The Vikings in History by Logan F. Donald

Author:Logan, F. Donald [Logan, F. Donald]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2013-11-04T16:00:00+00:00

Four years later Ragnar, possibly a former ally of Charles the Bald, entered the Seine in March and headed for Paris. Charles attempted to thwart this attack, and he arrayed his army on both banks of the river. The Viking leader with his whole force attacked the smaller band of the Frankish defenders on one side of the river and, before the eyes of the Franks across the river, he hanged his prisoners, by a contemporary account one hundred and eleven in number. Paris lay before him, and the hallelujahs of Easter turned into lamentations as Ragnar attacked and plundered the town, while Charles took refuge at the abbey of St-Denis. Most of the western part of the Frankish empire faced Viking assaults during these decades: not only in the Seine, but also in the Somme, Gironde, Garonne, Scheldt, Dordogne and Meuse. The Northmen were attacking Chartres, Amiens, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Tours, Angers, Orléans, Poitiers, Blois and Paris. Year after year they came, relentless, against a land seemingly unable to defend itself.

Charles the Bald, king of the West Franks since 843, did not take these attacks seriously at first, and he was otherwise preoccupied with the ambitions of his brothers. His defence of Paris in 845 was well intended but extraordinarily inept: not only did he offend sound military tactics by splitting his army in two, but he was unable to motivate his army and had to allow Ragnar to escape downriver after paying the Viking leader 7,000 pounds of silver. There was virtually no defence against the Vikings of this period: the only defence was self-defence – every man for himself, in a word, flight. The crude roads of France and the Low Countries knew then, as often again, the bands of refugees fleeing the feared savagery of Viking invaders. Monks from cloisters unprepared for hostile attacks fled from such holy places as St-Maixent, Charvoux, St-Maur-sur-Loire, St-Wandrille, Jumièges and St-Martin of Tours, and sought refuge in areas isolated from Viking raiders. For two generations these fleeing monks were to be seen on the roads leading to Burgundy, the Auvergne and Flanders. Even bishops left their sees and their flocks. As the immediate Viking threat passed – temporarily, as we from our vantage point know – the monks returned, monasteries were rebuilt, relics and other treasures brought back, the archives restored. And under fresh attacks the process would begin again. In all their wanderings the refugees took with them their ‘saints’, as they called their holy relics. The canons of Tours took the body of their holy father, Martin, first to Cormery in 853; they returned it to Tours in 854 but seem to have taken it away again in 862 and 869; in the attack of 877 they carried their saint to Chablis, then to Auxerre and finally back to Tours, where St-Martin rested at last. Likewise, the monks of St-Philibert from the island of Noirmoutier, a very early object of Viking attacks, moved with their relics progressively further and

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