Chapter XVII: Section I: In England, France, and Ireland (2)

There now remained one piratical band only,—that on the Loire. As Paris had been more than once menaced, king Charles caused to be constructed on the Seine, below that city, a bridge, which was intended to arrest the progress of the hostile vessels, by its inability to admit the high masts. The writers of that period are minute in describing the excesses of these men, whom they accompany step by step. But the detail is tedious: in general they have more sympathy for churches and abbeys, than for the peasantry; and much louder is their cry when a solitary priest is massacred at the altar, or a sacred relic borne away, than when a town is put to the sword. No church, no monastery, no village or town was spared,—nothing which had not the means of self-defence. In 867 the robbers appeared in the vicinity of Paris: the bridge prevented their arriving under the walls; and they established their head quarters at the abbey of St. Denis. From thence they spread into the neighbouring country, and acquired immense booty. But a contagious disease appearing among them, and reducing their numbers, they slowly descended the river to wait for reinforcements, which were constantly arriving on the coast. But these reinforcements were now smaller than they had lately been: three fourths of all the pirates that swept the seas were in England, preparing to drive Alfred from the throne; and though those who remained in France effected great mischief, they would have been unable to resist any considerable body. They were not, however, inured to open campaigns: their hostilities were undertaken on a smaller scale,—were generally directed against some town or religious edifice where there was less danger of resistance; and when assailed (as was sometimes the case) by a much superior force, they retired into their fortified places. Angers, which they captured in 873, was one of these. On this occasion Charles the Bald exhibited an energy to which he was usually a stranger. He raised an army, marched to Angers, compelled the Northmen to evacuate it, and retire to their island entrenchments on the Loire. From this place their predatory excursions were resumed. But they are beneath the notice of history: they were undertaken, not for conquest, but for booty. The period, however, is arrived when we must accompany the exploits of one who did conquer, and who laid the foundation of a state powerful enough to effect the greatest revolutions in Europe.[286]

Rognevald was one of the jarls of Harald the Fair-haired. After serving his monarch in many difficult and dangerous enterprises, he fell in battle. Of his sons, one, Einar, became jarl of the Orkneys. Einar was an ambitious man. When Halfdan, a son of Harald, expelled him from their island, he obtained reinforcements in Scotland, returned to the charge, and deprived Halfdan of authority and life. Harald sailed to avenge the death of his son; but Einar was left in possession of the government. Not inferior to Einar in ambition or valour, was _Hrolf_, or _Rollo_,—the _Rou_ of the Norman writers,—another son of Rognevald. According to the Icelandic sagas, he was so tall and so robust that no horse could carry him: hence his appellation of Hrolf _Gangr_, or the Walker. Like his ancestors, he passed his time on the deep, and enriched himself by his depredations on the shores of the Baltic. The death of his father, and the rebellion of his elder brother, made him probably less attached to the interests of Harald, or less obedient to his commands. It is certain that he ventured to do what had been so rigorously forbidden,—to make a piratical descent on the Norwegian coast. The monarch was in the town which Rollo endeavoured to sack; and his indignation at the attempt led him to banish the pirate for ever. Whether this could be much punishment to one whose life had been passed far from Norway may be doubted. Collecting as great a number of vessels as were willing to join him,—and the dignity of his family no less than his own prowess made him a popular chief,—he sailed for France. In his way he appears to have made some piratical descents on the Scottish and English coasts; and though he could not make much impression on either, he did what, in his present circumstances, was quite as advantageous—he loaded his ships with booty. Dudo of St. Quentin, and Wace, determined that the founder of the Norman dynasty shall be a favourite of heaven, introduce some visions and other miscellaneous appearances, which the historian must leave to the monastic chronicler. These are harmless, and may be despised; but when, to dignify the chief of some great family, history is perverted, a severer censure is necessary. Thus, Dudo (who is followed by many Norman writers) informs us that Rollo was powerful enough to become the ally and friend of Alfred; that by the Saxon monarch he was provided with a fleet to make war on the French king; that in gratitude for this aid he afterwards assisted Alfred—whom his subjects or the Danes had dethroned—to reascend the throne. How living writers could fall into the absurdity of receiving such statements, which are contrary to the unanimous voices of contemporary history, is surprising.[287]

[Sidenote: 876 to 888.]

