§ 1. General Effects of the Scandinavian Settlements in Gaul

The settlement of the Northmen in Gaul, and their consequent change into Normans, is the great continental event of the first half of the tenth century; it challenges a place alongside of the restoration of the Empire by Otto |Comparison of the settlements of Rolf and Guthrum.| in the second half. Its beginnings indeed might seem small. A band of Scandinavian pirates settled in Northern Gaul, exactly as another band of Scandinavian pirates had, thirty years before, settled in Eastern Britain. In both cases the sovereign of the invaded land found it expedient to secure the safety of the rest of his dominions, by surrendering a portion of them to the invader and by requiring baptism and nominal homage as guaranties for peace and good neighbourhood. The settlement of Rolf in Neustria exactly answers to the settlement of Guthrum in East-Anglia. Charles the Simple and his counsellors may well have justified their act by quoting the example of Ælfred himself. But the results of the two events were widely different. The East-Anglian and Northumbrian Danes were fused into the general mass of Englishmen, and they were soon distinguished from other Englishmen by |Results of the Norman settlement on general history.| nothing more than mere provincial differences. But the settlement of Rolf in Neustria had far wider results. It affected the later history of all Europe. The Scandinavians in Gaul embraced the creed, the language, and the manners of their French neighbours, without losing a whit of their old Scandinavian vigour and love of adventure. The people thus formed became the foremost apostles alike of French chivalry and of Latin Christianity. They were the Saracens of Christendom, spreading themselves over every corner of the world and appearing in almost every |Their prominence in devotion,| character. They were the foremost in devotion, the most fervent votaries of their adopted creed, the most lavish in gifts to holy places at home, the most unwearied in pilgrimages to holy places abroad. And yet none knew better how to hold their own against Pope and prelate; the special children of the Church were as little disposed to unconditional obedience as the most stiffnecked |and in war.| of Ghibelines. And they were no less the foremost in war; they were mercenaries, crusaders, plunderers, conquerors; |Change of their tactics.| but they had changed their element and they had changed their mode of warfare. No Norman fleets now went forth on the errand of the old wikings; the mounted knight and the unerring bowman had taken the place of the elder tactics which made the fortress of shields invincible. North, south, east, the Norman lances were lifted; and they were lifted in the most opposite of causes. |Their exploits in the Eastern Empire,| Norman warriors pressed into the remotest East to guard Eastern Christendom against the first Turkish invader; other Norman warriors were soon found to be the most dangerous enemies of Eastern Christendom in its own |1071.| home. If the Norman fought by the side of Rômanos at |1081.| Manzikert, he threatened the Empire of Alexios with overthrow at Dyrrhachion. His conquests brought with |in England,| them the most opposite results in different lands. To free |in Sicily.| England he gave a line of oppressors; to enslaved Sicily he gave a line of beneficent rulers. But to England he gave also a conquering nobility, which in a few generations became as truly English in England as it had become French in Normandy. If he overthrew our Harolds and our Waltheofs, he gave us a Fitzwalter and a Bigod to win back the rights for which Harold and Waltheof had fallen. In the arts of peace, like his Mahometan prototypes, he invented nothing; but he learned, adapted, improved, |Influence of the Normans on art; their welcome of foreigners.| and disseminated everything. He ransacked Europe for scholars, poets, theologians, and artists. At Rouen, at Palermo, and at Winchester, he welcomed merit in men of every race and every language. He guided Lanfranc and Anselm from Lombardy to Bec and from Bec to Canterbury. Art, under his auspices, produced alike the stern grandeur of Caen and Ely and the brilliant gorgeousness of Palermo and Monreale. In a word, the indomitable vigour of the Scandinavian, joined to the buoyant vivacity of the Gaul, produced the conquering |Disappearance of the Norman race,| and ruling race of Europe. And yet that race, as a race, has vanished. It has everywhere been absorbed by the |in Sicily,| races which it has conquered. From both Sicilies the Norman has vanished as though he had never been. And there too have vanished along with him the races which he used as his instruments, and which he alone taught to work in harmony. Greek, Saracen, and Norman have alike disappeared from the realm of good King William. |in Britain.| In our own land the fate of the Norman has been different. He abides in his lineage and in his works, but he is Norman no longer. He has settled in every corner of the British islands; into every corner of those islands he has carried with him the inborn qualities of his own race, but in every corner of those islands he has assumed the outward characteristics of the races among which he settled. The Scottish Bruce or the Irish Geraldine passed from Scandinavia to Gaul, from Gaul to England, from England to his own portion of our islands; but at each migration he ceased to be Scandinavian, French, or English; his patriotism was in each case transferred to his new country, and his historic being belongs wholly to the home which he had last won. In England itself the Norman has vanished from sight no less than from Apulia and insular Sicily. He has sunk beneath the silent and passive influence of a race less brilliant but more enduring than his own. The Norman has vanished from the world, but he has indeed left a name |Famous men of Norman descent.| behind him. Of him came Richard the Fearless and William the Bastard; of him came that Robert whose foot was first placed upon the ransomed battlements of the |1099.| Holy City, and that mightier Robert who in one year |1086.| beheld the Cæsars of East and West flee before him. |Frederick the Second.| And of his stock, far more truly than of the stock of Imperial Swabia, came the Wonder of his own and of all succeeding ages,—poet, scholar, warrior, legislator—the terror and the marvel of Christendom and of Islam—the foe alike of Roman Pontiffs and of Moslem Sultans—who won alike the golden crown of Rome and the thorny crown of Salem—dreaded in one world as the foremost champion of Christ, cursed in another as the apostate votary of Mahomet—the gay, the brave, the wise, the relentless, and the godless Frederick.

