to the Church. When the bishops of his own kingdom, with Wenilon of
Sens as their leader, offended with some remissness he had temporarily
shown in advancing their worldly interests, determined to depose
him from the throne, and called Louis the German to take his place,
Charles fled and threw himself on the protection of the Pope. And
when by submission and promises he had been permitted to re-enter
France, he complained of the conduct of the prelates in language
which ratified all their claims. "Elected by Wenilon and the other
bishops, as well as by the lieges of our kingdom, who expressed their
consent by their acclamations, Wenilon consecrated me king according
to ecclesiastic tradition, in his own diocese, in the Church of the
Holy Cross at Orleans. He anointed me with the holy oil; he gave me
the diadem and royal sceptre, and seated me on the throne. After that
consecration I could not be removed from the throne, or supplanted
by any one, at least without being heard and judged by the bishops,
by whose ministry I was consecrated king. It is they who are as the
thrones of the Divinity. God reposes upon them, and by them he gives
forth his judgments. At all times I have been ready to submit to their
fatherly corrections, to their just castigations, and am ready to
do so still." What more could the Church require? Its wealth was the
least of its advantages, though the abbacies and bishoprics were richer
than dukedoms all over the land. Their temporal power was supported
by the terrors of their spiritual authority; and kings, princes, and
people appeared so prone to the grossest excesses of credulity and
superstition, that it needed little to throw Europe itself at the
feet of the priesthood, and place sword and sceptre permanently in
subordination to the crozier. Blindly secure of their position, rioting
in the riches of the subject land, the bishops probably disregarded, as
below their notice, the two antagonistic principles which were at work
at this time in the midst of their own body--the principle of absolute
submission to authority in articles of faith, and the principle of
free inquiry into all religious doctrine. The first gave birth to
the great mystery of transubstantiation, which now first made its
appearance as an indispensable belief, and was hailed by the laity and
inferior clergy as a crowning proof of the miraculous powers inherent
in the Church. The second was equally busy, but was not productive of
such permanent effects. At the court of Charles the Bald there was a
society of learned and ingenious men, presided over by the celebrated
John Scot Erigena, (or native of Ireland,) who had studied the early
Fathers and the Platonic philosophy, and were inclined to admit human
reason to some participation in the reception of Christian truths.
There were therefore discussions on the real presence, and free-will,
and predestination, which had the usual unsatisfactory termination of
all questions transcending man's understanding, and only embittered
their respective adherents without advancing the settlement on either
side. While these exercitations of talent and dialectic quickness were
carried on, filling the different dioceses with wonder and perplexity,
the great body of the people in various countries of Europe were
recalled to the practical business of life by disputes of a far more
serious character than the wordy wars of Scotus and his foes. Michelet,
the most picturesque of the recent historians of France, has given us
an amazing view of the state of affairs at this time. It is the darkest
period of the human mind; it is also the most unsettled period of
human society. Outside of the narrowing limits of peopled Christendom,
enemies are pressing upon every side. Saxons on the East are laying
their hands in reverence on the manes of horses, and swearing in the
name of Odin; Saracens, in the South and West, are gathering once more
for the triumph of the Prophet; and suddenly France, Germany, Italy,
and England, are awakened to the presence and possible supremacy of a
more dreaded invader than either, for the Vikinger, or Norsemen, were
abroad upon the sea, and all Christendom was exposed to their ravages.
Wherever a river poured its waters into the ocean, on the coast of
Narbonne, or Yorkshire, or Calabria, or Friesland, boats, small in
size, but countless in number, penetrated into the inland towns, and
disembarked wild and fearless warriors, who seemed inspired by the
mad fanaticism of some inhuman faith, which made charity and mercy
a sin. Starting from the islands and rugged mainland of the present
Denmark and Norway, they swept across the stormy North Sea, shouting
their hideous songs of glory and defiance, and springing to land when
they reached their destination with the agility and bloodthirstiness
of famished wolves. Their business was to carry slaughter and
destruction wherever they went. They looked with contempt on the lazy
occupations of the inhabitants of town or farm, and, above all, were
filled with hatred and disdain of the monks and priests Their leaders
were warriors and poets. Gliding up noiseless streams, they intoned
their battle-cry and shouted the great deeds of their ancestors when
they reached the walls of some secluded monastery, and rejoiced in
wrapping all its terrified inmates in flames. Bards, soldiers, pirates,
buccaneers, and heathens, destitute of fear, or pity, or remorse,
amorous of danger, and skilful in management of ship and weapon, these
were the most ferocious visitants which Southern Europe had ever seen.
