ordered two fortresses to be built
for the defence of the approaches to the bridges, and continued his
feeble policy of paying blackmail.
In 865 St. Denis was pillaged. In 866 Robert the Strong, Count of
Paris, had won the title of the Maccabeus of France, by daring to
stand against the fury of the Northmen and to defeat them; but having
in the heat of battle with the terrible Hastings taken off his
cuirass, he was killed. By order of Charles, St. Denis was fortified
in 869, after another pillage of St. Germain.
In 876 began a second period of raids of even greater ferocity under
the Norwegian Rollo the Gangr[32] (the walker), a colossus so huge
that no horse could be found to bear him. In 884 the whole Christian
people seemed doomed to perish. Flourishing cities and monasteries
became heaps of smoking ruins; along the roads lay the bodies of
priests and laymen, noble and peasant, freeman and serf, women and
children and babes at the breast to be devoured of wolves and
vultures. The very sanctuaries[33] were become the dens of wild
beasts, the haunt of serpents and creeping things.
[Footnote 32: The remains of the great Viking's castle are still shown
at Aalesund, in Norway.]
[Footnote 33: When Alan Barbetorte, after the recovery of Nantes, went
to give thanks to God in the cathedral, he was compelled to cut his
way, sword in hand, through thorns and briers.]
In 885 a great league of pirates--Danes, Normans, Saxons, Britons and
renegade French--on their way to ravage the rich cities of Burgundy
drew up before Paris; and their leader, Siegfroy, demanded passage to
the higher waters. Paris, forsaken by her kings and emperors for more
than a century, scarred and bled by three spoliations, was now to
become a beacon of hope. The Roman walls were repaired, the towers on
the north and south banks were strengthened. Bishop Gozlin, in whom
great learning was wedded to incomparable fortitude, defied the
pirates, warning them that the citizens were determined to resist and
to hold Paris for a bulwark to the land.
Of this most terrible of the Norman sieges of Paris, we have fuller
record. A certain monk of St. Germain des Pres, Abbo by name, who had
taken part in the defence, was one day sitting in his cell reading his
Virgil. Desiring to exercise his Latin, and give an example to other
cities, he determined to sing of a great siege with happier issue than
that of Troy.[34] Abbo saw the black hulls and horrid prows of the
pirates' boats as they turned the arm of the Seine below Paris, seven
hundred strong vessels, and many more of lighter build. For two
leagues and a half the very waters of the Seine were covered with
them, and men asked into what mysterious caves the river had
retreated. On November 26th, 885, the attack began at the unfinished
tower on the north bank, replaced in later times by the Grand
Chatelet. Three leaders stand eminent among the defenders of the city:
Bishop Gozlin, the great warrior priest; his nephew, Abbot Ebles of
St. Denis; and Count Eudes (Hugh) of Paris, son of Robert the Strong.
The air is darkened with javelins and arrows; bishop and abbot are in
the very eye of danger; the latter with one shaft spits seven of the
besiegers, and mockingly bids their fellows take them to the kitchen
to be cooked. On the morrow, reinforced by fresh troops, the assault
is renewed, stones are hurled, arrows whistle; the air is filled with
groans and cries; the defenders pour down boiling oil and melted wax
and pitch. The hair of some of the Normans takes fire; they burn and
the Parisians shout--"Jump into the Seine; the water will make
your hair grow again and then look you that it be better combed." One
well-aimed millstone says Abbo, sends the souls of six to hell. The
baffled Northmen retire, entrench a camp at St. Germain l'Auxerrois,
and prepare rams and other siege artillery.
[Footnote 34: It must be admitted, however, that the poet's uncouth
diction is anything but Virgilian.]
