Under this reign the people were finally delivered from the long Norman invasion, which stopped of its own accord, and by act of the invaders rather than resistance of the invaded. Since the time the Norman vassals collected at the mouth of the Seine, the country round about had been nothing but a desert, towns abandoned, villages in ashes; one could travel whole leagues without even hearing a dog bark. Since there was nothing more to be got they ran the risk of dying by hunger. The Normans finally perceived with their positive spirit that it was better to take possession of the land than to pillage its ruined inhabitants, and that it was worth more to make these rich territories valuable than to get sustenance from their ruins. Thenceforth everything was changed. The fleets from the north brought colonists instead of pirates, and the peasants found in their midst a protection which they could not have gotten anywhere else. [Sidenote: [911-923 A.D.]] The new plan had been in operation for some time when a great emigration was determined upon in the north, owing to the subjection of all the chiefs under one head. The movement set out in the direction of Neustria under the leadership of Rollo, the famous sea-king--one of those who had assisted at the siege of Paris in the days of Charles the Fat, and had established a fixed home in that country. For some years the new-comers kept up their old practises. They burned St. Martin of Tours, and went to Bourges and killed the bishop. Rollo reappeared before the towers of the châtelet. Finally he came to an understanding with Charles the Simple, who gave him his daughter Gisela in marriage and raised him to the rank of the feudal barons, by legalising his seizure of Neustria. Rollo became duke of Normandy, and the king of France’s vassal, not without making the latter often feel that he troubled himself little about the nominal suzerainty. When the time for doing homage came and they wished him to do it in the Carlovingian manner, by kissing the sovereign’s foot, “No, by God,” exclaimed the proud sea-king, and he signed to one of his soldiers to kiss the royal foot for him. But the soldier, not less proud, seized Charles’ foot and put it to his lips without kissing it. The king fell back and his people remained dumb and motionless amid the laughter of Rollo and his companions[2] (912). The barbaric traits of the Normans did not prevent their quickly assimilating the semi-civilisation they found in their new country. Normandy was soon the most prosperous and best policed province in the kingdom. As Ordericus Vitalis[i] says, a child could have crossed it in safety, a purse full of gold in his hand. There runs a tale that one day while hunting Rollo hung his gold bracelets on a tree and they remained there two years without anyone’s daring to touch them.