No storm was sufficient to be a protection against their approach.
On the crest of the highest waves those frail barks were seen by the
affrighted dwellers on the shore, careering with all sail set, and
steering right into their port. All the people on the coast, from
the Rhine to Bayonne, and from Toulouse to the Grecian Isles, fled
for protection to the great proprietors of the lands. But the great
proprietors of the lands were the peaceful priors of stately abbeys,
and bishops of wealthy sees. Their pretensions had been submitted to
by kings and nobles; they were the real rulers of France; and even
in England their authority was very great. Excommunications had been
their arms against recusant baron and refractory count; but the Danish
Northmen did not care for bell, book, and candle. The courtly circle of
scholars and divines could give no aid to the dishoused villagers and
trembling cities, however ingenious the logic might be which reconciled
Plato to St. Paul; and Charles the Bald, surprised, no doubt, at the
inefficacy of prayers and processions, was forced to replace the
influence in the hands, not which carried the crozier and cross, but
which curbed the horse and couched the spear. The invasion of the
Danes was, in fact, the resuscitation of the courage and manliness
of the nationalities they attacked. Dreadful as the suffering was at
the time, it was not given to any man then alive to see the future
benefits contained in the present woe. We, with a calmer view, look
back upon the whole series of those events, and in the intermixture
of the new race perceive the elements of greatness and power.
Priest-ridden, down-trodden populations received a fresh impulse from
those untamed children of the North; and in the forcible relegation
of ecclesiastics to the more peaceable offices of their calling, we
see the first beginning of the gradation of ranks, and separation of
employments, which gave honourable occupation to the respective leaders
in Church and State; which limited the clergyman to the unostentatious
discharge of his professional duties, and left the baron to command his
warriors and give armed protection to all the dwellers in the land.
For feudalism, as understood in the Middle Ages, was the inevitable
result of the relative positions of priest and noble at the time of
the Norsemen's forays. It was found that the possession of great
domains had its duties as well as its rights, and the duty of defence
was the most imperative of all. Men held their grounds, therefore,
on the obligation of keeping their vassals uninjured by the pirates;
the bishops were found unable to perform this work, and the territory
passed away from their keeping. Vast estates, no doubt, still remained
in their possession, but they were placed in the guardianship of the
neighbouring chateaux; and though at intervals, in the succeeding
centuries, we shall see the prelate dressing himself in a coat of mail,
and rendering in person the military service entailed upon his lands,
the public feeling rapidly revolted against the incongruity of the
deed. The steel-clad bishop was looked on with slender respect, and
was soon found to do more damage to his order, by the contrast between
his conduct and his profession, than he could possibly gain for it by
his prowess or skill in war. Feudalism, indeed, or the reciprocal
obligation of protection and submission, reached its full development
by the formal deposition of a descendant of Charlemagne, on the express
ground of his inability to defend his people from the enemies by which
they were surrounded. [A.D. 879.] A congress of six archbishops, and
seventeen bishops, was held in the town of Mantela, near Vienne; and
after consultation with the nobility, they came to the following
resolution:--"That whereas the great qualities of the old mayors of the
palace were their only rights to the throne, and Charlemagne, whom all
willingly obeyed, did not transmit his talents, along with his crown,
to his posterity, it was right to leave that house." They therefore
sent an offer of the throne of Burgundy to Boso, Count of the Ardennes,
with the conditions "that he should be a true patron and defender
of high and low, accessible and friendly to all, humble before God,
liberal to the Church, and true to his word."
