THE NORTHMEN AND OTHER INVADERS 219 mets and coats of mail behind their long shields with spear, sword, or battle-axe. The later Carolingians often adopted I the policy of paying them money to go away, but this only
- made more come the next year. When the Northmen be-
| sieged Paris for the fourth time in 885, the Bishop Gauzelin 1 and the Count Odo defended it manfully and made every ! effort to secure from outside an army to relieve the city. But |j when the Emperor Charles at last arrived, he merely bought I off the Northmen and allowed them to spend the winter in I plundering Burgundy. It was largely on this account that b| he was deposed, and the incident illustrates the failure of the
central government to check the invaders and the fact that
H the people of each district must look for protection to their I local officials and great men such as the count and the I bishop. Through the ninth century, then, the Northmen re- peatedly ravaged Frankish territory and sometimes passed I the entire winter there; but the only region settlement where they seem to have made permanent settle- of , t , . Normandy i ments on any large scale was on the lower course of the Ri ver Sein e. From this position they threatened the I interior, and the King of the West Franks, whose capital was II at Laon in what is now northeastern France, found it ad- i visable to detach the district about Paris as a march against ' them. The first count of this march was Robe rt the S trong. J The ruler of the Northmen on the lower Seine, — or Nor- mans as we may now begin to call them, — during the last quarter of the ninth and the first quarter of the tenth cen- tury, was Rollo (876-927), a somewhat legendary figure i whose exploits are recorded in the later French Roman de j Rou. He made Rouen his capital, and in 911 or 912 he was definitely granted Normandy by the Carolingian king of the West Franks, Charles the Simple. While Normandy was
- the only large area conquered by the Northmen from the
Franks, they probably made smaller settlements in a number of places and were gradually absorbed into the native popu- lation, and everywhere converted to Christianity. In the British Isles the Northmen made numerous settle-
