m85

thc Seine, and throughout the entire region evil grows strong. Rouen is laid waste, looted and burnt: Paris, Beauvais, Meaux are taken, Melun’s stronghold is razed to the ground, Chartres occupied, Evreux and Bayeux looted, and every town invested.’

By the middle of the pth century many of' the Vikings werc taking up semi-residence on the French rivers, wintering near the mouths and harrying inland in the fine weather. In 859 sixty-two ships sailed southwards from the Loire in search of fresh targets. They pillaged the Iberian coast, put Algeciras to the sword, and penetrated into the Mediterranean to ravage the North African coast. They wintered in the Rhóne River delta and looted Arles, Nimes and other cities in the region, then sailed on to Italy, where they looted and burnt Pisa.

England had meanwhile been suffering as badly, if not worse, for here the raiders seemed intent on conquest, not just loot. London, Rochester and Canterbury fell to the Vikings, as did (briefly) the Capital of Winchester, and only Alfred of Wessex was able to resist them effectively. Alfred managed to defeat the Danes in the south, but lic could not save the north-east, and the wide belt of land between the east coast from the Thames estuary almost to the Tees, and the west coast from Liverpool to Carlisle, was ruled by the Danes and became known as the Danelaw.

After Alfred the power of the English kings declined, and by the end of the ioth century the Danes were attacking in ever-increasing strength. King Aethelred levied a tax—the Danegeld- to buy off the raiders, but tliis only encouraged morę to pour into England for the easy money. In 994, the first year of the Danegeld, 16,000 pounds of silver were paid to the Danes: by 1012, when the last Danegeld was paid, it had risen to 48,000 pounds. Aethelred fled in 1016 and the whole of England submitted to a Danish king, Knut. By 1027 Knut had welded England, Denmark, Nor-way and part of Sweden into a Scandinavian empire.

However, by this datę the situation was changing for the worse so far as the Vikings were concerned. Ireland had been lost in 1014. Iceland had declared independence. Knut died in 1035 and his empire