By this abnegation of temporal weapons, and dependence on the armed
warrior for their defence, the prelates put themselves at the head
of the unarmed peoples at the same moment that they exercised their
spiritual authority over all classes alike. It was useless for them to
draw the sword themselves, when they regulated every motion of the hand
by which the sword was held.
While this is the state of affairs on the Continent--while the great
Empire of Charlemagne is falling to pieces, and the kingly office is
practically reduced to a mere equality with the other dignities of the
land--while this disunion in nations and weakness in sovereigns is
exposing the fairest lands in Europe to the aggressions of enemies on
every side--let us cast our eyes for a moment on England, and see in
what condition our ancestors are placed at the middle of this century.
A most dreadful and alarming condition as ever Old England was in. For
many years before this, a pirate's boat or two from the North would
run upon the sand, and send the crews to burn and rob a village on the
coast of Berwick or Northumberland. Pirates we superciliously call
them, but that is from a misconception of their point of honour, and of
the very different estimate they themselves formed of their pursuits
and character. They were gentleman, perhaps, "of small estate" in some
outlying district of Denmark or Norway, but endowed with stout arms and
a great wish to distinguish themselves--if the distinction could be
accompanied with an increase of their worldly goods. They considered
the sea their own domain, and whatever was found on it as theirs
by right of possession. They were, therefore, lords of the manor,
looking after their rights, their waifs and strays, their flotsams and
jetsams. They were also persons of a strong religious turn, and united
the spirit of the missionary to the courage of the warrior and the
avidity of the conqueror. Odin was still their god, the doors of the
Walhalla were still open to them after death, and the skulls of their
enemies were foaming with intoxicating mead. The English were renegades
from the true faith, a set of drivelling wretches who believed in a
heaven where there was no beer, and worshipped a god who bade them
pray for their enemies and bless the very people who used them ill.
The remaining similarity in the language of the two peoples must have
added a bitterness to the contemptuous feelings of the unreclaimed
rovers of the deep; and probably, on their return, these enterprising
warriors were as proud of the number of priests they had slain, as of
the more valuable trophies they carried home. Denmark itself, up to
this time, had been distracted with internal wars. It was only the
more active spirits who had rushed across from the Sound, and solaced
themselves, in the intervals of their own campaigns, with an onslaught
upon an English town. But now the scene was to change. The inroads
of separate crews were to be exchanged for national invasions.
[A.D. 838.] Harold of the Fair Hair was seated on an undisputed throne,
and repressed the outrages of these adventurous warriors by a strong
and determined will. He stretched his sceptre over all the Scandinavian
world, and neither the North Sea nor the Baltic were safe places for
piracy and spoil. One of his countrymen had founded the royal line of
Russia, and from his capital of Kieff or Novgorod was civilizing, with
whip and battle-axe, the original hordes which now form the Empire
of the Czars. Already, from their lurking-places on the shores of
the Black Sea, the Norwegian predecessors of the men of Odessa and
Sebastopol were threatening a dash upon Constantinople; while sea-kings
and jarls, compelled to be quiet and peaceable at home, but backed by
all the wild populations of the North, anxious for glory, and greedy
of gold and corn, resolved to reduce England to their obedience, and
collected an enormous fleet in the quiet recesses of the Baltic,
withdrawn from the observation of Harold. It seems fated that France is
always, in some sort or other, to set the fashion to her neighbours.
