Saracen

of Italy and

from Charles-Martel, they treated the Aqui- 840_877 tanian and Narbonensic Gauls as a country to which they possessed a natural claim: in sultry 714-900 Provence you feel to breathe the Zahara air. invasions The Aquitanians were well inclined to fraternize Provence. with the Mahometans. No thanks either to Adalgisius and Adalferius and the Beneventine Lombards, that the Carlovingian Emperor had not been supplanted by a Sultan of Naples, whose Emirs would have extended their conquests round to the realm of the Ommiades. Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem, bowed humbly before the Arab, and it seemed more than once uncertain whether Rome would not be equally reduced to servitude. The Western Pontiff was threatened by the captivity inflicted upon the oriental Patriarchs: Saint Peter's successor might groan in bondage, like the successors of Saint Ignatius, Saint James or Saint Mark. The great Mediterranean lake appeared destined to become a Moslem lake; and why not? An Emperor of Morocco, according to the reasoning so irrefutable when supported by the arguments of civilization, would have as good a right as an Emperor of France.

Few early Provençal or Aquitanian Chronicles have been preserved, consequently the history of the country is very obscure. We have evidence however that the Saracens came over in great numbers. Their attacks and partial successes are not unfrequently noticed, but the

840-877 larger and more continuous immigrations are only incidentally recorded. Fraxinet, a castle or 714-900 fortress on the coast, somewhere nigh Fréjus,

Saracen

and influ

ence in Provence.

settlement became the nucleus of a Saracen colony midway between Italy and Spain, and readily reached from Africa. This position offered great advantages. The Saracens expanded themselves over the country. They mastered the passes of the Cottian and Penine Alps, following the footsteps of Hannibal. Various localities have received their denomination from these invaders. The forêt des Maures on the Fréjus coast, PuyMaure, and Mont-Maure near Gap, the Col de Maure near Château Dauphin, and the whole County of Maurienne, testify their occupancy; and it is considered that the Saracen blood has left deep traces in the aspect as well as the character of the Provençals.

With the Saracens probably came also a large proportion of Jews, who subsequently acquired considerable influence, rivalling their Spanish brethren, the Sephardim, in literature and intellectual cultivation. But the Moslems were as much at variance amongst themselves as the Christians: a divided Caliphate in the presence of a divided Empire. The Musnud of Bagdad has fallen like the Throne of Aix-la-Chapelle. Power had the Saracens given to them for accelerating the ruin of Carlovingian domination, but no power to build up for themselves out of the

ruins.

How casual and fantastic are the ele- 840-877 ments of popular celebrity! Turpin and Ariosto contribute the most enduring memorials of 714-900 Charlemagne's renown; and Haroun Alraschid reigns throughout Frangistaun by the lips of Sheherazade.

Notwithstanding their ultimate expulsion from Italy and the Gauls, the Mahometans kept up their continual claim.-Dragutte and Barbarossa infested the Mediterranean shores with undiminished pertinacity. The harems of Tunis and Tripoli were adorned by the flowers of beauty rudely plucked from the cottages and the villas, the chateaux and the palaces of Liguria or Tuscany, Romagna or the Abruzzi, Languedoc or Provence, who under a more fortunate or a more adverse star would have furnished models for Titian or Raphael, heightened the licentious revelry of a Borgia, or graced the courts of Henri-quatre or François-premier. The best names of the French noblesse and gentry might have answered the roll-call of the Algerine galley, whose bench levelled all distinctions, the captive peasant chained by the side of his captive seigneur. Even now, the frequent towers, adding romance to the lovely Riviera, anxiously commanding the promontories and protecting the gleaming bays, attest the harass so long inflicted by the infidel, and the vicinity of Africa's hostile shore.

4. Elsewhere have we alluded to the

VOL. I.

EE

The Scandinavian

840-877 European extent of Scandinavian piracy. It was, according to common expression, a chance, 815-1013 but in truth a wonderful ruling of Providence, that the pure Scandinavian and Jutish races invasions. had not prevented Cortes, Cabot and Columbus, colonizing and conquering broad America. Human sagacity cannot discern any adequate reason why the Northmen, whose energy established the once flourishing republic of Iceland, braved the eternal snows of Greenland, and explored the shores of the Pilgrim Fathers, should not in all respects have anticipated their successors of Visigothic, Roman, Gaulish, or "Anglo-Saxon" blood, and spread themselves over the forest-clad continent, then scarcely tenanted by the tribes who have since been exterminated by the poison-blast of civilization. What voice directed Leif Ericson and Thorfind to abandon the fertile Vinland? and who can explain wherefore that incipient domination was crushed, through which, had it been permitted, the whole course of the world's future history would have been changed?

Our discoursings in this work concerning the Scandinavian invasions are cursory and partial : we only contemplate them in Belgium, the Gauls and the borders. A general notion of the Danish inroads in these countries, so far as they are known -and very imperfectly known-from history, may be obtained by employing an easy process. Take the map, and colour with vermilion the provinces,

815-1013

Scandina

cen and

Hungarian

districts and shores which the Northmen visited, 840-877 as the record of each invasion. The colouring will have to be repeated more than ninety times Historical successively before you arrive at the conclusion of map of the the Carlovingian dynasty. Furthermore, mark by vian, Sarathe usual symbol of war, two crossed swords, the invasions. localities where battles were fought by or against the pirates where they were defeated or triumphant, or where they pillaged, burned or destroyed; and the valleys and banks of Elbe, Rhine and Moselle, Scheldt, Meuse, Somme and Seine, Loire, Garonne and Adour, the inland Allier, and all the coasts and coast-lands between estuary and estuary and the countries between the riverstreams, will appear bristling as with chevauxde-frise.

The strongly-fenced Roman cities, the venerated Abbeys and their dependent bourgades, often more flourishing and extensive than the ancient seats of government, the opulent seaports and trading towns, were all equally exposed to the Danish attacks, stunned by the Northmen's approach, subjugated by their fury. Aix-la-chapelle, Nimeguen and Treves, Cologne, Bonn, Coblentz, Worms, Hamburgh, Metz, Toul and Verdun, Tolbiac, Tournay, Terouenne and Tongres, Doerstadt and Quantowick, Arras, Amiens, Cambray, Ghent, Louvaine, Maestricht, Stavelo and Deventer, Fleury, Hasbey and Corbey, Nuys and Malmedi, Marmoutier and Noirmoutier, Pruhm,