Chapter VII: Part 7

Of such a mission we may be sure Charles the Bald and his successors never dreamed. The chances are that those to whom that mission really fell dreamed of it just as little. We must never forget that the national movements of those days were for the most part instinctive and unconscious; but they were all the more powerful and lasting for being instinctive and unconscious. An act of Charles the Bald, one of the ordinary grants by a King to one of his vassals, created the French nation. The post from which the King himself shrank was entrusted to a valiant subject, and Robert the Strong, the mightiest champion of the land against the heathen invader, received the government of the whole border land threatened by the Breton and the Northman.[62] We may be sure that the thoughts of the King himself did not reach at the most beyond satisfaction at having provided the most important post in his realm with a worthy defender. To shield himself from the enemy by such a barrier as was furnished by Robert's country, it was worth while to sacrifice the direct possession even of the fair lands between the Loire and the Seine. His dominion was a _mark_;[63] his truest title a _marquis_. But the Mark of France, like the Mark of Brandenburg and the Mark of Austria, was destined to great things. Robert no doubt, like the other governors and military chiefs, who were fast growing from magistrates into Princes, rejoiced in the prospect of becoming the source of a dynasty, a dynasty which could not fail to take a high place among the princes of Gaul. But he hardly dreamed of founding a line of Kings, and a line of Kings the most lasting that the world ever saw. Still less did he dream of founding a nation. But he did both. The Counts who held the first place of danger and honour soon eclipsed in men's eyes the Kings who had retired to the safer obscurity of their eastern frontier. The city of the river became a national centre in a way in which the city of the rock could never be. The people of the struggling Romance speech of northern Gaul found a centre and a head in the rising city and its gallant princes. That Robert was himself of German descent, the son of a stranger from some of the Teutonic provinces of the Empire,[64] mattered not a whit. From the beginning of their historic life the Parisian Dukes and Kings have been the leaders and representatives of the new French nationality. No royal dynasty has ever been so thoroughly identified with the nation over which it ruled, because no royal dynasty could be so truly said to have created the nation. Paris, France, and the Dukes and Kings of the French are three ideas which can never be kept asunder. A true instinct soon gave the ruler of the new state a higher and a more significant title. The Count of Paris was merged in the Duke of the French, and the Duke of the French was soon to be merged in the King. The name of _Francia_, a name whose shiftings and whose changes of meaning have perplexed both history and politics--a name which Eastern and Western writers seem to have made it a kind of point of honour to use in different meanings[65]--now gradually settles down, as far as the Western Kingdom is concerned, into the name of a territory, answering roughly to the Celtic Gaul of the elder geography.[66] It has still to be distinguished by epithets like _Occidentalis_ and _Latina_, from the Eastern _Francia_ of Teutonic speech, but, in the language of Gaul, _Francia_ and _Franci_ for the future mean the dominion and the subjects of the lord of Paris. We need not say that the lands beyond the Rhone, the Saône, and the Maes, which formed no part of the Western Kingdom, are not included under the name of _Francia_. But neither are the lands held, like the French Duchy, in fief of the common sovereign, Brittany, Flanders, Aquitaine, and the ducal Burgundy. To these must be added Normandy, the land wrested from the French Duchy to form the inheritance of the converted Northman. France is still but one among the principalities of Gaul; but, like Wessex in England, like Castile in Spain, like Prussia in Germany and Piedmont in Italy, it was the one destined, by one means or another, to swallow up the rest. From the grant of 861, from the foundation of the Parisian Duchy, we may date the birth of the French state and nation. From that day onwards France is whatever can, by fair means or foul, be brought into obedience to Paris and her ruler.

Count Robert the Strong, the Maccabæus of the West-Frankish realm, the patriarch of the old Capets, of the Valois, and of the Bourbons, died as he had lived, fighting for Gaul and Christendom against the heathen Dane.[67] But his dominion and his mission passed to a son worthy of him--to Odo, or Eudes,[68] the second Count of his house, presently to be the first of the Kings of Paris. In his day came the great struggle, the mighty and fiery trial, which was to make the name of Paris and her lord famous throughout the world. On the great siege of Paris by the Northmen, the turning-point in the history of the city, of the Duchy, and in truth of all Western Europe, we may fairly dwell at somewhat greater detail than we have done on the smaller events which paved the way for it. We must bear in mind the wretched state of all the countries which made up the Carolingian Empire. The Northmen were sailing up every river, and were spreading their ravages to every accessible point. Every year in the various contemporary annals is marked by the harrying of some fresh district, by the sack of some city, by the desecration of some revered monastery.[69] Resistance, when there was any, was almost wholly local; the invaders were so far from encountering the whole force of the Empire that they never encountered the whole force of any one of its component kingdoms. The day of Saul-court, renowned in that effort of old Teutonic minstrelsy which may rank alongside of our own songs of Brunanburh and Maldon,[70] the day when the young king Lewis led the West-Frankish host to victory over the heathen,[71] stands out well-nigh alone in the records of that unhappy time. While neither realm was spared, while one set of invaders ravaged the banks of the Seine and the Loire, while another more daring band sacked Aachen, Köln, and Trier,[72] the rival Kings of the Franks were mainly intent on extending their borders at the expense of one another. Charles the Bald was far more eager to extend his nominal frontier to the Rhine,[73] or to come back from Italy adorned with the Imperial titles,[74] than he was to take any active step to drive out the common enemy of all the kindred realms. At last the whole Empire, save the Burgundian Kingdom of Boso, was once more joined together under Charles the Fat. Paris was again under the nominal sovereignty of an Emperor whose authority, equally nominal everywhere, extended also over Rome and Aachen. Precarious and tottering as such an Empire was, the even nominal union of so many crowns on a single head, however unfit that head was to bear their weight, does seem to have given for the moment something like a feeling of greater unity and thereby of greater strength. Paris, defended by its own Count and its own Bishop, was defended by them in the name of His Emperor, Lord of the World.[75] The sovereigns alike of East and West were appealed to for help, and at least a show of help was sent in the name of both parts of the Frankish realm.[76] The defence of Paris was essentially a local defence, waged by its own citizens under the command of their local chiefs. Still the great check which the invaders then received came nearer to a national act on the part of the whole Frankish Empire than anything which had happened since the death of Charles the Great.

