What if the Vikings had taken Paris in 845?
At Easter 845 a Danish fleet sailed up the Seine and plundered Paris, and Charles the Bald paid 7,000 pounds of silver to send it away. What if the Danes had stayed on the Seine instead?
What actually happened
The Treaty of Verdun in 843 divided Charlemagne's empire among his three grandsons, and West Francia fell to the youngest, Charles the Bald. But he did not hold his kingdom firmly. In Aquitaine his nephew Pippin II styled himself king, Nominoë of Brittany went his own way, and nobles worn out by the wars between the royal brothers came late to the king's call. Meanwhile the Danes from the north sailed up the rivers every year to plunder monasteries and towns. In 841 Rouen was sacked.
In March 845 a Danish leader whom the Frankish annals call Reginherus sailed up the Seine with 120 ships. Charles split his army between the two banks and lost one half, and 111 prisoners are said to have been hanged on the riverbank. The Danes plundered the abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés and entered Paris on Easter Day, 28 March.
The king stayed at Saint-Denis without fighting and paid 7,000 pounds of silver, and the Danes went back down the river. It was the first of many times a West Frankish king paid Vikings to leave. Dysentery is said to have broken out on the ships going home, and the monks recorded it as St Germain's punishment. Some scholars identify this Reginherus with the legendary Ragnar Lothbrok, but there is no firm evidence.
The turning point
845 was Charles's worst year. That June he had to recognise Pippin II as king of Aquitaine, and in November he was defeated by Nominoë at Ballon. The same year the fleet of the Danish king Horik burned Hamburg. Had a king whose nobles would not come refused to pay, there would have been few ways to stop the Danes wintering in the island city.
Paris was not yet the capital of the kingdom, though. Carolingian kings moved between palaces such as Compiègne and Aachen, and Paris was a bishop's city with old walls and a centre of monasteries. Scholars such as Simon Coupland see paying tribute not as a coward's choice but as a calculated policy of buying time. In fact the Danes began wintering on the lower Seine a few years later, and in 911 Rollo was granted the mouth of the Seine and Normandy was born. What this turning point asks is: what if that had come 66 years earlier?
The world that might have been
In Crown & Plough the alternative reads: at Easter 845 King Charles's silver never came. The Danes wintered on the Île de la Cité and built a stockade at Rouen. The nobles of Aquitaine made Pippin II king, and West Francia split in three. In the game the West Frankish army is halved, Pippin's Kingdom of Aquitaine arises in Aquitaine and Gascony, and the Lothbrok house's “Kingdom of the Seine” arises in the lands of Normandy. The founding of Normandy in 911 does not separately happen in this world.
For a player who started as Ragnar, the altered world runs through six scenes. You choose whether to hold the island of Paris or load the silver and go home, whether to ally with Nominoë of Brittany or Pippin of Aquitaine in the Seine winter, and whether to accept the offer of baptism from the bishops King Charles sends. In 854, when King Horik of Denmark falls in a civil war, the nobles of Hedeby call on you on the Seine, and in 859 your sons and Hastein sail from the quays of Rouen for the southern sea. Horik's death and Björn and Hastein's Mediterranean voyage really did happen in 854 and 859.
Beyond the game, had a Northmen's state arisen at the mouth of the Seine in the mid-ninth century, the West Frankish kingdom would have entered the tenth century weaker and more fragmented than it did. On the other hand, as in the real Normandy, those settlers would very likely have been baptised within a few generations and become French-speaking lords.
Ripples through time
The earlier turning point of the same era, the Treaty of Verdun in 843, created West Francia's predicament. Had the empire not been divided, Charles would not have been leading nobles exhausted by war with his brothers.
In real history Paris was plundered again in 856–857 and 861, and in the great siege of 885–886 Count Odo held the city. Famous for that defence, Odo became king of West Francia in 888, and from his family the Capetian dynasty later came. In a world where Paris fell to the Danes early, the starting point of that story disappears.
Play this turning point
Choose the scenario Ragnar's Ship, which begins as Ragnar Lothbrok in 844. When gathering ships at Hedeby, getting King Horik's permission to go to the Seine raises the odds of Paris falling a little, and loading winter gear and cattle in that winter's “The map of the Seine” raises them a lot. Lightening the ships to go only for silver, or plundering riverside monasteries and slipping away, lets history run its course.
If you started the Age of Vikings and Coronations in another position, a West Frank in 844 can join the garrison guarding the bridges of the island of Paris or help carry the monasteries' treasures to Saint-Denis, while a Norse character can put their name down for Ragnar's ships. This turning point opens only while West Francia rules Paris.
Play this turning point → Start the scenario “Ragnar's Ship” →
Questions and answers
Was the man who attacked Paris in 845 really Ragnar Lothbrok?
The Frankish annals call the leader Reginherus (Ragnar), but whether he is the same man as Ragnar Lothbrok, the hero of the Norse sagas, cannot be confirmed. Many see the saga Ragnar as a legendary figure in whom the stories of several men were merged.
How much was 7,000 pounds of silver?
The Carolingian pound is estimated at a little over 400 grams of silver, so it was well over two tonnes of silver. In coins it was more than 1.6 million silver pennies, a very large sum for the West Frankish kingdom to pay at once.
When did the Vikings settle on the Seine?
From the 850s they began wintering on islands of the lower Seine, and around 911, when Charles the Simple granted Rollo the lands around Rouen at Saint-Clair-sur-Epte, Normandy was born.
Sources and further reading
Annals of Saint-Bertin (Annales Bertiniani) for 845; Annals of Xanten; Translatio sancti Germani. Modern accounts: Janet Nelson, Charles the Bald; Simon Coupland, “The Frankish Tribute Payments to the Vikings and their Consequences”.
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