Northmen: The Viking Saga AD 793-1241 (17 page)

Having failed to intimidate Paris into surrender or take it by a quick assault, the Danes set up a fortified winter camp at the abbey of St Germain l’Auxerrois on the north bank of the Seine, not far from the bridgehead of the Grand Pont. It was not until the last day of January 886 that the Danes launched another attack. This time the Danes divided their forces into three groups. One group attacked the bridgehead tower on the Grand Pont while the other two attacked the bridge itself from ships. The Danes fought for three days to capture the tower, trying to fill its moat in with earth, logs, straw bales and even the bodies of dead animals and captives so that that they could push three mobile siege towers close enough to storm the ramparts. The defenders sallied out and destroyed two of the towers but a few Danes managed somehow to break into the city, only to be quickly killed. The Danes now tried to break the bridge by sending three fireships crashing against it, but it failed to catch light. The weather seemed to be on the side of the Danes, however. On 6 February the Seine flooded and debris smashed the Petit Pont. During the night Gauzelin sent a hand-picked unit across the river to guard the now isolated tower on the south bank so that they could begin to repair the bridge at first light. They were seen by the Danes who at daybreak began to assault the tower. The rest of the garrison could do nothing but watch helplessly as the Danes set fire to the tower and slaughtered everyone in it before throwing the bodies into the river.

It was now possible for the Danes to sail past Paris on the south side. The Danes moved their camp across the river to the abbey of St Germain-des-Prés, Abbo’s monastery. While part of the Danish army maintained the siege other bands raided far and wide, to Chartres in the west and Evreux to the south. Dismayed by the loss of the bridge, Gauzelin sent messengers out with an urgent appeal for help to Henry of Franconia, the count of Saxony. Henry arrived with an army but his soldiers were weakened by the winter weather and he withdrew after the Danes repulsed a half-hearted attack on their camp. Sigfred was rapidly losing enthusiasm for the siege and he and his personal following left after Gauzelin agreed to pay him a face-saving tribute of 60 pounds (27 kg) of silver. After fighting so long and hard, most of the Danes were not willing to be bought off for so little and the siege continued. No contemporary annal names the leader of these diehards, but according to later traditions it was Rollo, who would become famous as the founder of Normandy.

Like so many of the great Viking leaders, Rollo’s origins are uncertain. In Icelandic saga traditions he was identified with Hrolf the Ganger (‘walker’), a son of the Norwegian jarl Rognvald of Møre, who got his nickname because he was so tall that no horse could be found that could carry him. However, the Norman historian Dudo of St Quentin believed that Rollo was a Dane. According to Dudo, Rollo arrived on the Seine as early as 876 and at some point after that captured Rouen, making it his permanent base.

The end of the siege

Hunger and disease began to take a heavy toll on the Parisians in spring 886. By April there was not enough space in the city to bury the dead. One of those who succumbed was Gauzelin, who fell ill and died on 16 April, striking a severe blow to the Parisians’ morale. The Danes must have had sympathisers within the city walls because they heard the news of Gauzelin’s death before most of the townsfolk. Hugh, abbot of St Germain l’Auxerrois, took over spiritual leadership of the city but he too died three weeks later, casting the Parisians into despair. Odo secretly left Paris and rode to meet the emperor to beg him to lead an army in person to lift the siege. Odo received no firm assurances and on his return to Paris was ambushed outside the gates of the battered tower on the north bank, the Danes having learned in advance of his return. Odo’s horse was killed under him but he and the soldiers who accompanied him fought their way through to safety.

It was not until October that Charles, urged on by the archbishop of Reims, who warned him that if he lost Paris he would lose his kingdom, raised an army and marched to relieve the city. On route, Henry of Franconia was killed in a skirmish with the Danes after his horse fell into a ditch. Charles set up camp at the foot of Montmartre but, to the dismay of the Parisians, he simply opened negotiations with the Danes, giving them exactly what they had asked for at the beginning of the siege: permission to sail past Paris and spend the winter ravaging the Burgundians, whose count had proved disloyal. This may have made sense to Charles but it seemed like betrayal to the Parisians and they refused to let the Danes pass (presumably they had repaired the Petit Pont by this time). The Danes were forced to drag their ships overland and launch them back into the river upstream of Paris. Come the spring, Charles made it even less likely that he would get any credit for his relief of Paris when he paid the Danes 700 pounds (318 kg) of silver to leave the Seine. Some of the Danes did indeed leave but a large contingent under Rollo remained behind.

