Siege of Paris (885-886): Count Odo Holds the Seine

The Siege of Paris of 885–886 was a Viking attempt to force a passage up the River Seine past the fortified island city of Paris. For about eleven months a small garrison led by Count Odo and Bishop Gozlin held the bridges against a large Scandinavian army. The city never fell, but Emperor Charles the Fat ended the siege by paying the attackers, a decision that helped bring down the last united Carolingian empire and raised Odo, an ancestor of the Capetian kings, to the throne.

Background: Vikings on the Seine

Scandinavian raiders had been sailing up the Seine for decades. In 845 a fleet under a leader called Ragnar reached and plundered Paris, leaving only after King Charles the Bald paid 7,000 pounds of silver, an episode described in the article on the Viking sack of Paris in 845. Further attacks hit the city in the 850s and 860s.

In response Charles the Bald ordered fortified bridges to be built across rivers to block Viking fleets. At Paris, two bridges linked the Île de la Cité to the banks: the Grand Pont to the north and the Petit Pont to the south, each defended by a tower. In the 880s the Frankish world was also politically fragile. After the deaths of several young kings, Charles the Fat, already emperor and ruler of East Francia and Italy, became king of West Francia in 884, briefly reuniting the lands of Charlemagne for the first time since the Treaty of Verdun divided them in 843.

The siege begins

In late November 885 a large Viking fleet arrived at Paris. Its main leader in the sources is Sigfred (Sigfrid), who had earlier raided in the Low Countries. According to Abbo of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, a monk who witnessed the siege and wrote a long Latin poem about it, Sigfred asked Bishop Gozlin to let the fleet pass upriver, promising to leave the city untouched. Gozlin refused, since the regions upstream would then be exposed.

On 26 November the Vikings attacked the tower guarding the Grand Pont, which was still unfinished. The defenders worked through the night to raise it higher and beat off the assault. Over the following weeks the attackers built a fortified camp near the church of Saint-Germain-le-Rond and tried siege engines, battering rams, mining and fire. Abbo describes the defenders pouring boiling oil, wax and pitch on men at the foot of the tower.

What happened during the winter

At the end of January 886 the Vikings launched a three-day assault on the north tower. They tried to fill the ditch with earth, branches, animal carcasses and, Abbo claims, the bodies of slain prisoners. They also sent burning boats against the bridge. The attack failed.

On 6 February 886 a flood swept away part of the Petit Pont, cutting off its tower on the south bank. Twelve defenders in the tower held out until the Vikings set it on fire. Abbo names all twelve and says they were killed after giving themselves up. This was the attackers’ only significant gain.

Meanwhile the Vikings plundered the surrounding countryside, burning churches and abbeys outside the walls. Relief was slow. Henry, a Frankish count and leading commander of Charles the Fat in the region, came with an army in February but could achieve little. In the spring Sigfred accepted a payment of 60 pounds of silver and withdrew with his followers, but most of the army stayed.

Key people

Odo (Eudes), Count of Paris was the son of Robert the Strong, a Frankish magnate who had died fighting Vikings in 866. Odo led the military defence and in the summer of 886 slipped out of the city to urge the emperor to come to its aid, then fought his way back in.

Gozlin (Joscelin), Bishop of Paris organised the early defence and led the refusal to let the fleet pass. He died in the city on 16 April 886, probably of disease. His nephew Ebles, abbot of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, became known as a fighting churchman during the siege.

Charles the Fat was a great-grandson of Charlemagne and the last emperor to rule all the Carolingian kingdoms together. Abbo of Saint-Germain-des-Prés wrote the Bella Parisiacae urbis, the main source for the siege, a few years after it ended.

The emperor’s payoff

Count Henry was killed in late August 886 when his horse fell into a concealed pit dug by the besiegers outside the city. In October Charles the Fat finally arrived with a large army and camped near Montmartre. Instead of attacking, he negotiated.

Charles promised the Vikings 700 pounds of silver, to be paid in March 887, and gave them permission to pass up the Seine to winter in Burgundy, where some magnates were resisting him. The Parisians refused to let the fleet pass under their bridges, so the Vikings dragged their ships overland around the city before sailing upriver.

Medieval and modern writers have often called this payment shameful, contrasting the emperor’s caution with Odo’s courage. Some historians argue Charles had sensible reasons: his army was far from home, the season was late and directing the Vikings against rebellious subjects had a political logic. Contemporary opinion in the West Frankish kingdom was nevertheless hostile.

Consequences

The siege damaged Charles the Fat’s authority at a time when he was already ill and lacked a legitimate son. In November 887 the East Frankish nobles turned to his nephew Arnulf of Carinthia, and Charles was deposed. He died in January 888, and the Carolingian empire broke apart for good into separate kingdoms.

In West Francia, the nobles chose Odo as king. He was crowned at Compiègne on 29 February 888, the first king of the West Franks who was not a Carolingian. His fame as the defender of Paris was a major reason for his election. Odo’s family, the Robertians, later produced Hugh Capet, who became king in 987 and founded the Capetian dynasty that ruled France for centuries.

The siege also showed that fortified bridges and determined local defence could stop Viking fleets. Over the next generation West Frankish kings increasingly dealt with the Seine Vikings by granting land, leading to the agreement with Rollo in 911 that created Normandy. Later Norman tradition claimed Rollo took part in the siege of Paris, but this is not confirmed by contemporary sources.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 845, March: Earlier Viking sack of Paris; Charles the Bald pays 7,000 pounds of silver.
• 885, late November: The Viking fleet arrives at Paris; Gozlin refuses passage.
• 885, 26 November: First assault on the tower of the Grand Pont.
• 886, late January: Three-day assault on the north tower fails.
• 886, 6 February: Flood breaks the Petit Pont; the twelve defenders of the south tower are killed.
• 886, 16 April: Death of Bishop Gozlin.
• 886, late August: Count Henry is killed outside Paris.
• 886, October–November: Charles the Fat arrives, pays the Vikings and lets them go to Burgundy.
• 887, November: Charles the Fat is deposed.
• 888, 29 February: Odo is crowned king of West Francia.

Why it matters

The defence of Paris made the city a symbol of resistance and turned its count into a king, starting the rise of the family that became the Capetian dynasty. The emperor’s payment, by contrast, helped end the Carolingian empire as a single political unit.