One is a little surprised at the progress in the higher branches of the art of war which had clearly been made by the enemy who now assaulted Paris. The description of their means of attack, if not intelligible in every detail, at least shows that the freebooters, merciless heathens as they were, were at all events thorough masters of the engineering science of their age.[90] But, through the whole winter of 885, all their attempts were unavailing. The skill and valour of the defenders were equal to those of the besiegers, and their hearts were strung by every motive which could lead men to defend themselves to the last. But early in the next year, in February 886, accident threw a great advantage into the hands of the besiegers. A great flood in the Seine swept away, or greatly damaged, the lesser bridge, the painted bridge, that which joined the island to the fortress on the left bank of the river.[91] That fortress and the suburb which it defended, the suburb which contained the Roman palace and the ministers of Saint Genoveva and Saint German, were thus cut off from the general defences of the city. The watchful care of the Bishop strove to repair the bridge by night. But the attempt was forestalled by the invaders; the tower was isolated and surrounded by the enemy. The Bishop and the other defenders of the city were left to behold, to weep, and to pray from the walls, at the fate of their brethren whom they could no longer help.[92] The tower was fiercely attacked; the gate did not give way till fire was brought to help the blows of the Northmen; the defenders of the tower all perished either by the flames or by the sword, and their bodies were hurled into the river before the eyes of their comrades.[93] The conquerors now destroyed the tower, and from their new vantage ground they pressed the siege of the island city with increased vigour.
The chances of war seemed now to be turning against the besieged. The stout heart of Bishop Gozlin at last began to fail; he saw that Paris could no longer be defended by the arms of its citizens only. He sent a message to Henry, the Duke of the Eastern Franks, praying him to come to the defence of the Christian people. The Duke came; we are told that his presence did little or nothing for the besieged city;[94] yet in the obscure verses of the poet we seem to discern something like a night attack on the Danish camp on the part of the Saxon Duke and his followers.[95] But in any case the coming of the German allies did nothing for the permanent relief of the city. They went back to their own land; Paris was again left to its own resources, and at last the Bishop, worn out with sorrow and illness, began to seek the usual delusive remedy. He began to enter into negotiations with Sigefrith, which were cut short by the prelate's death. The news was known in the Danish camp before it was commonly known within the walls of Paris, and the mass of the citizens first learnt from the insulting shouts of the besiegers that their valiant Bishop was no more.[96]
The Bishop, as long as he lived, had been the centre and soul of the whole defence, yet it would seem that, at the actual moment of his death, his removal was a gain. We hear no more, at least on the part of the men of Paris, of any attempts at treating with the enemy. One bitter wail of despair from the besieged city reaches our ears, and the hero of the second act of the siege now stands forth. The spiritual chief was gone; the temporal chief steps into his place, and more than into his place. Count Odo appears as cheering the hearts of the people by his eloquence, and as leading them on to repeated combats with the besiegers.[97] At last hunger began to tell on the strength of the defenders; help from without was plainly needed, and this time it was to be sought, not from any inferior chief, but from the common sovereign, the Emperor and King of so many realms. Count Odo himself went forth on the perilous errand; he called on the princes of the Empire for help in the time of need, and warned the sluggish Augustus himself that, unless help came speedily, the city would be lost for ever.[98] Long before any troops were set in motion in any quarter for the deliverance of Paris, the valiant Count was again within its walls, bringing again a gleam of joy to the sad hearts of the citizens, both by the mere fact of his presence and by the gallant exploit by which he was enabled to appear among them. The Northmen knew of his approach, and made ready to bar his way to the city. Before the gate of the tower on the right bank, the tower which still guarded the northern bridge, the lines of the heathen stood ready to receive the returning champion. Odo's horse was killed under him, but, sword in hand, he hewed himself a path through the thick ranks of the enemy; he made good his way to the gate, and was once more within the walls of his own city, ready to share every danger of his faithful people.[99]
Such a city, we may well say, deserved to become the seat of Kings, and such a leader deserved to wear a royal crown within its walls. Eight months of constant fighting passed away after the return of Odo before the lord alike of Rome, of Aachen, and of Paris appeared before the city where just now his presence was most needed. Towards the last days of summer Duke Henry again appeared, but it was fully autumn before the Emperor himself found his way to the banks of the Seine.[100] Duke Henry came, with an army drawn from both the Frankish realms, Eastern and Western.[101] With more show of prudence than he had shown at his former coming, Henry began by reconnoitring both the city and the camp of the enemy, to judge at what point an attack might be made with least risk.[102] But the Northmen were too wary for him. They had surrounded their whole camp with a network of trenches, three feet deep and one foot wide, filled up with straw and brushwood, and made to present the appearance of a level surface.[103] A small party only were left in ambush. As the Duke drew near, they sprang up, hurled their javelins, and provoked him with shouts. Henry pressed on in wrath, but he was soon caught in the simple trap which had been laid for him; his horse fell, and he himself was hurled to the ground. The enemy rushed upon him, slew him, and stripped him in the sight of his army.[104] One of the defenders of the city, the brave Count Ragnar, of whom we have already heard, came in time only to bear off the body, at the expense of severe wounds received in his own person.[105] The corpse of the Duke was carried to Soissons and was buried in the Church of Saint Médard. The army of Henry, disheartened by the loss of their chief, presently returned to their own homes. Paris was again left to its own resources, cheered only by such small rays of hope as might spring from the drowning of one of the besieging leaders in the river.[106]