We have seen, at the beginning of this century, how England followed
the example of the Frankish peoples in consolidating itself into one
dominion. Charlemagne was recognised chief potentate of many states,
and Egbert was sovereign of all the Saxon lands, from Cornwall to the
gates of Edinburgh. But the model was copied no less closely in the
splitting-up of the central authority than in its consolidation. While
Louis the Debonnaire and Charles the Bald were weakening the throne of
Charlemagne, the states of Egbert became parcelled out in the same
way between the descendants of the English king. Ethelwolf was the
counterpart of Louis, and carried the sceptre in too gentle a hand. He
still further diminished his authority by yielding to the dissensions
of his court. Like the Frankish ruler, also, he left portions of his
territory to his four sons; of whom it will be sufficient for us to
remember that the youngest was the great Alfred--the foremost name in
all mediæval history; and by an injudicious marriage with the daughter
of Charles the Bald, and his unjust divorce of the mother of all his
sons, he offended the feelings of the nation, and raised the animosity
of his children. Ethelbald his son completed the popular discontent
by marrying his father's widow, the French princess, who had been
the cause of so much disagreement; and while the people were thus
alienated, and the guiding hand of a true ruler of men was withdrawn,
the terrible invasion of Danes and Jutlanders went on. [A.D. 839.] They
sailed up the Thames and pillaged London. Winchester was given to the
flames. The whole isle of Thanet was seized and permanently occupied.
The magic standard, a raven, embroidered by the daughters of the famous
Regner Lodbrog, (who had been stung to death by serpents in a dungeon
into which he was thrown by Ella, King of Northumberland,) was carried
from point to point, and was thought to be the symbol of victory and
revenge. The offending Northumbrian now felt the wrath of the sons of
Lodbrog. They landed with a great army, and after a battle, in which
the chiefs of the English were slain, took the Northumbrian kingdom.
Nottingham was soon after captured and destroyed. It was no longer a
mere incursion. The nobles and great families of Denmark came over to
their new conquest, and stationed themselves in strong fortresses,
commanding large circles of country, and lived under their Danish
regulations. The land, to be sure, was not populous at that time, and
probably the Danish settlements were accomplished without the removal
of any original occupiers. [A.D. 860.] But the castles they built, and
the towns which rapidly grew around them, acted as outposts against
the remaining British kingdoms; and at last, when fleet after fleet
disembarked their thousands of warlike colonists--when Leicester,
Lincoln, Stamford, York, and Chester, were all in Danish hands, and
stretched a line of intrenchments round the lands they considered their
own--the divided Anglo-Saxons were glad to purchase a cessation of
hostilities by guaranteeing to them forever the places and territories
they had secured. And there was now a Danish kingdom enclosed by
the fragments of the English empire; there were Danish laws and
customs, a Danish mode of pronunciation, and for a good while a still
broader gulf of demarcation established between the peoples by their
diversity in religious faith. [A.D. 872.] But when Alfred attained the
supreme power--and although respecting the treaties between the Danes
and English, yet evidently able to defend his countrymen from the
aggressions of their foreign neighbour--the pacified pirate, tired of
the sea, and softened by the richer soil and milder climate of his new
home, began to perceive the very unsatisfactory nature of his ancient
belief, and rapidly gave his adhesion to the lessons of the gospel.
Guthrum, the Danish chieftain, became a zealous Christian according to
his lights, and was baptized with all his subjects. Alfred acted as
godfather to the neophyte, and restrained the wildest of his followers
within due bounds. Perhaps, even, he was assisted by his Christianized
allies in the great and final struggle against Hastings and a new swarm
of Scandinavian rovers, whose defeat is the concluding act of this
tumultuous century. Alfred drew up near London, and met the advancing
hosts on the banks of the river Lea, about twenty miles from town. The
patient angler in that suburban river seldom thinks what great events
occurred upon its shore. Great ships--all things are comparative--were
floating upon its waters, filled with armed Danes. Alfred cut certain
openings in the banks and lowered the stream, so that the hostile navy
stranded. Out sprang the Danes, astonished at the interruption to their
course, and retreated across the country, nor stopped till they had
placed themselves in inaccessible positions on the Severn. But the
century came to a close. Opening with the great days of Charlemagne,
it is right that it should close with the far more glorious reign
of Alfred the patriot and sage;---a century illuminated at its two
extremes, but in its middle period dark with disunion and ignorance,
and not unlikely, unless controlled to higher uses, to give birth to a
state of more hopeless barbarism than that from which the nations of
Europe had so recently emerged.
TENTH CENTURY.
Emperors of Germany.
A.D.
LOUIS IV.--(_cont._)
911. CONRAD.
920. HENRY THE FOWLER.
936. OTHO THE GREAT.
973. OTHO II.
983. OTHO III.
Emperors of the East.
