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Be Caesar as my husband. So you will save my life and my throne, of which I vow to you an equal share. With the help of your Northmen and the legions I command and who cling to me, we can defeat Constantine and rule the world together. This petty fray is nothing. What matters it if some lives have been lost in a palace tumult? The world lies in your grasp; take it, Olaf, and, with it, me."
The local inquirers seem to incline to attribute the final destruction of Næodunum, the City of the Diablintes in the nomenclature of the time, to the incursions of the Northmen in the ninth century.
Bad weather kept him for a time from the shore, and it was not until April 9 that he was able to land. It was near the mouth of the St. John River, not far from where St. Augustine now stands, that he set foot on shore, the first white man's foot to tread the soil of the coming United States since the days of the Northmen, five centuries before.
It would be wrong to call the Northmen mere corsairs, or even to class them with piratical states such as Cilicia of old, or Barbary in more recent times. Their invasions were rather to be regarded as an after-act of the great migration of the Germanic tribes, one of the last waves of the flood which overwhelmed the Roman Empire, and deposited the germs of modern Christendom.
The Northmen also set up their camp, in expectation of a battle, and darkness had just closed in on them when a shout was heard on the opposite side of the river, and to their surprise a voice was heard speaking in their own language, "Brave warriors, why come ye hither, and what do ye seek?" "We are Northmen, come hither to conquer France," replied Rollo.
For the war-fury which the Northmen named after the Barserkers enwrapped and inflamed him, body and spirit, owing to those strenuous combats, and owing to the venom and the poison which exhaled from those children of sorcery, that spawn of Death and Hell, so that his gentle mind became as it were the meeting-place of storms and the confluence of shouting seas.
A portion of the garrison crossed in boats to the assistance of their friends, Edmund leading over his band of Saxons. With these he fell upon the rear of the Danes engaged in fighting with the force under the count, and the Northmen, attacked on both sides, gave way and took to flight. They were hotly pursued by the Franks.
When their vessels were descried, they were supposed to be Jewish traders according to some, African according to others, and British in the opinion of others; but the gifted monarch, perceiving, by the build and lightness of the craft, that they bare not merchandise, but foes, said to his own folk, 'These vessels be not laden with merchandise, but manned with cruel foes. At these words all the Franks, in rivalry one with another, run to their ships, but uselessly: for the Northmen, indeed, hearing that yonder was he whom it was still their wont to call Charles the Hammer, feared lest all their fleet should be taken or destroyed in the port, and they avoided, by a flight of inconceivable rapidity, not only the glaives, but even the eyes of those who were pursuing then.
The effect of their migrations was to diminish the strength and importance of their native countries which they had left. OTHER SETTLEMENTS OF NORTHMEN. The Northmen made many other voyages which have not yet been mentioned. As early as 852 there was a Scandinavian king in Dublin. They early conquered the Shetland Isles, the Orkneys, and the Hebrides.
There seemed no defence from these Northmen, as they were called, who swarmed like destroying insects upon the coast, up the rivers, and over the lands; three times sacked Paris, the scars to-day being visible in that impressive Roman ruin, the Palais des Thermes, the home of the Caesars, and of the Merovingian kings, which they partially burned.
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