Part Two: The Fallen Crown: New World Rising
“No-one would have believed, in the sixth decade of the eleventh century, that English affairs were being watched from the enemy shores of France. Few men even considered the possibility of an attack by the old enemy. And yet, across the English Channel, military minds immeasurably superior to theirs watched that island with envious eyes, and slowly, and surely, they drew their plans against them.”
(With apologies to H.G. Wells and Jeff Wayne)
Chapter I: Under the French Heel, Part One
Ruled Britannia: The Third, and Final, Conquest of Britain
If there is one date, or at lest one year every school kid in Britain knows, it’s 1066. That was, of course, the year of the famous Battle of Hastings, in which not only English but European life changed forever. The Crown of Wessex, as already detailed the last time we stepped into the history of England, had fallen, and though for a short time others such as the House of Godwin and the House of Denmark carried on, there was about to be a seismic event which would change English politics, policy and the lives of every Englishman and Englishwoman, and in the process both give rise to an enduring hero of legend, and more practically, change the shape of Europe, and even further afield, leaving its mark on the western world for all time. In some ways, you could say that though the Vikings failed to conquer Britain in the eighth and ninth centuries, they did eventually manage it, and more completely than they could ever have hoped to do. By then, though, they had settled in France and become known by another name: the Normans.
The future Kings of England, who would rule unopposed in pretty much an unbroken line for another six hundred years, traced their claim to the throne back to a - mostly disputed, never proven - promise that William, Duke of Normandy, would be made king on the death of Edward, an assurance supposedly given by Harold Godwinson, who then tried the throne out for size and thought “You know, this ain’t bad. F
uck that William. May I may be shot through the eye with an arrow before any damned frog sits on this throne!” Right. Anyway, you’ve read about that in the previous chapter, haven’t you? But before we get to that broken (if ever made) promise and what it meant for England, and wider Europe, just who the damned hell
were these Normans? Oh, glad you asked.
Pirates to Princes: The Rise of the Normans
As everyone knows, and as I’ve already told you, the Normans were the descendants of those jolly old folk, everyone’s favourite raiders, five stars in
Rape and Pillage Monthly and beloved of shipwrights, the Vikings. Having somewhat failed to hammer down the English like their poster boy, Thor, god of thunder, the Vikings had, in the early tenth century, decided to seek easier pickings to the east. Not very far east, just a hop over the English Channel where they said
“Bonjour! Vous est morte!” or something and began harrying the French. They could not have really been expecting an easy conquest, and Vikings generally went where they thought they could pick a decent fight. True, if they could just slaughter and carry off treasure, then that was sehr gut, or something, and Lindisfarne and other monasteries along the coast of England provided them with little to no resistance. But Vikings were at heart warriors, and there’s nothing really brave or particularly honourable about slaying men who wore dresses and shrieked like girls from the barest flesh wound, a simple cut deep into the shoulder and through bone, the kind of thing no self-respecting Viking would allow him to stop raping, pillaging and plundering to take care of. Doctor? What’s that?
In France, they got the fight they had been craving. Many of them, in fact. Although they folded like umbrellas a millennium later when Hitler’s wehrmacht rolled over Europe, at this time there were few fighting machines like the French one, and one thing they loved to do was defend their towns and cities, especially the jewel of la belle france. So when heavily-armed Vikings came sailing up the Seine, they shouted “Non!” and gave them what for. So much so, in fact, that really, the Vikings never managed to conquer France, and had to end up settling there with the permission of the French king. And most of that was probably down to these two.
Odo (857 - 898)
You’ve got to love the French. They had three kings, all succeeding one another, all called Charles, so rather than give them numerals, as later became the trend, they identified them by their, ah, characteristics. So we had Charles the Bald being succeeded by Charles the Simple and then Charles the Fat. Oh, and there was also Hugh the Abbot, who was, well, an abbot. Of course he was. Was there a Charles the Costello? No of course there wasn’t; don’t be silly. Okay, he was never king, just regent. Oh, and Odo’s father was Robert the Strong. And no, he wasn’t called Odo the Shapeshifter. Wrong journal. Originally the Count of Paris, he was crowned king after the Siege of the capital, in which he drove back the Viking invaders.
The Siege of Paris (885 - 886)
It should probably be understood that at this time the Kingdom of Francia was not France, but was in fact the territory of the Franks, and encompassed what would become France, also Germany and part of Italy. Most, in fact, so far as I can see, of Western Europe, with the exception of Spain and Portugal. In 843 West Francia became a separate kingdom, which would evolve in time into France, and Paris was its capital city. In 845 the Vikings reached Paris for the first time, and attacked it, eventually sacking the city. How they carried a whole city away in sacks is something historians still debate to this day, but the French (we’ll just call them that for handiness’ sake, all right? I know they were the West Francians or Franks or whatever, but this is easier) decided that the Seine was too easy a conduit for those big longships to sail up and menace their beloved capital, so Odo’s father, Robert the Strong, started having bridges built across the river, thus impeding Viking progress up the Seine and also making of them something of a target.
