armaments for similar expeditions.  They would cruise along the coasts of the sea, to land where they found an unguarded point, and sack a town or burn a castle, seize treasures, capture men and make them slaves, kidnap women, and sometimes destroy helpless children with their spears in a manner too barbarous and horrid to be described.  On returning to their homes, they would perhaps find their own castles burned and their own dwellings roofless, from the visit of some similar horde.

Thus the seas of western Europe were covered in those days, as they are now, with fleets of shipping; though, instead of being engaged as now, in the quiet and peaceful pursuits of commerce, freighted with merchandise, manned with harmless seamen, and welcome wherever they come, they were then loaded only with ammunition and arms, and crowded with fierce and reckless robbers, the objects of universal detestation and terror.

One of the first of these sea kings who acquired sufficient individual distinction to be personally remembered in history has given a sort of immortality, by his exploits, to the very rude name of Ragnar Lodbrog, and his character was as rude as his name.

[Illustration:  The sea kings]

Ragnar’s father was a prince of Norway.  He married, however, a Danish princess, and thus Ragnar acquired a sort of hereditary right to a Danish kingdom—­the territory including various islands and promontories at the entrance of the Baltic Sea.  There was, however, a competitor for this power, named Harald.  The Franks made common cause with Harald.  Ragnar was defeated and driven away from the land.  Though defeated, however, he was not subdued.  He organized a naval force, and made himself a sea king.  His operations on the stormy element of the seas were conducted with so much decision and energy, and at the same time with so much system and plan, that his power rapidly extended.  He brought the other sea kings under his control, and established quite a maritime empire.  He made more and more distant excursions, and at last, in order to avenge himself upon the Franks for their interposition in behalf of his enemy at home, he passed through the Straits of Dover, and thence down the English Channel to the mouth of the Seine.  He ascended this river to Rouen, and there landed, spreading throughout the country the utmost terror and dismay.  From Rouen he marched to Paris, finding no force able to resist him on his way, or to defend the capital.  His troops destroyed the monastery of St. Germain’s, near the city, and then the King of the Franks, finding himself at their mercy, bought them off by paying a large sum of money.  With this money and the other booty which they had acquired, Ragnar and his horde now returned to their ships at Rouen, and sailed away again toward their usual haunts among the bays and islands of the Baltic Sea.