Our materials for the great siege are fairly abundant. Several of the contemporary chronicles, in describing this gallant struggle, throw off somewhat of their usual meagreness, and give an account conceived with an unusual degree of spirit and carried out with an unusual amount of detail.[77] And we have a yet more minute account, which, even as it is, is of considerable value, and which, had it been a few degrees less wearisome and unintelligible, would have been of the highest interest. Abbo, a distinguished churchman of those times, a monk of the house of Saint German, and not only a contemporary, but a spectator and sharer in the defence,[78] conceived the happy idea of writing a minute narrative of the exciting scenes which he had witnessed. But he unhappily threw his tale into the shape of hexameters which have few rivals for affectation and obscurity. The political biographer of Lewis the Pious at all events writes Latin; Abbo writes in a Babylonish dialect of his own composing, stuffed full of Greek and other out-of-the-way words, and to parts of which he himself found it needful to attach a glossary. Still with all this needless darkness, he gives us many details, and he especially preserves many individual names which we should not find out from the annalists. A fervent votary of Saint German, a loyal citizen of Paris, a no less loyal subject of the valiant Count who, when he wrote, had grown into a King, Abbo had every advantage which personal knowledge and local interest could give to a narrator of the struggle. Only we cannot help wishing that he had stooped to tell his tale, if not in his native tongue, whether Romance or Teutonic, yet at least in the intelligible Latin of Nithard in a past generation and of Richer in a future one.[79]

The poet begins with a panegyric on his city, in which he may, while dealing with such a theme, be forgiven for somewhat unduly exalting its rank among the cities of the world.[80] Its position, the strength of the island-fortress, connected with the mainland by its castles on either side, is plainly set forth.[81] The defenders of the city are clearly set before us; Odo the Count, the future King, as we are often reminded,[82] and Gozlin the Bishop, stand forth in the front rank. Around the two great local chiefs are gathered a secondary band of their kinsfolk and supporters, clerical and lay. There is Odo's brother Robert, himself to wear a crown in the city which he defended, but in days to which the foresight of the poet did not extend. There is the valiant Count Ragnar; there is the warlike Abbot Ebles of Saint Germans, whose exploits are recorded with special delight by the loyal monk of his house.[83] A crowd of lesser names are also handed down to us, names of men who had their honourable share in the work, but with whose bare names it is hardly needful to burthen the memories of modern readers. A great object of attack on the part of the Northmen was the castle which guarded the bridge on the right bank of the river, represented in after times by the Grand Châtelet. The watchful care of the Bishop had been diligent in strengthening this and the other defences of the city; but the last works which were to guard this important point were not fully finished.[84] The Danish fleet now drew near, a fleet manned, so it was said, by more than thirty thousand warriors.[85] As in the tale of our own Brihtnoth,[86] the invaders began with a peaceful message. The leader of the pirates, Sigefrith, the sea-king,--a king, as the poet tells us, without a kingdom[87]--sought an interview with Count Odo, and demanded a peaceful passage through the city. Odo sternly answers that the city is entrusted to his care by his lord the Emperor, and that he will never forsake the duty which was laid upon him. The siege now began; the Northmen strove to storm the unfinished tower. After two days of incessant fighting, and an intervening night spent in repairing the defences, the valour of the defenders prevailed. The Count and the Bishop, and the Abbot who could pierce seven Danes with a single shot of his arrow,[88] finally drove back the heathen to their ships; and instead of the easy storm and sack which they doubtless looked for on this, as on earlier occasions, the Northmen were driven to undertake the siege of the city in form.[89]