The year in which Rollo arrived in the south is not very clearly established. Schoning has 995; but this will not bear the test of scrutiny, for the French and Norman writers assert that he was occupied above thirty years in his subjugation of Normandy, and we know that he was recognised its duke in 912. Asser of St. David’s—a contemporary—has the year 876, and he is confirmed by the writers nearest to the period; yet there are some chronological difficulties which we cannot remove. Harald of Norway did not undertake the voyage to the Orkneys before the year 895; and the banishment of Rollo is assigned to the year following. The only way to reconcile this anachronism is by the conjecture that Rollo, being exiled for piracy in 876, joined his countrymen and the Danes, who were ravaging England and France; that he established himself at Rouen, but frequently extended his devastations to the north and east of that city; that he was more than once in England, and perhaps in the north, before his recognition as duke of Normandy. But let us follow his footsteps. Landing at Walcheren, he defeated the count of Hainault, whom he captured, and exacted a heavy sum by way of ransom. Repairing to Rouen, he was not so ruthless as to destroy it: he accepted from the archbishop a sum of money, fortified it, and made it the basis of his operations against the French king. His arrival threw France into consternation; and Hastings was sent to learn his object, which he coolly replied was—conquest. But whether at this period he proceeded far in his operations may well be doubted. His name does not appear in the siege of Paris, which took place in 886, nor in many other enterprises which from 876 to 896—that is, twenty years—afflicted France. Yet the names of other chiefs are specified. As we have already conjectured, he was probably for some years in England, or in the north. Certainly he could not have entered on that splendid career which led to his elevation, before the year 890, or later still. Yet it is possible that he might be joined with the other chiefs in the devastations which, from 876,—during full thirty years,—afflicted the whole of France. However this be, in ten years after his first disembarkation, siege was laid to Paris. It is described by a contemporary poet,—by an eye-witness, Abbo, monk of Fleury. It was of considerable duration, and many were the desperate assaults which were made upon the city; but they were as bravely repelled; and the siege was raised. Yet the Northmen did not retire further than the abbey of St. Germain’s, where they continued for some time to despatch their destructive hordes. As no great enemy was before them, they split into two bodies; and while one was collecting booty and burning villages, another laid siege to Chartres. In this attempt, however, they failed,—a result which Wace ascribes to the virtue of a certain relic.[288] A new attack was made on Paris, but with as little effect. At this juncture arrived the emperor Charles the Fat, to succour the capital; and the expulsion of the pirates seemed inevitable. But far different was the result: without striking a blow, he negotiated, and agreed to give the pirates seven hundred pounds of gold, with permission to ravage the two sides of the Seine into Burgundy, provided they would then leave—not France, but the central provinces. They received the money, and ravaged Burgundy; but they had no intention to forsake the fertile plains of the interior for the dreary maritime coast.[289]

[Sidenote: 888 to 896.]

Though Eudes defeated the pirates, this was merely a temporary check,—so temporary as scarcely to arrest their progress. Meaux was besieged and taken; Champagne, Lorraine, and Burgundy were ravaged; Troyes, Chalons, Toul, Verdun were occupied; Picardy and Artois, to the borders of the sea, were laid waste. Contemporaneously with these rapid successes were the depredations of the pirates who were still entrenched on the Loire. There was no rest for France; no hope of expelling her daring intruders. Though Eudes had triumphed over the pirates, the next time they assailed that capital he was glad to purchase their retreat. Descending the river to its mouth, they next assailed the fortress of St. Loo. It was compelled to capitulate; but no conditions were binding on these wretches, who regarded oaths as vain formalities: instead of security for their lives, the inhabitants found a grave. Bretagne was now ravaged; but duke Alan was braver and more, fortunate than Eudes. Though the invaders were 15,000 in number, he assailed them, at a moment, too, when they were flushed with victory over a rival duke. His success was splendid; thousands were left dead on the field; the rest were put to flight. But even this success was scarcely a check to these wild sons of the deep. Driven from England by the genius of Alfred, they came in fearful numbers to France. They occupied both the coasts and the centre; and they traversed every part of the kingdom with an impunity surprising to posterity.[290]

[Sidenote: 896 to 909.]