Abbo now pauses to bewail the state of France: no lord to rule her,
everywhere devastation wrought by fire and sword, God's people
paralysed at the advancing phalanx of death, Paris alone tranquil,
erect and steadfast in the midst of all their thunderbolts, _polis ut
regina micans omnes super urbes_, a queenly city resplendent above all
towns. The second attack begins with redoubled fury. After battering
the walls of the north tower, monstrous machines on sixteen wheels are
advanced and the besiegers strive to fill the fosse. Trees, shrubs,
slaughtered cattle, wounded horses, the very captives slain before
the eyes of the besieged, are cast in to fill the void. Bishop Gozlin
brings down the Norman chieftain, who had butchered the prisoners, by
a well-aimed arrow: his body, too, is flung into the fosse. The enemy
cover the plain with their swords and the river with their bucklers;
fireships are loosed against the bridge. In the city women fly to the
sanctuaries; they roll their hair in the dust, beat their breasts and
rend their faces, calling on St. Germain: "Blessed St. Germain,
succour thy servants." The fighters on the walls take up the cry;
Bishop Gozlin invokes the Virgin, Mother of the Redeemer, Star of the
Sea, bright above all other stars, to save them from the cruel Danes.
[Illustration: ST GERMAIN L'AUXERROIS.]
On February 6th, 886, a sudden flood sweeps away the Petit Pont, and
its tower, with twelve defenders, is isolated. With shouts of triumph
the Northmen cross the river and surround it. The twelve refuse to
yield, and fire is brought. The warriors (a touching detail) fearing
lest their falcons be stifled, cut them loose. There is but one vessel
wherewith to quench the flames and that soon drops from their hands;
the little band rush forth; they set their backs against the ruins of
the bridge, their faces to their foes and fought a hopeless fight. The
walls of the city are lined with their kinsmen and friends impotent to
help; the enemies of God, doomed one day to dine at Pluto's cauldron,
press upon them; they fight till Phoebus sinks to the depths of the
sea, so great is the courage of despair. The survivors are promised
their lives if they will yield, they are disarmed, then treacherously
slain, and their souls fly to heaven. But one, Herve, of noble bearing
and of great beauty, deemed a prince, is spared for ransom. With
thunderous voice he refuses to bargain his life for gold, falls
unarmed on his foes and is cut to pieces. "These things," writes Monk
Abbo, "I saw with mine eyes," and he gives the names of the heroic
twelve who went to receive the palm of martyrdom: Ermenfroi, Herve,
Herland, Ouacre, Hervi, Arnaud, Seuil, Jobert, Hardre, Guy, Aimard,
Gossuin. Their names are inscribed on a little marble tablet over the
Place du Petit Pont,[35] near the spot where they fell. Hail to the
brave who across twelve centuries thrill our hearts to-day! They were
examplars to the land; they helped to make France by their desperate
courage and noble self-sacrifice, and to win for Paris the hegemony of
her cities. The city is at length revictualled by Henry of Saxony and
again the Parisians are left to themselves. On the sixth of April
Bishop Gozlin, their shield, their two-edged axe, whose shaft and bow
were terrible, passes to the Lord. On May 12th, Eudes steals away to
implore further help from the emperor, and as soon as he sees the
imperialists on the march returns and hews his way into Paris, to
share the terrors of the siege. Henry the Saxon again appears, but is
ambushed and slain and his army melts away. Yet again Paris is
abandoned by her emperor and seeks help of heaven, for the waters are
low, the besiegers are able to get footing on the island, set fire to
the gates and attack the walls. The body of St. Genevieve, which had
been transferred to the Cite, is borne about, and at night the ghostly
figure of St. Germain is seen by the sentinels to pass along the
ramparts, sprinkling them with holy water and promising salvation.
Charles the Fat, the Lord's anointed, now appears with a multitude of
a hundred tongues and encamps on Montmartre, but while the Parisians
are preparing to second him in crushing their foes, they learn that
the cowardly emperor has bought them off with a bribe and permission
to winter in Burgundy. The Parisians, however, refused to give them
passage and by an unparalleled feat of engineering they transported
their ships overland for two miles and set sail again above the city.
Next year, as Gozlin's successor, Bishop Antheric, was sitting at
table with Abbot Ebles, a fearful messenger brought news that the
_acephali_[36] were again in sight. Forgetting the repast, the two
churchmen seized their weapons, called the city to arms, hastened to
the ramparts, and the abbot slew their pilot with a well-aimed shaft.