One is a little surprised at the progress in the higher branches of the art of war which had clearly been made by the enemy who now assaulted Paris. The description of their means of attack, if not intelligible in every detail, at least shows that the freebooters, merciless heathens as they were, were at all events thorough masters of the engineering science of their age.[90] But, through the whole winter of 885, all their attempts were unavailing. The skill and valour of the defenders were equal to those of the besiegers, and their hearts were strung by every motive which could lead men to defend themselves to the last. But early in the next year, in February 886, accident threw a great advantage into the hands of the besiegers. A great flood in the Seine swept away, or greatly damaged, the lesser bridge, the painted bridge, that which joined the island to the fortress on the left bank of the river.[91] That fortress and the suburb which it defended, the suburb which contained the Roman palace and the ministers of Saint Genoveva and Saint German, were thus cut off from the general defences of the city. The watchful care of the Bishop strove to repair the bridge by night. But the attempt was forestalled by the invaders; the tower was isolated and surrounded by the enemy. The Bishop and the other defenders of the city were left to behold, to weep, and to pray from the walls, at the fate of their brethren whom they could no longer help.[92] The tower was fiercely attacked; the gate did not give way till fire was brought to help the blows of the Northmen; the defenders of the tower all perished either by the flames or by the sword, and their bodies were hurled into the river before the eyes of their comrades.[93] The conquerors now destroyed the tower, and from their new vantage ground they pressed the siege of the island city with increased vigour.

The chances of war seemed now to be turning against the besieged. The stout heart of Bishop Gozlin at last began to fail; he saw that Paris could no longer be defended by the arms of its citizens only. He sent a message to Henry, the Duke of the Eastern Franks, praying him to come to the defence of the Christian people. The Duke came; we are told that his presence did little or nothing for the besieged city;[94] yet in the obscure verses of the poet we seem to discern something like a night attack on the Danish camp on the part of the Saxon Duke and his followers.[95] But in any case the coming of the German allies did nothing for the permanent relief of the city. They went back to their own land; Paris was again left to its own resources, and at last the Bishop, worn out with sorrow and illness, began to seek the usual delusive remedy. He began to enter into negotiations with Sigefrith, which were cut short by the prelate's death. The news was known in the Danish camp before it was commonly known within the walls of Paris, and the mass of the citizens first learnt from the insulting shouts of the besiegers that their valiant Bishop was no more.[96]

The Bishop, as long as he lived, had been the centre and soul of the whole defence, yet it would seem that, at the actual moment of his death, his removal was a gain. We hear no more, at least on the part of the men of Paris, of any attempts at treating with the enemy. One bitter wail of despair from the besieged city reaches our ears, and the hero of the second act of the siege now stands forth. The spiritual chief was gone; the temporal chief steps into his place, and more than into his place. Count Odo appears as cheering the hearts of the people by his eloquence, and as leading them on to repeated combats with the besiegers.[97] At last hunger began to tell on the strength of the defenders; help from without was plainly needed, and this time it was to be sought, not from any inferior chief, but from the common sovereign, the Emperor and King of so many realms. Count Odo himself went forth on the perilous errand; he called on the princes of the Empire for help in the time of need, and warned the sluggish Augustus himself that, unless help came speedily, the city would be lost for ever.[98] Long before any troops were set in motion in any quarter for the deliverance of Paris, the valiant Count was again within its walls, bringing again a gleam of joy to the sad hearts of the citizens, both by the mere fact of his presence and by the gallant exploit by which he was enabled to appear among them. The Northmen knew of his approach, and made ready to bar his way to the city. Before the gate of the tower on the right bank, the tower which still guarded the northern bridge, the lines of the heathen stood ready to receive the returning champion. Odo's horse was killed under him, but, sword in hand, he hewed himself a path through the thick ranks of the enemy; he made good his way to the gate, and was once more within the walls of his own city, ready to share every danger of his faithful people.[99]

Such a city, we may well say, deserved to become the seat of Kings, and such a leader deserved to wear a royal crown within its walls. Eight months of constant fighting passed away after the return of Odo before the lord alike of Rome, of Aachen, and of Paris appeared before the city where just now his presence was most needed. Towards the last days of summer Duke Henry again appeared, but it was fully autumn before the Emperor himself found his way to the banks of the Seine.[100] Duke Henry came, with an army drawn from both the Frankish realms, Eastern and Western.[101] With more show of prudence than he had shown at his former coming, Henry began by reconnoitring both the city and the camp of the enemy, to judge at what point an attack might be made with least risk.[102] But the Northmen were too wary for him. They had surrounded their whole camp with a network of trenches, three feet deep and one foot wide, filled up with straw and brushwood, and made to present the appearance of a level surface.[103] A small party only were left in ambush. As the Duke drew near, they sprang up, hurled their javelins, and provoked him with shouts. Henry pressed on in wrath, but he was soon caught in the simple trap which had been laid for him; his horse fell, and he himself was hurled to the ground. The enemy rushed upon him, slew him, and stripped him in the sight of his army.[104] One of the defenders of the city, the brave Count Ragnar, of whom we have already heard, came in time only to bear off the body, at the expense of severe wounds received in his own person.[105] The corpse of the Duke was carried to Soissons and was buried in the Church of Saint Médard. The army of Henry, disheartened by the loss of their chief, presently returned to their own homes. Paris was again left to its own resources, cheered only by such small rays of hope as might spring from the drowning of one of the besieging leaders in the river.[106]

