DISRUPTION OF THE FRANKISH EMPIRE—THE COMING OF THE VIKINGS
840-855
Wars of the sons of Lewis the Pious—Battle of Fontenay and Peace of
Verdun—The Vikings and their ships and methods of warfare—All
Western Europe subject to their incursions—Their invasion of
Neustria and Austrasia—Intermittent civil wars of the Franks—Charles
the Bald and his policy—Death of Lothair.
At the moment of his death Lewis the Pious had been at enmity with his
son Lewis of Bavaria and his grandson Pippin the young of Aquitaine,
while he had by his last partition-statute provided for the division of
the bulk of his realm between his eldest-born Lothair, and his
youngest-born Charles. It seemed natural, therefore, that when, after
the old man’s death, the succession troubles broke out with renewed
vigour the Franks of Neustria and Austrasia and the Lombards would be
ranged in battle against the East Germans and the Aquitanians.
Such, however, was not to be the case; the governing force in the future
course of events was to be, not the dying will of Lewis the Pious, but
the dispositions of his three sons, and still more the unwillingness of
the various kingdoms in their heritages to abide by the unnatural
partition—last among so many—which Lewis had left behind him.
The first question to be settled was whether the empire, in the shape in
which Charles the Great and Lewis in his earlier years had ruled it, was
to continue. There was no doubt as to the succession to the imperial
title. Lothair had been crowned co-regent emperor many years before, and
before his father’s death had been restored to favour, and acknowledged
as heir to the imperial throne. But would he be strong enough to sustain
the burden which had been too much for his father, to combine a strong
hand and a conciliatory policy, and hold the various races of his
subjects together, without driving any one of them to discontent and
revolt? [Sidenote: Character of Lothair.] Lothair was brave,
unscrupulous, active, troubled by none of the morbid scruples and
ill-placed tenderness which had been so fatal to his father. But he was
full of faults of the opposite extreme, as dangerous to a ruler as his
parent’s over-great mildness and long-suffering. He was quite destitute
of natural affection, as his doings at the penance of St. Médard and the
Lügenfeld had shown, and was not merely wanting in tenderness for his
kith and kin, but unable even to pretend to a reasonable regard for
brother, father, or nephew. Even in that rough time his unfilial conduct
had shocked his own subjects and followers. His ambition and pride were
the only sentiments to which an appeal could be made with success. He
was filled with an overweening idea of the greatness of the imperial
position, though he had done so much himself to cause its degradation in
the eyes of all the nations of the empire, by his cruel and offensive
treatment of his father. He had taught the Franks that an emperor could
be imprisoned, preached at, dictated to, publicly chastised, deposed,
and he foolishly supposed that his own imperial dignity would not suffer
from the precedent. The moment his accession was proclaimed it was known
that harsh unbending rigour would reign all over the Frankish realm.
Yet Lothair’s situation in 840 was not disadvantageous; his enemies
Lewis and Pippin had been driven into remote corners of the empire. He
was loyally supported by the Lombards of his old Italian kingdom and by
the Austrasians, the old ruling race, whose imperialist tendencies had
been shown by their constant fidelity to Lewis the Pious throughout all
his troubles. But Lothair wasted his strength by a strange combination
of arbitrary claims and dilatory action. He began by showing the most
reckless disregard for his father’s dying wishes. He made no secret of
his intention of stripping his young brother Charles of the Neustrian
dominions which had been left him, though the child of his father’s
declining years had been specially commended to his protection.
[Sidenote: War of the three brothers.] But he did not follow up his
threats by any prompt action against the young king, but went off to
Germany to conclude the campaign against his brother Lewis of Bavaria,
which his dead father had left half finished. But on arriving in Bavaria
he did not strike down his enemy, but made a six months’ truce with him,
and returned to Neustria. There he made a feeble attempt to put down
Charles, but finally returned to Aachen, where he spent the winter in
pomp and feasting, while his two brothers were repairing their strength
and raising large armies. Lewis and Charles had determined to combine,
for they saw that strict union was needful against their common enemy.
