Harald lived from 860 to 933 A. D. He introduced that new doctrine of middle Europe that made the people the king’s retainers at all times and not on special occasions. It was a centralization and consolidation of power and royal authority. It laid taxes upon all the lands and interfered with what the people had ever held as their vested rights. It enabled the monarch to meddle with the holdings of his people and aimed to cement the entire country into one kingdom of power through a central head rather than to permit the existence of several petty realms, each presided over by a Jarl who was jealous of his more powerful neighbors. To the lesser rulers the course of Harald was tyrannical, a curse upon their freedom, a blight upon their ambition. As we view the situation from the distance of ten centuries, it was a step in the progress of the nations that was to result in a blessing through the introduction of Christianity and the ultimate progress of civilization. The freemen resisted as long as they could; beaten again and again they gathered their waning strength and renewed the desperate struggle, but to no purpose. One by one the freeholders came under Harald’s dominion. Many withdrew from the scene of strife, forsook the land of their birth, preferring exile with their accustomed liberties to vassalage under conditions, where, as they deemed, no free-born man would care to live. We now read of them in many lands. France, Italy, Spain,—each in turn feels the fury of the wrath of the fair-haired warriors of the north. A century later, we behold these restless wanderers victorious in the streets of Byzantium. They check their foes from whatever source they come, never give quarter and swiftly ride to victory, be it on their spirited chargers or in their high-prowed seahorses. In Sicily, Asia, the shores of the Black Sea, in Greece, in northern Africa, no matter where, the stoutest champions of the Moslem or the less valiant warriors of the declining Roman Empire, all feel the force of the northern blast and succumb to the prowess of the Northmen. Wherever they go they leave their mark, and to this day the arsenal of Venice is scored with runes which boast the triumphs of the Vikings. Of all their wanderings the islands “west-over-the-sea” were their chosen field for conquest. For centuries the coast and river hamlets of England, Scotland and Ireland were in constant dread of their bloody depredations. Their blows were quickly struck. Whence they came the Briton did not know. Swift as the hawk upon the sparrow, they swept down upon some quiet, industrious hamlet with merciless weapon in hand. Fire, pillage and slaughter followed in their wake. They plundered home and sanctuary, tossed in sport the screaming children on their pikes, sent their mothers to shame and serfdom, and left the erstwhile peaceful Briton to quench the ebbing stream of life in the smouldering embers of his former home.