The news of the death of Henry was brought to the Emperor. Notwithstanding his grief--perhaps an euphemism for his fear--he pressed on towards Paris with his army; but even the chronicler most favourable to him is obliged to confess that the lord of so many nations, at the head of the host gathered from all his realms, did nothing worthy of the Imperial majesty.[107] All in truth that the Emperor Charles did was to patch up a treaty with the barbarians, by virtue of which, on condition of their raising the siege of Paris, they received a large sum as the ransom of the city, and were allowed to ravage Burgundy without let or hindrance.[108] We are told indeed that this step was taken because the land to be ravaged--are we to understand the Kingdom of Boso?--was in rebellion.[109] At all events, the Christian Emperor, the last who reigned over the whole Empire, handed over a Christian land as a prey to pagan teeth, and left Paris without striking a blow. Charles went straight back into Germany, and there spent the small remnant of his reign and life in a disgraceful domestic quarrel.[110] One act however he did which concerns our story. Hugh the Abbot, the successor of Robert the Strong in the greater part of his Duchy, had died during the siege. The valiant Count of Paris was now, by Imperial grant, put in possession of all the domains which had been held by his father.[111]

But the Count was not long to remain a mere Count; the city and its chief were alike to receive the reward of their services in the cause of Christendom. Presently came that strange and unexampled event by which the last Emperor of the legitimate male stock of the Great Charles was deposed by the common consent of all his dominions. The Empire again split up into separate Kingdoms, ruled over by Kings of their own choice. The choice of the Western realm fell, as it well deserved to fall, upon the illustrious Count of Paris. The reign of Odo indeed was not undisturbed, nor was his title undisputed. He had to struggle in the beginning of his reign with a rival in the Italian Guy, and in latter years he had to withstand the more formidable opposition of a rival King of the old Imperial line. And chosen as he was by the voice of what we may now almost venture to call the French people, hallowed as King in the old royal seat of Compiègne by the hands of the Primate of Sens, the Metropolitan of his own Paris,[112] Odo had still to acknowledge the greater power and higher dignity of the Eastern King. He had to confess himself the man of Arnulf, to receive his crown again at Arnulf's hands, while Arnulf was not as yet a Roman Emperor, but still only a simple King of the East Franks.[113] Still the Count had become a King; the city which his stout heart and arm had so well defended had become a royal city. The rank indeed both of the city and its King, was far from being firmly fixed. A hundred years of shiftings and changings of dynasties, of rivalry between Laon and Paris, between the Frank and the Frenchman, had still to follow. But the great step had been taken; there was at last a King of the French reigning in Paris. The city which by its own great deeds had become the cradle of a nation, the centre of a kingdom, was now placed in the foremost rank at their head. The longest and most unbroken of the royal dynasties of Europe had now begun to reign. And it had begun to reign, because the first man of that house who wore a crown was called to that crown as the worthiest man in the realm over which he ruled.

But we must go back to the enemy before Paris. By the treaty concluded with the Emperor, they were to raise the siege, but they were left at liberty to harry Burgundy and other lands. The citizens of Paris, however, steadfastly refused to allow them to pass up the Seine; so the Northmen ventured on a feat which in that age was looked on as unparalleled.[114] They saw, we are told, that the city could not be taken; so they carried their ships for two miles by land, and set sail at a point of the river above the city.[115] While the Empire was falling in pieces, while new kingdoms were arising and were being struggled for by rival kings, the Northmen were harrying at pleasure. Soissons was sacked;[116] after a long and vain attack on the mighty walls of Sens, the enemy found it convenient to retire on a payment of money.[117] Meaux also, under the valiant Count Theodberht, stood a siege; but after the death of their defender, the citizens capitulated. The capitulation was broken by the Northmen; the city was burned, and the inhabitants were massacred.[118] By this time Odo was King. Meanwhile the Northmen, after their retreat from Sens, had made another attempt on Paris, and had been again beaten off by the valiant citizens.[119] The King now came to what was now his royal city, and established a fortified camp in the neighbourhood to secure it from future attacks.[120] Yet when the Northmen once more besieged Paris in the autumn of 889, even Odo himself had to stoop to the common means of deliverance, The new King, the first Parisian King, bought off the threatened attack by the payment of a Danegeld, and the pirates went away by land and sea to ravage the Constantine peninsula, the land which, a generation or two later, was to become the special land of the converted Northmen.[121]