In the spring of 841 the king of Neustria and the king of Germany each
drew towards the Rhine, with the purpose of joining their armies. The
emperor was frightened by the strength which they displayed, and thought
it necessary to add to his own forces by enlisting in his cause his only
possible ally. He hastily promised to confirm the young Pippin in his
kingdom of Aquitaine if he would lead the men of the south to his aid.
Pippin accepted the offer, and brought an army of Gascons across
Burgundy to join his uncle. Meanwhile Charles and Lewis had successfully
united their hosts at Chalons-sur-Saône in such force that Lothair
feared to fight them. He held them off by disloyal negotiation for some
weeks, till he heard that his nephew had arrived with all the forces of
Aquitaine, and then suddenly declared that nothing could be settled
without a battle, and proceeded to attack his brothers. [Sidenote:
Battle of Fontenay.] The armies met in the valley of the Yonne, and
there followed the decisive and disastrous battle of Fontenay, the
greatest fight that Europe had seen since Charles Martel smote the
Saracens at Poictiers. The whole of the nations of the empire were
arrayed against each other. On the hill by Bretignolles Lothair, with
the host of Austrasia, faced the Bavarians and Saxons of king Lewis. In
the plain by Lefay the Neustrians of Charles were drawn up against the
Aquitanians of the young Pippin. After much hard fighting the Neustrians
gave way before the onslaught of their southern countrymen, but on the
other flank the Germans of Lewis won a far more decisive advantage over
the emperor’s Austrasian followers. Lothair was driven down from the
hill with fearful slaughter, the flower of the nobility of the land
between Meuse and Rhine lay dead on the field. It was a blow from which
Austrasia never recovered. Her ancient supremacy over the rest of the
empire, won six generations back at Testry and Amblève, was gone for
ever. The swords of the Teutons of the east had shattered the reputation
of her invincibility, and the balance of power was permanently
transferred eastward (June 25th, 841). The slaughter was long
remembered, and the evils which the empire was to pass through during
the next forty years were often ascribed to the result of this fatal
fight. ‘By that day,’ says the chronicler Regino, ‘the strength of the
Franks was so cut down, and their fame and valour so diminished, that
for the future they were not merely unable to extend the bounds of their
realm, but even incapable of protecting their own frontiers.’
Lothair drew back the wrecks of his army to Aachen, while Pippin fled
southward to Aquitaine. The victorious brothers, Charles and Lewis,
succeeded before the year was out in subduing all the partisans of the
emperor, both in Neustria and in Germany. It was in vain that Lothair
tried to stir up trouble against them by supporting a rebellion in
Saxony, where, in the wilder corners of the land, a rising of the
servile classes, and the few surviving adherents of paganism, was
troubling king Lewis.
In the next spring the kings of Neustria and Germany united their armies
to drive Lothair from Austrasia. [Sidenote: The Oath of Strasburg.] They
met at Strasburg, where they swore to each other the solemn oath, whose
wording is so precious to us as giving the first monument of the new
French and German tongues that were just developing in their realms.
When they marched on Aachen Lothair was compelled to take his wife and
children and the royal treasure-hoard, and fly southward into Burgundy.
It was long remembered how on his retreat he broke up the great silver
globe, which had been the pride of his grandfather Charles the Great,
‘whereon were represented the divisions of the world, and the
constellations of heaven, and the courses of the planets,’ and
distributed its fragments as pay among his discontented soldiery. He
halted at Lyons, and there his proud spirit at last bowed to the
necessity of asking for peace from his brothers. The two kings showed
themselves willing to treat, and the final result of the negotiations
was the famous Partition of Verdun. It was indeed no time for civil
wars. While the brothers were fighting, the Danes had sacked Quentovic,
a great port on the English channel, and the Moors had landed in
Provence and harried Arles, while the Slavs beyond the Elbe had shaken
off the Frankish yoke.
