ments around seven million silver pennies, or approximately 14 percent of the total that were minted. The Carolingians had grown rich and powerful, and sponsored well-endowed abbeys, by plundering unbelievers on their borders. Now that process was ironically and very uncomfortably reversed. The hunters had become the hunted.
In 885, a Viking army returned to Paris, where Ragnar had found such easy pickings four decades previously. This time the city was better defended, but the Northmen put it under siege and tormented the inhabitants for nearly a year. A famous account known as the Wars of the City of Paris, by a monk called Abbo of Saint-Germain, recounted the chaos as “fear seized th
Powers and Thrones
Dan Jones