In how many of these embassies Rollo was an actor, we shall not venture to decide. Whether he was not much in England, as well as in France; whether he was not alternately engaged in both kingdoms, must be left to the reader’s own inference. This, at least, is certain, that from the year 896 his name and exploits fill the page of French history, to the exclusion of many other names which had before occupied it. From that year, too, must be dated those rapid and decisive successes which insured his future greatness. The banishment of so many pirates from the north by Harald Harfager now sent larger swarms to the south. The first care of Rollo was to strengthen the fortifications of Rouen, which had been destroyed in his absence (whether that absence were in England, or the interior of France, we will not decide), and which he now made formidable. Next, both sides of the Seine felt the vigour of his genius. The forces which were sent to oppose him he defeated. But we cannot follow his steps. Let it be sufficient to observe, that he was almost uniformly successful; that in several battles he was the victor; that Bayeux, Evreux, Nantes, and many places of inferior note were taken by him; that he partitioned the lands which he subdued among his warriors, to be held of him as the liege head, under the usual feudal conditions. From this policy and this success, we should infer that he was in one respect the counterpart of his countrymen—that he protected, instead of destroying, the peasantry—that he encouraged, instead of abolishing, Christianity. Probably much of his moderation was owing to the councils of Franco, archbishop of Rouen, his chief vassal. Alarmed at the progress of his arms, Charles the Simple applied through Franco for a truce, which was readily granted. There can, indeed, be little doubt that the success of Hastings was before the eyes of Rollo, and that he aspired to a lordship much more ample than Chartres,—one which he should compel the French king to cede to him, and thereby give him a proud seat amongst the princes of Europe. Hence the readiness with which he listened to Franco, especially when assured that Charles had already contemplated his investiture with some portion of his new conquests. The truce, indeed, was not agreeable to some of the French peers, and hostilities were recommenced, much to the injury of France. There was not a province which some of his bands did not traverse; there was scarcely one which he did not plunder; and though frequently repulsed, they always returned to the charge. The French began to murmur, and Charles to apply himself still more seriously to a permanent understanding with Rollo. Hostilities had availed nothing; France had lost many thousands of her bravest defenders, and hundreds of thousands of her peaceful inhabitants; and if the invaders had also lost many considerable detachments, their ranks were speedily replenished by new immigrations from the north.[291]

[Sidenote: 910 to 912.]

About the year 910, or perhaps the year following, Franco, at the command of Charles, opened the important negotiation with this adventurer. The offers were—Neuctria with the ducal title, and the hand of Gisele, a natural daughter of the king, provided he would embrace Christianity, and become the liege vassal of the French crown. This prelate was an eloquent, persuasive man, and had already considerable influence over the mind of Rollo. But that chief objected to one of the conditions as not sufficiently liberal. Neuctria he had already; and there was no great generosity in recognising his title to that which nobody could wrest from him. Besides, it was, he alleged, barren and half-peopled; but he forgot that this result was his own work and that of his countrymen. Franco then offered a portion of Bretagne—perhaps the whole—as an arriere-fief; and Rollo no longer hesitated. He had a wife already, Popa, the daughter of a French count; and her he repudiated,—on what ground is matter of dispute; but surely there need be none. Rollo was not yet a Christian; he had not been married in any Christian church; how then could the church recognise the union? Gisele, therefore, was to become the bride of the chief. A meeting of Rollo and of Charles was appointed at St. Clair-sur-Epte, a place on the frontier of Normandy. In 912, both repaired to that town,—Charles with a splendid retinue of nobles and prelates, by whose advice he had entered into a treaty with the new vassal. Here the investiture took place; Rollo did homage to the sovereign, and both acts were witnessed by the French nobles. To kneel before the monarch, hold up his hands between those of the superior, and repeat a certain formula called an oath, were no great acts of degradation; and to these Rollo had no objection. But the homage was not complete until the regal foot was kissed. To this humiliation he would not stoop, and he was allowed to perform it by deputy. A warrior of his suite was accordingly brought forward; but he was no less proud than his master; and on the royal foot being somewhat raised, he raised it still higher, and threw the poor monarch on his back, amidst the suppressed laughter of the assembly.[292]

[Sidenote: 912.]