Paris was finally secured against Scandinavian attack by the establishment of the Duchy of Normandy. By the treaty of Clair-on-Epte in 913, Rolf Ganger, changed in French and Latin mouths into Rou and Rollo, became the man of the King of Laon for lands which were taken away from the dominion of the Duke of Paris. Charles the Simple, the restored Karling, was now King; Robert, the brother of Odo, was Duke of the French, and there can be no doubt that the tottering monarchy of Laon gained much by the dismemberment of the Parisian Duchy and by the establishment at the mouth of the Seine of a vassal bound by special ties to the King himself. The foundation of the Rouen Duchy at once secured Paris against all assaults of mere heathen pirates. France had now a neighbour to the immediate north of her--a neighbour who shut her off from the sea and from the mouth of her own great river--a neighbour with whom she might have her wars, as with other neighbours--but a neighbour who had embraced her creed, who was speedily adopting her language and manners, and who formed, part of the same general political system as herself. The shifting relations between France and Normandy during the tenth and eleventh centuries form no part of our subject, but it will be well to bear in mind that Paris was at once sheltered and imprisoned through the Norman possession of the lower course of the Seine.

It follows then that the next besiegers of Paris came from a different quarter; and these next besiegers came from the quarter from which its last besiegers have come. In the course of the tenth century, the century of so many shifting relations between Rouen, Laon, and Paris, while the rivalry between King and Duke sometimes broke forth and sometimes slumbered, Paris was twice attacked or threatened by German armies. Both the First and the Second Otto at least appeared in the near neighbourhood of the city. In 946, the first and greatest of the name, not yet Emperor in formal rank, but already exercising an Imperial pre-eminence over the kingdoms into which the Frankish Empire had split up, entered the French Duchy with two royal allies or vassals in his train. One was the Burgundian King Conrad, Lord of the realm between the Rhone and the Alps; the other was the nominal King of Paris and its Duke, Lewis, alike the heir of all the Karlings and the descendant of our own Ælfred, whose nominal reign over the Western Kingdom was practically well nigh confined to the single fortress of Compiègne. Among the shifting relations of the Princes of the Western Kingdom, Hugh the Duke of the French and Richard the Duke of the Normans were now allied against their Carolingian over-lord. He had lately been their prisoner, and had been restored to freedom and kingship only by the surrender of the cherished possession of his race, the hill and tower of Laon. Otto, the mighty Lord of the Eastern realm, felt himself called on to step in when Teutonic interests in the Western lands seemed to be at their last gasp. The three Kings united their forces against the two Dukes, and marched against the capitals both of France and Normandy. But never were the details of a campaign told in a more contradictory way. There can be little doubt that Rouen was besieged, and besieged unsuccessfully. Thus much at least the German historian allows;[122] in Norman lands the tale swells into a magnificent legend.[123] What happened at Paris is still less clear. Laon, for the moment a French possession, was besieged unsuccessfully, and Rheims successfully.[124] Then, after a vain attempt on Senlis, the combined armies of the Kings of Aachen, Arles, and Compiègne drew near to the banks of the Seine. Flodoard, the canon of Rheims, the discreetest writer of his age, leaves out all mention of Paris and its Duke; he tells us merely that the Kings crossed the river and harried the whole land except the cities.[125] The Saxon Widukind tells us how his King, at the head of thirty-two legions, every man of whom wore a straw hat[126] besieged Duke Hugh in Paris, and duly performed his devotions at the shrine of Saint Denis.[127] From these two entries we are safe in inferring that, if Paris was now in any strict sense besieged, it was at least not besieged successfully. But Richer, the monk of Saint Remigius, one of the liveliest tale-tellers of any age, is ready with one of those minute stories which, far more than the entries of more solemn annalists, help to bring us face to face with the men of distant times. The Kings were drawing near to the Seine. In order that the enemy might be cut off from all means of crossing, the Duke of the French, Hugh the Great, aware of their approach, had bidden all vessels, great and small, to be taken away from the right bank of the river for the space of twenty miles. But his design was hindered by a cunning stratagem of the invaders. Ten young men, who had made up their mind to brave every risk,[128] went in advance of the army of the Kings, having laid aside their military garb and provided themselves with the staves and wallets of pilgrims. Protected by this spiritual armour, they passed unhurt and unchallenged through the whole city of Paris, and crossed over both bridges to the left bank of the river. There, not far from the suburb of Saint German, dwelt a miller, who kept the mills which were turned by the waters of the Seine.[129] He willingly received the comely youths who professed to have crossed from the other side of the river to visit the holy places. They repaid his hospitality with money, and moreover purchased wine, in the consumption of which a jovial day was spent. The genial drink opened the heart and the lips of the host, and he freely answered the various questions of his guests. He was not only a miller; he was also the Duke's head fisherman, and he moreover turned an occasional penny by letting out vessels for hire. The Germans praised the kindness which he had already shown them, which made them presume to ask for further favours. They had still other holy places to pray at, but they were wearied with their journey. They promised him a reward of ten shillings--no small sum in the tenth century--if he would carry them across to the other side. He answered that, by the Duke's orders, all vessels were kept on the left bank to cut off all means of crossing from the Germans. They told him that it might be done in the night without discovery. Eager for his reward, he agreed. He received the money, and, accompanied by a boy, his step-son, he guided them to the spot where seventy-two ships lay moored to the river side. The boy was presently thrown into the river, the miller was seized by the throat, and compelled by threats of instant death to loose the ships. He obeyed, and was presently bound and put on board one of the vessels. Each of the Germans now entered a ship and steered it to the right bank. The whole body then returned in one of the vessels, and each again brought across another. By going through this process eight times, the whole seventy-two ships were brought safely to the right bank. By daybreak the army of the Kings had reached the river. They crossed in safety, for all the inhabitants of the country had fled, and the Duke himself had sought shelter at Orleans. The land was harried as far as the Loire, but of the details of the siege of Rouen and of the siege of Paris, if any siege there was, we hear not a word.[130]

