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Rh the north, they more than once resumed their raids for plunder, often in concert with the Northmen of the Loire. And at the same time a new scourge fell upon the country. Troops of Hungarians, having de- vastated South Germany, Lorraine and Alsace, advanced in 917 into French Burgundy and threatened the very heart of the kingdom. Confronted with this danger, Charles endeavoured to exert himself. But it was now that the utter weakness of the monarchy was made manifest; the barons, ill-pleased with their sovereign, with one accord refused to join the ost. Only the Archbishop of Rheims appeared with his vassals, and upon him alone the safety of the kingdom was left to depend.

Thenceforward the Northmen in the north and west, and the Hungarians in the East, harry the country with frenzied pillaging and burning. As long as the king was not directly threatened he remained indifferent and supine: not only did he allow the Normans to devastate Brittany from one end to the other, indeed he had officially permitted them to pillage it in 911, but he allowed them also to go up the Loire, fix themselves at Nantes, burn Angers and Tours, and besiege Orleans (919). The only resistance the spoilers met with in that quarter came, not from the king, but from the Marquess of Neustria, Robert, who in 921 succeeded in driving them out of his duchy at the cost of leaving them at full liberty to settle in the Nantes district. In 923 they plundered Aquitaine and Auvergne, the Duke of Aquitaine and the Count of Auvergne being left to deal with them on their own account. In the same year King Charles himself summoned the Northmen to the north of the kingdom in order to resist Raoul, whom the magnates had just set up in his stead as king. From the Loire and from Rouen the pirates burst forth upon Francia; they again went up the Oise and pillaged Artois and the Beauvaisis, so that at the beginning of 924 the threatened lords of Francia were forced to club together to bribe them into retiring. Even then the Normans of Rouen would not depart until they had extorted the cession of the whole of the Bayeux district, and doubtless of that of Séez also.

Still the devastastions went on. The Northmen of the Loire, led by Rögnvald also demanded a fief in their turn, and committed fresh ravages in Neustria. Here were the domains of Hugh the Great, King Raoul consequently made no movement. In December 924 the robbers invaded Burgundy, and being repulsed after a determined and bloody struggle, came and fixed themselves on the Seine near Melun. Much alarmed, King Raoul found in Francia a mere handful of barons prepared to follow him, Church vassals from Rheims and Soissons, and the Count of Vermandois. These could not suffice. He set off at once for Burgundy to try to recruit additional troops. Duke Hugh the Great, fearing for his own dominions, came and took up a post of observation near the Northmen's entrenchments. But while the king was