Chapter 7
200
the Garonne. Here, as on the Loire, they found a land distracted by civil war, for the young Pepin had not given up his pretensions to the throne of an independent Aquitaine. The viking attack was well-timed, and the pirates were able to sail up-river, plundering without hindrance until they were within a short distance of Toulouse. The town had lately been besieged unsuccessfully by Charles the Bald, and the vikings must have learnt that the garrison was too strong for them; so they made no attack, and, instead, sailed off suddenly. Whether they had deliberately chosen Spain as their new goal, or whether it was a storm that drove them out of their course, is now hard to say, but Spain it was where the viking fleet, 150 ships strong, next appeared. They made first for the northern coast, landing near Gijon, and plundering there and in the neighbourhood of Corunna. But the little kingdom of the Asturias showed a high courage in the face of this danger, and proved to the world in what large measure interior political dissension and irresolute leadership had contributed to the humiliations inflicted on the Franks by these northern buccaneers. An army was rapidly collected, the viking land-force heavily defeated, the survivors pursued to their boats, and a number of these (it is said as many as seventy) burnt. The pirates fled in confusion and, rounding Cape Finisterre, sailed down the western coast of the peninsula, pillaging as they went. Their surprise attacks were successful, but they were soon to find themselves opposed by a new and redoubtable foe, the Arab conquerors of Spain. At Lisbon the vikings (called majus by the Arabs) had a fleet of about a hundred sail, and they were able to hold on for thirteen days in the vicinity, plundering and occasionally fighting with Moorish detachments. In the first exchanges they seem to have got the better of their adversaries, who rapidly became seriously alarmed by the incursions of the northern pirates. Then the vikings set off southwards; a part of the fleet visited Arzilla on the North African coast, but the main body sailed to Cadiz, and thence made their way inland to Medina Sidonia where they encountered and defeated a Moorish force. After this they returned to the sea, and then, with reckless courage, made their way up the Guadalquivir towards Seville. This audacious stroke was successful, and, when two engagements had been fought, the town, except for the garrison in the citadel, fell to them. Thereupon the vikings, holding Seville as their base, even dared to go ravaging far inland in the direction of Constantina, Cordoba, and Moron. But the Arabs, after the first weeks of panic and flight, were
201
rallied by their chiefs at Carmona, and when Seville had been in the hands of the vikings for six weeks, a large raiding party of the pirates was ambushed and massacred, and almost immediately afterwards the city was retaken by the Moors. The surviving vikings realized the overwhelming danger of their position and forthwith took to their boats, but there was a delay in gathering in the scattered bands of marauders and some haggling over the exchange of prisoners, while the Moors were daily growing in strength. The result was that before they could escape to the sea the vikings were caught by the full
Fig. 29
(Opens New Window)
202
fleet of the Emir 'Abd-ar-Rahman had arrived in Seville, they were forced to make off to their boats in precipitate flight. Some of them were driven across to the African coast by a storm, but others made their way at once up the western side of the peninsula, plundering as they went. At the end of the year the remnants of the expedition were reunited in the mouth of the Gironde.
A curious result of this expedition was the temporary establishment in the middle of the ninth century of some kind of diplomatic relations between the Arab Emir of Spain and the king of the Majus. The Emir is known to have sent an ambassador to the court of the viking chief, and, although the nature of the mission of this man, Ghazâl, is not recorded, his adventures during a two months' sojourn at the viking royal palace and the gallant court paid by him to the viking queen Noud (1) have been described in some detail. (2) The land whither Ghazâl went was a great island in the ocean where there were flowing waters and gardens; it lay at a distance of three days' journey from the mainland (the point of departure is, unhappily, not specified) and contained a large population of majus; in the neighbourhood were many other isles of various sizes, all inhabited by majus, and the adjacent territories of the mainland belonged also to them.