A.D.
LEO.--(_cont._)
911. CONSTANTINE IX.
915. CONSTANTINE and ROMANUS.
959. ROMANUS II.
963. NICEPHORUS PHOCAS.
969. JOHN ZIMISCES.
975. BASILIUS AND CONSTANTINE X.
Kings of France.
A.D.
CHARLES THE SIMPLE.--(_cont._)
923. RODOLPH.
936. LOUIS IV., (d'Outremer.)
954. LOTHAIRE.
986. LOUIS V., (le Fainéant.)
987. HUGH CAPET, (new Dynasty.)
996. ROBERT THE WISE.
Kings of England.
A.D.
ALFRED.--(_cont._)
901. EDWARD THE ELDER.
925. ATHELSTANE.
941. EDMUND I.
948. ELDRED.
955. EDWY.
959. EDGAR.
976. EDWARD II.
978. ETHELRED II.
Authors.
SUIDAS, (Lexicographer), GERBERT, ODO, DUNSTAN.
THE TENTH CENTURY.
DARKNESS AND DESPAIR.
The tenth century is always to be remembered as the darkest and most
debased of all the periods of modern history. It was the midnight of
the human mind, far out of reach of the faint evening twilight left
by Roman culture, and further still from the morning brightness of
the new and higher civilization. If we try to catch any hope of the
future, we must turn from the oppressed and enervated populations of
France and Italy to the wild wanderers from the North. By following
the latter detachment of Norsemen who made their settlements on
the Seine, we shall see that what seemed the wedge by which the
compactness of an organized kingdom was to be split up turned out
to be the strengthening beam by which the whole machinery of legal
government had been kept together. Romanized Gauls, effeminated
Franks, Goths, and Burgundians, were found unfitted for the duties
either of subjects or rulers. They were too ambitious to obey, and
too ignorant to command. Religion itself had lost its efficacy, for
the populations had been so fed with false legends, that they had no
relish for the truths of the gospel, which, indeed, as an instrument
of instruction, had fallen into complete disuse. Ship-loads of false
relics, and army-rolls of imaginary saints, were poured out for
the general veneration. The higher dignitaries of the Church were
looked on with very different feelings, according to the point of
view taken of them. When regarded merely as possessors of lands and
houses, they were loved or hated according to the use they made of
their power; but at the very time when cruelties and vices made them
personally the objects of detestation or contempt, the sacredness
of their official characters remained. Petitions were sent to the
kings against the prelates being allowed to lead their retainers into
battle, not entirely from a scruple as to the unlawfulness of such a
proceeding, but from the more serious consideration that their death
or capture would be taken as a sign of the vengeance of Heaven, and
damp the ardour of the party they supported. Churches and cathedrals
were filled with processionary spectacles, and their altars covered
with the offerings of the faithful; and yet so brutal were the manners
of the times, and so small the respect entertained for the individual
priest, that laymen of the highest rank thought nothing of knocking
down the dignitaries of the Church with a blow on the head, even while
solemnly engaged in the offices of devotion. The Roman pontiffs, we
have seen, did not scruple to avail themselves of the forgeries of
their enthusiastic supporters to establish their authority on the basis
of antiquity, and at the middle of this century we should find, if we
inquired into it, that the sacred city and chair of St. Peter were a
prey to the most violent passions. Many devout Roman Catholics have
been, at various periods, so horrified with the condition of their
chiefs, and of the perverted religion which had arisen from tradition
and imposture, that they have claimed the mere continued existence of
the Papacy as a proof of its Divine institution, and a fulfilment of
the prophecy that "the gates of hell should not prevail against it."
Yet even in the midst of this corruption and ignorance, there were not
wanting some redeeming qualities, which soften our feelings towards
the ecclesiastic power. It was at all times, in its theory, a protest
against the excesses of mere strength and violence. The doctrines it
professed to teach were those of kindness and charity; and in the great
idea of the throned fisherman at Rome, the poorest saw a kingdom which
was not of this world, and yet to which all the kingdoms of this world
must bow. Temporal ranks were obliterated when the descendants of kings
and emperors were seen paying homage to the sons of serfs and workmen.
