In the autumn of 882, encouraged doubtless by the news of the death of Lewis III, the Danes returned from the Meuse to Flanders and during the next three years ravaged Flanders, Brabant and Picardy, establishing themselves strongly at Louvain. In 885 they abandoned these districts and sailed up the Seine, after a nine years' absence. In November they reached Paris with a fighting force of some 30,000 men and a fleet of 700 vessels. The passage up the river was stopped by fortified bridges and the besiegers were fortunate in having as leaders two men of great ability and courage, first Gauzlin, Abbot of St Germain's, and, later, Count Odo of Paris. The position of Paris was at times desperate. The Danes were exasperated by the stout defence and in their eagerness to plunder further up the river dragged many of their ships some two miles overland past Paris, and so reached the upper waters of the Seine. Later, as the result of peaceful negotiations, they obtained permission to pass the bridges on condition that they only ravaged Burgundy, leaving the Seine and Marne districts untouched; thus had the provinces of the Frankish empire lost all sense of corporate union. The Danes soon made their way as far west as Verdun. Here however they were disastrously defeated by Odo, now king of the West Franks (June 888), and in the next year they finally abandoned the siege of Paris making their way to Brittany. In Brittany they found another army already busy. The Bretons had won a great victory in the autumn of 888 when only 400 out of some 15,000 Danes made their way back to their fleet. The great _here_ from the Seine now joined forces with the remnants of this army, but proved powerless against Duke Alan, and some returned to Flanders in 890, while Hásteinn with the rest sailed to the Somme. The Danes in Flanders were defeated by Arnulf (afterwards emperor) on the Dyle, near Louvain, in 891, but it had no great effect for soon after we find them again as far east as Bonn. A bad harvest in the summer of 892 brought famine in its train and this was more effective in ridding the land of invaders. In the autumn of the year the whole army, horses and all, crossed in one passage in some 250 ships from Boulogne to the mouth of the Limen in Kent and, shortly after, Hásteinn with a fleet of 80 ships left the Somme and sailed to Milton in North Kent. The story of the campaigns there has already been told. For the first time since 840 the Frankish empire was free from invaders. Grievous as were the losses of the Franks, it is well to remember that those of the Danes had been great also. Their fleet had been reduced from 700 to 250 ships, and as the whole army could still go to England in one crossing, that must also have been reduced from thirty to ten or fifteen thousand men.