Thus was a fierce, an obscure pirate invested with one of the most important fiefs in Europe. His successors were, like him, valiant and politic; and by their means the duchy was raised to a height of power that rendered it a rival at once to the French and English kings. By what degrees, however, this progressive greatness was achieved, must be left to the historian of France. It is sufficient for us to observe that the new state became a successful barrier against the pagans of Scandinavia. Not that, both in Bretagne and Gascony, new armaments did not arrive and do some mischief; but it was transient, and no fear was entertained that the most powerful cities of France would ever again be assailed by them. When they did appear in any district, they were soon repulsed. The policy, therefore, of erecting Neustria into a state, and confiding it to the government of a race of heroes, was a wise one. A successor of Charles the Simple endeavoured to dethrone a grandson of Rollo; but, as we have already seen, Harald of Denmark sailed to the aid of the young duke, took the French king prisoner, and restored the relation between duke and monarch to the state in which it was on the death of Rollo.[293]

3. _Ireland._ At what period the Northmen first commenced their depredations in Ireland is, like many other points of northern history, impossible to be established. The Irish annals themselves contain no record of such transactions prior to the eighth century; yet they must have happened before. If little reliance is to be placed on the statement of Saxo, that Fridleif I. and Frode III. conquered and plundered Dublin, it would be rash to affirm that there was not a very ancient intercourse between that island and Scandinavia. Whether the Lochlans, or Dwellers of the Lakes, were Scandinavians, or the Scottish Highlanders, has been matter of great dispute. We know, however, that, in the ninth century, the Danes were expressly called Lochlans by the Irish, and that the term was used at an earlier period to designate some maritime people with whom the natives had a frequent intercourse. The term, however, might be applied to both the Gael and the Northmen,—to all maritime nations. On this subject let us hear the last and most eloquent of Irish historians:—

In proof of the Danes having been the people with whom this
early intercourse was maintained, the authority of a number of
modern historians has been adduced, according to whose accounts
it would seem that, from a period preceding the birth of Christ,
a succession of invasions of this island from Denmark had been
commenced; and that, for some centuries after, a course of
alternate hostility and friendship marked the relations between
the two countries. Imposing, however, as is the array of
northern authorities for this statement, the entire value of
their united evidence may be reduced to that of the single
testimony of that of Saxo Grammaticus, from whose pages they
have all copied; and it is well known, for all the earlier
portion of this eloquent writer’s history, the foundation is as
unsound and unreal as Scaldic fable and fallacious chronology
could make it. The only circumstance that lends any semblance of
credit to the accounts given by northern histotorians of the
early fortunes of Ireland, is the known fact that the chief
materials of their own history were derived from records
preserved in Iceland: to which island inaccessible as it might
seem to have been to the rude navigation of those days, it is
certain that a number of Irish missionaries of the seventh and
eighth centuries contrived to find their way. We learn, from
more than one authentic source, that, when the Norwegians first
arrived in Iceland, they found there traces of its having been
previously inhabited by a Christian people; and the Irish books,
bells, and holy staves, left behind by the former dwellers,
sufficiently denoted the religious island from whence they had
migrated. The title of Papas, which it appears was borne by
them, has led to the conclusion that they must have been Irish
priests who had adventurously fixed themselves in this desolate
region; and, under the same name, they were found in the Orkneys
when the Norwegians conquered those islands. Unless we were to
suppose, however, that among the books left by those
missionaries in Iceland, there were any relating to Irish
history of which the chroniclers consulted by Saxo might have
availed themselves, the incident, though curious and well
attested, affords but slight grounds for placing reliance on
these early northern annals, whose sources of information are
known to have been spurious, and to whose general character for
extravagant fiction, the few brief notices which they contain
respecting Irish affairs, can hardly be expected to furnish an
exception. Nor is any more serious credit due to them when they
represent Dublin to have been in possession of the Danes a short
time before the birth of Christ, than when they assert that
London was built by these northern people about the very same
period. Fabulous, however, as are these accounts, yet that, long
before either the Danish or even the Saxon invasions, the coasts
of the Baltic had sent forth colonies to the British Isles, is a
fact to which foreign as well as domestic tradition bears
testimony. The conjecture of Tacitus, that the people called
Picts were a Germanic or northern race, is confirmed by the
traditional accounts of this people, preserved in the chronicles
of Britain; and all the early Scandinavian legends concur with
the annals of Ireland in intimating, at some remote period,
relations of intercourse between the two countries. We have
seen, in a preceding part of this work, what almost certain
grounds there are for believing that those Scyths, or Scots,
who, at the time when Ireland first became known to modern
Europe, formed the dominant part of her people, were a colony
from some region bordering on the Baltic Sea which had, a few
centuries before, gained possession of this island. From
whatever part these Scythian adventurers may have arrived,
whether from the Cimbric peninsula, the islands of the Baltic,
or the Scandinavian shores, it may be concluded that with that
region the occasional intercourse was afterwards maintained, and
those alliances and royal intermarriages formed of which, in our
ancient traditions and records, some scattered remembrances
still remain. With respect to those swarms of sea-rovers who,
throughout the dark and troubled period we are now approaching,
carried on their long career of havoc and blood, though known
most popularly in English history by the general name of Danes,
they are but rarely, and not till a late period, thus designated
in our annals. By Tigernach, the earliest existing annalist,
they are invariably called Gâll, or Strangers; while, in the
Annals of Inisfallen, of Ulster, and of the Four Masters, they
are styled indifferently either Galls, Gentiles, Dwellers on the
Lakes, or Pirates; but in not more than two or three instances
are they called Normans, and as seldom Danes.[294]

