Sometimes they bore down upon a reach of coast when the unsuspecting inhabitants had not the faintest presentiment of peril from the waves. A medieval writer (Monachi Sangale, Gesta Caroli, II. 14) tells how Charlemagne himself and his courtiers were thus surprised. They were seated at a banquet one day in the town of Narbonne, when all of a sudden some swift barks were seen putting into the harbour. The company started up, wondering who the strangers might be. Were they Jews, or Africans, or simply British traders? None could tell. The keen eye of the king alone hastily divined the situation. “No bales of merchandise,” said he, “are borne hither by yonder galleys. They are manned by terrible foes.” And then advancing to the window, he stood for a long time reflecting, his eyes moist with tears and bent on vacancy. No one durst ask him the cause of his foreboding, till at length he broached it himself. “It is not for myself,” muttered he, “that I am weeping, nor for any harm that yonder barks can do to me; but it grieves me sore to think that during my lifetime they have made bold to approach these shores, and greater still is my dejection when I reflect on the evils they will yet inflict on those who come after me.” And he was right. The crews that he saw in the offing were plundering Northmen, who were soon to be followed by kindred sea-rovers bent on conquest. Of little avail in his own time were his strong forts and garrison towns built to withstand the foe, and after his death his less imperious successors hardly dared lift a dagger to stem the tide of invasion that laid waste their fairest lands and cities. “Take the map,” wrote Sir Francis Palgrave in his history of _Normandy and England_, “and colour with vermilion the provinces, districts, and shores which the Northmen visited, as the record of each invasion. The colouring will have to be repeated more than ninety times successively before you can arrive at the conclusion of the Carlovingian dynasty. Furthermore, mark by the usual symbol of war—the two crossed swords—the localities where the battles were fought by or against pirates,—where they were defeated or triumphant, or where they pillaged, burned, or destroyed; and the valleys and banks of the Elbe, Rhine and Moselle, Scheldt, Meuse, Somme and Seine, Loire, Garonne and Adour, the inland Allier, and all the coasts and coastlands between estuary and estuary, and the countries between the river streams will appear bristling as with _chevaux de frise_. “The strongly-fenced Roman cities, the venerated abbeys and their dependent bourgades, often more flourishing and extensive than the ancient seats of government, the opulent seaports and trading towns were all equally exposed to the Danish attacks, stunned by the Northmen’s approach, subjugated by their fury.”