The Partition of Verdun finally broke up the empire. Though Charles and
Lewis restored to Lothair his capital of Aachen, and consented to
recognise him as emperor, and to respect him as elder brother, yet for
the future they were for all practical purposes independent sovereigns.
The scheme which Charles the Great had worked so successfully, and Lewis
the Pious so feebly, for conducting the government of Western
Christendom by an emperor assisted in certain outlying regions by
subject-kings of his kindred, now definitely disappeared. Lothair had no
power or authority outside the district which his brothers consigned to
his direct sovereignty.
[Illustration:
PARTITION-TREATY OF VERDUN
843.
]
[Sidenote: Treaty of Verdun, 843.] Examining the boundaries fixed by the
treaty of Verdun, we find the Frankish empire divided into three long
strips running from north to south. In the east Lewis of Bavaria took
all the Teutonic lands east of the Rhine—Saxony, Thuringia, Bavaria,
Suabia, and the suzerainty over the Slavs of the Elbe and Save. He had
also one small tract of Austrasian territory west of the Rhine, the
_gaus_ of Speier, Worms, and Mainz. Lothair kept his old kingdom of
Italy, together with a long narrow strip of territory reaching from the
mouth of the Rhone to the mouths of the Rhine and Yssel. This strip
consisted of Frisia, the bulk of Austrasia, the most of Burgundy, and
Provence. Charles took the western kingdoms of Neustria and Aquitaine,
with the Spanish March and western Burgundy, for his kinsman Pippin was
abandoned to his mercy by the emperor, and the lands south of the Loire,
as well as those north, were put into his share of the empire.
Two of these realms, those of Charles and Lewis, roughly corresponded to
national unities. The eastern kingdom comprised all the Teutonic
districts of the empire, except Austrasia. The western, formed by the
union of Neustria and Aquitaine, was the first foreshadowing of the
modern kingdom of France, comprising as it did the bulk of the Romance
districts of the empire, where the Teutonic element had always been
small, and was of late growing less and less prominent. But Lothair’s
kingdom was an unnatural and unwieldy aggregation of districts connected
neither by blood, by language, nor by historical ties. Its shape seems
to have been determined merely by the wish to give the emperor both the
imperial cities—Rome and Aachen—together with a strip of soil
conveniently connecting them. The Teutonic Austrasians, the
Romance-speaking Burgundians, and the Italian Lombards were in no wise
fitted for union with each other, and were certain to drift apart, alike
from geographical and from national reasons. They only adhered to each
other for one man’s life, and fell asunder the moment that he died.
For the future we shall find the wide realm of Charles the Great
constantly tending to minute sub-division. The connection between east
and west, north and south, grows constantly less, and ere long we shall
be compelled to tell of the fortunes of the different fractions of the
empire in separate chapters, since the central cord of connection formed
by the kingly power has finally snapped. But as long as the generation
of the sons of Lewis the Pious survives, there is still a certain
interdependence between the history of the Eastern and Western Franks,
and it is not till the deposition of Charles the Fat, in 887, that the
elements of dissolution finally triumph, and all ideas of the reunion of
the empire are finally discredited.
In 843 commences the tripartite government of Lothair the emperor, and
his two brothers, whom we may for the future style by their well-known
names of Lewis the German and Charles the Bald, though the latter style
can hardly yet have been appropriate to the Neustrian king, who had only
just celebrated his twenty-first birthday. His elder brothers were now
much older men, Lothair having attained his forty-fourth and Lewis his
thirty-eighth year. Both of them had now growing sons whom they were ere
long to take as colleagues in part of their realm.
