31 January – 2 February 886
Rams and fire ships, January 886
For two months the Danes hold their camp at Saint-Germain-le-Rond, dig trenches and live off the country. Abbo describes three great rams, each on sixteen wheels under a high roof, with room for sixty armed men inside. The defenders set up mangonels.
The boats of the Northmen before a fortified tower, an engraving by Alphonse de Neuville for François Guizot’s History of France, 1883Wikimedia Commons, Alphonse de Neuville, Public domain (NorthmenBarques.jpg)
On 31 January 886 the Danes attack the tower and the Grand Pont in three groups, by land and from the river. For two days they fill the ditch round the tower with brushwood, dead animals and the bodies of prisoners they have killed, and bring up the rams, which the stones of the mangonels keep away from the walls. On the third day they set three ships on fire and send them against the bridge. The ships sink at the stone piers before the fire reaches the bridge, and on 3 February the Danes draw back to their camp and leave the rams behind.
Sources
- Abbo of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Bella Parisiacae urbis, book 1.
- Nirmal Dass (ed.), Viking Attacks on Paris: The Bella Parisiacae Urbis of Abbo of Saint-Germain-des-Prés (2007).
- Jim Bradbury, The Medieval Siege (1992).
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