For well-nigh a century the storm had raged and the brunt of its fury had fallen on the Church, for it was not greed alone which had driven forth these fierce pirates from their homes in the north, but, and in the first place perhaps, a fiery zeal for their time-honoured traditions and their time-honoured faith: they would have rebuilt their broken altars and brought back the old gods to the lands from which they had been banished. It was toward the close of the year 880 that the Danes, who had ere this made themselves masters of Holland and Friesland, for the first time visited Brabant. Coming up the Scheldt in their long black boats, they presently ascended the Dyle as far as 'a place called Lovon,' as a contemporary writer has it, where the river ceases to be navigable. This is the first time that Louvain is mentioned in history; it was then what its name signifies--forest and fen. Here they made camp on a little island formed by two branches of the stream, and the site of the future capital of Brabant became their headquarters. From thence they issued daily, and the usual consequences followed--churches and monasteries went up in flames, altars were cast down, and those who served them tortured and slain; whilst the most cherished objects of Christian worship were profaned and trampled in the dust. In the vast diocese of Liége, which embraced at this time the whole country between the Meuse and the Dyle, hardly a sacred building was left standing. At Mechlin, the only one of the five great towns of Brabant which had as yet begun to exist, there was not a church but was reduced to ashes. So, too, further afield at Tongres, St. Trond, Maestricht, where the Danes had another camp. In the episcopal city itself they fired the church and the monastery of St. Caprais, and cut the throats of the monks. The monks of St. Peter's fared worse: they were nailed by their heads to the walls of their cloister, and there left to die. The Cathedral of St. Lambert, too, was invaded, rifled for treasure, and then burnt to the ground; and a host of other sanctuaries shared a like fate. As for Francon, the bishop, though after events showed that he was in reality no coward, when he heard that the Danes were approaching, he packed up his relics and his treasures, and made for Huy, on the banks of the Meuse between Liége and Namur, where there was an impregnable fortress.