This was the Rouen which welcomed Charlemagne in 769, who came to celebrate Easter in the Cathedral he was to benefit so largely, among the canons who had only been organised into a regular chapter, living in one community, about nine years before. The great Emperor not only helped the Cathedral in his lifetime, but left it a legacy in his will, for the town, in gratitude for his benefactions, had furnished twenty-eight "ships" to help him pursue his enemies, out of the fleet which had already begun to exploit the rich commercial possibilities of Britain, and to enter into trading engagements even with the Byzantine emperors. With the second coming of Charlemagne at the dawn of the ninth century, the next period in the history of Rouen closes. At his death the semblance of an empire, into which his mighty personality had welded the warring anarchies of Western Europe, crumbled back into its constituent fragments. His was an empire wholly aristocratic, and wholly German. After Charles Martel had driven out the Saracens from Tours and Poitiers, it absorbed Gaul also in its rule, but Charlemagne was never other than a Teutonic ruler over Franks. He was one of the makers of Europe but not one of the creators of the Kingdom of France. It was not until his empire crumbled at his death that those persistent entities, France and Germany, made their appearance. But Normandy had much to go through before she became a part of that kingdom which she did so much to make. In 556 a great fire had destroyed most of the city of Rouen. Thirty years later a plague had decimated her inhabitants. The Merovingians had left her ruined and depopulated. Though spasmodic efforts at prosperity and strength appeared during the great Emperor's lifetime, the town had not yet reached anything approaching to a solid basis of civic or commercial power. Its attempts were ruined by the anarchy that followed Charlemagne's decease, and there was little left for the first Danes to plunder when the first galleys of the Northern pirates swept up the Seine in 841. [Illustration] CHAPTER IV _Rouen under her own Dukes_ Normanni, si bono rigidoque dominatu reguntur, strenuissimi sunt et in arduis rebus invicti omnes excellunt et cunctis hostibus fortiores superare contendunt. Alioquin sese vicissim dilaniant atque consumunt. Rebelliones enim cupiunt, seditiones enim appetunt, et ad omne nefas prompti sunt. Rectitudinis ergo forti censura coerceantur et fraeno disciplinae per tramitem justitiae gradiri compellantur. [Illustration: THE ARMS OF NORMANDY]