896 - Counts of Holland
The effect of the viking incursions on Frankish feudalism was great - "Eighty years of plunder and murder," says Gerlache (Fasai sur Ire gratifies Epoques, p. 94), "had turned the fields into a wilderness; the towns rose like oases in the desert; the wealth of the monasteries perished; the people were either slain with the sword or had taken to the sword as robbers; all the elements of political life, kingship, nobility, clergy, were confounded together, and every tie of civil society relaxed."
The impoverished natives took refuge under the nobles, whose power made great advance. Now arose, too, a new title of nobility, that of margrave, each margrave being bound, to defend a piece of frontier, receiving in return an almost complete independence. Such was the marquis of Antwerp, who guarded the mouth of the Scheldt. The towns also became as sanctuaries against the ravsger; the serf who took refuge there presently became free; the burghers began to trade, and found encouragement in their traffic even from the Northmen themselves.
Thus the whole district came to be covered with prosperous towns: it was also divided into independent lordships, among which the countship of Holland, as it soon afterwards was called, was the most prominent and important. The title "count of Holland" does not appear in history until the 11th century. In the latter part of the 9th century there was a certain Count Dirk, to whom, early in the 10th, Charles the Simple granted the abbey of Egmond near Alkmaar. Of his history almost nothing is known; he was dead before 942, as there exists still a document of that year signed by Dirk II. Dirk II was a man of weight; he got for his younger son the archbishopric of Treves, and Arnulf his elder son married a kinswoman of the emperor Otto II.
He himself received in 983 a broad district, that now covered by the Zuyder Zee, from Teiel to the north, and the mainland southward down to Nimeguen. He died in 988; and Arnulf was count till 993.
