CHAPTER VIII

LATER VIKING RAIDS AND THE DANISH CONQUEST

Men who had seen the famous triumphal procession on the Dee in 973, when Eadgar the Peaceful, rowed by eight vassal princes, passed in his boat by the venerable walls of the ‘Chester’ of Valeria Victrix, must have groaned in spirit at the wretchedness that overwhelmed England in the reign of his worthless son, Aethelred ‘the Redeless.’[D]

[D] Aethelred is popularly known as ‘the Unready,’ but the Anglo-Saxon word _rede_ means ‘counsel’ or ‘advice,’ and a better rendering of the king’s nickname is ‘ill-counselled’ or ‘wrong-headed.’

The story of how Aethelred’s evil mother, Aelfthryth, contrived the murder of her stepson, Eadward II., ‘the Martyr,’ at Corfe is well known. He himself was at the time only ten years of age. For several years the kingdom was probably governed by his mother and her supporters, but they were not strong enough to oust the officials of Eadgar and Eadward II. The minority of the king left the rival ealdormen and reeves ill-controlled, and there is some reason to think that the monachizing religious policy of Eadgar and St. Dunstan was greatly resented. At all events, there was much internal disorder; it is even possible that a state of modified civil war prevailed. Externally the country appeared great and powerful. Aethelred II. at his accession was overlord of all Britain no less than his father. England possessed a navy as strong in numbers as the largest Viking fleet that had ever assailed the country. Yet when the crisis came everything was in hopeless disorder. It was not the people, but the ruling class that was in fault. The exasperation of the nation glows fiercely through the bitter entries of the ‘Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,’ whose compiler is thoroughly aware that sheer ineptitude, if not absolute treachery, was the cause of the national disasters.

Of the wretched monarch at whose door the blame for the downfall of the first ‘English Empire’ is usually laid little can be said that is favourable. Aethelred II. is condemned for all time by the scathing epithet bestowed upon him of ‘redeless.’ He was not altogether devoid of courage and enterprise, but his instability and utter incapacity to adopt and execute any sensible plan of action were his bane.

In 980, after more than forty years of immunity, the shores of England were once more troubled by Vikings. Pirate squadrons raided Thanet, and the country round Southampton and Chester. Next year another, or the same force--apparently from Ireland--sacked St. Petrocstow (Padstow), and wasted on both shores of the Bristol Channel; and in 982 three pirate vessels touched at Portland for a hurried raid.

For five or six years thereafter nothing is heard of Vikings; but there was certainly unrest among the English nobles, and when the raids began again the country was utterly unprepared. Once again was repeated the weary tale of the ninth century--raids, growing ever more murderous and widespread, and met only by local resistance. But besides this there is the foul record of combined action repeatedly frustrated by jealousy, ineptitude, or treachery, and of frequent buying off after the invaders had done as much mischief as possible. In 988 there was another petty raid of Irish Vikings; and in the same year the great Archbishop Dunstan died, taken away betimes from the wrath to come.

At this period the famous Olaf Tryggvason, debarred from his ancestral Norway, which was held against him by Jarl Haakon, was roving about the Northern Seas. He appeared in English waters in 991 with, perhaps, fifty ships, sacked Ipswich, and, sailing down the coast, landed his followers at Maldon. He was gallantly opposed by Brihtnoth, Ealdorman of Essex; but, after a hard struggle, the day went against the English, Brihtnoth himself being slain. It was a mere local defeat, like that of Charmouth in 836; but the consequences were most disgraceful. ‘In this same year,’ says the Chronicle, ‘it was decreed that tribute should be given to the Danish men for the great terror they occasioned by the seacoast; and that first [payment] was ten thousand pounds. The first who advised this was Archbishop Sigeric.’

Next year an attempt was made to collect a great fleet at London in order to ‘entrap the army from without.’ According to the Chronicle, Ealdorman Aelfric, one of the admirals, deliberately betrayed the plan of campaign to the enemy, and then deserted his fleet. Olaf escaped with the loss of only one ship, and shortly afterwards was able to fight an indecisive action with the squadrons of London and East Anglia. The English flagship was taken; but, as far as we can see, the Vikings had the worst of it, and withdrew northward. In 993, however, they had recruited sufficiently to sack Bamborough, and then entered the Humber. ‘They did much evil, both in Lindsey and Northumbria. There was collected a great force; but when the armies were to engage, then the leaders first commenced the flight--namely, Fræna and Godwin and Frithgist.’ Two at least of the three bear Scandinavian names, and the suspicion must be strong that they deliberately deserted their men.

