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Rh otherwise, and the episcopal organisation was far more elaborate than was required.

With the death of Louis the Pious in 840 a change took place in the relations between Danes and Franks. In the quarrels over the division of the Empire Lothar encouraged attacks on the territory of his rivals. Harold was bribed by a grant of the island of Walcheren and neighbouring district, so that in 842 we find him as far south as the Moselle, while Horic himself took part in an expedition up the Elbe against Louis the German. In 847 when the brothers had for the time being patched up their quarrels, they stultified themselves by sending embassies to Horic, asking him to restrain his subjects from attacking the Christians. Horic had not the power, even if he had the desire, but, fortunately for the Empire, Denmark was now crippled by internal dissensions. This prevented any attack on the part of the Danish nation as a whole, but Viking raids continued without intermission.

The first sign of dissension in Denmark appeared in 850, when Horic was attacked by his two nephews and compelled to share his kingdom with them. In 852 Harold, the long-exiled King of Denmark, was slain for his treachery to Lothar, and two years later a revolution took place. We are told that after twenty years' ravaging in Frankish territory the Vikings made their way back to their fatherland, and there a dispute arose between Horic and his nephew Godurm (O.N. Guðormr). A disastrous battle was fought and so great was the slaughter that only one boy of the royal line remained. He became king as Horic the Younger. Encouraged by these dissensions, Roric and Godefridus, brother and son respectively to Harold, attempted in 855 to win the Danish kingdom but were compelled to retire again to Frisia. Roric was more successful in 857 when he received permission from Horic to settle in the part of his kingdom lying between the sea and the Eider, i.e. perhaps in North Frisia, a district consisting of a strip of coast-line between the town of Ribe and the mouth of the Eider, with the islands adjacent.

We have now carried the story of the relations between Denmark and her continental neighbours down to the middle of the ninth century, the same period to which we have traced the story of the Viking raids in England and Ireland. Before we tell the story of the transformation which those raids underwent just at this time, we must say something of Viking attacks on the maritime borders of the Continent.

The first mention of raids on the coast of Western Europe is in 800, when Charles the Great visited the coast-line from the Somme to the Seine and arranged for a fleet and coast-guard to protect it against Viking attacks. In 810, probably under direct instruction from the Danish king Godefridus, a fleet of some 200 vessels ravaged Frisia and its islands. Once more Charles the Great strengthened his fleet and the guarding of the shores, but raids continued to be a matter of almost yearly occurrence. The Emperor Louis pursued the same policy as his