The period from the Peace of Verdun, in 843, down to the deposition of
Charles the Fat, in 887, is the most chaotic and perplexing portion of
the history of Europe with which we have to deal. For the fortunes of
the various fractions of the Frankish empire are bound up with the
fortunes of the members of a much-ramified royal house in which—with a
lamentable want of originality—the same four names are continually
recurring. [Sidenote: The grandsons of Lewis the Pious.] We have
hitherto been confronted only with the three brothers—Lothair, Lewis,
and Charles. Now each of these brothers had three sons, and with a
perversity which the reader and the writer of history must alike
deplore, each christened his boys after their uncles. Lothair’s three
sons were Lewis, Charles, and Lothair; Lewis named his offspring Lewis,
Charles, and Carloman; and Charles, when at a later date he became a
father, followed the evil example by christening his children Lewis,
Charles, and Carloman also. The genealogical table must be kept
carefully before us, lest from the similarity of names we confuse the
imperial, the German, and the Neustrian houses of the Karlings.
THE DESCENDANTS OF CHARLES THE GREAT.
CHARLES THE GREAT
768-814.
|
+-----------------+------------------+
| | |
CHARLES, PIPPIN, LEWIS THE PIOUS, === (1) Hermengarde.
King of Neustria, King of Italy, King of Aquitaine, | (2) Judith.
died 811. died 810. Emperor, 814-40. |
| |
BERNARD, |
King of Italy, |
810-818. |
|
+-----------+-------------+---------------+---------+----+
| | | | |
(1) LOTHAR, (1) Pippin, (1) LEWIS, King (2) CHARLES (2) Gisela=Eberhard
King of King of of Bavaria, THE BALD, King | of Friuli.
Italy, Aquitaine, King of of Neustria, |
Emperor, died 838. Germany, 843-77. |
840-55. | 843-76. Emperor, 875-77. BERENGAR,
| | | | King of Italy, 887.
| Pippin the Younger. | | Emperor, 915.
| Claimed Aquitaine, | |
| 838-46. | +------------------+
| | |
+-----------+ +----------------+ |
| | |
+--+---+-------+------+ +---+--+-----+ |
| | | | | | | |
Wido === Rothilde, | CHARLES, | CARLOMAN | CHARLES |
C. of | | King of | King of | THE FAT, |
Spoleto.| +----+ Provence, | Bavaria, | Emperor, |
| | 855-63. | died 880. | 881-87. |
| | | | |
+----+ LEWIS II., LOTHAIR, King LEWIS THE |
| Emperor, of Lorraine, SAXON, |
| 855-75. 855-69. King of |
| | | Saxony. +-----+-----+
| | | | |
WIDO Hermengarde===Boso, King ARNULF, King LEWIS II., CHARLES,
Emperor, | of Provence, of Germany, King of King of
891-96. | 879-87. 887-99. France, Aquitaine,
| | | 877-79. died 865.
LAMBERT, LEWIS, King of +-----+------+ |
Emperor, Provence, 887-905, | | |
890-99 Emperor, 901. | | |
Zwentibold. LEWIS THE |
CHILD, King |
of Germany, |
899-911. |
|
+------------------+-------+---------+
| | |
LEWIS III., CARLOMAN, CHARLES THE
King of France, King of France, SIMPLE, King
of
877-80. 879-84. France, 893-920.
The dates of the reigns of the three contentious brothers were, for
Lothair 843-855, for Lewis 843-876, for Charles 843-877. When they had
settled down after the Peace of Verdun, they found two problems before
them. The first was that of keeping the peace with each other, in spite
of all the grudges which the events of the last fifteen years had raised
between them. The second was that of defending Western Christendom from
the assaults from without, which were daily growing more and more
dangerous. The Danes, whose first ravages we have related under the
reign of Lewis the Pious, were now becoming no longer a mere pest to the
coastland, but a serious danger to the whole empire. The Saracens were
commencing a series of daring piratical descents on Provence and Italy.
The Slavs beyond the Elbe were gradually throwing off their allegiance
to the empire, and recommencing the raids on Germany, from which they
had been stayed by Charles the Great.
For ten years (843-53) the three kings succeeded—contrary to all
expectation—in keeping the peace with each other. But in spite of their
temporary freedom from civil strife, they did not succeed in defending
their realms with success from the outer barbarian. As the chronicler
observed, ‘the slaughter of Fontenay seemed not only to have thinned the
ranks of the Frankish host, but to have robbed them of their ancient
invincibility in war.’ The only one of the three kings who showed the
slightest power to defend his borders was Lewis the German: his two
brothers suffered one continual series of checks and disasters.
