Not With Gold

In November 885, a Viking army arrived at the gates of Paris. These men were detritus from the Great Heathen Army, which Alfred the Great of Wessex had smashed a few years earlier, but they were still formidable. More than 300 ships sailed down the Seine, and many thousands of men stood outside Paris clamoring for tribute.

The Parisians refused. Count Odo had only about 200 soldiers, but he, along with the Bishop Gozlin, inspired the populace to resist and man the city’s impressive fortifications. The pagans had to be stopped somehow. Alfred had shown it could be done in England, and Paris planned to show it could be done in West Francia as well. To this end, Odo had erected towers guarding the bridges leading into the city.

When the Vikings attacked the towers, their onslaught was fierce. For a few days, the Parisians met the attackers’ spears and swords with burning pitch, but after a while supplies ran low. Hard pressed, the citizens began to give way when Gozlin, axe in hand, hewed his way to the outer walls and planted a cross, calling on the people to defend it. Inspired by the Bishop’s words, the Parisians held on and the Vikings gave up their attack.

But the Vikings did not leave. For months more they maintained the siege, ravaging the countryside; they built engines and bombarded the city; they sent fire ships at the bridges to destroy them. Relief forces arrived in February but were easily repulsed. Plague struck the city, and among its victims was the brave Bishop. In desperation, Odo took a handful of men and fought his way through the Viking lines to seek help from Emperor Charles.  With the Emperor’s promise of aid, Odo returned to Paris, fighting his way back in, and the news inspired the Parisians to hold on.

Charles took his jolly good time in arriving, however; it was only by October, after the siege had dragged on for almost a year, that the Imperial army arrived at Paris. Charles surrounded the Vikings, but instead of crushing them, he paid them off, inviting them to attack Burgundy instead.

The Parisians were outraged: the Emperor, in whom they had placed their hopes and on whose behalf they had fought and suffered for eleven long months, had undone everything for which they had strived. They refused to cooperate with the Vikings, forcing them to drag their ships to the Marne instead of letting them sail down the Seine, but there was little else they could do.

Charles’s prestige suffered a tremendous blow on account of his flaccidity, and resistance did not take long to materialize. Sensing weakness, Charles’s nephew Arnulf forced his uncle into retirement and ascended the throne of East Francia. With Charles’s deposition, the Empire broke down into its component kingdoms, and the nobles of West Frankia elected Odo of Paris as their king. Both men proved much more vigorous than their predecessor, each defeating the Vikings in a decisive battle just as Alfred had done.

The key to effective resistance is firm leadership. Machiavelli observed the necessity of leadership to any kind of collective action when he read Livy’s account of the aftermath of the sack of Rome by the Gauls. The Romans had evacuated to the nearby city of Veii, and there were many who wished to remain there even after Rome was retaken. The Senate convinced the tribunes to come to Rome, and so when the commoners still at Veii received instructions to return as well, they complied without fuss.

Most people follow whomever is strong. They have preferences, of course—they would rather be led by someone whom they know, someone who looks like them, who talks like them, who prays to the same gods—and when these preferences are not met, they grow sullen and dissatisfied and willing to lend ear to someone more to their liking who offers change. Sheep crave a shepherd, and so long as he doesn’t slaughter them indiscriminately, they can be content.

A few men, however, are of a different breed, lions instead of sheep. Lions prefer to lead if they can, and they won’t follow just anyone: they will submit only to men of action. Such men are known by a variety of names depending on circumstance, but when they emerge in times of political disorder, the label they receive is generally “strongmen.”

The archetypal origin story of the strongman is the Hobbesian tale: out of a disordered and insecure situation emerges a man willing to use violence to end the disorder and bring security. The people at large are grateful for the strongman ending the chaos but still fearful of the strongman himself, and upon this combination of gratitude and fear the strongman builds his supremacy.

According to liberals, including libertarians, the rise of the strongman involves a Faustian bargain. Hard-line libertarians will generally deny that chaos truly existed, or if it clearly did attribute it to the actions of the strongman himself. The strongman offers security but his own rule turns out to be even worse for the people than the chaos from which he supposedly delivered them. The people have thus given up security and liberty when they thought they were winning them both.

When a strongman attains power, he does so by violence, or at least more violence than alternative archetypes use. This is a result of the circumstances which occasion the strongman’s rise. There are stories of non-violent leaders putting an end to chaos—Herodotus has one—but these are rare. Chaos involves violence, and so does ending it.

If you want to make your libertarian friends squirm, ask them whom they would have backed in the civil war of Weimar Germany, the Nazis or the Communists? In those days, those were the two options, not because they were the only political factions but because they were the two strongest when push came to shove. It would have been better for all concerned if someone else had come out on top, but circumstances did not permit that outcome.

The chaos that the strongman ends doesn’t come out of nowhere. Chaos is not a desirable state of affairs, and political structures exist precisely to prevent chaos. It arises only when existing structures are unable to address challenges to their power. This is generally by accident—disorder is a threat to an established ruler, after all—but Leftist infiltration of governments often hampers otherwise strong systems. The best example is the spineless French nobility on the cusp of the Revolution.

The present migrant crisis and recent terrorism in Paris may be foreshadowing the kind of chaos that leads to the rise of a strongman. If violence persists and intensifies and European governments cannot put a stop to it, people will look for new leadership, someone who can actually protect them. As things stand now, it’s anyone’s guess whether European governments will clamp down on the invaders or on their own people.

In 387 B.C., Rome was sacked by the Gauls. The Gallic army had marched through Italy looking for land and plunder and was initially interested in negotiating with the Romans rather than fighting. When Roman envoys joined the Gauls’ enemies in battle, however, the Gallic leader Brennus decided to march against Rome. Caught off guard, the Romans were defeated at the river Allia and abandoned their city. A small force remained on the Capitoline hill, but the vast bulk of the people evacuated to Veii. With barbarians occupying almost the entire city of Rome, things looked grim for the future rulers of the world.

Rome’s salvation came from an unexpected source. Marcus Furius Camillus’ military skill and honorable diplomacy had brought Rome to supremacy in Italian affairs. First in war, first in peace, but last in the hearts of his countrymen, Camillus had been exiled to Ardea shortly before the Gauls appeared in Italy. Hearing news of the fall of his beloved city, Camillus stirred up the young men of Ardea and led them in battle against the Gauls, scoring victory after victory. Inspired by his victories, the Romans gave Camillus command of the army, and he drove the Gauls out from Rome. “Not with gold,” he said, but with iron, shall we regain our fatherland.”

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