story of Hilparik, a king of Neustria, whose brutal behaviour to his
various queens and the numerous murders and revenges that darkened his
reign, form a most unsavoury chapter in the story of this portion of
France.

Following this period came the time when France was ruled by the mayors
of the palace who, owing to the weakness of the sovereigns, gradually
assumed the whole of the royal power. After Charles Martel, the most
famous of these mayors, had defeated the Saracens at Tours, came his son
Pepin-le-Bref, the father of Charlemagne. Childeric, the last of the
Merovingian kings, had been put out of the way in a monastery and Pepin
had become the King of France. Charlemagne, however, soon made himself
greater still as Emperor of an enormous portion of Europe--France,
Italy, and Germany all coming under his rule. At his death Charlemagne
divided his empire. His successor Louis le Debonnaire, owing to his
easy-going weakness, fell a prey to Charlemagne's other sons, and at his
death, Charles the Bald became King of France and the country west of
the Rhine. The other portions of the empire falling to Lothaire and the
younger Louis.

During all this period, France had suffered from endless fighting and the
famines that came as an unevitable consequence, and just about this time
Neustria suffered still further owing to the incursions of the Danes. Even
in Charlemagne's time the black-sailed ships of the Northmen had been seen
hovering along the coast near the mouth of the Seine, and it has been said
that the great Emperor wept at the sight of some of these awe-inspiring
pirates.

In the year 841 the Northmen had sailed up the Seine as far as Rouen, but
they found little to plunder, for during the reign of the Merovingian
kings, the town had been reduced to a mere shadow of its former prosperity.
There had been a great fire and a great plague, and its ruin had been
rendered complete during the civil strife that succeeded the death of
Charlemagne. Wave after wave came the northern invasions led by such men as
Bjorn Ironside, and Ragnar Lodbrog. Charles the Bald, fearing to meet these
dreaded warriors, bribed them away from the walls of Paris in the year 875.
But they came again twelve years afterwards in search of more of the
Frenchmen's gold. When Charles the Fat, the German Emperor, became also
King of France, he had to suffer for his treacherous murder of a Danish
chief, for soon afterwards came the great Rollo with a