In the same year Pippin died, the Frankish emperor Charles the Bald issued the Edict of Pîtres. Amid a raft of legal pronouncements on matters such as coin production, labor laws, and the plight of refugees, the edict also ordered Frankish subjects to contribute to measures against the Vikings, including a royal bridge-building program, by which vulnerable waterways such as the Seine would have regular militarized crossings along their course, guarded with forts and theoretically able to block the Northmen’s boats.
