It was in Gaul that the ravages of the Normans were most
severely felt, though for a few years they were the scourge of Frisia and the
adjacent provinces. Germany and Italy had other enemies to fear. In the year
862 a new danger, in the shape of the Hungarians, appeared on the borders of Bavaria.
They were an Asiatic people, from the northern slopes of the Ural Mountains,
who had been moving westward since the commencement of the century.
Contemporaries identified them with the Huns of Attila, and the resemblance was
more than superficial. The Hungarians were of the Tartar race - nomads who lived
by hunting and war, skilled in horsemanship and archery, utterly barbarous and
a byeword for cruelty. The rapidity of their movements, and the distances to
which their raids extended, are almost incredible. In 899 they swept through
the Ostmark and reached the Lombard plain; in 915 they sacked Bremen; in 919
they harried the whole of Saxony and penetrated the old Middle Kingdom; in 926
they went into Tuscany and appeared in the neighbourhood of Rome; in 937 they
even reached the walls of Capua. In fact, until the great victory of Otto I
upon the Lech (955), they were the terror of two-thirds of Christian Europe.
Italy, the most disunited of the new kingdoms, was further vexed by the Saracen
pirates who roamed the Western Mediterranean. The only sea-power capable of
dealing with them was that of the Byzantine Empire. The Greek fleet protected
the southeast of Italy, but was powerless to save Sicily, which was conquered
piecemeal for the Crescent (827-965). Farther north the seaports of Amalfi,
Gaeta, Naples and Salerno paid tribute or admitted Saracen garrisons; in 846
Ostia and the Leonine quarter of Rome (including the basilica of St. Peter)
were pillaged. Robber colonies established themselves on the river Garigliano,
and at Garde-Frainet, the meeting-point of Italy and Provence.
