Were it not that we believe these powerful enemies of Christianity—the Northmen, or pirates from the regions of the North—were instruments in God's hands for the punishment of the apostate church of Rome, it would not be in our way to have introduced them. But as they appear to be nothing short of the judgment of God against the overgrown worldliness of every order of the Catholic priesthood, we may give them a brief notice.
Originally they came from the shores of the Baltic, in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Probably they were a mixture of Goths, Danes, Norwegians, Swedes, and Frisians. But, though composed of so many different tribes, they were all agreed as to their main object—plunder and slaughter. Their petty kings and chieftains were practiced pirates, and the most daring that ever infested the seas or the shores of Western Christendom. They pushed their light boats up the rivers as far as they could go, burning, slaying, and plundering wherever they went.
"From the shores of the Baltic," says Milman, "from the Scandinavian islands, from the gulfs and lakes, their fleets sailed on, wherever the tide or the tempest might drive them. They seemed to defy, in their ill-formed barks, the wildest weather; to be able to land on the most inaccessible shores, to find their way up the narrowest creeks and shallowest rivers; nothing was secure, not even in the heart of the country, from the sudden appearance of these relentless savages." They have been called "the Arabs of the sea," but, unlike the Mahometans, they did not wage a religious war. They were ferocious heathens, and their gods, like themselves, were warriors and pirates. Plunder, not the propagation of a faith, was their object. The castle or the monastery, the noble lord, the bishop, or the monk, were alike in their eyes, provided a rich booty could be obtained. The religious estates, especially in France, suffered the most. The wealth, and the defenseless position of the monasteries, pointed these out as the chief objects of their attack.
A day of retribution had come. God's hand was sore upon those who called themselves His people. His wrath seemed to burn. The church had now to pay dearly for her worldly greatness and glory. It had been her ambition for centuries; and Charlemagne had raised the clergy to great wealth and worldly honor. But, scarcely had they been seated in their palaces, when the tide of barbaric invasion began to desolate the empire, and lay waste the religious edifices. The richer the abbey, the more tempting the prey, and the more remorseless the sword of the barbarian. Ignorant of the different orders of clergy, they massacred indiscriminately. Fire and sword were their weapons throughout their whole career. "France was covered with bishops and monks, flying from their ruined cloisters, their burning monasteries, their desolate churches, bearing with them the precious relics of their saints, and so deepening the universal panic, and preaching despair wherever they went."
To purchase repose from the warlike Normans, who forced their way up the Seine, and for two years besieged the city of Paris, Charles the Simple, of France, ceded the duchy of Normandy to their leader Rollo in 905. Thus the pirate of the Baltic assumed the Christian religion, became first Duke of Normandy, and one of the twelve peers of France. William, conqueror of England in 1066, was the seventh Duke of Normandy.
England, like France, was greatly harassed and desolated by the Northmen. The first descent, which was severely felt, was about the year 830. From that time these invasions were incessant. And here, as in France, they found the richest booty in the defenseless monastery. The sanctuaries were wasted with fire and sword. At length, after the victory gained by Alfred over Guthrum in 878, a large territory was ceded to the Danes in the East of England, on condition of their embracing Christianity, and living under equal laws with the native inhabitants. But the peace thus obtained was only for a time.