arm of the Seine below Paris, seven
hundred strong vessels, and many more of lighter build. For two
leagues and a half the very waters of the Seine were covered with
them, and men asked into what mysterious caves the river had
retreated. On November 26th, 885, the attack began at the unfinished
tower on the north bank, replaced in later times by the Grand
Chatelet. Three leaders stand eminent among the defenders of the city:
Bishop Gozlin, the great warrior priest; his nephew, Abbot Ebles of
St. Denis; and Count Eudes (Hugh) of Paris, son of Robert the Strong.
The air is darkened with javelins and arrows; bishop and abbot are in
the very eye of danger; the latter with one shaft spits seven of the
besiegers, and mockingly bids their fellows take them to the kitchen
to be cooked. On the morrow, reinforced by fresh troops, the assault
is renewed, stones are hurled, arrows whistle; the air is filled with
groans and cries; the defenders pour down boiling oil and melted wax
and pitch. The hair of some of the Normans takes fire; they burn and
the Parisians shout--"Jump into the Seine; the water will make
your hair grow again and then look you that it be better combed." One
well-aimed millstone says Abbo, sends the souls of six to hell. The
baffled Northmen retire, entrench a camp at St. Germain l'Auxerrois,
and prepare rams and other siege artillery.

[Footnote 34: It must be admitted, however, that the poet's uncouth
diction is anything but Virgilian.]

Abbo now pauses to bewail the state of France: no lord to rule her,
everywhere devastation wrought by fire and sword, God's people
paralysed at the advancing phalanx of death, Paris alone tranquil,
erect and steadfast in the midst of all their thunderbolts, _polis ut
regina micans omnes super urbes_, a queenly city resplendent above all
towns. The second attack begins with redoubled fury. After battering
the walls of the north tower, monstrous machines on sixteen wheels are
advanced and the besiegers strive to fill the fosse. Trees, shrubs,
slaughtered cattle, wounded horses, the very captives slain before
the eyes of the besieged, are cast in to fill the void. Bishop Gozlin
brings down the Norman chieftain, who had butchered the prisoners, by
a well-aimed arrow: his body, too, is flung into the fosse. The enemy
cover the plain with their swords and the river with their bucklers;
fireships are loosed against the bridge. In the city women fly to the
sanctuaries; they roll the