But when at last the Frankish kings had made peace, the Vikings had grown so bold that they persisted none the less in their attacks on the empire, and in the years that followed the new partition, their successes were even greater than before. All the three brothers were sorely beset by the Northmen, and two of them met with an unbroken series of disasters. |The Danes in Saxony.| Lewis the German fared best; the tough Saxon tribes on his frontier always made a good fight against their hereditary enemies the Danes. But the king saw the new town of Hamburg burnt in 845, so that its bishop had to fly to Bremen, and in 851 a great expedition sailed up the Elbe, defeated the Saxon counts in the open field and returned in triumph to Jutland after ravaging the eastern half of Saxony.
Lothair and Charles fared far worse. The emperor saw his coastland in Frisia ravaged every year. It was in vain that he tried to gain peace by giving the island of Walcheren to Rorik the Dane, on the condition that he should hold it as a fief and guard the coast from his brethren. Other greedy adventurers followed Rorik, till the whole Frisian coast was dotted with their palisaded forts, and their ravages penetrated farther and farther inland, till Lothair in his palace at Aachen began to tremble for his own safety.
But the lot of the young king Charles and of the Western Franks was still less happy. His realm had a far greater length of exposed coastland than those of his brethren, and he was vexed by a lingering civil war, for Pippin of Aquitaine had never acquiesced in the Partition of Verdun, and did his best to maintain himself among his partisans south of the Loire. After much fighting he was compelled for two years to do homage to Charles, but he soon rose in arms again, and though his uncle had the better in the contest he was still able to keep up an obstinate resistance. |The Vikings in France.| Charles thought more of subduing Pippin than of warding off the Danes, and while he was engaged in Aquitaine the northern parts of his realm were fearfully maltreated. As early as 843 the Vikings found courage to winter in Neustria, seizing and fortifying the monastery of Noirmoutier on an island at the Loire-mouth. Next year they were enabled to strike far inland, for Pippin, overborne by his uncle Charles, madly called in Jarl Oscar to his aid, and brought the Vikings up the Garonne as far as Toulouse. Thus introduced into the very heart of the land, they were able both to spy out its fertility and wealth, and to judge of the weakness and unwisdom of its rulers. It was not Aquitaine, however, that first felt their heavy hand. |Sack of Paris.| In 845 they boldly entered the Seine-mouth, plundered Rouen for the second time, and then ascended the river far higher than they had ever mounted before, up to the very walls of the city of Paris. Charles dared not face them, but fortified himself on the heights of Montmartre and the abbey of St. Denis, while the Vikings entered Paris and plundered part of the city, till, stricken by an inexplicable panic, they returned to their boats and dropped down the river again. It was certainly not the army of Charles that they need have feared, for he was thinking of paying tribute rather than of fighting. Indeed he paid 7000 lbs. of gold to this particular horde to induce them to quit Neustria altogether.
From this time onward things went from bad to worse for king Charles, largely owing to his own faults as we may guess, for he was a fickle unsteady prince, always taking new enterprises in hand and dropping them suddenly for some fresh plan before he had half carried them out. Nor was his courage beyond suspicion; more than once in his reign he fled out of danger with an alacrity that savoured more of fear than of prudence. After the sack of Paris we find the Vikings hovering around Neustria on every side; one band had established itself at the Loire-mouth, another under Jarl Oscar watched the Garonne, another devoted itself to the harrying of Flanders, and got succour when required from the emperor Lothair’s Danish vassals on the isle of Walcheren. Spasmodically hurrying about from one scene of Viking outrages to another, king Charles protected nothing, and always arrived too late to be of use. In 847 even Bordeaux, the greatest city of southern Gaul, was beleaguered by the Vikings of the Garonne. |Sack of Bordeaux.| This drew him for some time into Aquitaine, where he for once won a success, by subduing his nephew Pippin, who had lost his former popularity among the Gascons by his drunken and dissolute habits, and still more by his unwisdom in calling in the Danes to his aid. But while Charles lay in Aquitaine he suffered a greater disaster than any he had yet sustained, by the loss of Bordeaux, which was betrayed to Jarl Oscar by a discontented party among its citizens.[[57]] It was to be held for some years by the Vikings.
