near Toul and Ponthion. The beginning of the reign was marked, besides, by several victories gained over the Northmen who had penetrated into Saxony. Other bands were defeated by Count Henry of Alemannia and Liutbert, Archbishop of Mayence. But Hugh of Lorraine had decided that the occasion was a good one for again putting forward his claim to his father's kingdom, with the support of his brother-in-law, the Northman Godefrid. Count Henry, whose task it was to resist them, chose to employ treachery. Godefrid was imprudent enough to consent to an interview in the course of which he was assassinated, and the Franks succeeded in inflicting a check on his leaderless troops. Hugh, being allured to Gondreville under pretext of negotiations, also fell into an ambush. He was blinded, tonsured, and immured in the Abbey of Prum. His sister, Gisela, Godefrid's widow, was a little later to die as Abbess of the Convent of Nivelles. This partial success was, however, balanced by the defeat suffered in front of Louvain by the army raised in Lorraine and in the Western Kingdom. Charles seemed indeed to be losing his interest in this unceasing war. At the assembly which he held at Frankfort at the beginning of the year 885, his only care seemed to be to procure the recognition of his illegitimate son Bernard's right to succeed him. His wishes, however, were opposed by the magnates. Charles counted on the support of Pope Hadrian III, the successor of John VIII who had been assassinated in 884, but Hadrian died 8 July 885, and this event forced the Emperor finally to give up his project. The successor of the dead Pope, Stephen V, had been elected without consulting Charles the Fat, and so much was the Emperor displeased that he thought it necessary to cross the Alps yet again. But he lingered in the north of the peninsula while his confidential agent, the Arch-Chancellor Liutward, Bishop of Vercelli, went to Rome to negotiate with the Pope. An outbreak of sedition at Pavia nearly cost the Emperor his life, and he decided not to advance farther, but to take the road for Gaul once more, whither he was recalled by the imperious necessity of resisting the Northmen.
Carloman's death had liberated the bands with whom he had treated at Amiens from their pledge to respect the Western Kingdom. Large numbers of the Northmen who had crossed over into England came back during the summer of 885 to rejoin their compatriots at Louvain who, for their part, had got as far as the mouth of the Seine. Other companies, coming from the Lower Scheldt, joined them there. On 25 July they entered Rouen, and their fleet, three hundred strong, carrying some forty thousand men, began to push up the Seine. A Neustrian army which attempted to bar the way to the invaders was obliged to beat a retreat without having succeeded in defending the fortified bridge which Charles the Bald had built at Pitres, and the great viking fleet, reinforced by Danes from the Loire, arrived before Paris on 24 November, covering the river's surface for more than two leagues. The city
