By this abnegation of temporal weapons, and dependence on the armed warrior for their defence, the prelates put themselves at the head of the unarmed peoples at the same moment that they exercised their spiritual authority over all classes alike. It was useless for them to draw the sword themselves, when they regulated every motion of the hand by which the sword was held.
While this is the state of affairs on the Continent--while the great Empire of Charlemagne is falling to pieces, and the kingly office is practically reduced to a mere equality with the other dignities of the land--while this disunion in nations and weakness in sovereigns is exposing the fairest lands in Europe to the aggressions of enemies on every side--let us cast our eyes for a moment on England, and see in what condition our ancestors are placed at the middle of this century. A most dreadful and alarming condition as ever Old England was in. For many years before this, a pirate's boat or two from the North would run upon the sand, and send the crews to burn and rob a village on the coast of Berwick or Northumberland. Pirates we superciliously call them, but that is from a misconception of their point of honour, and of the very different estimate they themselves formed of their pursuits and character. They were gentleman, perhaps, "of small estate" in some outlying district of Denmark or Norway, but endowed with stout arms and a great wish to distinguish themselves--if the distinction could be accompanied with an increase of their worldly goods. They considered the sea their own domain, and whatever was found on it as theirs by right of possession. They were, therefore, lords of the manor, looking after their rights, their waifs and strays, their flotsams and jetsams. They were also persons of a strong religious turn, and united the spirit of the missionary to the courage of the warrior and the avidity of the conqueror. Odin was still their god, the doors of the Walhalla were still open to them after death, and the skulls of their enemies were foaming with intoxicating mead. The English were renegades from the true faith, a set of drivelling wretches who believed in a heaven where there was no beer, and worshipped a god who bade them pray for their enemies and bless the very people who used them ill. The remaining similarity in the language of the two peoples must have added a bitterness to the contemptuous feelings of the unreclaimed rovers of the deep; and probably, on their return, these enterprising warriors were as proud of the number of priests they had slain, as of the more valuable trophies they carried home. Denmark itself, up to this time, had been distracted with internal wars. It was only the more active spirits who had rushed across from the Sound, and solaced themselves, in the intervals of their own campaigns, with an onslaught upon an English town. But now the scene was to change. The inroads of separate crews were to be exchanged for national invasions. [A.D. 838.] Harold of the Fair Hair was seated on an undisputed throne, and repressed the outrages of these adventurous warriors by a strong and determined will. He stretched his sceptre over all the Scandinavian world, and neither the North Sea nor the Baltic were safe places for piracy and spoil. One of his countrymen had founded the royal line of Russia, and from his capital of Kieff or Novgorod was civilizing, with whip and battle-axe, the original hordes which now form the Empire of the Czars. Already, from their lurking-places on the shores of the Black Sea, the Norwegian predecessors of the men of Odessa and Sebastopol were threatening a dash upon Constantinople; while sea-kings and jarls, compelled to be quiet and peaceable at home, but backed by all the wild populations of the North, anxious for glory, and greedy of gold and corn, resolved to reduce England to their obedience, and collected an enormous fleet in the quiet recesses of the Baltic, withdrawn from the observation of Harold. It seems fated that France is always, in some sort or other, to set the fashion to her neighbours. We have seen, at the beginning of this century, how England followed the example of the Frankish peoples in consolidating itself into one dominion. Charlemagne was recognised chief potentate of many states, and Egbert was sovereign of all the Saxon lands, from Cornwall to the gates of Edinburgh. But the model was copied no less closely in the splitting-up of the central authority than in its consolidation. While Louis the Debonnaire and Charles the Bald were weakening the throne of Charlemagne, the states of Egbert became parcelled out in the same way between the descendants of the English king.