When Robert fell in battle in 866, his son Odo was made Count of Paris, and when Charles the Bald died in 877 he was succeeded by the other Charles, the fat one, who had barely had time to get comfortable on the throne before those annoying Vikings were back, shouting and halloooing and attacking up the river again. This time though, they meant business, and they weren’t going to be driven away by a few poxy bridges. Some say they had 700 ships, but those who hadn’t drunk too much wine thought it more like 300, still a big fleet and sure to put the willies up any Frenchman seeing them sailing up the Seine, shouting and hallooing and, you know.
As Count of Paris, Odo undertook the city’s defence, and though outnumbered (even 300 ships would have carried about 15,000 men, and he had barely 200 at his command) he managed to drive them back. The Vikings had by now settled on a form of protection racket, where they arrived in a town or city and promised not to burn it to the ground and kill every living soul if they were paid off. It was called tribute back then, but it’s the same principle as “ooops! Now look what you made me do!” that helped gangs to terrorise shop-keepers in the next few centuries. Anyway, Odo told them where they could stick their requests for a payoff, and possibly after enquiring whether he had anything to do with the All-Father, his name being so similar and all, and if so, could he put in a good word with Odin to aid them in their quest to burn Paris to the ground, the Vikings withdrew and set up a siege.
They mined the river (how did they work if they were on it? Oh right: they had camped on the other side of it. Still, they’d have to go out on it if they wanted to renew their attack. Seems a little self-destructive, possibly literally so), used siege engines, catapults and sneering sarcasm probably, but nothing would induce the French to surrender. The city was probably unable to support a bribe, not when they had a king called Charles the Fat, and also knew what happened to those who gave in to the Vikings. So they fought on. The Vikings used battering rams and fire, but the French had a secret weapon: a cross! Yes, the Bishop of Paris planted a crucifix in the outer defences and called on all Christian men to resist the heathen invader. That’d show ‘em!
The siege continued on into Christmas and the New Year, the Vikings trying everything to gain access, including shoring up the shallow part of the river with dead bodies (kind of lends new meaning to “close the wall up with our English dead”, doesn’t it?) but to no avail. They even had a shot at sending burning ships - the dreaded “fireships” - against the wooden bridge, but the damn things sank before they reached the structure, thanks Olaf the Lazy Shipwright! Odin, however, must have been bored, because he took an interest and sent rain that swelled the river and wrecked the bridge. Down it came and in came the Vikings. Go for it, lads! And they did. Seeing their plight was now somewhat up a certain creek without a certain instrument, Odo sent men to Charles, looking for reinforcements. They arrived, but after marching from Germany were too shagged to do any fighting, and sat down for a breather, no doubt to the massed mocking laughter of men who had wrestled ice giants in legend and drank the ocean possibly.
However, they weren’t laughing by April, when one of the leaders declared “F
uck this lads, I’m bollocksed with all this sieging. Vikings weren’t meant to siege. In and out, hit ‘em fast and hard, f
uck off back home, that’s for me. Hell with this. Who wants their city anyway? Only full of pox-ridden whores, mimes and snooty fu
ckers. I don’t really fancy eating frog’s legs for the rest of my life, do you?” And with that, he was gone. But it wasn’t all roses for the French either. As it tends to do when food runs low and sanitation is at best basic, disease began to break out in the city and the poor old bishop snuffed it. Odo decided to head to Old Fatso’s palace, asking for more help. Charles’ attendants looked on with horror as the big fat bastard agreed, envisioning the block and tackle and sheer disregard for physics it was going to take to get the king on his horse (his horse would not have been too pleased either) but somehow they managed it and off they went. They attacked and fought their way into the city, turned and mounted its defence.
Realising, as fresh armies arrived in the summer, that there was no way they were getting into Paris without wearing a tie and being on the guest list, the remaining Viking leader, Rollo, of whom we will hear more presently, gave up and, allowed by the king to head up the Seine to attack Burgundy - a handy way of putting down a pesky revolt that had erupted there - he eventually paid him off, (Odo possibly thinking “what the fu
ck did you do that for? I could have paid him and saved all those lives but I didn’t, and now you just fork over the cash? Just wait till I’m king you fat…”) but either way, the important thing was that the almost year-long siege was over. And more importantly, Paris had not fallen.
As part of the story of how Odo then became king, it’s amusing to chronicle what happened to Charles the Fat. After he paid off the Vikings he was
persona non grata (or possibly
persona gras, sorry) in the capital, and fell out of favour. When he tried to have his bastard son Bernard made the legitimate heir to the throne in 885, the bishops, to a man, said oh no you fu
cking don’t pal. No fat bastard - excuse our French - will sit on the throne of France while we have breath in our bodies. Unfortunately for them, their boss, Pope Hadrian III, declared that he would recognise the kid, and as long as he had breath in his body nobody would dare to defy him. Then suddenly he had no breath in his body, as, on the way to sort out the bishops and proclaim Bernard the Bastard as the new king, he sort of died (doesn’t say whether this was of natural causes, an accident or whether some disgruntled bishop slipped deadly nightshade into his wine or something) and put a real crimp in Charles’ plans. Would it be unfair and unkind to mention he was on the way to Worms, but before he got there ended up as future food for worms? It would? Tough. You should know me by now, and if you still don't then just get used to it: this is how I roll.