'The Fury of the Northmen': Viking Assault on Constantinople, 860

On June 18, 860, Rus Vikings attacked Constantinople. An excerpt from the article:

"Suddenly on June 18, 860, “like a swarm of wasps,” according to Photios, the Archbishop of Constantinople, the Viking fleet of 200 ships emerged from the Bosporus, the narrow strait connecting the Sea of Marmara to the Black Sea, to assault Constantinople. As many as 20,000 Vikings surged ashore, but Oryphas was an able man and shut the gates of the capital just in time. While this saved the city from falling to the Vikings’ bold rush, this left the suburbs and hinterland unprotected. Photios later wrote of the “wholesale massacres” conducted by the Vikings as they looted and razed the suburbs. The nine islands in the Sea of Marmara were devastated. Vikings took the 22 servants of the former Patriarch Ignatius aboard their ships and hacked them to death with axes. The Byzantines were experiencing the same horrors other Vikings were inflicting on the coasts of Germany, England, Ireland, France, Muslim Spain and Italy. Indeed, the “fury of the Northmen,” as named in a Catholic prayer by the local monks, was at full flood."