Charles the Fat’s behaviour at Paris left him looking weak and incompetent and he quickly lost support. While he was holding a council at Frankfurt in November 887, Charles was deposed by his nephew, Arnulf of Carinthia (r. 887 – 99), who was elected king in his place by the East Franks. Deserted even by his servants, Charles retired to his estate at Donaueschingen in the Black Forest where he died on 13 January 888: it was rumoured that he had been strangled on Arnulf’s orders. Charles’ death triggered the final break-up of Charlemagne’s empire. Arnulf’s coup was recognised only by the East Franks. The nobles of Burgundy, Provence and Italy all elected their own kings, as did those of West Francia, who chose Odo (r. 888 – 98), the hero of the siege of Paris and the first king of the Franks who was not a Merovingian or a Carolingian. West and East Francia would never be reunited, developing instead into the medieval kingdoms of France and Germany.

Arnulf and Odo both proved to be energetic rulers and their reigns saw a marked decline in Viking activity in the Frankish kingdoms. Arnulf won a major victory over the Danes at the battle on the River Dyle, near Louvain in modern Belgium, in September 891. This was the same Danish army that had laid siege to Paris in 885 – 6. The Danes had built a fortified camp on the riverbank. Led by Arnulf himself, the East Franks stormed the camp. The Danes panicked and tried to escape across the river but in the free-for-all hundreds, if not thousands, were crushed to death or drowned, their corpses damming the river ‘so that it seemed to run dry’. Among the dead was a king called Sigfred, but it is not clear if he was the same Sigfred who led the Danes at the siege of Paris. The survivors retreated to Boulogne, from where they crossed to England in 892 in ships provided by the locals, who no doubt thought them a small price to pay to see the back of the Vikings. A factor that is likely to have influenced their decision just as much as defeat on the Dyle was a famine in Flanders, which meant the army could not live off the land. Unfortunately for the Danes, they found England well prepared for them.

The foundation of Normandy

Odo was not a Carolingian and their supporters frequently challenged his authority. In 893, the Carolingian Charles the Simple, the posthumous son of King Louis the Stammerer, was crowned king in opposition to Odo. A long civil war followed but the Danes were busy in England and there was no resurgence of Viking raiding. Odo finally triumphed in the war in 897 and Charles withdrew his claim to the throne. However, when Odo died in 898, Charles took the throne without opposition, restoring the Carolingian line. Charles’ kingdom was still host to Viking armies on the Loire and the Seine. The Frankish kings had never regained effective control of either area since Danish Vikings first arrived in force in 841. The Seine Vikings were the greater threat because Rollo’s base at Rouen was too close to Paris and the royal estates in the Île de France. Rollo’s depredations in the area only finally came to an end in 911, when he was defeated in an attack on Chartres. The next year Rollo met with Charles the Simple (whose nickname means ‘sincere’ not simple-minded) at the village of St-Claire-sur-Epte, and the two men negotiated a peace deal. In return for his homage, conversion to Christianity, and agreement to defend the Seine against other Viking raiders, Charles appointed Rollo as count of Rouen. It was a mutually advantageous arrangement. Charles got recognition of his sovereignty over lands he did not actually control, while Rollo’s de facto rule over the lower Seine was legitimised. This was, of course, not the first time a Frankish ruler had come to this kind of agreement with a Viking leader. Charles may have expected that it would prove to be a temporary expedient and that Rollo’s tenure would be as short-lived as Roric’s and Godfred’s had been on the lower Rhine. However, Rollo’s principality, soon to become known as Normandy, from
Nordmannia
meaning ‘Northman’s Land’, not only survived but flourished, coming to play an influential role in European history as part of the Viking Age’s ‘long tail’.

Rollo stuck to his side of the agreement and kept other Viking raiders out of the Seine, but he was determined to be no more obedient to his king than he really had to be. A story told about the meeting at St-Claire-sur-Epte by Dudo relates that Rollo was required to kiss King Charles’ foot as a condition of the agreement, but he was too proud to do so. ‘The bishops said to Rollo, “you who receive such a gift ought to kiss the king’s foot.” And he said: “I shall never bend my knees to the knees of another nor shall I kiss anyone’s foot”. Compelled, however, by the prayers of the Franks, he ordered another warrior to kiss the king’s foot. This man immediately seized the king’s foot and put it to his mouth and kissed it while the king was still standing. The king fell flat on his back. This raised a great laugh and greatly stirred up the crowd.’ It is easy to read this most likely apocryphal tale as evidence of Rollo’s freebooting Viking spirit, but in his desire to pay no more than lip service to his overlord, he was really no different to any other independent-minded Frankish count. Rollo left Paris alone but he was always on the look-out for opportunities to expand his territories, attacking the neighbouring county of Flanders several times, though without success. In 922, Charles the Simple was deposed and a civil war broke out. The political turmoil gave Rollo an opportunity to secure control of Caen and Bayeux, almost doubling the size of Normandy.