[Sidenote: The Vikings.] The main problem which now confronted the
Frankish rulers was the necessity for dealing firmly with the invasion
of the Scandinavian pirates. The peoples on both shores of the Cattegat
had now thrown themselves heart and soul into the occupation of harrying
the lands of their southern neighbours. They were a group of kindred
tribes, some of whom dwelt in Jutland and the Danish isles, others on
the southern and south-eastern shore of the Scandinavian peninsula,
others along the fiords which face the German Ocean. Western Christendom
often styled them indiscriminately by the name of Danes, though in truth
the Danes were only the most southern of the four races which joined in
the invasions. A better common appellation was that of Northmen, which
would include the Swede, the Goth and the Norwegian as well as the
Danish dwellers in Jutland and Zealand.
From time immemorial the dwellers on the Cattegat and the southern
Baltic had been a sea-faring race. Tacitus, in the second century of our
era, speaks of Scandinavia as powerful by its fleets. The Jutes and
Angles who joined in the conquest of Britain had sprung from these seas.
The Danes had been addicted to piracy from the earliest times. Far back
in the sixth century, we have heard of Viking chiefs, like king Hygelac
whom Theudebert the Frank slew,[55] as occasionally descending on the
Austrasian and Frisian shores. But it was not till the end of the eighth
century that western Europe began to be seriously troubled by the
Northmen. The cause of the sudden increase of activity among races who
had so long spared the feeble realm of the later Merovings is difficult
to ascertain. Perhaps their constant wars with the Saxons, tribes as
fierce and untameable as themselves, had kept them quiet. But it is
certain that down to the time of Charles the Great they were mainly
expending their energy on wars with each other, and were seldom heard of
in the North Sea or the British Channel till the Frankish empire with
its wealth, its commerce, and its Christian propaganda came up to meet
them by subduing the Saxon and Frisian, and stretching forth its
boundary to the Eider.
Footnote 55:
See page 113.
[Sidenote: Early Viking raids.] It was just after Charles the Great had
conquered Saxony that the Vikings began to make themselves felt. The
earliest trace of them in western waters was a petty raid on the English
town of Wareham in 789. Within a few years, however, the scope of their
expeditions enlarged; in 793 they sacked the great Northumbrian
monastery of Lindisfarn; in 795 they are heard of in Ireland for the
first time. In 799 they began their assaults on the Frankish empire by a
transient raid on Aquitaine. From this time forward their activity grew
incessantly; every year their fleets discovered some new and rich field
for plunder, till no creek or estuary of western Europe was unknown to
their pilots. We have already told how Charles the Great was so vexed by
their first ravages that he endeavoured to establish a defensive
flotilla in all the ports of Neustria, and how in the last years of his
reign the Danish king Godfred had given him serious trouble both in the
south Baltic and on the Frisian shore.[56] We have mentioned the far
more important descents of the Vikings on the lands about the Rhine
mouth in the days of the feeble government of good king Lewis. But now
the evil was still growing: the emperor Lothair and his brothers were to
find the Northmen no longer a nuisance but a real danger.
Footnote 56:
See page 367.
Nothing could have been more daring than the enterprise of the Northmen
in setting out from their distant homes to undertake the long voyage to
Ireland or Aquitaine. [Sidenote: The ships of the Vikings.] Their
vessels were merely long narrow open boats, generally some seventy-five
feet long by fifteen broad, but drawing only three-and-a-half feet of
water. They relied on rowing more than on sailing, and their one mast
could easily be lowered, and generally was taken down before a naval
engagement. When the wind was favourable they used a single large square
sail, but it was always in the strength and endurance of the oarsmen
that they placed their main confidence. The ordinary Viking vessel seems
to have carried about one hundred and twenty men, so that to transport
any large body an enormous number of ships was required. But even in
small numbers the Vikings were very formidable; they were all
professional warriors, who had taken by choice to the trade of
sea-robbers, and were individually far superior to the forced levies
whom English aldermen or Frankish counts could hurry into the field
against them. They were far better armed than their opponents, almost
every man being well equipped with the shirt of ring-mail and steel
helmet, while among the Franks and English only the nobles and chiefs
were as yet wearing armour. They were also fighting for their lives: the
pirate defeated in a strange country was completely at the mercy of the
people of the land, and always doomed to death; hence he fought with a
far greater fury than his enemies. But at first the Viking came to
pillage rather than to fight: he was better pleased to plunder some rich
undefended port or monastery and then put out to sea, than to win
precarious spoil after hard handstrokes with the levies of an angry
country-side.
