A History of the Vikings
Chapter 7
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THE WESTERN EMPIRE
IT was in the second decade of the ninth century, soon after the death of Charles the Great, that the first shock of viking aggression warned Louis the Pious of the danger from the north now menacing the calm and prosperous lands of the huge Frankish Empire. Just south of the mouth of the Loire on the big tidal island of Noirmoutier was the monastery of St. Philibert, not perhaps a provokingly wealthy institution, but one of some prosperity inasmuch as the island was a port of call for the barques employed in the salt-trade that was then, as now, the chief industry of the Breton marsh-lands. As such, Noirmoutier was doubtless well known to the northern adventurer-merchants, and it was this place that became the first goal of northern pirates in the Atlantic waters.
It may have been Norwegian vikings from Ireland, rather than Danes coming by the Channel route, who first of all plundered the abbey, but it was not long afterwards that the Danes found their way round Ouessant and sailed into the Bay of Biscay. Whether from Ireland or from Denmark, several times between the years 814 and 819 viking fleets appeared suddenly off the island and sacked the monastery, so that the abbot was compelled eventually to build temporary quarters for his monks inland on the Grand-lieu lake near Nantes, and here they were able to shelter during the months they soon learnt to recognize as the raid season. Later, Noirmoutier itself was fortified against the vikings, but the dangers of its island-position made defence against a viking fleet a peril worse than precipitate flight. Eventually the wretched and often ruined buildings of the monastery were abandoned, and the island became a viking-headquarters where the pirates could pass the winter; but this happened some twenty years after the early raids, and, as the opening of the viking attacks, it is sufficient to record the first plunderings of the abbey and also the sack about the same time of another monastery much further to the south on Ré island off Rochelle.
Louis may have paid little heed to these sudden and unex-
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pected raids on the remote Atlantic islands, but it was not long before the Franks were to hear something of the itinerary of these viking expeditions and could thus gauge the seamanship and audacity of the pirates. In 820 a small fleet of thirteen ships appeared off the Flanders coast where, after effecting a landing, they burnt some houses and stole a few cattle; thence the little armament made for the mouth of the Seine, but the crews failed in an attempt to land in that neighbourhood, losing five men in the enterprise. Undaunted, the fleet straightway sailed round the Brittany peninsula and fell upon and destroyed the town of Buin on the shores of the Bay of Biscay. Thence, laden with a rich booty, the pirates made off to their home, perhaps paying a visit to Ireland on the way back. (1)
There followed a period wherein the Danes were occupied by internal struggles in their own country and their viking enterprise checked, maybe, by the deliberate policy of their leaders who were anxious to win the emperor's favour (p. 135); so it happened that for thirteen years Louis had no trouble from pirates, even though throughout all this time the Norwegians were terrorizing Ireland. In 834, however, the rich merchant-province of Frisia, that had already been a victim of the Danish pirates in the time of Charles the Great, was attacked by Danes who ravaged a part of the land and finally plundered, and partially destroyed by fire, the wealthy town of Dorstad, an important Frankish-Frisian mart on the site of the modern Wijk-bij-Duurstede in the fork of the Lek and the Kromme Rhine, where they slew many of the inhabitants and carried off others as prisoners. Here they were not merely reckless adventurers, for political conditions had given their erstwhile king Harald (p. 92) and his brother Rorik a footing in Frisia, and it was possibly a result of their intrigues with the emperor's son, Lothar, who was at strife with his father, that there took place this plundering of the country outside their grip by Danish pirates. But whatever the cause, the menace to the Empire from the viking movement was now becoming serious. In the following year Noirmoutier was attacked again and Frisia revisited by the Danes, and in the year afterwards, 836, Noirmoutier had to be abandoned by the monks, who were forced to dig up and remove to a place of safety the bones of their founder St. Philibert; at the same time Frisia suffered from a third and more severe onslaught, Antwerp and
1. It happens that Howth near Dublin and the islands in Wexford Haven were plundered in this year and a number of Irish women carried off; but the identity of the raiders is, of course, unknown.
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Witla at the mouth of the Meuse being burnt, Dorstad plundered, and a tribute demanded from the now terrified inhabitants of the country.
There was another attack on Frisia in 837 and Louis was at last forced to take action. He had been purposing an expedition to Italy, but he gave up his plans and marched instead to Nimeguen with the intention of driving the vikings out of Frisia. But they escaped before he arrived and he could do
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nothing except make some pretence of setting in order the defences of the country, now a matter of considerable difficulty inasmuch as some of the Frisians, in despair of obtaining effective aid from the emperor, seemed disposed to seek safety by siding with the vikings. The Danish king Horik I (p. 93) had denied all knowledge of the earlier raids, telling the emperor that he had seized and executed some of the pirates responsible for them, and he even went so far as to demand in return blood-money for those of his countrymen who had been slain during these
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plunderings. Exactly how he justified this preposterous demand is not known, but it is easy to believe that at this period he was not the instigator of the raids, and Louis, recognizing the impotence of even a strong Danish king to curb this viking enterprise, itself probably a result of Horik's tyranny in his own state, had to content himself with a diplomatic indication that he would hold Horik responsible for any further acts of piracy committed by his countrymen.