[Sidenote: 795 to 820.]

We must be satisfied with the general inference that Ireland was visited by the Northmen as soon, or nearly as soon, as Scotland, and the Scottish islands. The first visit of which we have any record was in 795, in the reign of Aidan, monarch of the country. Leaving Iona, the monastery of which they had laid in ashes, the sea kings proceeded to the north-western coast, landed, and ravaged the country as far as Roscommon. This was, probably, the work of years: here, as everywhere else, they would form intrenchments at the mouths of the great rivers, the banks of which, for twenty leagues round, they would lay waste as far as boats could ascend. They appear to have been twelve years in the country before any serious resistance was made. In 812 they were defeated; but defeat, so long as the sea was open, and communication with it maintained by navigable rivers, was speedily repaired. In 815, a Norwegian chief named Turges, or Thorgils, arrived with a more powerful armament, and, during thirty years, was a dreadful scourge not only to the northern, but to the eastern and southern districts of the island. Their fury was peculiarly directed against the holy places, especially the monastery of Banchor and the cathedral of Armagh, which they revisited and destroyed every time they heard of their restoration. Every cell, every chapel, every holy place to which the superstitious piety of the age resorted, naturally attracted their notice. But in the atrocities which they committed, and which the unanimous voice of every kingdom they visited—from Greece to Ireland—has immortalised, they must have been actuated by other motives than the hope of gain. If they were savage to the laity, they were demoniacal to the ecclesiastics. Probably their superior ferocity in the latter case may be explained by the deep hatred which the persecutions of Charlemagne had produced (as we have before intimated, under the term _Saxons_ must also be included the Scandinavians, and perhaps some tribes of the great Slavonic family). But against that great man, we are not disposed to join in the hostility of some modern writers. The men with whom the emperor had to deal were without honour, without virtue of any kind, men who regarded the most solemn oaths as empty sounds, who loved war as much for the plunder which it brought as for the gratification of shedding blood. But were not the Saxons and Danes fighting for their liberties? True, and the greatest of them was the liberty to plunder the rest of the world,—to trample under foot all humanity, all moral virtue,—to be the tyrants of Europe. Charlemagne triumphed over them, and we rejoice at his success; nor, had he exterminated the whole people, should he be censured by posterity.[295]

[Sidenote: 820 to 848.]

