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ceded without much difficulty, and shortly afterward a chosen band of Northmen bore a coffin into the cathedral, supposed to contain the lifeless body of their chieftain. But no sooner had they set it down than Hastings started up, sword in hand, and killed without hesitation the poor bishop who had baptised him, whilst he was celebrating the sacred office at the altar for the repose of the soul of the remorseless sea-rover *. His followers then drew forth their concealed weapons, massacred all who were assembled in the cathedral, and made themselves masters of the city, which they set fire to, after committing their usual acts of ferocity. Hastings, we are told, then loaded his vessels with a rich booty, and set sail on his return home, not forgetting to take with him the handsomest women of Luna ‡.

Although these stories of Harald and Hastings have no historical value, the events narrated are quite in accordance with the character of the Northmen, and may perhaps have actually. taken place. All that we know with certainty, however, is, that Harald took several towns in Sicily, and that the city of Luna was destroyed in the middle of the ninth century, by a band of Norman sea-rovers; a fact which is attested by several Italian writers as well as by the Norman chroniclers.]

* The Norman Trouvère Benoit, in his rhymed Chronicle of the Dukes of Normandy, says

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"E Hastenc est en pez sailli,

Enz en sun poin s'espée nue
Cum male deserte a rendue
A saint euesque sun parein:
Tut le fendi de ci qu'al sein
Mort l'a e le conte ensement
S'a il des meillors plus de cent."
"Braient dames, plorent puceles
Aqui l'em coupe braz e mameles.
Suz les auters les esceruient,
Tut detrenchent et tut occient,"
says Benoit.

Depping, Liv. ii. ch. 3.

CHAPTER IX.

OF THE MARITIME EXPEDITIONS OF THE ANCIENT

SCANDINAVIANS.

How formidable soever the ancient Scandinavians were by land to most of the inhabitants of Europe, it must yet be allowed that their maritime expeditions occasioned still more destructive ravages and greater terror. We cannot read the history of the eighth, the ninth and the tenth centuries, without observing with surprise the sea covered with their vessels, and from one end of Europe to the other, the coasts of those countries, now the most powerful, a prey to their depredations.

During the space of two hundred years, they almost incessantly ravaged England, and frequently subdued it. They often invaded Scotland and Ireland, and made incursions on the coasts of Livonia, Courland and Pomerania. Already feared, before the time of Charlemagne, they became still more terrible as soon as this great monarch's eyes were closed. He is known to have shed tears on hearing that these barbarians had, on some occasion, defied his name, and all the precautions he had made to oppose them. He foresaw what his people would suffer from their courage under his feeble successors. And never was presage better grounded. They soon spread, like a devouring flame, over Lower Saxony, Friesland, Holland, Flanders, and the banks of the Rhine as far as Mentz. They penetrated into the heart of France, having long before ravaged the coasts; they everywhere found their way up the Somme, the Seine, the Loire, the Garonne and the Rhone. Within the space of thirty years, they frequently pillaged and burnt Paris, Amiens, Orleans, Poitiers, Bourdeaux, Toulouse, Saintes, Angoulême, Nantes, and Tours. They settled themselves in Camargue, at the mouth of the Rhone, from whence they wasted Provence and Dauphiny as far as Valence. In short, they ruined France, levied immense tribute on its monarchs, burnt the palace of Charlemagne at Aix-la-Chapelle, and, in conclusion, caused one of the finest provinces of the kingdom to be ceded to

them. They often carried their arms into Spain, and even made themselves dreaded in Italy and Greece. In fine, they no less infested the north than the south with their incursions, spreading everywhere desolation and terror: sometimes as furiously bent on their mutual destruction, as on the ruin of other nations; sometimes animated by a more pacific spirit, they transported colonies to unknown or uninhabited countries, as if they were willing to repair in one place the horrid destruction of human kind occasioned by their furious ravages in others.

A people, who are ignorant of manual arts and professions, of justice, and of all means of providing for their own security or subsistence except by war, never fail to betake themselves to piracy, if they inhabit a country surrounded by the The Pelasgi or first Greeks were generally pirates and Some of them," says Thucydides †, "attacked un

sea.

robbers.

* In September, 844, a band of these sea-rovers, after plundering the coasts from the Tagus to the Guadalquiver, sailed up the latter river and attacked Seville, which they soon made themselves masters of, the inhabitants having fled, on their approach, to Carmona, and the Moorish troops making but a feeble resistance. On learning this unexpected event, Abderahman II. sent a flotilla with fresh troops down the river, from Cordova, and a sanguinary conflict took place between the sectaries of Odin and Mahomet, presenting, no doubt, one of the most singular scenes recorded in history. On one side the fair-haired sons of the north, on the other the swarthy warriors of Mauritania; both possessing indomitable courage, and both excited by the spirit of religious fanaticism. The Northman beholding the shadowy forms of the Valkyrior hovering over the field of battle, ready to conduct him in triumph, when he fell, to participate in the boisterous joys of Valhalla; the Moor, amidst the clash of arms, equally convinced that dark-eyed Houris were waving their green kerchiefs to welcome those who braved death for Allah and his prophet, to an eternity of blissful voluptuousness. No decided advantage appears to have been gained by either party, we only know that the sea-rovers redescended the Guadalquiver unmolested, carrying with them the spoil of the city and a great number of captives, among whom we may picture many a weeping damsel, who, amidst the frozen regions of the north would long sigh in vain for the sunny plains and vine-covered hills of Andalusia. The Northmen continued cruising for some time after this along the coast, but Abderahman, by stationing vessels at the mouths of the rivers, and troops on the sea-shore, effectually prevented them from committing any further depredations. This seems to have been the first time that the Moors came into contact with the Northmen, whom they took for a people of magicians. See Depping, Histoire des Expéd. Maritimes des Normands, Liv. II. chap. 2.-ED.