In 994 Olaf was joined by Sweyn Haraldson, ‘Fork-beard,’ King of Denmark. He had been expelled from his kingdom by the Swedes, and compelled to take to the sea. He had been baptized as a Christian with his father, but had apostatized, and had an apostate’s rancour against his former religion. The two fleets counted ninety-four ships, and Olaf and Sweyn determined to attack London. They were stoutly repulsed with great loss, though Olaf is said to have succeeded in breaking the bridge. The Vikings withdrew to the Channel, landed on the south coast, and horsing themselves in the old fashion, rode over Kent, Sussex, and Hampshire, committing ‘unspeakable evil.’ Again the shameful expedient of 991 was repeated, and the host was bought off with a tribute of 16,000 pounds of silver. The Vikings wintered at Southampton, and Olaf, who had been already converted to Christianity, visited Aethelred at Andover, was ‘received at episcopal hands,’ and swore that he would not again molest England. Next year he sailed to Norway, and recovered it for himself. Sweyn also went back to attempt to regain Denmark. Aethelred’s silver was probably useful to both. For two years England was free from ravage.

But in 997 a new Viking fleet appeared, and wasted Devon, Cornwall, and Wales. This time it was not a half-political enterprise of two dispossessed princes, but a genuine plundering expedition of the old type. Next year the Vikings pillaged in Dorset, Hampshire, and Sussex, without resistance from the cowardly ealdorman Aelfric, the betrayer of 992. In 999 they extended their ravages into Kent. An army and fleet were raised to fight them, but the generals put off a decision until the force broke up.

In the supposed world-ending year 1000 the Vikings tried their fortune in Normandy. One of their leaders, Pallig, husband of Sweyn’s sister Gunhild, took service with Aethelred, and there is in the Chronicle the surprising entry that the King took the offensive against the Irish Vikings with a great fleet and army and devastated Man and Cumberland.

But in 1001 the ravages again began on the south coast. The Hampshire levies were beaten by an advanced force, and the raiders were soon joined by the fleet which had been attacking Normandy. Jarl Pallig also deserted to his former comrades. Wiltshire and Dorset were ravaged, and the local levies defeated at Penselwood. The Vikings marched, devastating, along the coast to Southampton Water, and there the old miserable story was repeated. The invaders were again bought off with 24,000 pounds of silver. The year was marked by the famous massacre on St. Brice’s Day, of Danes settled in England. The fact is undoubted, but the nature and extent of the slaughter are not known. It is to be supposed that it affected only the mercenaries in Aethelred’s service and the stragglers from the pirate fleets; but it is quite probable that many innocent persons were involved in it. The result was, of course, to add a natural exasperation to the thirst for plunder of the Vikings.

Sweyn ‘Fork-beard’ had established himself in Denmark. He had also defeated and slain Olaf Tryggvason at the famous battle of Svöld, and now controlled Norway. In 1003 he appeared off the English coast with a large fleet, captured Exeter, and swept through Devon into Wiltshire. The cowardly ealdorman Aelfric once more deserted his troops, and Sweyn sacked Wilton and Sarum, withdrawing to his fleet unmolested, leaving in his wake a ghastly trail of smoking villages and farmsteads, desecrated and ruined churches, the mutilated bodies of the country-folk, and the immediate prospect of famine and pestilence. He landed in the following year in East Anglia, and sacked Norwich and Thetford, though gallantly opposed by the local _fyrd_ under Ealdorman Ulfkytel, evidently an Anglo-Dane. ‘If the main force had been there,’ moans the Chronicle, ‘never had the enemy returned to their ships ... they never met with worse hand-play than Ulfkytel brought them.’