The desolation which, at this period more than any other, afflicted Ireland, might easily have been averted, had there been a central government strong enough to rally around it the hearts and arms of the people. But the monarch was merely a titular one, and less powerful than his vassals. Instead of harmony there was dissension only among the members of the body politic; and this evil was aggravated a hundred fold by the mischievous practice of hiring the aid of strangers. When, in 837, another powerful reinforcement arrived from the north, and commenced its depredations on the banks of the Liffey and the Boyne, the evil which, since 795, had afflicted the country, was increased a thousand fold. There was not, says the eloquent historian of Ireland, “a single spot of renown in the ecclesiastical history of our country, not one of those numerous religious foundations, the seats and monuments of the early piety of her sons, that was not frequently, during this period, made the scene of the most fearful and brutal excesses.” Let it not be forgotten that this frequency of destruction evinces the zeal of the Irish in rebuilding their holy places, and the intrepidity with which they repaired to them, even when assured that they should be there met by incarnate demons, and sent to aggrandise the “noble army of martyrs.” In general the higher dignitaries were spared for the sake of the ransom. The mischief was, that the head quarters of Turges always presented a rallying-point for the defeated Northmen, and for such new comers as arrived on the coast. The way in which this veteran chief at last met his fate, is romantically told by Giraldus de Barri. He had fallen in love, says that amusing Welchman, with the daughter of the king of Meath, and he made known his love to the father. Pretending to comply with his suit, a day was appointed on which Turges, attended by fifteen followers, was to meet his bride, accompanied by as many maidens, on a small island of Loch-Var. To the place of meeting, however, the Irish lady was escorted by fifteen young men in the female garb, and they destroyed the tyrant. Probably the relation of the native annalists, that he was drowned in that lake by the king of Meath, is the true one. However this be, his death was a fatal blow to the Scandinavian power in Ireland. From this period (844) we read, indeed, of their depredations, of their formidable combinations, even of their victories; but there was no longer the same hope, the same confidence in their invincibility.[296]

[Sidenote: 849 to 872.]

In 849, another powerful armament arrived from the north. Their policy was not merely to plunder, but to take advantage of the civil wars which desolated Ireland, by hiring their services to the highest bidder. In 850, they were employed by the monarch in his contest with a native king, and the example was speedily followed by his royal subjects. In this year, too, we perceive that Dublin was in the power of the Northmen, and one of their chief seats: probably it had been so for half a century, or longer still. It was fortunate for the Irish that the different Scandinavian people who thus harassed them were often the enemies of each other. Sometimes they fought under the banners of Christian princes; at other times they contended alone. Thus, in 850, the Dubh-Gals, or black strangers, assailed the Fin-Gals, or white strangers, of Dublin. Who were they? Were they Scottish Highlanders? or were the former Slavonic, the latter Scandinavian, pirates? This question can never be answered to our entire satisfaction; but we cannot easily believe that any chief of the Highlands could equip so powerful an armament as that which assailed the establishment of Dublin. Three years afterwards, Anlaf, Ivar, and Sitric, all brothers, and princes from Scandinavia, arrived with a great armament, and seated themselves in three great stations,—Dublin, Limerick, and Waterford. Probably the last-named city was founded by Sitric. His two brothers considerably extended their frontiers. They appear, too, so far to have acted in concert as to compel the Irish princes to pay them an annual tribute,—something like the Danegelt, which was so oppressive to the English. Anlaf, indeed, was a remarkable character; but if the chronology be correct, which places his arrival in the year 853, he must not be confounded with the prince whom, in 924, Athelstane defeated. His kingdom of Dublin, which comprehended the county and much of its neighbourhood, was amplified no less than defended by him, with success. Not that advantages were not sometimes won from him. On one occasion he was pursued into his capital, and his territory wasted to its very gates. But this, at such a period, when everything depended on a surprise, was a very ordinary result; and that very month he might be able to extend his ravages to the centre of the island. That he frequently did so, we know,—sometimes alone, sometimes in conjunction with his brothers, at other times as the ally of the native princes. But that they were always in the country does not appear probable. If this Ivar be the man who was also king of Northumberland, his territories in England must have frequently required his presence. Anlaf, too, had a principality on this side of the channel; for he is styled king of all the Northmen in Ireland and Britain. But connected with him, with his royal brothers, and their reputed father, Ragnar Lodbrog, are so many chronological difficulties, that we can never reconcile them. One of these princes, according to the Annals of Ulster, died in 874; as all came in the middle of the century, none could long survive that period; even then, if they were the sons of the Ragnar who was killed in 794, and who immediately afterwards descended on the Northumbrian coast, they must have reached an age nearly centennial. That there has been a sad confusion of names—for all were common in the Scandinavian annals—is undoubted. Then the confusion in the orthography of proper words—Anlaf, for example, being written Alaf, Olaf, Amlain, Amlaiph, &c.—must add to the hopelessness of the historian’s task. Three kings of this name, all celebrated during the first half of the ninth century, could not be the princes who, under the same names, obtained so much celebrity during the first half of the tenth. Either, therefore, the chronology is wrong, or the events are for ever confounded. In this, as in every other case, historians have adopted the same mode of solution,—that there were two individuals of the name existing at periods considerably removed from each other.[297]