By this time the Vikings were operating on every coast in western
Europe. It was not only the Franks who were suffering from their
inroads: the English kingdoms and the Celts of Scotland and Ireland were
faring even worse. The expeditions of the Northmen were now taking two
well-marked courses; one was the voyage past Frisia and the Rhine-mouth
to the Neustrian and south English coasts. The other was a longer and
bolder adventure, the open sea voyage from the western capes of Norway
to Orkney and Shetland, and thence south-west, past the Hebrides, to
Ireland, Wales, and western England. The former line of plunder was
mainly in the hands of the Danes; the latter was more frequented by the
Norwegians. The other two northern peoples, the Swedes and Goths of the
Scandinavian peninsula, were almost entirely engrossed in cruises
eastward, against the Slavs and Finns of the Baltic.
[Sidenote: The Vikings in Ireland.] In the earlier years of the Viking
raids, Ireland suffered more than any other country; its tribal kings
could give no protection to their subjects. There was not a town in the
island defended by a stone wall, and the numerous and wealthy
monasteries, protected by their sanctity alone, lay open to the spoiler.
The Norwegian pirates ranged at their good pleasure over the face of the
land, and ere long commenced to winter in it, instead of returning home
at the end of their summer ravages. It was in Ireland that they first
bethought them of seizing the whole country and turning it into a new
Norse kingdom. It was in the very year of the Partition of Verdun that a
great chief named Thorgisl gained full possession of the northern half
of the island, and established himself as king therein. He reigned for
two years (843-45) with great success, till he fell by chance into the
hands of Malachy, king of Meath, who drowned him in Loch Owel. With his
death, his kingdom fell to pieces, and the Irish recovered much that he
had conquered from his divided followers. But the Norwegians still clung
to all the ports and headlands of Ireland: at Dublin, Wexford,
Waterford, Limerick, they built their towns and waged continual war
against the Irish of the inland parts.
England fared at first better than the sister isle. The great over-king
Ecgbert of Wessex was well able to defend his realm; most of the Viking
attacks were beaten off with loss as long as Ecgbert lived (802-838).
But under his weaker son Ethelwulf the invasions grew more and more
desperate and persistent, till in 850 we find the fatal sign that the
Vikings succeeded for the first time in wintering in the land,
fortifying themselves in the Kentish isle of Thanet, and defying the
fyrd of Wessex to force the narrow waterway that separated it from the
mainland.
The Danes in the Frankish empire had a far harder task than their
Norwegian brethren had found in Ireland, and for a long time they showed
much greater caution in venturing inland, or accepting battle in the
open field. They fled before the face of Lewis the Pious when he marched
against them in force, and it was only when the empire was distracted by
civil war that they began to strike boldly up the great rivers and
plunder the towns of the interior. It was of evil import for the empire
that just before the fight of Fontenay they had sailed up the Seine and
taken Rouen (841), and that just before the pacification of Verdun they
had entered the Loire and burnt the great port of Nantes.
