8 HISTORY OF FRANCE. [chap. is of the Western Francia, he now was chosen king of Karoliitgia, or of the Western Franks, who were thus finally separated from their Austrasian brethren. There was thus for a moment a French-speaking king of the Western Franks reigning at Paris. But the reign of Odo was short, and his right was disputed. The blood of the Karlings was still so honoured that when Charles the Simple, the grandson of Charles the T3ald, came forward, a number of nobles and bishops crowned him at Rheims. Odo died in 898, a time of great confusion, when his next brother, Robert, succeeded him as Duke of the Franks. Charles the Simple was now sole king, but in 922 Robert was chosen king. He was killed the ne.xt year, and then Rudolf, Pcke of the Duchy of Burgundy, was chosen. This is that Burgundy of which Dijon is the capital, and which formed no pirt of the new kingdom of Burgundy, but was a fief of the Western Kingdom. Charles was at last murdered while in the hands of his kinsman, Herbert, Count of Vennandois. Rudolf reigned till his death in 936. 10. Settlement of the Normans. — While Charles the Simple was king, a new state was founded in Northern Gaul. The Northmen, who had so long wasted the land, had made permanent settlements in several places, specially at the mouth of the Loire. They now in 911 made their greatest settlement on the Seine at Rouen. This was done in a formal way by the grant of part of Duke Robert's duchy of France, namely the lands between the Seine and the Epte, to Rolf Ga>ii:^er, called also Rou and Rollo, the most famous leader of the Northmen. This he held as a fief of King Charles. He and his suc- cessors gradually enlarged their dominions. The North- men, settled in Gaul, learned to speak French ; their name was softened into Nonaaits, their princes were called Dukes of the Noniums, and their land Normandy. The Norman dukes took from the beginning a place among the chief princes of the Western kingdom. And now that France and its capital Paris were coming to be the chief place in the kingdom, they were checked for a while by the settlement which took away from them their north coast, which gave the mouth of the Seine to the new power, and cut Paris quite off from the sea. 11. Hugh the Great and King Lewis. — Robert had been for a short lime the second king of the house of Paris. His son Hus^h, called the White and the Great,