Conquest does not appear to have been yet in Sweyn’s thoughts. In the spring of 1004 he returned home; but the wretched country, though free from foes, was stricken with famine during that year, and in 1006 Sweyn was back again. He landed at Sandwich, and swept unopposed through Wessex to Reading, defeated some local troops, and thence turned back to the sea. Aethelred fled to Shropshire, and the Witan decided that ‘they must needs bribe the army with a tribute, though they were all loth to do it.’ In the spring of 1007 36,000 pounds of silver were paid, and the satiated Danes retired for two years.

The respite was utilized for an apparently determined attempt to organize a great fleet. Every three hundred ‘hides’ of land was assessed at a ship; each ten hides at a boat, and for every eight hides a fully equipped soldier was to be furnished. In 1009 a vast armament assembled at Sandwich, but to no purpose. Perhaps owing to the treachery of Eadric Streona, Aethelred’s favourite, at any rate on account of disgraceful dissension among the leaders, the huge force broke up. The miserable story is told at length by the Chronicler, with bitter denunciation of Eadric.

The Vikings were led this year by Thorkil ‘the Tall,’ of Jomsborg, a famous Viking settlement on the Baltic coast of Germany. The beginning of the end was seen when Kent and Canterbury ransomed themselves from pillage. The Danes then raided Wessex as far as Oxford, and laid Essex and Hertfordshire under contribution, but were stoutly repulsed in an attack on London. They wintered in Kent, and, as usual, the wretched King began to contemplate another payment of tribute. Meanwhile Thorkil left his quarters in Kent and invaded East Anglia. Ipswich was sacked, the county levies defeated, and the countryside wasted ruthlessly. ‘Redeless’ in everything, Aethelred did not open negotiations until 1011, by which time the raiders were completely out of hand. They disregarded their nominal chief Thorkil, and ‘went everywhere in troops, plundering and slaying our miserable people.’ They captured Canterbury through the treachery of the Abbot Aelfmar, and carried off Archbishop Aelfheah (Alphege), Godwin, Bishop of Rochester, and a multitude of captives. Not until the spring of 1012 was the huge ‘gafol,’ or ‘Danegeld’--48,000 pounds of silver--collected, and a hideous tragedy marked the final payment. A horde of drunken Danes dragged Archbishop Aelfheah, who had nobly refused to ransom himself, before their ‘husting’[E] at Greenwich, and pelted him to death with the bones of the beasts which they had devoured. It may be questioned whether any deed more foul is recorded in history. And yet the brutality of these semi-savage destroyers has too frequently been held up to unstinted admiration. Thorkil himself was innocent of the Archbishop’s blood, and next day he sent his body with honour to London. Soon after, oddly enough--perhaps the deed had sickened him--he entered Aethelred’s service.

[E] A Scandinavian word, meaning a general assembly of householders; here used of an army, and to-day retained in connection with political elections.

The humiliation had been in vain. Sweyn himself invaded England next year, and now at last the patience of the people with their incapable king was at an end. The whole north and east at once submitted to Sweyn. He then began to waste Wessex, and Wessex, too, yielded. All England was his almost without a blow, except London, which held its own ‘in full fight against him, for therein was King Aethelred and Thorkil with him.’ But the stout _burh-ware_ were exasperated by the bad discipline of Thorkil’s mercenaries, and when they withdrew to Greenwich, London, too, submitted. Aethelred fled to Normandy.

Sweyn himself lived only a few weeks, fortunately for England, for he was little more than a savage pirate leader. His army, and the English who were with it, elected as king his son Cnut, but the Witan of Wessex and Mercia sent to Aethelred--so hard to quench was English loyalty!--‘saying that no lord was dearer to them than their natural lord, if he would govern them better than he did before.’ So at Lent Aethelred came home ‘to his own people,’ and for once acted with vigour. He promptly marched against Cnut, who was at Gainsborough, caught him unprepared, and forced him to fly out to sea. He touched at Sandwich, and in his rage and disappointment committed the worst of the comparatively few crimes that stain his memory. He cut off the noses, hands, and ears of his hostages, put them ashore, and sailed away to Denmark.

