The situation grew so quickly unstable that, following a battle at Chartres in 911, the Frankish king, Charles the Simple, was forced to negotiate with the Vikings, and in the process made a fatal mistake that was to shape his nation even down to our own times. In some desperation, and with considerable lack of foresight, Charles granted the Scandinavians a swathe of territory in what was then called Neustria, along the northern coast of the kingdom facing England. Because of its new overlords, it would soon gain a new name, one that it has kept to the present day: Nordmannia, ‘the land of the
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