But on no country was the effect of the Scandinavian settlement in Gaul so deep as it was on Gaul itself. It may sound like a strange paradox, but there can be little doubt that it was the settlement of the Northern pirates which finally made Gaul French in the modern sense. Their settlement was made during the transitional period of West-Frankish history. The modern French nation and language were just beginning to appear. Paris, not yet the capital, had been found to be the most important military post in the kingdom, and the lords of Paris had shown themselves to be its most vigorous defenders. |Period of struggle in West-France. 887–987.| The tenth century was a period of struggle between the Teutonic and the Romance tongues, between Laon and Paris, between the descendants of Charles the Great and the descendants of Robert the Strong. The Norman stepped into the scene of confusion, and he finally decided the quarrel in favour of the French dynasty of |Origin of modern France.| Paris against the Frankish dynasty of Laon. Modern France, we must ever remember, has no part or lot in either of the two dynasties whose associations she so persistently usurps, the Karlings and their predecessors the Merwings. Till the ninth century there was no geographical division which at all answered to modern France. Charles the Great more than once contemplated a division of his Empire; but not one of his proposed divisions coincided even in the roughest way with the limits of the |First glimpse of modern France.| kingdom of the Valois and the Bourbons. Modern France makes its first indistinct appearance in the division which was made on the death of Lewis the Pious. Then, for the |839.| first time, Northern and Southern Gaul, Neustria and Aquitaine, were united to make the kingdom of Charles the Bald. The kingdom thus formed was the first germ of modern France. It roughly answers to its geographical extent, and, what is still more to the purpose, we see that a new nation, with a new language, was springing up |843.| within it. The final settlement of Verdun confirmed the existence of the new kingdom. The Empire was then divided into three kingdoms, the Western, the Eastern, and the narrow debateable ground between them, known as Lotharingia. This last kingdom fell to pieces, while the kingdoms on each side of it grew, flourished, and contended for its fragments. These are the two kingdoms of the East and the West-Franks, which we are already sorely tempted to call by the familiar names of Germany and France.

FOR THE DELEGATES OF THE CLARENDON PRESS.

