mametupa:Viking in Paris for the first time (no spoiler:D)In 845 the Vikings sailed up the Seine and
mametupa:Viking in Paris for the first time (no spoiler:D)In 845 the Vikings sailed up the Seine and attacked Paris for the first time. The appearance of this group, led by Ragnar, led to fears that the Franks were being punished for their sins in the same way that God had punished the Israelites. Charles the Bold and the Frankish defenders fled in panic to the monastery of Saint-Denis, prompting the Vikings to hang 111 captives in full view of the king. The capital was only saved further depredations by an epidemic of dysentery, which struck down many of the raiders. Nonetheless, Charles was still forced to pay a huge tribute to get the Vikings to move on. The Franks did have the satisfaction of divine vengeance on Ragnar — at least in the eyes of the author of the Translatio of Saint-Germain — for he is said to have suffered a terrible death on his return to Denmark, his stomach swelling and bursting open as his diseased guts spilled out, a punishment for his earlier sacking of the monastery of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.The bribe paid to Ragnar’s group in 845 was a colossal 7,000 pounds of silver, but Charles’s authority was still sufficiently strong that it took him just three months to raise this vast sum. Although over the next few years the raiders concentrated on Frisia, Brittany and Aquitaine, leaving the central core of Charles’s realm untouched, they then returned to the Seine in force, exacting further tributes in 853, 858 and 86o. The nature of the raids, too, began to change. In 852, the Vikings overwintered for the first time on the Seine, a development that (just as it would later do in England) marked their permanent entry onto the Frankish political landscape. The 860 tribute payment (of 5,000 pounds of silver) was made by Charles to Weland, the leader of a newly arrived Viking band, and was in exchange for besieging (and expelling) yet another Viking force under Björn Ironside, which had based itself on the island of Oissel in the Seine. Björn, with hunger beginning to bite, simply offered Weland an even larger payment (of 6,000 pounds of silver) to be allowed to slip away, an inducement that his duplicitous countryman had no qualms in accepting. The two groups then headed down the Seine and split up to overwinter at various points along the river. Source: The Northmen’s Fury, Philip ParkerPS. There are many other legends about Ragnar’s demise. Some say he died in England in the hands of King Aella. -- source link
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