The Normans are terrified, and at length a treaty is made with their
leaders, who promised not to ravage the Marne and some even entered
Paris. But the ill-disciplined hordes were hard to hold in and bands
of brigands, as soon as the ramparts were passed, began to plunder and
slew a score of Christian men. The Parisians in their indignation
sought out and--Hurrah! cries Abbo--found five hundred Normans in the
city and slew them. But the bishop protected those that took refuge in
his palace, instead of killing them as he ought to have done--_potius
concidere debens_. For a time Paris had respite; cowardly Charles the
Fat was deposed, and in 887 Count Eudes was acclaimed king of France
after his return from Aquitaine, whose duke he had brought to
subjection. He counselled a gathering of all the peoples outside Paris
to make common cause against the Normans, and Abbo saw the proud
Franks march in with heads erect, the skilful and polished Aquitaines,
the Burgundians too prone to flight. But nought availed: the motley
host soon melted away.
[Footnote 35: The tablet has now (1911) disappeared. _See_ p. 313.]
[Footnote 36: Abbo's favourite epithet. They were without a head, for
they knew not Christ, the Head of Mankind.]
At the extreme north-east of Paris the Rue du Crimee leads to a group
of once barren hills, part of which is now made into the Park of the
Buttes Chaumont. Here, by the Mount of the Falcon (Montfaucon[37]) in
892 King Eudes fell upon an army of Northmen, who had come against
Paris and utterly routed them. Antheric, the noble pastor, with his
virgin-like face, led three hundred footmen into the fight and slew
six hundred of the _acephali_. But Abbo's muse now fails him, for
Eudes, noble Eudes, is no more worthy of his office, and Christ's
sheep are perishing. Where is the ancient prowess of France? Three
vices are working her destruction: pride, the sinful charms of Venus
(_foeda venustas veneris_) and love of sumptuous garments. Her
people are arrayed in purple vesture, and wear cloaks of gold; their
loins are cinctured with girdles rich with precious stones. Monk Abbo
wearies not of singing, but the deeds of noble Eudes are wanting; all
the poet craves is another victory to rejoice Heaven; another defeat
of the black host of the enemy.
[Footnote 37: In the Middle Ages and down to 1761 Montfaucon had a
sinister reputation. There stood the gallows of Paris, a great stone
gibbet with its three rows of chains, near the old Barriere du Combat,
where the present Rue de la Grange aux Belles abuts on the Boulevard
de la Villette.]
Alas! the noble Eudes was now a king with rebellious vassals. Paris
was never captured again, but the _acephali_ were devouring the land.
The grim spectres of Famine and Plague made a charnel-house of whole
regions of France, while Eudes was fighting the Count of Flanders, a
rival king, and the ineffectual emperor, Charles the Simple. He it was
who after Eudes' death, by the treaty of St. Claire sur Epte in 902,
surrendered to the barbarians the fair province, subsequently to be
known as Normandy. The new prayer in the Litany, "From the fury of the
Northmen, good Lord deliver us," was heard, and the dread name of
Rollo vanishes from history to live again in song. Under the title of
Robert, assumed from his god-father, he reappears to win a dukedom and
a king's daughter; the Normans are broken in to Christianity, law and
order; their land becomes one of the most civilized regions of France;
the fiercest of church levellers are known as the greatest of church
builders in Christendom. They gave their name to a style of Christian
architecture in Europe and a line of kings to England,[38] Naples and
Sicily.
[Footnote 38: William the Conqueror was also known as William the
Builder.]
The people of Paris and of France never forgot the lesson of the dark
century of the invasions. A subtle change had been operating. The
empire had decomposed into kingdoms; the kingdoms were segregating
into lordships. Men in their need were attracted to the few strong and
dominant lords whose courage and resource afforded them a rallying
point and shelter against disintegrating forces: the poor and
defenceless huddled for protection to the seigneurs of strongholds
which had withstood the floods of barbarians that were devastating the
land. The seeds of feudalism were sown in the long winter of the
Norman terror.