Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/259

 THE NORTHMEN AND OTHER INVADERS 219 mets and coats of mail behind their long shields with spear, sword, or battle-axe. The later Carolingians often adopted I the policy of paying them money to go away, but this only 1 and the Count Odo defended it manfully and made every ! effort to secure from outside an army to relieve the city. But I off the Northmen and allowed them to spend the winter in I plundering Burgundy. It was largely on this account that b| he was deposed, and the incident illustrates the failure of the central government to check the invaders and the fact that H the people of each district must look for protection to their I local officials and great men such as the count and the I bishop. Through the ninth century, then, the Northmen re- peatedly ravaged Frankish territory and sometimes passed I the entire winter there; but the only region settlement where they seem to have made permanent settle- of, t ,. Normandy i ments on any large scale was on the lower course of the Ri ver Sein e. From this position they threatened the I interior, and the King of the West Franks, whose capital was II at Laon in what is now northeastern France, found it ad- i visable to detach the district about Paris as a march against ' them. The first count of this march was Robe rt the S trong. J The ruler of the Northmen on the lower Seine, — or Nor- mans as we may now begin to call them, — during the last quarter of the ninth and the first quarter of the tenth cen- tury, was Rollo (876-927), a somewhat legendary figure i whose exploits are recorded in the later French Roman de j Rou. He made Rouen his capital, and in 911 or 912 he was definitely granted Normandy by the Carolingian king of the West Franks, Charles the Simple. While Normandy was Franks, they probably made smaller settlements in a number of places and were gradually absorbed into the native popu- lation, and everywhere converted to Christianity. In the British Isles the Northmen made numerous settle-
 * made more come the next year. When the Northmen be-
 * sieged Paris for the fourth time in 885, the Bishop Gauzelin
 * j when the Emperor Charles at last arrived, he merely bought
 * the only large area conquered by the Northmen from the