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Soon these expeditions assumed a wider range and a wilder character, and historians of the time paint the horrors spread by the vikings in dark colors. In the English churches they had a day of prayer each week to invoke the aid of heaven against the harrying Northmen. In France the following formula was inserted in the church prayer: "A furore Normannorum libera nos, o Domine!"
Numbers of figures could be seen moving about or standing near the fires, the tents of the chiefs were visible some distance back, but the number of these as well as of the fires was much less than it had been on the first arrival of the Northmen, owing to the numbers who had gone to the camp round St. Germain. The night was very dark and a light rain was falling.
Gall, tells in prolix and pompous but evidently heartfelt and sincere terms the tale of the great Emperor's farsightedness. "Charles, who was ever astir," says he, "arrived by mere hap and unexpectedly in a certain town of Narbonnese Gaul. While he was at dinner and was as yet unrecognized of any, some corsairs of the Northmen came to ply their piracies in the very port.
It was with means thus feeble, that the intrepid navigator went to encounter the ice in localities which had never been visited since the time of the Northmen. Setting out from Deptford on the 8th of June, 1576, he sighted the south of Greenland, which he took for the Frisland of Zeno.
The river which was the "revolutionary torrent" of Carrier had been the highway for the Northmen into the heart of Carolingian France. Saumur blends the tenth century and the sixteenth together in the names of Gelduin and Du Plessis; Chinon brings into contact the age of the Plantagenets and the age of Joan of Arc.
Now peace was on all the land, and the frost and snow were bright and sharp everywhere; so that men said that it was a hard winter, and complained of the cold which seemed nothing to us Northmen. Maybe there was a foot of snow in deep places, and the ice was six inches thick on the waters; and the Saxons wondered thereat, saying that they minded the like in such and such years before.
In veneration for the Deity, too, he does not yield to the Spaniard; the arms of the Northmen could not make him apostatize from Christianity when he had once professed it. No opinion which the church condemns had, up to this time, empoisoned the purity of his faith. Nay, his pious extravagance went so far that it became requisite to curb by laws the rapacity of his clergy.
The convents alone kept up any remnants of culture; but as the fury of the Northmen was chiefly directed to them, numbers had been destroyed, and there was more ignorance and wretchedness than at any other time.
The result was a compact between the powerful and the weak, which was the beginning of the feudal system. It was in effect an exchange of protection for service and fealty. You give us absolute control of your persons your military service when required, and a portion of your substance and the fruit of your toil and we will in exchange give you our fortified castles as a refuge from the Northmen.
The wisdom of his advice was the next morning made evident, by the total defeat of the French, and the advance of the Northmen, who in a short space after appeared beneath the walls of Paris. Failing in their attempt to take the city, they returned to Rouen, where they fortified themselves, making it the capital of the territory they had conquered.
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