But where was this island and who was the king? In all probability it was, as is to be expected, Horik in Zealand whom Ghazâl visited, but the account of the itinerary does not by any means establish this as certain, and there remains the chance that the Emir's ambassador did not go to Denmark at all, but to Ireland. In that event his mission would have been to the court of the great viking chieftain Turgeis (p. 276), who had won for himself enormous power in Ireland and who was drowned in 845, the year after the Spanish expedition. This view is to a small extent supported by the circumstance that the name Noud would just pass as a version of Aud (Auðr), the name of the wife of Turgeis, whereas the name of Horik's wife is not known from the northern sources. But this is flimsy evidence, and it seems on the whole most likely, on the grounds of the geographical description of the lands of the majus, with their territory on the adjacent mainland (Scania), that Ghazâl was sent to the Danish court.
1. In the Arabic script the d was not aspirated. Tuda and Nuda are variants of the name.
2. R. Dozy, Recherches sur l'histoire el la littérature de l'Espagne, 3rd ed., Paris, 1881, II, p. 267; and cf. A. Fabricius, Actes du 8e. congrès int. des orientalistes, 1889 (Stockholm and Oslo), I, p. 121.
203
This year of the Spanish raid, 844, saw another attack on Quentovic, and the fate of that unhappy Channel town was thereby sealed; Étaples sheltered its escaped merchants, and henceforth took over its trade. In 845 all three kingdoms of the former Carolingian empire were assailed by vikings. Horik, the Danish king, now abandoning a pretence of friendship towards Louis the German, (1) despatched a fleet of no less than 600 ships to the Elbe and seized Hamburg. For two days the Danes remained plundering and burning in the town, and though, ultimately, they were repulsed with considerable loss by a Saxon levy, they had struck Christendom a cruel blow, not only materially by their wanton destruction and slaughter, but morally by driving the great missionary Anskar, now Archbishop of Hamburg, into exile. Frisia also suffered from Danish piracy in the same year.
Cruel, too, was the humiliation that befell Charles the Bald, for now there descended upon his realm one of the most renowned vikings of all time, Ragnar Lodbrok, a scion of the Danish royal family. In the beginning of March this robberhero reached the Seine at the head of a Danish fleet, 120 ships strong, and sailed straight up-stream to Rouen, where he tarried only two days, and then on to Carolivenna (now Chaussy) near St. Germain-en-Laye and about nine miles from St. Denis. Charles heard of his coming and marched at once with a moderate-sized army against him; but, on approaching the enemy, he made the mistake of dividing his force, sending the two detachments down the river on opposite banks. The vikings fell upon one of these parties and drove it back in confusion, taking many prisoners; these, said to have been 111 in number, they hanged on an island in the Seine in full view of the second detachment that was advancing against them, and then fell in fury on the now unnerved Frankish troops. The result was a big victory for Ragnar, and Charles, with the remnant of his army, was compelled to take refuge in the abbey of St. Denis and there to watch events. Ragnar, after terrorizing and devastating the neighbourhood, eventually sailed boldly past the little cooped-up Frankish force, and, at the end of the month, arrived before the walls of Paris.
Paris, though in those days not much more than an island-city in the Seine, was already beginning to count among the chief towns of the kingdom, and the prize now offered to the Danes was a rich one. On the approach of Ragnar, the monks
1. There is, however, nothing in the history of Mohammedan Spain to suggest that this was a result of Ghazâl's mission.
204
and most of the population took to flight, and the town must have been almost empty when the vikings, on Easter Sunday, fell upon it. Nevertheless, there was a great plundering, and most of all the monastery of St. Germaindes-Prés suffered. Then Ragnar gave the order to retire. (1) His position must have been precarious, for Charles, who was behind him and in a position to bar his escape, had lost no time in collecting reinforcements and was now at the head of a considerable host. It seemed that he had only to take up a proper strategic position, making a full show of his strength, and Ragnar must be lost. But the necessary courage failed the Christian king, and now came the first of those pitiful and short-sighted weaknesses, those follies of a cowardly statesmanship that seem to have passed muster as safe and sane expedients of government in this unhappy century. Charles bribed the pirates to depart. Ragnar, therefore, sailed home unmolested, taking with him the plunder of Paris and a danegeld of 7,000 pounds of silver, the price of his promise to leave Charles's kingdom henceforward in peace.
