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As the young men rode up they saw that part of the head and face of a child lay in the midst of the charred heap, with a few other portions of the little one that had been only partially consumed in the fire. The Northmen did not require to be told the cause of what they saw.
No sooner were their sails out of sight than Alfred commenced to build a navy so that he would be able to meet them equally when they next came against him, and he studied the Danish craft to serve as models for the English boats. The galleys of the Northmen were pointed at both ends and could be rowed in either direction.
William Longue-Epee, son of Rollo the great leader of these Northmen, curiously enough commenced the rebuilding of the abbey, and it was completed in the year of the English conquest.
As for the first, let me but see five hundred Romans sworn to stand armed day and night for the defence of Rome, and I dismiss the Northmen." Cecco del Vecchio was unsoftened; honest, but uneducated impracticable, and by nature a malcontent, he felt as if he were no longer necessary to the Senator, and this offended his pride.
Ogier, the Dane, is a real personage. History agrees with romance in representing him as a powerful lord who, originally from Denmark and a Pagan, embraced Christianity, and took service under Charlemagne. He revolted from the Emperor, and was driven into exile. He afterwards led one of those bands of piratical Northmen which ravaged France under the reigns of Charlemagne's degenerate successors.
It needed but a glance at them to assure him that they were the dreaded ships of the Northmen, for the Black Raven floated at many of the mast-heads. From the town the sounds of horns and great shoutings could be heard, showing that there too the approaching fleet had just been discerned as the morning fog lifted from the sea. Edmund held a hurried consultation with his kinsman.
The struggle was prolonged throughout the summer; and when, in November, 886, Charles the Fat at last appeared before Paris, "with a large army of all nations," it was to purchase the retreat of the Northmen at the cost of a heavy ransom, and by allowing them to go and winter in Burgundy, "whereof the inhabitants obeyed not the emperor."
In the second century of the war with the Northmen we begin to hear of churches and cloisters plundered by native chiefs, who yet called themselves Christians, though in every such instance our annalists are careful to record the vengeance of Heaven following swift on sacrilege.
If the Danes won, the last chance of the Saxons under Alfred would have departed and the country must necessarily become like the other countries of the far north. At nightfall, however, the pirates gave way and for protection fled into a fortress on Bratton Hill, where the Saxons surrounded them and besieged them. The Northmen at last ran out of food and were forced to surrender.
So many Northmen were killed that the survivors became alarmed and returned to Greenland. VINLAND FORGOTTEN. The voyages to Vinland soon ceased and the discoveries of Leif and his followers were only remembered in the songs or "sagas" of the people. They thought of Vinland mainly as a land of flat stones, great trees, and fierce natives.
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