at the point of the sword; and his murders and decimations on that
account disgrace humanity. The more warlike of the Pagans flying into
Jutland, from whence the Saxons had issued forth, were received with
kindness, and furnished with the means of punishing their persecutor, by
harassing his coasts. The maritime towns of France were especially
ravaged by those pirates called "Normands," or men of the North; and it
was owing to their being joined by many malcontents, in the provinces
since called Normandy, that that district acquired its name.
Charlemagne, roused by this effrontery, besides fortifying the mouths of
the great rivers, determined on building himself a fleet, which he did,
consisting of 400 of the largest galleys then known, some having five or
six benches of oars. His people were, however, extremely ignorant of
maritime affairs, and in the progress of having them taught, he was
suddenly called to the south, by the invasion of the Saracens.

[Illustration: _Awilda, the Female Pirate._]

Another division of Normans, some years afterwards, in the same spirit
of emigration, and thirsting, perhaps, to avenge their injured
ancestors, burst into the provinces of France, which the degeneracy of
Charlemagne's posterity, and the dissensions which prevailed there,
rendered an affair of no great difficulty. Louis le Debonnaire had taken
every means of keeping on good terms with them; annually persuading some
to become Christians, and then sending them home so loaded with
presents, that it was discovered they came to be baptized over and over
again, merely for the sake of the gifts, as Du Chesne tells us. But on
the subsequent division of the empire among the undutiful sons of Louis,
the pirates did not fail to take advantage of the general confusion;
braving the sea almost every summer in their light coracles, sailing up
the Seine, the Somme, or the Loire, and devastating the best parts of