See Thucyd. lib. i. cap. 5.

fortified cities; others, such as the Carians and Cretans, who dwelt along the coasts, fitted out fleets to scour the seas." But whereas the Greeks are represented to us as pirates in the first periods of their history, it is to be observed, that the Scandinavians did not become so till late. Sidonius Apollinarius, a writer of the fifth century, is, I think, the first who mentions the piracy of the Northern nations. He attributes this practice to the Saxons, of whom he draws a frightful picture. The Danes and Norwegians had not as yet ventured far from their coasts. I imagine that their nearest neighbours had not allurements sufficient to tempt them. The inhabitants of those countries, as poor and warlike as themselves, were likely to return them blow for blow. Britain and Gaul were too distant and too well defended to become the first attempt of the Scandinavian ravagers. They began then by arming a few vessels, with which they plundered the states nearest to them, and overpowered such few merchant ships as

* The Saxons are first noticed by the ancient writers as occupying, towards the close of the second century, the islands lying near the mouth of the Elbe. Ptol. Geogr. II. 2. A century later they had become so troublesome by their predatory expeditions, that the Emperors Diocletian and Maximian deemed it advisable to place the coasts under the special command of an officer, afterwards dignified with the title of Count of the Saxon Shore. Carausius, a Menapian, who first held this office, instead of warring with the pirates, entered into an alliance with them, and by their assistance, and that of his German (Frankic) soldiers was proclaimed emperor, and reigned in Britain from 287 to 294. "Under his command," says Gibbon, "Britain, destined in future ages to obtain the empire of the sea, already assumed its natural and respectable station of a maritime power. His fleets rode triumphant in the Channel, commanded the months of the Seine and of the Rhine, ravaged the coasts of the ocean, and diffused beyond the columns of Hercules the terror of his name."

The coasts of France continued to be infested by Saxon sea-rovers during the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh centuries. Their expeditions were conducted precisely in the same manner as that of their Scandinavian brethren of the eighth, ninth and tenth centuries. They ascended the rivers in their light barks, pillaged the towns on their banks, and retired with their booty to an island or other naturally strong position on the coast, where they generally passed the winter. A band of these Saxon pirates even succeeded in acquiring a permanent settlement in Neustria, and like their Norman successors, left off their predatory habits for the peaceful pursuits of commerce and agriculture. The district they occupied is called in a charter of Charles-icChauve, Otlingia Saxonica. They had also permanent establishments at Caen, Bayeux, St. Omer, and at the mouth of the Loire. See Depping, Hist. des Expéd. Marit. des Normands, Lib. II. ch. 1.--ED.

traversed the Baltic. Insensibly enriched by their success in little enterprizes, and encouraged to attempt greater, they were at length in a condition to become formidable to distant nations, such as the Anglo-Saxons, the French, or the Flemings, who all of them possessed wealth enough to tempt freebooters, and lived under a government too defective and weak to repel them. From that time this people conceived an amazing fondness for maritime expeditions, and towards the beginning of the ninth century we find these adventurers vastly increased, who, by a strange association of ideas, imagined they acquired eternal glory by committing everywhere, without any pretext, the most horrible violence.

In proportion as the divisions, incapacity and imprudence of Charlemagne's successors weakened their governments, the Scandinavians, encouraged by their growing wealth, constantly fitted out still more numerous fleets. "The French monarchy," says an author of that age*, "labouring under the weight of a bad interior policy, hath been obliged to leave the seas exposed to the barbarous fury of the Normans." The mal-administration of the Saxon kings of England produced the same effect in that island. Both the one and the other had the dangerous imprudence to purchase peace from these pirates; which was not only putting arms into the hands of the enemy, but was also attended with this further inconvenience, that the commanders in these expeditions, who had no authority over each other, only considered themselves bound by their own separate engagements; so that those harassed nations were no sooner freed, by dint of money, from one set of ravagers, than another succeeded, ready to attack them with the same impetuosity, if they were not appeased by the same means. The better to account for that strange facility with which the Scandinavians so long plundered, and so frequently conquered the AngloSaxons and the French, we must remark, that their cruelty, which gave no quarter, and which occasioned those sad lamentations so well known, had impressed these nations

Auctor Vitæ Sti. Genulfi, lib. xi.

+ The monks inserted it as a petition in the Litany, A furore Normannorum, libera nos, Domine.-The French called these adventurers in general Normans, i. e. Northern-men; which afterwards became the proper name of the colony that settled in Neustria, whose history is given below.-P.

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