[Sidenote: 872 to 1000.]

For many years after this period, we read that the Northmen were in possession of Dublin, Limerick, and Waterford, the chiefs of which had the regal title. Early in the tenth, indeed, they were expelled from the first of these cities by the people of Leinster; but the misfortune must have been soon repaired: for in a few years afterwards, we find Godfrey, grandson of Ivar, reigning there, and forcing tribute from most of the princes in the south. In 926, however, the pirates were signally defeated in Ulster, and eighty of their chiefs slain. The moral effect of these victories could be no other than to inspire the natives with new hope, and to procure them new successes. In 936, a greater loss was inflicted on the Scandinavians of Dublin. Five years afterwards, a similar advantage was gained over them; but either they must have had speedy means of reinforcing themselves, or their losses must have been grossly exaggerated. Nor could they be very unfortunate, if it be true that after their partial conversion to Christianity, in 948, they erected the great abbey of St. Mary, in the vicinity of Dublin. Yet they were sometimes tributary to Murkertach, one of the native kings, and the most celebrated hero of his age; and Dublin was frequently in the hands of the Irish; but it was as frequently retaken. These alternations of success and disaster comprehend the history of the Northmen in Ireland. But after the accession of Brian, surnamed Born, or the exacter of tributes, the decline which had for above half a century been visible in the affairs of the pirates, became signally rapid. Many were the successive engagements in which that heroic chief had the advantage. In 969, he took and destroyed Limerick; in 972, he recovered the island of Iniscathy, to which the natives attached no ordinary sanctity; in 980, a great confederation of the pirates who had penetrated into the heart of the country, were defeated by Malachi, the monarch of Ireland. This last victory deserves more than ordinary remembrance, from the fact that it gave freedom to some thousands of Irish captives. In 989, Dublin was besieged during twenty days by the monarch of Ireland; and being forced to capitulate, it agreed that every house should annually pay one ounce of gold to the native hero. Probably this convention was ill kept: for in 994, he was again before that city. The success over the common enemy would have been more signal, had not Brian and the titular monarch been frequently at war with each other. But in 997, they united their forces, and marched on Dublin. Three years afterwards, we find the Danes as vassals in the armies of Brian.[298]

[Sidenote: 1000 to 1014.]

But we must hasten over the obscure battles of the period, and come at once to that which for ever broke the Danish sceptre in Ireland. In 1014, the Danes, having collected reinforcements from all parts of Europe, and concentrated their strength on the plain of Clontorf, fought a battle memorable in the Irish annals. Fortunately for the natives, the same necessity of combination made them for a moment suspend their private feuds, and march to resist the common enemy. Splendid was the victory which awaited Brian; but he fell, being treacherously assassinated in his tent in the hour of success. From this moment may be dated the destruction of the gigantic enemy. Dying struggles it exhibited, and struggles such as became a giant; but the blow was struck; and, however lingering the disease, the end was sure to be fatal.[299]

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