chapter 9._

NORMANS: A. D. 845-861. Repeated ravages in the Seine. Paris thrice sacked.

See PARIS; A. D. 845; and 857-861.

NORMANS: A. D. 849-860. The career of Hasting.

"About the year of Alfred's birth [849] they laid siege to Tours, from which they were repulsed by the gallantry of the citizens, assisted by the miraculous aid of Saint Martin. It is at this siege that Hasting first appears as a leader. His birth is uncertain. In some accounts he is said to have been the son of a peasant of Troyes, the capital of Champagne, and to have forsworn his faith, and joined the Danes in his early youth, from an inherent lust of battle and plunder. In others he is called the son of the jarl Atte. But, whatever his origin, by the middle of the century he had established his title to lead the Northern hordes in those fierce forays which helped to shatter the Carlovingian Empire to fragments. … When the land was bare, leaving the despoiled provinces he again put to sea, and, sailing southwards still, pushed up the Tagus and Guadalquiver, and ravaged the neighbourhoods of Lisbon and Seville. But no settlement in Spain was possible at this time. The Peninsula had lately had for Caliph Abdalrahman the Second, called El Mouzaffer, 'The Victorious,' and the vigour of his rule had made the Arabian kingdom in Spain the most efficient power for defence in Europe. Hasting soon recoiled from the Spanish coasts, and returned to his old haunts. The leaders of the Danes in England, the Sidrocs and Hinguar and Hubba, had, as we have seen, a special delight in the destruction of churches and monasteries, mingling a fierce religious fanaticism with their thirst for battle and plunder. This exceeding bitterness of the Northmen may be fairly laid in great measure to the account of the thirty years of proselytising warfare, which Charlemagne had waged in Saxony, and along all the northern frontier of his empire. … Hasting seems to have been filled with a double portion of this spirit, which he had indulged throughout his career in the most inveterate hatred to priests and holy places. It was probably this, coupled with a certain weariness—commonplace murder and sacrilege having grown tame, and lost their charm—which incited him to the most daring of all his exploits, a direct attack on the head of Christendom, and the sacred city. Hasting then, about the year 860, planned an attack on Rome, and the proposal was well received by his followers. Sailing again round Spain, and pillaging on their way both on the Spanish and Moorish coasts, they entered the Mediterranean, and, steering for Italy, landed in the bay of Spezzia, near the town of Luna. Luna was the place where the great quarries of the Carrara marble had been worked ever since the times of the Cæsars. The city itself was, it is said, in great part built of white marble, and the 'candentia mœnia Lunæ' deceived Hasting into the belief that he was actually before Rome; so he sat down before the town which he had failed to surprise. The hope of taking it by assault was soon abandoned, but Hasting obtained his end by guile. … The priests were massacred, the gates thrown open, and the city taken and spoiled. Luna never recovered its old prosperity after the raid of the Northmen, and in Dante's time had fallen into utter decay. But Hasting's career in Italy ended with the sack of Luna; and, giving up all hope of attacking Rome, he re-embarked with the spoil of the town, the most beautiful of the women, and all the youths who could be used as soldiers or rowers. His fleet was, wrecked on the south coasts of France on its return westward, and all the spoil lost; but the devil had work yet for Hasting and his men, who got ashore in sufficient numbers to recompense themselves for their losses by the plunder of Provence."

_T. Hughes, Alfred the Great,