The immunity, also, from spoil and slaughter, which to a certain extent
still adhered to episcopal and abbatial lands, reflected a portion
of their sanctity on the person of the bishop and abbot. Mysterious
reverence still hung round the convents, within which such ceaseless
prayers were said and so many relics exposed, and whither it was also
known that all the learning and scholarship of the land had fled for
refuge. The doles at monastery-doors, however objected to by political
economists, as encouragements of mendicancy and idleness, were viewed
in a very different light by the starving crowds, who, besides being
qualified by destitution and hunger for the reception of charitable
food, had an incontestable right, under the founder's will, to be
supported by the establishment on whose lands they lived. The abbot
who neglected to feed the poor was not only an unchristian contemner
of the precepts of the faith, but ran counter to the legal obligations
of his place. He was administrator of certain properties left for the
benefit of persons about whose claims there was no doubt; and when the
rapacious methods of maintaining their adherents, which were adopted by
the count and baron, were compared with the baskets of broken victuals,
and the jugs of foaming beer, which were distributed at the buttery
of the abbey, the decision was greatly in favour of the spiritual
chief. His ambling mule, and swift hound, and hooded hawks, were not
grudged, nor his less defensible occupations seriously inquired into,
as long as the beef and mutton were not stinted, and the liquor flowed
in reasonable streams. As to his theological tenets, or knowledge of
history, either sacred or profane, the highest ecclesiastic was on
the same level of utter ignorance and indifference with the lowest
of his serfs. There were no books of controversial divinity in all
this century. There were no studies exacted from priest or prelate.
All that was required was an inordinate zeal in the discovery of holy
relics, and an acquaintance with the unnumbered ceremonies performed
in the celebration of the service. Morals were in as low a state as
learning. Debauchery, drunkenness, and uncleanness were the universal
characteristics both of monk and secular. So it is a satisfaction to
turn from the wretched spectacle of the decaying and corrupt condition
of an old society, to the hardier vices of a new and undegenerated
people. Better the unreasoning vigour of the Normans, and their wild
trust in Thor and Odin--their spirit of personal independence and pride
in the manly exercises--than the creeping submission of an uneducated
population, trampled on by their brutal lay superiors, and cheated out
of money and labour by the artifices of their priests.
Rollo, the Norman chief, had pushed his unresisted galleys up the
Seine, and strongly intrenched himself in Rouen, in the first year
of this century. From this citadel, so admirably selected for his
purposes, whether of defence or conquest, he spread his expeditions
on every side. The boats were so light that no shallowness of water
hindered their progress even to the great valleys where the river was
still a brook. When impediments were encountered on the way, in the
form of waterfall, or, more rarely, of bridge or weir, the adventurers
sprang to shore and carried their vessels along the land. When greater
booty tempted them, they even crossed long tracts of country, hauling
their boats along with them, and launching them in some peaceful
vale far away from the sea. Every islet in the rivers was seized and
fortified; so that, dotted about over all the beautiful lands between
the Seine and the borders of Flanders, were stout Norman colonies,
with all the pillage they had obtained securely guarded in those
unassailable retreats, and ready to carry their maritime depredations
wherever a canoe could swim. Their rapidity of locomotion was equal
to that of the Saracenic hordes who had poured down from the Pyrenees
in the days of Charles the Hammer. But the Norsemen were of sterner
stuff than the light chivalry of Abderachman. Where they stopped they
took root. They found it impossible to carry off all the treasure they
had seized, and therefore determined to stay beside it. Rouen was at
first about to be laid waste, but the policy of the bishop preserved it
from destruction, while the wisdom of the rovers converted it into a
fortress of the greatest strength. Strong walls were reared all round.
