He found his Emperor Charles surrounded by his Court at Metz, whither he had marched back from Italy. The Emperor Charles was huge and unwieldy of body, and he was palsied so that his head shook, and he had no will. But Eudes spoke to the Nobles and shamed them into marching, though it was not until July that they tardily agreed to go westward, nor until September, when for now ten months little Paris had stood up against the northmen, that the great army of the Empire was seen marching up from the north and the east, until it lay camped below Montmartre, not an hour from the town. Even here so feeble was Charles that he would not fight when he saw the host of the northmen. He lay there is his camp treating, and one that watched him has written: “He did nothing worthy of the Majesty Royal.” And it was October, and nearly a year since the Normans had come, before his treating was ended. The chief of the pagans was one Siegfried, who had sailed from Thames, having gathered his men about him at Fulham above London, after King Alfred had broken their power. Siegfried it was who had so sailed with his followers out of Thames mouth and up Seine, sacking Rouen and coming at last to Paris itself. And with Siegfried the dull, palsied Emperor bargained, buying him off with silver to seven hundred pounds weight, and shamefully permitting that heathen to go east into the heart of Gaul and to pillage Burgundy. So was the great siege ended and Paris saved by its valour and by the valour of Eudes: but not avenged, because the blood of Charlemagne had lost its vigour in his descendants, and the Emperors were nothing worth. But as for Paris and her lord, they now stood out separate from these Emperors who could do nothing for them; and Eudes, the son of Robert, made himself more great, so that when Charles the Emperor died a year later, the great men met together and said to themselves: “As for the Germanies, let them go where they will, but Eudes shall be our king here.” And Eudes was crowned and anointed in Compiègne, not two years after his manliness in the great siege, and being so crowned he rode out eastward to where the northmen were pillaging in Argonne, and finding there the body of the pirates he destroyed them; and to this day it is remembered how powerfully he blew his horn in that fight. From him and from his father Robert all the kings of France descend. THE CROWNING OF THE CAPETIAN (_Sunday, July 3_, A.D. 987)