Abbo’s story tells of sorties to secure food, of negotiations that fell through, of a journey made by Eudes to seek help from the Emperor and of the suspicion of treachery that his long absence cast upon him until he banished it by cutting his way through his foes into the town again. His return heartened the besieged, but the besiegers were not disheartened. Hot weather lowered the Seine and an attacking party found footing outside the walls of the island and built a fire against one of the gates. Then in truth the very saints were called on to give aid. Holy Sainte Geneviève’s body had been in some way brought into the Cité from its resting place on the southern hill, and now it was carried about the town that she had succored three centuries before. The trusting declared that they saw Saint Germain in spirit-guise upon the wall encouraging the defenders.
At last Charles appeared upon the hill of Montmartre, but while the plucky fighters in the beleaguered city were preparing to go forth to meet him they learned that once again he had bought off the invading army.
The fat king was deposed and died soon after and again the regal possessions were divided. Paris and its surroundings, the Île de France, fell (887) to Eudes, the candidate of a party of independent nobles who admired his fine work in the defense of the city.
The end of the siege did not mean the end of the new king’s troubles with Rollo. That sturdy opponent never ceased his fighting though his invasions became in time not ravages but reasonably ordered campaigns, since he did not destroy what he gained, and sometimes even repaired the damage he had done. Fortune was impartial. Now Rollo defeated Eudes, now Eudes defeated Rollo. The king’s most famous success was at Montfaucon, then northeast of Paris, but now within the fortifications. For five hundred years before the Revolution there stood on this spot a gibbet three stories high on which one hundred and twenty criminals could be hung at once. The man who built it was one of its victims.
Loyalty to the royal family led to the restoration of the Carlovingian line after the death of Eudes. Charles, called the Simple, a youth of nineteen, was set upon the throne and found himself faced at once by the problem of crushing or checking the perpetual invasion. When no solution had been found after thirteen years the king attempted conciliation. He offered Rollo his daughter in marriage and a considerable piece of territory provided that the rover should acknowledge himself Charles’s vassal and should become a Christian. Rollo considered this proposition for a period of three months and then consented to parley with the king over details. They went with their followers to a town not far from Paris where they ranged themselves on opposite sides of a stream and communicated by messenger. Rollo seems to have made no difficulty on the subject of his bride or of his religion, but he was fastidious as to the land he should receive. No one knew better than he the character and condition of northern France, and he rejected one proposed section after another on the plea of its being too swampy or too close to the sea or—brazenly enough—too seriously hurt by the harrying of the Northmen! When at last he deigned to accept what came to be called Normandy a further difficulty arose because he refused to acknowledge his vassalship by kneeling before the king and kissing his foot. He had never bent the knee to any one, he said, and he never would. He was willing to do it vicariously, however, and he directed one of his followers to offer the feudal salute. But his proxy had been trained in the same school. Stooping suddenly he seized Charles’s foot and raised it to his lips, oversetting the king and provoking bursts of laughter from the Northmen and of indignation from the Franks.
Charles found it prudent to swallow his rage and he was rewarded by gaining an admirable colony. The Northmen or Normans became excellent settlers and their coming invigorated a people whose feeble monarchs had represented only too well their own characteristics. It was largely through this vigorous northern influence that, when a break occurred in the Carlovingian line, Hugh Capet, duke of France and count of Paris, a descendant of Eudes’ brother Robert, was elevated (987) by the barons to the throne which his descendants in the direct line occupied for some three hundred years. The family never has died out. Louis XVI in prison was called “Citizen Capet;” the duke of Orleans, pretender to the non-existent French throne, is a twentieth century representative.
The tenth century found Paris reduced to practically its size when Cæsar sent Labienus to attack it. The Northmen had destroyed the faubourgs on the once flourishing left bank, and it was only by degrees that the abbeys of Sainte Geneviève and of Saint Germain-des-Prés replaced their buildings to meet the needs of the population slowly growing around them once more.
The northern bank was even more forlorn, with but a chapel or two to lighten its waste places, and an insignificant blockhouse, perhaps built by the Northmen, where to-day the Louvre stands magnificent.
Packed into the Cité were the houses and the public buildings of such population as the wars had left. A street led across the island from north to south, connecting the two bridges; another from east to west between the cathedral and the palace. Around the open square made by their crossing clustered the shops and markets. Wooden dwellings filled every alley and even crouched against the huge encircling wall. Nobles in armor, their servitors in leather, ecclesiastics with mail beneath their robes, merchants in more peaceful guise, peasants in walking trim—all these carried on the every-day life of this city which is seemingly immortal since fire and sword and flood have laid it low repeatedly but only for such brief time as it takes for it to grow again.