The military results of the first German invasion of France and Normandy were certainly not specially glorious. Laon, Senlis, Paris, and Rouen, were, to say the least, not taken. All that was done was to take Rheims and to ravage a large extent of open country. But, in a political point of view, the expedition was neither unsuccessful nor unimportant. From that time the influence of the Eastern King in the affairs of the Western Kingdom becomes of paramount importance, and under his protection, the King of the West Franks, King of Compiègne and soon again to be King of Laon, holds a far higher place than before in the face of his mighty vassals at Paris and Rouen. The next German invasion, forty years later, found quite another state of things in the Western Kingdom. The relations between King Lothar and Duke Hugh Capet were wholly different from the relations which had existed between their fathers, King Lewis and Duke Hugh the Great. No less different were the relations between Lothar and Otto the Second from those which had existed between their fathers, Lewis and Otto the Great. The elder Otto had been a protector, first to his brother-in-law and then to his nephew; the younger Otto was only a rival in the eyes of his cousin.[131] On the other hand, it was the policy of Hugh Capet to keep up the dignity of the Crown which he meant one day to wear, and not to appear as an open enemy of the dynasty which he trusted quietly to supplant. For a while then the rivalry between Laon and Paris was hushed, and the friendship of Paris carried with it the friendship of Rouen and Angers. Thus, while Lewis, a prince than whom none ever showed a loftier or more gallant spirit, was hunted from one fortress or one prison to another, his son, a man in every way his inferior, was really able to command the forces of the whole land north of the Loire. Again the King of Gaul looked Rhine-wards; the border land of Lotharingia kindled the ambition of a prince who might deem himself King both of Laon and Paris. That border land, after many times fluctuating to and fro, had now become an acknowledged portion of the Eastern Kingdom. But a sudden raid might win it for the King of the West, and the Duke of Paris would be nothing loth to help to make such an addition to the Kingdom which he meant one day to possess. The raid was made; the hosts of the King and the Duke crossed the frontier, and burst suddenly on the Imperial dwelling-place of Aachen. The Emperor, with his pregnant wife, the Greek princess Theophanô, had to flee before the approach of his cousin, and Lothar had the glory of turning the brazen eagle which his great forefather had placed on the roof of his palace in such a direction as no longer to be a standing menace to the western realms.[132] As in a more recent warfare, the Gaul began with child's play, and the German made answer in terrible earnest. The dishonour done to their prince and his realm stirred the heart of all Germany, and thirty thousand horsemen--implying no doubt a far larger number of warriors of lower degree--gathered round their Emperor to defend and avenge the violated Teutonic soil. Lothar made no attempt to defend his immediate dominions; he fled to crave the help of his mighty vassal at Paris.[133] The German hosts marched, seemingly without meeting any resistance, from their own frontier to the banks of the Seine. Everywhere the land was harried; cities were taken or surrendered, but the pious Emperor, the Advocate of the Universal Church, everywhere showed all due honour to the saints and their holy places.[134] In primatial Rheims, in our own days to be the temporary home of another German King, the German Cæsar paid his devotions at the shrine of Saint Remigius, the saint who had received an earlier German conqueror still into the fold of Christ.[135] At Soissons Saint Médard received equal worship, and when the church of Saint Bathild at Chelles was burned without the Emperor's knowledge, a large sum was devoted to its restoration. But if the shrines of the saints were reverenced, the palaces of the rival King were especially marked out for destruction. Attigny was burned, and nearly equal ruin fell upon Compiègne itself. Meanwhile the King had fled to Etampes, in the immediate territory of the Duke, while Hugh himself was collecting his forces at Paris. At last the German host came within sight of the ducal city. Otto now deemed that he had done enough for vengeance. He had shown that the frontiers of Germany were not to be invaded with impunity; he had come to Paris, not to storm or blockade the city, but to celebrate his victorious march with the final triumph of a pious bravado. He sent a message to the Duke to say that on the Mount of Martyrs he would sing such a Hallelujah to the martyrs as the Duke and people of Paris had never heard. He performed his vow; a band of clergy were gathered together on the sacred hill, and the German host sang their Hallelujah in the astonished ears of the men of Paris. This done, the mission of Otto was over, and after three days spent within sight of Paris, the Emperor turned him to depart into his own land.[136]

