the defence of the approaches to the bridges, and continued his
feeble policy of paying blackmail.

In 865 St. Denis was pillaged. In 866 Robert the Strong, Count of
Paris, had won the title of the Maccabeus of France, by daring to
stand against the fury of the Northmen and to defeat them; but having
in the heat of battle with the terrible Hastings taken off his
cuirass, he was killed. By order of Charles, St. Denis was fortified
in 869, after another pillage of St. Germain.

In 876 began a second period of raids of even greater ferocity under
the Norwegian Rollo the Gangr[32] (the walker), a colossus so huge
that no horse could be found to bear him. In 884 the whole Christian
people seemed doomed to perish. Flourishing cities and monasteries
became heaps of smoking ruins; along the roads lay the bodies of
priests and laymen, noble and peasant, freeman and serf, women and
children and babes at the breast to be devoured of wolves and
vultures. The very sanctuaries[33] were become the dens of wild
beasts, the haunt of serpents and creeping things.

[Footnote 32: The remains of the great Viking's castle are still shown
at Aalesund, in Norway.]

[Footnote 33: When Alan Barbetorte, after the recovery of Nantes, went
to give thanks to God in the cathedral, he was compelled to cut his
way, sword in hand, through thorns and briers.]

In 885 a great league of pirates--Danes, Normans, Saxons, Britons and
renegade French--on their way to ravage the rich cities of Burgundy
drew up before Paris; and their leader, Siegfroy, demanded passage to
the higher waters. Paris, forsaken by her kings and emperors for more
than a century, scarred and bled by three spoliations, was now to
become a beacon of hope. The Roman walls were repaired, the towers on
the north and south banks were strengthened. Bishop Gozlin, in whom
great learning was wedded to incomparable fortitude, defied the
pirates, warning them that the citizens were determined to resist and
to hold Paris for a bulwark to the land.

Of this most terrible of the Norman sieges of Paris, we have fuller
record. A certain monk of St. Germain des Pres, Abbo by name, who had
taken part in the defence, was one day sitting in his cell reading his
Virgil. Desiring to exercise his Latin, and give an example to other
cities, he determined to sing of a great siege with happier issue than
that of Troy.[34] Abbo saw the black hulls and horrid prows of the
pirates' boats as they turned the