ABSTRACT
The success of the first Vikings was very largely due to the fact that they were a mere army, with no homes or treasures of their own to defend; their wives and children and stored property were all over seas in inaccessible Scandinavia, and they had no base to defend save their fleet. The moment that the Frankish cavalry had reached its full development, the career of the Viking was terribly circumscribed. England had no force of horsemen when the Viking raids began; Ecgbert's army was in this respect wholly unlike that of Charles the Great. Though the English fortifications were as a rule mere palisades,—the art of building in England being far behind that of the Continent,—they seem to have been very effective in checking ravages. Paris had been more than once in Viking hands before Charles the Bald fortified it, but now its new defences enabled it to make a very different resistance.