Neustria and Aquitaine were never again formally separated |1360.| till the Peace of Bretigny in the fourteenth century. |Union under Charles the Third. 885–887.| Neustria and Austrasia, the kingdoms of the Western and the Eastern Franks, were never again united except during the ephemeral reign of Charles the Third or the Fat. That Emperor, the last who reigned over both the Eastern and the Western Franks, was deposed by common consent |Division of the Empire. 888.| of his various Kingdoms. Four kingdoms now appeared, answering to those of Germany, Italy, France, and Burgundy. And now a more important step still was taken |Kingdoms of East and West-Franks.| in the direction of modern France. The Western Franks took to themselves a new dynasty and a new capital. Since the death of the great Charles, the city on the |Growing importance of Paris.| Seine, the old home of Julian, had been gradually rising in consequence. It plays an important part during the reign of his son Lewis the Pious. Characteristically |830.| enough, Paris first appears in Carolingian history as the scene of a conspiracy against her Teutonic master. There it was that the rebels assembled who seized and imprisoned, |Paris the chief bulwark against the Northmen.| and at last deposed, the pious Emperor. Later in the ninth century Paris won for herself a more honourable renown; she became the bulwark of Gaul against the inroads of the Northmen. The pirates soon found out the importance of the position of the city in any attack or defence of Gaul on her northern side. The Seine, and Paris upon the Seine, now became the great objects of Scandinavian attack. Thrice in the reign of Charles the Bald did the |Formation of the March of Paris. 861.| invaders enter the city. At last a new power was formed, chiefly with the object of defending Gaul from their attack. A large district was granted in fief by Charles the Bald to Robert the Strong, as a march or border territory, to be defended against the invading Northman and the rebellious Breton. And of this march, under Robert’s son Odo, Paris became the head. The power thus formed was destined to a career which seems not unusual for such frontier districts. Rome herself, then still the home of Empire, had begun her own career as a march of the Latin against the Etruscan. So, in later times, the Mark of Brandenburg, the outlying defence of Germany against the Slave, and the Eastern Mark, her outlying defence against the Magyar, have, under the names of Prussia and Austria, eclipsed the older names of Saxony, Swabia, Bavaria, and Eastern Francia. So it was with this outlying march granted to Count Robert by Charles the Bald. Paris now became a centre, a capital; if not a royal, at least a ducal, city. The fief of Robert grew into the duchy of France, and the duchy of France grew into the kingdom. Robert himself became the forefather of the first Capets, of the Valois, and of the Bourbons. |Paris defended by Odo. 885–886.| The great siege of Paris by the Northmen, and its gallant defence by Count Odo, or Eudes, the son of Robert, greatly raised the position alike of the city and of its lord. On the deposition of Charles the Third ineffectual attempts were indeed made on behalf of other candidates, but, in the |Odo elected King. 888.| end, Count Odo was elected and consecrated to what now begins to be called the Kingdom of France, a kingdom over |1848.| which his descendants were still reigning thirty years ago.

Odo of Paris then became “Rex Francorum,” in a sense which, as applied to his family, we cannot better represent than by the title of “King of the French.” His own family was of German descent; but, throughout the following century, his dynasty represents, perhaps quite unconsciously, the growing French nationality, just as the dynasty of Laon represents the decaying Teutonic element. The Dukes and Kings of Paris spoke French long before the end of the tenth century, while the Karlings of Laon still spoke their ancestral Frankish. The hundred years’ struggle between the Carolingian house at Laon and the Capetian house at Paris now begins. This period falls naturally into two stages. In the first stage, the lords of Paris directly disputed the crown with the heirs of Charles; in the second, they preferred the position of kingmakers to that of Kings. Odo was elected as the hero of the siege of Paris, the true champion of Gaul and of |Charles the Simple and Robert.| Christendom. But he soon found a rival in Charles the Simple, whose only claim was the doubtful belief that the blood of his great namesake flowed in his veins. It was in the course of his troubled reign that the Scandinavian invaders made that settlement in Gaul which grew into the Norman duchy. It was at his hands that the first Norman Duke received the investiture of his dominions. But the settlement was made at the immediate cost, not of the Carolingian King at Laon, but of the Capetian Duke at Paris. It was from France, in the strictest sense, that Normandy was cut off. The lord of Rouen now stepped in as a kind of umpire between the two rival powers, and throughout the whole struggle of the century no question was of greater importance than whether the power of Normandy should be arrayed on the side of Paris or on the side of Laon. We have now to record the history of the Norman settlement itself, and the history of the Normans in Gaul during the period of struggle, and to show how important an element they were in determining the controversy in favour of the competitor most foreign to their own ancient blood and speech.