and made numerous attacks on the north coast, culminating in a threatening move against Paris in 845, when they were bought off by 7,000 pounds of silver. From then on, for twenty years, it was western France which suffered most from the Vikings, who used great rivers such as the Seine, Loire, and Garonne to reach right into the interior. The Middle Kingdom, reached by the Rhine and its tributaries, was largely spared, because Lothar I allowed Harald and his nephew Roric, two Danish Vikings, to settle by the mouths of the Rhine in the neighbourhood of Dorestad, thus defending Lothar's kingdom from further attack. But in western Francia Charles the Bald was too busy establishing himself and eliminating the threat from his nephew Pippin II of Aquitaine to devote all his attention to defence. In the 860s, however, he devised what seem to have been very effective measures, building forts and fortified bridges. The lower Loire and Seine were abandoned to the Vikings, but the wealthy cities and monasteries inland were protected. Thus in 865 'the Great Army', under several royal Scandinavian generals, moved from Francia and landed in East Anglia. In 866 they seized York from the warring Northumbrian kings and set up a kingdom based on that town; they then conquered eastern Mercia and East Anglia. The attacks on King Alfred's Wessex failed, although in 878 Wessex was attacked from both east and west and the Vikings narrowly missed capturing the king himself. Alfred rallied his subjects, and forced the invaders to make peace, agreeing on a frontier between West Saxon territory and what became known as the Danelaw. Perhaps the Vikings had just heard the good news from Francia: in 877 Charles the Bald had died. His son Louis the Stammerer died two years later, and a period of civil confusion followed. An army gathered at Fulham, and crossed the Channel in 879. This time they attacked not only the northern part of Charles's kingdom, but the northern part of the Middle Kingdom as well; Roric had died as well, and no longer protected this region. Flanders was devastated, and in 882 there was a great raid up the Rhine to Cologne and Trier. A large-scale attack on Paris in 885/6 failed, however, thanks to the defence of Count Odo, and fortifications elsewhere
-102-