Rollo’s agreement with King Charles gave Danes the security to settle in Normandy and put down permanent roots. The first settlers were Rollo’s own warriors and their families. Rollo distributed the land in much the same way that a Viking leader would have shared the loot from a successful raid, keeping the largest share for himself and giving the more important warriors larger estates than the rank and file warriors. These first settlers were soon joined by others from England, where the West Saxon conquest of the Danelaw was in full swing. One of these refugees was jarl Thorketill, who arrived with his followers from Bedford in 920. Little is known about the nature of the Danish settlement but, as happened in England, they probably took over the abandoned estates of local nobles and monasteries: the local peasants simply got new landlords. It is clear from the distribution of Danish place-names that Danes did not settle in all of the lands granted to Rollo, and that even in the areas they did settle they must have been a minority among the native population. The densest clusters of settlement seem to have been around Rouen and Caen and in the Pays de Caux between the Seine estuary and the fishing port of Fécamp on the Channel coast. The settlers left little archaeological evidence of their presence, indicating that they quickly adopted the material culture and burial customs of the native population. So far, the only certain pagan Viking burials found in France are a female burial discovered near Pîtres and a chieftain’s ship burial on the Île de Groix off the coast of Brittany.

Viking Brittany

While Rollo was consolidating his position in Normandy, a Viking leader called Rognvald established another Viking colony in Brittany. By the beginning of the tenth century, the Franks were getting the measure of the Vikings, and so too were the English and the Irish. Brittany’s relative poverty had protected it in the ninth century but it now began to look increasingly like a soft target. When the settlement of Rollo and his followers in Normandy in 911 closed the Seine to raiders, the Vikings turned their full fury on Brittany. As monastery after monastery was sacked, Breton monks fled en masse to seek safety in France and England, taking with them whatever books and treasures they could carry. After Rognvald captured Nantes in 919, Breton resistance collapsed completely. The aristocracy followed the monks into exile in France and England and Brittany became a Viking kingdom with its capital at Nantes. Nothing is known about Rognvald’s earlier career, but it is clear that, unlike Rollo, he was no statesman, making no effort either to legitimise or institutionalise his rule. Rognvald seems to have seen Brittany as no more than a base from which to launch plundering raids on Francia. While York, Dublin and Rouen prospered as trade centres under Viking rule, Nantes, whose location at the mouth of the Loire should have ensured its prosperity too, was allowed to become semi-derelict: its cathedral was abandoned and became overgrown with brambles.

In 924 – 5, Rognvald raided deep into the Auvergne but was defeated by the Franks and made a fighting retreat to Nantes where it is thought he died soon after. According to the
Miracles
of
St
Benedict
, Rognvald’s death was divine punishment for attacking the saint’s abbey at Fleury on the Loire. Fittingly, for a man who had inspired such terror in his lifetime, Rognvald’s death was marked by dreadful portents, lights in the sky, moving rocks and apparitions. It is not known who, if anyone, succeeded Rognvald as leader of the Vikings in Brittany. The pirate state began to unravel. When the Vikings gathered in Nantes to launch a major raid up the Loire, the peasants of Brittany rebelled. Lacking strong leadership and military skills, the peasants were defeated but the revolt encouraged Alain Barbetorte (‘twistbeard’), a Breton noble living in exile in England, to lead an invasion of Brittany in 936 with a fleet supplied by king Æthelstan. Landing from the sea, Alain enjoyed complete surprise, capturing and executing a party of Viking revellers celebrating a wedding near Dol. A Viking fort at Péran, further west along the coast, was destroyed by fire around this time, possibly as a result of fighting during Alain’s reconquest. Alain captured Nantes after a fierce battle in 937 and the Bretons stormed the Vikings’ last stronghold, at Trans, in 939. The destruction of the Viking colony doubly benefited the Franks. The last major Viking threat to the Frankish kingdom was eliminated, while Brittany never fully recovered and drifted permanently under Frankish influence.