But when at last the Frankish kings had made peace, the Vikings had
grown so bold that they persisted none the less in their attacks on the
empire, and in the years that followed the new partition, their
successes were even greater than before. All the three brothers were
sorely beset by the Northmen, and two of them met with an unbroken
series of disasters. [Sidenote: The Danes in Saxony.] Lewis the German
fared best; the tough Saxon tribes on his frontier always made a good
fight against their hereditary enemies the Danes. But the king saw the
new town of Hamburg burnt in 845, so that its bishop had to fly to
Bremen, and in 851 a great expedition sailed up the Elbe, defeated the
Saxon counts in the open field and returned in triumph to Jutland after
ravaging the eastern half of Saxony.
Lothair and Charles fared far worse. The emperor saw his coastland in
Frisia ravaged every year. It was in vain that he tried to gain peace by
giving the island of Walcheren to Rorik the Dane, on the condition that
he should hold it as a fief and guard the coast from his brethren. Other
greedy adventurers followed Rorik, till the whole Frisian coast was
dotted with their palisaded forts, and their ravages penetrated farther
and farther inland, till Lothair in his palace at Aachen began to
tremble for his own safety.
But the lot of the young king Charles and of the Western Franks was
still less happy. His realm had a far greater length of exposed
coastland than those of his brethren, and he was vexed by a lingering
civil war, for Pippin of Aquitaine had never acquiesced in the Partition
of Verdun, and did his best to maintain himself among his partisans
south of the Loire. After much fighting he was compelled for two years
to do homage to Charles, but he soon rose in arms again, and though his
uncle had the better in the contest he was still able to keep up an
obstinate resistance. [Sidenote: The Vikings in France.] Charles thought
more of subduing Pippin than of warding off the Danes, and while he was
engaged in Aquitaine the northern parts of his realm were fearfully
maltreated. As early as 843 the Vikings found courage to winter in
Neustria, seizing and fortifying the monastery of Noirmoutier on an
island at the Loire-mouth. Next year they were enabled to strike far
inland, for Pippin, overborne by his uncle Charles, madly called in Jarl
Oscar to his aid, and brought the Vikings up the Garonne as far as
Toulouse. Thus introduced into the very heart of the land, they were
able both to spy out its fertility and wealth, and to judge of the
weakness and unwisdom of its rulers. It was not Aquitaine, however, that
first felt their heavy hand. [Sidenote: Sack of Paris.] In 845 they
boldly entered the Seine-mouth, plundered Rouen for the second time, and
then ascended the river far higher than they had ever mounted before, up
to the very walls of the city of Paris. Charles dared not face them, but
fortified himself on the heights of Montmartre and the abbey of St.
Denis, while the Vikings entered Paris and plundered part of the city,
till, stricken by an inexplicable panic, they returned to their boats
and dropped down the river again. It was certainly not the army of
Charles that they need have feared, for he was thinking of paying
tribute rather than of fighting. Indeed he paid 7000 lbs. of gold to
this particular horde to induce them to quit Neustria altogether.
From this time onward things went from bad to worse for king Charles,
largely owing to his own faults as we may guess, for he was a fickle
unsteady prince, always taking new enterprises in hand and dropping them
suddenly for some fresh plan before he had half carried them out. Nor
was his courage beyond suspicion; more than once in his reign he fled
out of danger with an alacrity that savoured more of fear than of
prudence. After the sack of Paris we find the Vikings hovering around
Neustria on every side; one band had established itself at the
Loire-mouth, another under Jarl Oscar watched the Garonne, another
devoted itself to the harrying of Flanders, and got succour when
required from the emperor Lothair’s Danish vassals on the isle of
Walcheren. Spasmodically hurrying about from one scene of Viking
outrages to another, king Charles protected nothing, and always arrived
too late to be of use. In 847 even Bordeaux, the greatest city of
southern Gaul, was beleaguered by the Vikings of the Garonne. [Sidenote:
Sack of Bordeaux.] This drew him for some time into Aquitaine, where he
for once won a success, by subduing his nephew Pippin, who had lost his
former popularity among the Gascons by his drunken and dissolute habits,
and still more by his unwisdom in calling in the Danes to his aid. But
while Charles lay in Aquitaine he suffered a greater disaster than any
he had yet sustained, by the loss of Bordeaux, which was betrayed to
Jarl Oscar by a discontented party among its citizens.[57] It was to be
held for some years by the Vikings.
