386 Outlines of European History The North- men Growing power and independ- ence of the great land- owners mentioned above, but they continued to make much trouble for two centuries at least. Then there were also the Hungarians, a savage race from Asia, who ravaged Germany and northern Italy and whose wild horsemen penetrated even into the West Frankish kingdom. Finally, they were driven back eastward and settled in the country now named after them — Hungary. And lastly there came the Northmen, bold and adventurous pirates from the shores of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. These skillful and daring seamen not only attacked the towns on the coast of the West Frankish kingdom but made their way up the rivers, plundering and burning the villages and towns as far inland as Paris. In England we shall find them, under the name of Danes, invading the country and forcing Alfred the Great to recognize them as the masters of northern England.-^ So there was danger always and everywhere. If rival nobles were not fighting one another, there were foreign invaders of some kind devastating the country, bent on robbing, maltreat- ing, and enslaving the people whom they found in towns and villages and monasteries. No wonder that strong castles had to be built and the towns surrounded by walls ; even the mon' asteries, which were not of course respected by pagan invaders, were in some cases protected by fortifications. In the absence of a powerful king with a well-organized army at his back, each district was left to look out for itself. Doubt- less many counts, margraves, bishops, and other great landed proprietors, who were gradually becoming independent princes, earned the loyalty of the people about them by taking the lead in defending the country against its invaders and by estab- lishing fortresses as places of refuge when the community was hard pressed. These conditions serve to explain why such government as continued to exist during the centuries following the death of* Charlemagne was necessarily carried on mainly, not by the king and his officers, but by the great landholders. 1 These Scandinavian pirates are often called vikings^ from their habit of leav- ing their long boats in the vik^ which meant, in their language, " bay " or " inlet."
