2. _France._ The devastations of the Saxons and the Jutes on the coasts of Gaul commenced as early as those on the coast of Britain. We read of them in the third and every succeeding century, until France was too strong to be assailed with impunity,—until piracy was extinguished in the north of Europe. In the fifth century, the pirates besieged Orleans, and formed many settlements on the western coast. About the middle of the sixth, Hamlet of Jutland is said to have fought the Franks in person, and to have been defeated. The period, however, of Hamlet, is purely conjectural; and his descent on the coast is equally so. But that the Normans were there is affirmed by the contemporary Gregory of Tours, who describes their ravages with much interest. Under the Carlovingians, the piratical armaments were more powerful than at any preceding time. In 795, the Danes ravaged Friesland; from 800, the coasts of Flanders and France were infested; nor could the genius and vast resources of Charlemagne punish their audacity. On witnessing their fugitive depredations, he is said to have predicted the trouble which they would cause his successors. Such a prediction required no supernatural discernment; but it proves that the monarch had formed a correct estimate of northern piracy. For the greater part of a century, however, they did not appear in any overwhelming numbers on the French coast. The forces of the Northmen were too much scattered over the deep, in England, Ireland, the Orkneys, and the Baltic, to admit of any considerable concentration at a given point. Their efforts, however destructive, were desultory, and might have been easily repelled, had there been any wisdom or any vigour in the government. But the sons of the emperor Louis were too eager to destroy each other, to have time for the chastisement of obscure pirates; and every year added to the severity of the scourge. In 840, Rouen was burnt; and many great monasteries of that province, defended as they were by numerous vassals, shared the same fate. The banks of two rivers—the Seine and the Loire—were ravaged from their mouths to the interior of France. Amboise was next burnt, and Tours was besieged; but St. Martin saved his city.[281] [Sidenote: 840.]