A storm, happily for the Frisians, destroyed a Danish fleet that set off to ravage their country in 838, and Louis, seeing that further attack was to be expected, now ordered the building of some boats to patrol the coast so that at least there might be some warning of the raids. Nothing happened for the rest of that year, but there was a renewal of the viking plunderings in 839. Their ravages, however, were overshadowed by a horrible disaster of another kind, for on Boxing Day of this year the sea broke over the dykes and poured into the land, destroying, it is said, over two thousand four hundred homesteads and drowning a large number of men and animals. But the emperor was now in no mood to concern himself with the unhappy state of this country, for he was already heavily involved in the desperate political jealousies of his sons, and during the stormy domestic quarrels of 839 he gave no heed to the further viking raids on Frisia and up the Rhine. It may be that he bought some peace for the Frisians by the grant of Walcheren to the Danish insurgent Harald and of Dorstad to his brother Rorik, wasting no more time on wordy exchanges with Horik; but the troubles within the empire were now increasing, and the menace from Danish pirates was the least of the urgent anxieties that beset the Franks on that summer morning of A.D. 840 when Louis the Pious, the second Carolingian emperor, died.
The empire was at once in a turmoil, and for a year the threats and hostile demonstrations of the three warring sons of the dead emperor left the Frankish territory at the mercy of an invader. Events marched rapidly to the dreadful and bloody climax at Fontenoy (25th June 841) when Charles the Bald and Louis the German amid scenes of revolting carnage defeated Lothar, and thereby sealed the fate of the empire as a majestic and indivisible whole. For two more years Lothar struggled, but all his efforts to become sole emperor were in vain, and in 843 by the treaty of Verdun the three brothers made the partition of the empire an accomplished fact. Lothar, who retained the imperial title, took the middle kingdom, that is Italy and the long stretch of land reaching from the Alps to
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the North Sea between the Rhine and the Scheldt; Louis the German had the lands east of this, except Frisia which was allotted to Lothar, and so possessed a sea-coast from the Weser to the Eider; Charles had France from the Meuse to the Loire, together with rebellious Aquitaine and the Toulouse country.
The Danes had been quick to take their opportunity, and Frisia now lay helpless in their power. They had even meddled to a small extent in the great civil war, the turbulent Harald, in return for a renewed grant of Walcheren, serving in Lothar's
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army on the Moselle in 842, and bringing, either through fear or treachery, disaster upon his ally. But this was an isolated political enterprise, and an earlier and serious act of piracy had shown that the vikings saw in the death-throes of the empire the chance of plunderings and conquests further afield. In May of 841 a large fleet under a chieftain called Asgeir (1) suddenly appeared on the Seine and hurried up-river to Rouen
1. Commonly called Oscar. The name is given in the chronicles as Oscheri or Hoseri.
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which was stormed, plundered, and fired. The abbey of St. Ouen close at hand shared a similar fate, and down-stream, a few days later, the monastery of jumièges was forced to buy its safety at a heavy price. Then the vikings slipped down to the open sea and disappeared, refusing to risk an engagement with a Frankish force that attempted to waylay them. In the following year a viking fleet, it may have been the same one, after an attack on London, crossed the Channel and swooped down on Quentovic, a busy and important mart at the mouth of the Canche near Étaples; the pirates sacked the defenceless town with the utmost ferocity, leaving only amid the smoking ruins some few houses that had bought their safety by bribes. From Quentovic this remarkable fleet sailed back to England and plundered Rochester.
The disasters that had befallen Rouen and Quentovic, terrifying though they were, were eclipsed in 843 by the appalling fate of Nantes. The capture of this strong and guarded city was made possible by interior dissension in Brittany, (1) and a fleet of sixty-seven ships, not from Denmark but from Vestfold in Norway, (2) was able to sail up to the town walls unsuspected and unobserved, the wretched Nantais thinking only of the dangers threatening them from the landside where Count Lambert was busy stirring up the country against Charles the Bald. It was St. John's Day, and the town was full to overflowing on the occasion of the festival. Without any warning the vikings poured in, putting to the sword all whom they encountered and firing the houses on every side. They burst into the cathedral and hacked down the bishop at the altar itself; they butchered the huge and terror-struck congregation and then burnt the building. Only at nightfall did the awful slaughter and the pillaging cease, the vikings escaping unharmed with a rich booty and many prisoners. They made their way back to the sea, plundering recklessly as they went, and finally landed at Noirmoutier, which they had chosen as their base, and where, in fact, they passed the winter. It was the beginning of a new and dreadful phase of the viking attacks. No longer could the creatures be counted upon to go scurrying home when their terrible work was over; now they dared to lurk close at hand watching over their miserable prey.
In 844 the vikings appeared on another great river of France,
1. The story that the vikings were conducted to the attack by a pilot in the employ of the rebel Count Lambert is no doubt an invention.
2. The pirates were called Westfaldingi, Ann. Engolism, 8 43) (Pertz, M.G.H., SS. XVI, 486), Chron. Aquit. 843, 3, (SS. II, 253).
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