Such, at least, is the tale as told by the admirers of the Imperial devotee. In the hands of the monk of Rheims the story assumes quite another shape, and in the hands of the panegyrist of the house of Anjou it inevitably grows into a legend.[137] Richer tells us how the Emperor stood for three days on the right bank of the river, while the Duke was gathering his forces on the left; how a German Goliath challenged any man of France to single combat, and presently fell by the dart of a French, or perhaps Breton, David;[138] how Otto, seeing the hosts which were gathering against him, while his own forces were daily lessening, deemed that it was his wisest course to retreat.[139] As for the details of the retreat, our stories are still more utterly contradictory. One loyal French writer makes Lothar, at the head of the whole force of France and Burgundy, chase the flying Emperor to the banks of the Maes, whose waters swallowed up many of the fugitives.[140] The monk of Rheims transfers the scene of the German mishap to the nearer banks of the Aisne,[141] while the Maes is with him the scene of a friendly conference between the two Kings, in which Lothar, distrusting his vassals at Paris, deems it wiser to purchase the good-will of the Emperor by the cession of all his claims upon Lotharingia.[142] The most striking details come from the same quarter from which we get the picture of the Hallelujah on Montmartre. The Emperor, deeming that he had had enough of vengeance, departed on the approach of winter;[143] he reached the Aisne and proposed to encamp on its banks. But by the advice of Count Godfrey of Hennegau, who warned him of the dangers of a stream specially liable to floods, he crossed with the greater part of his army, leaving only, on the dangerous side, a small party with the baggage.[144] It was on this party that Lothar, hastening on with a small force, fell suddenly, while a sudden rise of the stream hindered either attack or defence on the part of the main armies.[145] Otto then sends a boat across with a challenge, proposing that one or the other should allow his enemy to cross without hindrance, and that the possession of the disputed lands should be decided by the result of the battle which should follow.[146] 'Nay rather,' cried Count Geoffrey, probably the famous Grisegonelle of Anjou, 'let the two Kings fight out their differences in their own persons, and let them spare the blood of their armies.'[147] 'Small then, it seems,' retorted Count Godfrey in wrath, 'is the value you put upon your King. At least it shall never be said that German warriors stood tamely by while their Emperor was putting his life in jeopardy.'[148] At this moment, when we are looking for some scene of exciting personal interest, the curtain suddenly falls, and this, our most detailed narrator, turns away from the fortunes of Emperors and Kings to occupy himself with his immediate subject, the acts of the Bishops of Cambray.[149]

Putting all our accounts together it is hard to say whether, in a military point of view, the expedition of Otto the Second was a success or a failure. If his design was to take Paris, he certainly failed. If he simply wished to avenge his own wrongs and to show that Germany could not be insulted with impunity, he undoubtedly succeeded. In either case the political gain was wholly on the German side. King and Duke acted together during the campaign; but each, in its course, learned to distrust the other, and each found it expedient to seek the friendship of the Emperor as a check against his rival.[150] And more than all, the Imperial rights over Lotharingia were formally acknowledged by Lothar, and were not disputed again for some ages.[151]

This campaign of 976 has a special interest just now, as its earlier stages read, almost word for word, like a forestalling of the events of the present year of wonders. How far its later stages may find their counterpart in the great warfare now going on, it is not for us to guess. But it is a campaign which marks a stage in the history of Europe. It is the first war that we can speak of--a war waged between Germany and anything which has even the feeblest claim to be called an united France. When Otto the Great marched against Paris and Rouen, he was fighting in the cause of the King of the West Franks, the lawful over-lord of the Dukes against whom he was fighting. When Otto the Second marched against Paris, he was fighting against King and Dukes alike, and King and Dukes between them had at their call all the lands of the strictly French speech, the tongue of _oil_. Aquitaine of course, and the other lands of the tongue of _oc_, had no part or lot in the matter; then, as in latter times, there were no Frenchmen south of the Loire. But if the expedition of Otto was in this sense the first German invasion of France, it was also for a long time the last. It is not often that Imperial armies have since that day entered French territory at all. The armies of Otto the Fourth appeared in the thirteenth century at Bouvines, and the armies of Charles the Fifth appeared in the sixteenth century in Provence. But Bouvines, lying in the dominions of a powerful and rebellious vassal, was French only by the most distant external allegiance, and Provence, in the days of Charles the Fifth, was still a land newly won for France, and the Imperial claims over it were not yet wholly forgotten. Both invasions touched only remote parts of the kingdom, and in no way threatened the capital. Since the election of Hugh Capet made Paris for ever the head of France and of all the vassals of the French Kingdom, the city has been besieged and taken by pretenders, native and foreign, to the Capetian Crown, but it has never, till our own century, been assailed by the armies of the old Teutonic realm. The fall of the first Buonaparte was followed by a surrender of Paris to a host which called up the memories alike of Otto of Germany and of Henry of England. The fall of the second Buonaparte is followed before our own eyes by the siege of Paris, the crowning point of a war whose first stages suggest the campaign of the Second Otto, but which, for the mighty interests, at stake, for the long endurance of besieger and besieged, rather suggests the great siege at the hands of Sigefrith. But all alike are witnesses to the position which the great city of the Seine has held ever since the days of Odo. Paris is to France not merely its greatest city, the seat of its government, the centre of its society and literature. It is France itself; it is, as it has been so long, its living heart and its surest bulwark. It is the city which has created the kingdom, and on the life of the city the life of the kingdom seems to hang. What is to be its fate? Is some wholly different position in the face of France and of Europe to be the future doom of that memorable city? Men will look on its possible humiliation with very different eyes. Some may be disposed to take up the strain of the Hebrew prophet, and to say, 'How hath the oppressor ceased, the golden city ceased!' Others will lament the home of elegance and pleasure, and what calls itself civilization. We will, in taking leave of Paris, old and new, wind up with the warning, this time intelligible enough to be striking, of her own poet--