[57]. By Jews according to one account; by partisans of Pippin according to another.
The plunder of such a wealthy place was well calculated to draw more Danish hordes into Gaul. The condition of the country grew progressively worse, and we trace every year the advance of the ships of the invaders farther and farther up the great rivers. In 850 they grew so bold that they fortified themselves high up the Seine at Givald’s dyke (Jeufosse), where they abode many months and harried all the country about Beauvais and Mantes at their leisure. Charles the Bald, engaged in a luckless campaign against the rebellious duke of the Bretons, brought no succour to his subjects. Nor was he on the spot when in the following year Ghent, Térouanne, and all Flanders were wasted. But probably the capture of his old enemy Pippin of Aquitaine atoned in his eyes for many such disasters: the pretender was taken prisoner by the count of Gascony, who handed him over to the king. In accordance with old Frankish custom Pippin was shorn and thrust into a monastery.
|The Danes at Givald’s dyke.| The year 852 saw the kingdom of the West Franks sink to a worse degradation than any it had yet known. When the Danes again came up the Seine and settled down in their former camp at Givald’s dyke, Charles called out the whole force of Neustria in such overwhelming strength that the Vikings retired behind their palisades and stood on the defensive. Presently the emperor Lothair with his warlike Austrasians marched up to help his brother, and the doom of the Danes seemed settled. But after a siege which lasted many months, Charles suddenly made peace with Godfred the Danish chief and granted him a great sum of money and a tract of land at the Loire-mouth to settle in. Lothair and the Austrasians went home in wrath, and never aided the fickle Neustrian king again.
When the Franks were faring so badly, only one more evil was wanted to make their position unbearable, and this was soon added. In 853 the ten years’ peace between the brothers, which had lasted since the treaty of Verdun, was broken. The restless people of Aquitaine, though they had lost their old leader Pippin, had determined to try a new revolt. They secretly sent to ask aid of Lewis the German, and he, though much vexed at home by Danish raids and Slavonic rebellions, was unwise enough to grant their petition. |Civil War of Lewis and Charles, 854.| He sent his second son Lewis the Saxon, with a Suabian and Bavarian army, into Aquitaine, and declared war on his brother Charles. The emperor Lothair, with more sense than he usually showed, tried to keep his brothers from the mad struggle. But it was not owing to his efforts that the Germans finally consented to retire from southern Gaul, but merely because the younger Lewis met less support than he had expected from the Gascon rebels, and found himself not strong enough to resist the full force of Neustria, when his uncle took the field against him. But while this wholly unjustifiable civil war was in progress, the Danes had made worse havoc than ever in the midst of the kingdom of Charles. They burnt Nantes and Tours, harried the districts around Angers and Blois, and only checked their course before the walls of Orleans, which made a sturdy and successful resistance (853-4).
|Death of Lothair, 855.| In the next year the last formal link which still held together the Frankish empire was snapped by the death of the emperor Lothair. Old before his time, and feeling himself utterly unable to cope with the evils of the day, he retired into the monastery of Prüm, and died there only a few weeks after he had taken the cowl. His heterogeneous empire at once fell to pieces: his eldest son Lewis, who had already been crowned as his colleague in the empire by pope Sergius II., was left nothing but the kingdom of Italy with which to support his imperial title. To Italy he was a good king, but beyond the Alps he met with neither respect nor obedience. His younger brothers Lothair and Charles divided between them the northern parts of their father’s heritage. Lothair took Austrasia, Charles took Provence, and the intermediate Burgundian territory was parted between them.
Thus the unity of the Empire had already become a mockery, and the realm of Charles the Great was split into five kingdoms, owing each other neither love nor homage nor succour in time of need.