Ragnar's expedition, however, had an inglorious end, for on the journey back a pestilence visited his fleet, and when he returned to the Danish court, Horik, in a fright lest this plague might spread in Denmark, set free some of Ragnar's prisoners and restored to the Franks a part of the viking's plunder. There is no knowing whether this gesture was intended to placate an outraged Heaven, or whether the dismissal of the prisoners was an ordinary sanitary precaution; but it is certain that the Danish king showed himself through his embassies to the Paderborn assembly, that was held in the autumn of this year, as being now of a chastened mind, and a peace was made with him that left the Eider districts, at any rate, undisturbed until the '80s. For six years the Seine, also, was not visited by pirates.
The sack of Paris was not the only disaster that befell West Francia in 845, for there was a sustained pillaging of the Loire regions and Aquitaine from the viking base at Noirmoutier. In addition, the returned Spanish fleet, now presumably augmented, was operating in the Gironde country, and in this year its crews captured and burnt the inland town of Saintes. Before the fall of the town the vikings had repelled an attack by a local levy of the Franks, but after the town was theirs they were able to settle unmolested in the
1. A picturesque legend describes a fog falling suddenly upon the impious villains and causing their retreat in confusion and alarm.
205
Saintonge. Charles, ver careful of the major political anxieties of his difficult realm, was the last person to think of attempting to dislodge pirates from a remote district of rebellious Aquitaine.
Frisia was ravaged again in the following year, Dorstad being once more sacked and burnt, and many abbeys in the Scheldt district plundered. At this point the three kings of the empire, meeting in conference at Meersen near Maestricht, sent a warning to Horik that his subjects must either keep the peace in Frisia or expect an attack from the joint armies of the three kingdoms. Horik knew this for an empty threat, a plain statement of the weakness and misery in the kingdoms of the Franks, for the chances of these three jealous and mutually suspicious rulers acting in concert were obviously negligible. Accordingly, he took no notice and allowed Frisia to be attacked again in both of the two succeeding years. The province of Betuwe fell under viking dominion as a result of these operations.
Brittany was ravaged in 847 by pirates, and an army of the Bretons under Duke Nominoë was defeated by them. But the principal centre of viking activity was now the Gironde where Asgeir, who had taken Rouen in 840, added to the lustre of his former great achievement by investing (847) and capturing (848) Bordeaux. The long siege of this town, and its fall owing to the treachery of the Jews, reflects the curious impotence of the Franks to override domestic politics and quarrels for the sake of repelling the invader. Pepin, the pretender to Aquitaine, made no attempt to relieve the city, so Charles the Bald, scenting a big political advantage to himself from the increase of his prestige in this neighbourhood, made a demonstration of doing so. He did actually attack and sink nine viking ships on the Gironde, but he carefully avoided a general engagement, and Bordeaux fell to the invaders without any effective intervention on his part. But his plan succeeded. Pepin was to some extent discredited by the fall of the town, and in the same year (848) Charles had himself solemnly crowned as king of Aquitaine. After Bordeaux was captured the vikings elected to remain in the district, and in 849 they pressed inland as far as Perigueux, which they sacked with their customary viking thoroughness.
In the first decades of the second half of the ninth century, the calamitous and monstrous outrages of the Danes were repeated with increasing and ever more reckless ferocity, so that the miseries suffered by the Franks of the coastal districts and river valleys were terrible indeed. In 850 there was plundering by a great Danish fleet on the Rhine and the Lek and the
<< Previous Page Next Page >>
© 2004-2007 Northvegr.
Most of the material on this site is in the public domain. However, many people have worked very hard to bring these texts to you so if you do use the work, we would appreciate it if you could give credit to both the Northvegr site and to the individuals who worked to bring you these texts. A small number of texts are copyrighted and cannot be used without the author's permission. Any text that is copyrighted will have a clear notation of such on the main index page for that text. Inquiries can be sent to info@northvegr.org. Northvegr™ and the Northvegr symbol are trademarks and service marks of the Northvegr Foundation.
|