Footnote 57:
By Jews according to one account; by partisans of Pippin according to
another.
The plunder of such a wealthy place was well calculated to draw more
Danish hordes into Gaul. The condition of the country grew progressively
worse, and we trace every year the advance of the ships of the invaders
farther and farther up the great rivers. In 850 they grew so bold that
they fortified themselves high up the Seine at Givald’s dyke (Jeufosse),
where they abode many months and harried all the country about Beauvais
and Mantes at their leisure. Charles the Bald, engaged in a luckless
campaign against the rebellious duke of the Bretons, brought no succour
to his subjects. Nor was he on the spot when in the following year
Ghent, Térouanne, and all Flanders were wasted. But probably the capture
of his old enemy Pippin of Aquitaine atoned in his eyes for many such
disasters: the pretender was taken prisoner by the count of Gascony, who
handed him over to the king. In accordance with old Frankish custom
Pippin was shorn and thrust into a monastery.
[Sidenote: The Danes at Givald’s dyke.] The year 852 saw the kingdom of
the West Franks sink to a worse degradation than any it had yet known.
When the Danes again came up the Seine and settled down in their former
camp at Givald’s dyke, Charles called out the whole force of Neustria in
such overwhelming strength that the Vikings retired behind their
palisades and stood on the defensive. Presently the emperor Lothair with
his warlike Austrasians marched up to help his brother, and the doom of
the Danes seemed settled. But after a siege which lasted many months,
Charles suddenly made peace with Godfred the Danish chief and granted
him a great sum of money and a tract of land at the Loire-mouth to
settle in. Lothair and the Austrasians went home in wrath, and never
aided the fickle Neustrian king again.
When the Franks were faring so badly, only one more evil was wanted to
make their position unbearable, and this was soon added. In 853 the ten
years’ peace between the brothers, which had lasted since the treaty of
Verdun, was broken. The restless people of Aquitaine, though they had
lost their old leader Pippin, had determined to try a new revolt. They
secretly sent to ask aid of Lewis the German, and he, though much vexed
at home by Danish raids and Slavonic rebellions, was unwise enough to
grant their petition. [Sidenote: Civil War of Lewis and Charles, 854.]
He sent his second son Lewis the Saxon, with a Suabian and Bavarian
army, into Aquitaine, and declared war on his brother Charles. The
emperor Lothair, with more sense than he usually showed, tried to keep
his brothers from the mad struggle. But it was not owing to his efforts
that the Germans finally consented to retire from southern Gaul, but
merely because the younger Lewis met less support than he had expected
from the Gascon rebels, and found himself not strong enough to resist
the full force of Neustria, when his uncle took the field against him.
But while this wholly unjustifiable civil war was in progress, the Danes
had made worse havoc than ever in the midst of the kingdom of Charles.
They burnt Nantes and Tours, harried the districts around Angers and
Blois, and only checked their course before the walls of Orleans, which
made a sturdy and successful resistance (853-4).
[Sidenote: Death of Lothair, 855.] In the next year the last formal link
which still held together the Frankish empire was snapped by the death
of the emperor Lothair. Old before his time, and feeling himself utterly
unable to cope with the evils of the day, he retired into the monastery
of Prüm, and died there only a few weeks after he had taken the cowl.
His heterogeneous empire at once fell to pieces: his eldest son Lewis,
who had already been crowned as his colleague in the empire by pope
Sergius II., was left nothing but the kingdom of Italy with which to
support his imperial title. To Italy he was a good king, but beyond the
Alps he met with neither respect nor obedience. His younger brothers
Lothair and Charles divided between them the northern parts of their
father’s heritage. Lothair took Austrasia, Charles took Provence, and
the intermediate Burgundian territory was parted between them.
Thus the unity of the Empire had already become a mockery, and the realm
of Charles the Great was split into five kingdoms, owing each other
neither love nor homage nor succour in time of need.
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