Francia cur latitas vires, narra, peto, priscas,
Te majora triumphâsti quibus atque jugâsti
Regna tibi? Propter vitium triplexque piaclum.
Quippe supercilium, Veneris quoque feda venustas.
Ac vestis preciosæ elatio te tibi tollunt!
Afrodite adeo, saltem quo arcere parentes[152]
Haud valeas lecto, monachas Domino neque sacras;
Vel quid naturam, siquidem tibi sat mulieres,
Despicis, occurant? Agitamus fasque nefasque.
Aurea sublimem mordet tibi fibula vestem,
Efficis et calidam Tyriâ camera preciosâ.
Non præter chlamydem auratam cupis indusiari
Tegmine, decusata tuos gemmis nisi zona
Nulla fovet lumbos, aurique pedes nisi virgæ,
Non habitus humilis, non te valet abdere vestis.
Hæc facis; hæc aliæ faciunt gentes ita nullæ;
Hæc tria ni linquas, vires regnumque paternum
Omne scelus super his Christi, cujus quoque vates,
Nasci testantur bibli: fuge, Francia, ab istis!

ART. VI.--_The Established Church in Wales._

(1.) _An Essay on the Causes which have Produced Dissent from the Established Church in Wales._ By ARTHUR JAMES JOHNES. Third Edition.

(2.) _Letters on the Social and Political Condition of Wales._ By HENRY RICHARD. London: Jackson, Walford, and Hodder.

(3.) _History of Nonconformity in Wales._ By THOMAS REES, D.D. London: John Snow.

(4.) _Hanes y Methodistiaid Calfinaidd gan._ JOHN HUGHES.

(5.) _Llyfryddiaeth y Cymry, gan y diweddar Barch._ WILLIAM RAWLANDS. Llanidloes: John Pryse.

(6.) _The Church of the Cymry. A Letter to the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P._, from HENRY S. EDWARDS, B.A. Oxon., Vicar of Carnarvon. London: Longmans, Green, and Co.

(7.) _The Church of England in Wales, in Seven Letters to the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P._ By the Rev. WILLIAM REES, Liverpool.

The Act for the Disestablishment and Disendowment of the Irish Church was one of great importance for what it did, but of still greater importance for what it implied; for in that measure there was a distinct legislative recognition of certain general principles, which are susceptible of far wider application than to the particular case they were invoked to sustain. It disposed, once for all, of the fond fantasy that the State is bound in its collective capacity to have a conscience, and in obedience to the dictates of that conscience, to impose its own creed upon the community, as the established faith of the country, to be supported by the authority, and enforced by the sanction of law. It acknowledged the principle that where an established church never has been, or has ceased to be the church of the nation, and fails, therefore, in its professed function as the religious instructor of the people, it has no longer any _raison d'être_, and ought to be swept away as an anomaly and encumbrance. It recognised the fact, if not for the first time, at least with more distinctness and emphasis than was ever done before, that ecclesiastical property is national property, which the nation has a perfect right through its legitimate organ, the legislature, to apply to any purpose it may think fit, whether sacred or secular.

We need not wonder that when the Irish Establishment was abolished, men's minds should turn almost instinctively to the sister institution in Wales, as furnishing a case in many respects parallel, but in other respects still less admitting of justification. The discussion of this subject in Parliament last session, on the motion of Mr. Watkin Williams, did not take place, perhaps, under the most favourable auspices. But it was at least attended with this advantage, that it obliged those who oppose the Disestablishment of the Welsh Church to show their hand. As Mr. Gladstone, in addition to his many other merits as an orator, is the most accomplished debater in the House of Commons, we may safely assume that whatever could be said in defence of the Church in Wales, and in deprecation of its proposed severance from the State, was said by him with the utmost degree of plausibility and point. But certainly on a calm review of the arguments he used on that occasion, they do not appear to be very formidable.