The beautiful river was guarded night and day by their innumerable
fleet, and in a short time it was recognised equally by friend and foe
as the capital and headquarters of a new race. Nor were the Normans
left entirely to Scandinavia for recruits. The glowing reports of their
success, which successively arrived at their ancient homes, of course
inspired the ambitious listeners with an irresistible desire to launch
forth and share their fortune; but there were not wanting thousands
of volunteers near at hand. King and duke, bishop and baron, were all
unable to give protection to the cultivator of the soil and shepherd
of the flock. These humble sufferers saw their cabins fired, and all
their victuals destroyed. Rollo was too politic to make it a war of
extermination against the unresisting inhabitants, and easily opened
his ranks for their reception. The result was that, in those disastrous
excursions, shouting the war-cry of Norway, and brandishing the
pirate's axe, were many of the original Franks and Gauls, allured by
the double inducement of escaping further injury themselves and taking
vengeance on their former oppressors. Religious scruples did not stand
in their way. They gave in their adhesion to the gods of the North, and
proved themselves true converts to Thor and Odin, by eating the flesh
of a horse that had been slain in sacrifice. It is perhaps this heathen
association with horseflesh as an article of food, which has banished
it from Christian consumption for so long a time. But an effort is
now made in France to rescue the fattened and roasted steed from the
obloquy of its first introduction; and the success of the movement
would be complete if there were no other difficulty to contend against
than the stigma of its idolatrous origin. Yet the recruits were not
all on one side, for we read of certain sea-kings who have grown tired
of their wandering life, and taken service under the kings of France.
Of these the most famous was Hastings, whom we saw defeated at the end
of the last century, on the banks of the river Lea. He is old now, and
so far forgetful of his Scandinavian origin that some French annalists
claim him as a countryman of their own, and maintain that he was the
son of a husbandman near Troyes. He is now a great landed lord, Count
of Chartres, and in high favour with the French king. When Rollo had
established his forces on the banks of the Eure, one of the tributaries
of the Seine, the ancient pirate went at the head of an embassy to see
what the new-comer required. Standing on the farther bank of the little
river, he raised his voice, and in good Norwegian demanded who they
were, and who was their lord. "We have no lord!" they said: "we are all
equal." "And why do you come into this land, and what are you going to
do?" "We are going to chase away the inhabitants, and make the country
our home. But who are you, who speak our language so well?" The count
replied, "Did you never hear of Hastings the famous pirate, who had so
many ships upon the sea, and did such evil to this realm?" "Of course,"
replied the Norsemen: "Hastings began well, but has ended poorly."
"Have you no wish, then," said Hastings, "to submit yourselves to King
Charles, who offers you land and honours on condition of fealty and
service?" "Off! off!--we will submit ourselves to no man; and all we
can take we shall keep, without dependence on any one. Go and tell the
king so, if you like." Hastings returned from his unsuccessful embassy,
and the attempt at compromise was soon after followed by a victory of
Rollo, which decided the fate of the kingdom. The conquerors mounted
the Seine, and laid siege to Paris; but failing in this, they retraced
their course to Rouen, and made themselves masters of Bayeux, and of
other places. Rollo was now raised to supreme command by the voices of
his followers, and took rank as an independent chief. But he was too
sagacious a leader to rely entirely on the favour or success of his
countrymen. He protected the native population, and reconciled them
to the absence of their ancient masters, by the increased security in
life and property which his firmness produced. He is said to have hung
a bracelet of gold in an exposed situation, with no defence but the
terror of his justice, and no one tried to remove it. He saw, also,
that however much his power might be dreaded, and his family feared, by
the great nobility of France with whom he was brought into contact, his
position as a heathen and isolated settler placed him in an inferior
situation. The Archbishop of Rouen, who had been his ally in the
peaceable occupation of the city, was beside him, with many arguments
in favour of the Christian faith. The time during which the populations
had been intermixed had smoothed many difficulties on either side.
[A.D. 911.] The worship of Thor and Odin was felt to be out of place in
the midst of great cathedrals and wealthy monasteries, and it created
no surprise when, in a few years, the ambitious Rollo descended from
his proud independence, did suit and service to his feeble adversary
Charles the Simple, and retained all his conquests in full property as
Duke of Normandy and Peer of France.