The news of the death of Henry was brought to the Emperor. Notwithstanding his grief—perhaps an euphemism for his fear—he pressed on towards Paris with his army; but even the chronicler most favourable to him is obliged to confess that the lord of so many nations, at the head of the host gathered from all his realms, did nothing worthy of the Imperial majesty.[107] All in truth that the Emperor Charles did was to patch up a treaty with the barbarians, by virtue of which, on condition of their raising the siege of Paris, they received a large sum as the ransom of the city, and were allowed to ravage Burgundy without let or hindrance.[108] We are told indeed that this step was taken because the land to be ravaged—are we to understand the Kingdom of Boso?—was in rebellion.[109] At all events, the Christian Emperor, the last who reigned over the whole Empire, handed over a Christian land as a prey to pagan teeth, and left Paris without striking a blow. Charles went straight back into Germany, and there spent the small remnant of his reign and life in a disgraceful domestic quarrel.[110] One act however he did which concerns our story. Hugh the Abbot, the successor of Robert the Strong in the greater part of his Duchy, had died during the siege. The valiant Count of Paris was now, by Imperial grant, put in possession of all the domains which had been held by his father.[111]
But the Count was not long to remain a mere Count; the city and its chief were alike to receive the reward of their services in the cause of Christendom. Presently came that strange and unexampled event by which the last Emperor of the legitimate male stock of the Great Charles was deposed by the common consent of all his dominions. The Empire again split up into separate Kingdoms, ruled over by Kings of their own choice. The choice of the Western realm fell, as it well deserved to fall, upon the illustrious Count of Paris. The reign of Odo indeed was not undisturbed, nor was his title undisputed. He had to struggle in the beginning of his reign with a rival in the Italian Guy, and in latter years he had to withstand the more formidable opposition of a rival King of the old Imperial line. And chosen as he was by the voice of what we may now almost venture to call the French people, hallowed as King in the old royal seat of Compiègne by the hands of the Primate of Sens, the Metropolitan of his own Paris,[112] Odo had still to acknowledge the greater power and higher dignity of the Eastern King. He had to confess himself the man of Arnulf, to receive his crown again at Arnulf's hands, while Arnulf was not as yet a Roman Emperor, but still only a simple King of the East Franks.[113] Still the Count had become a King; the city which his stout heart and arm had so well defended had become a royal city. The rank indeed both of the city and its King, was far from being firmly fixed. A hundred years of shiftings and changings of dynasties, of rivalry between Laon and Paris, between the Frank and the Frenchman, had still to follow. But the great step had been taken; there was at last a King of the French reigning in Paris. The city which by its own great deeds had become the cradle of a nation, the centre of a kingdom, was now placed in the foremost rank at their head. The longest and most unbroken of the royal dynasties of Europe had now begun to reign. And it had begun to reign, because the first man of that house who wore a crown was called to that crown as the worthiest man in the realm over which he ruled.
But we must go back to the enemy before Paris. By the treaty concluded with the Emperor, they were to raise the siege, but they were left at liberty to harry Burgundy and other lands. The citizens of Paris, however, steadfastly refused to allow them to pass up the Seine; so the Northmen ventured on a feat which in that age was looked on as unparalleled.[114] They saw, we are told, that the city could not be taken; so they carried their ships for two miles by land, and set sail at a point of the river above the city.[115] While the Empire was falling in pieces, while new kingdoms were arising and were being struggled for by rival kings, the Northmen were harrying at pleasure. Soissons was sacked;[116] after a long and vain attack on the mighty walls of Sens, the enemy found it convenient to retire on a payment of money.[117] Meaux also, under the valiant Count Theodberht, stood a siege; but after the death of their defender, the citizens capitulated. The capitulation was broken by the Northmen; the city was burned, and the inhabitants were massacred.[118] By this time Odo was King. Meanwhile the Northmen, after their retreat from Sens, had made another attempt on Paris, and had been again beaten off by the valiant citizens.[119] The King now came to what was now his royal city, and established a fortified camp in the neighbourhood to secure it from future attacks.[120] Yet when the Northmen once more besieged Paris in the autumn of 889, even Odo himself had to stoop to the common means of deliverance, The new King, the first Parisian King, bought off the threatened attack by the payment of a Danegeld, and the pirates went away by land and sea to ravage the Constantine peninsula, the land which, a generation or two later, was to become the special land of the converted Northmen.[121]
Paris was finally secured against Scandinavian attack by the establishment of the Duchy of Normandy. By the treaty of Clair-on-Epte in 913, Rolf Ganger, changed in French and Latin mouths into Rou and Rollo, became the man of the King of Laon for lands which were taken away from the dominion of the Duke of Paris. Charles the Simple, the restored Karling, was now King; Robert, the brother of Odo, was Duke of the French, and there can be no doubt that the tottering monarchy of Laon gained much by the dismemberment of the Parisian Duchy and by the establishment at the mouth of the Seine of a vassal bound by special ties to the King himself. The foundation of the Rouen Duchy at once secured Paris against all assaults of mere heathen pirates. France had now a neighbour to the immediate north of her—a neighbour who shut her off from the sea and from the mouth of her own great river—a neighbour with whom she might have her wars, as with other neighbours—but a neighbour who had embraced her creed, who was speedily adopting her language and manners, and who formed, part of the same general political system as herself. The shifting relations between France and Normandy during the tenth and eleventh centuries form no part of our subject, but it will be well to bear in mind that Paris was at once sheltered and imprisoned through the Norman possession of the lower course of the Seine.