Development of Southern French and Catalan Society, 718-1050Early in the eighth century, the current of the Muslim movement that inundated northern Spain crept over the Pyrenees to spread across a portion of the French Midi. From the north the tide of Carolingian conquest forced the Muslims back and took in these same southern French and northern Spanish provinces. During the same era the Vikings raided intermittently and with varying degrees of intensity along the seacoasts and up the inland waterways,