Editorial
A French Easter Memory
By Dr. Gary K. Busch 21/3/08
Mar 21, 2008 - 10:48:21 AM

In the year 845, on March 28 according to tradition, the cowardly French king Charles The Bald, a grandson of Charlemagne, but obviously without an ounce of his grandfather's courage, was attacked by the Viking raider and King of Denmark, Ragnar Lodbrok. After defeating King Charles in a battle along the Seine, Ragnar laid siege to Paris, captured it and sacked it. The so-called King of France then sent a messenger to Ragnar asking what it would take for the mighty Viking and his men to stop picking on him.

Ragnar took 211 hostages, hanged all but 100 of them, and then let the rest go when Charlie coughed up 7,000 pounds of silver. Here's one account of this great moment in the long tradition of French "military" history...

It was on Holy Saturday 845, the day before Easter, that the full extent of Viking ambitions were understood. On that Easter eve even the most notorious Viking of the ninth century, the fearsome chief Ragnar Lodbrok, sailed up the Seine and sacked Paris. The citizenry fled and the churches were abandoned. Ragnar Lodbrok had successfully struck at the heart of the kingdom which had dominated Europe so recently under Charlemagne. Before the appalled eyes of the Frankish king Charles the Bald, Ragnar Lodbrok hung 111 citizens from trees and let another hundred go only when he was paid 7,000 pounds of silver. Then, his red beard glinting in the pale spring sun, he made a sarcastic bow to the terrified king and took himself off to the open seas once more. Bur there was no doubt among the watching crowds where power lay. It was certainly not with the king.

(--from The Story of Britain: From the Romans to the Present: a Narrative History by Rebecca Fraser)

A few years later , Ragnar decided to try his luck across the Channel. In 865, he landed in Northumbria on the north-east coast of England. It is here he was defeated in battle for the only time, by King Aelle II of Northumbria.