For about a year England was free from invaders, but not from faction-strife. Money was needed for Thorkil’s mercenary fleet--21,000 pounds of silver. Eadric Streona murdered his personal foes without hindrance. Finally, the Kings gallant son, Eadmund, sick of the endless disorder, took up a position of open hostility to his wretched father. Aethelred was already sickening to death, and when Cnut appeared again at Sandwich in the autumn the army raised to fight him broke up owing to the treachery of Streona, who deserted to Cnut, with Jarl Thorkil and his mercenaries. Wessex submitted to the Danes once more. Aethelred was carried to faithful London; Eadmund retreated northward. There he rallied the Anglo-Danish levies to punish Eadric, and early next year attacked West Mercia; but Cnut marched northward through the Danelaw upon York, and the Northumbrians, under Earl Uhtred, hurried back to defend their homes. Uhtred found the situation so hopeless that he submitted ‘for need,’ as the Chronicle pathetically says. But his submission was merely the signal for his murder--by the advice of Eadric, of course. Eadmund took refuge in London with the remains of his army, and Cnut, leaving Jarl Eric Haakonson in charge of Northumbria, prepared to follow him. Eadmund appears to have reached the faithful city early in April, and on the 16th the wretched Aethelred died.

The once mighty English Empire was now restricted to the walls of London, but Eadmund II. made a splendid effort to recover it. Before ending this most wearisome and gloomy chapter of this story of invasion it is pleasant to chronicle one heroic attempt. Like Poland in the eighteenth century, the kingdom of Alfred was at least to die with honour.

Eadmund stayed only a few days in London. Its gallant inhabitants could be trusted to do their duty to the last, and the landless king sallied forth to rally adherents to his scanty following. Scarcely had he left London when Cnut beleaguered it. Being unable to force the bridge, he opened a passage for his ships round the fortifications of Southwark, probably by largely utilizing the watercourses in the marsh. The popular impression that Cnut had with him a corps of engineers capable of carrying out such a formidable undertaking as that of excavating a ship canal something near a mile in length is certainly erroneous. It must be remembered that until quite modern times South London was liable to be flooded at every high tide, and it is more than probable that the only pioneering work imposed upon the Danish warriors consisted in making short cuts from one reed-grown watercourse to another, and in clearing a fairway. Cnut thus brought his lighter vessels above the bridge and completed the blockade; but the citizens held out stoutly, hoping for relief from Eadmund.

The King had reached Wessex safely, and the men of his dynasty’s homeland soon began to rally to his banner. In June he was able to take the field and defeat a Danish force at Penselwood. Cnut sent off in haste an Anglo-Danish army under Thorkil and the traitor Eadric, but Eadmund defeated them at Sherston, and marched for London. He burst through Cnut’s lines into the city and broke up the siege. Cnut collected his forces on the south bank of the Thames, but Eadmund, two days later, slipped away up the river and forced a passage at Brentford. The Danes, however, though beaten, were not routed, and the English lost many men by drowning--apparently because they had scattered to plunder. The Danes still threatened London, but Eadmund’s victories were attracting to him large reinforcements, and he was soon so strong that Cnut finally abandoned the siege and retreated to the mouth of the Orwell. Having collected provisions by systematic ravage, he transferred his base of operations to the Medway; but Eadmund, who was north of London, promptly crossed the Thames at Brentford and met him at Otford. For the fifth time he gained the day, and Cnut was driven back into Sheppey.

At this moment the double traitor Eadric deserted Cnut, and made his peace with the far too magnanimous Eadmund, apparently because he brought with him his Magesaetan (Hereford and Shropshire) levies, which had hitherto been aiding Cnut. The indefatigable Danish king, however, did not give up the game. He once more transferred his army into Essex, and when Eadmund advanced against him he stood to fight at Assandune (Ashington). He may have counted upon Eadric’s treachery; it seems impossible that the abominable desertion that followed had not been concerted. In the heat of the battle the traitor left the line and ‘began the flight with the Magesaetas, and so betrayed his true lord and all the people of England.’ The result was fearful disaster. The whole English army was broken and destroyed; ‘all the nobility of the English race was there undone.’ Eadmund, undaunted still, retreated to Gloucestershire, and set to work to collect another army. But he must have been almost in despair, and it was well for him that the Danes were also wearied out and ready to come to terms. On the Isle of Alney, near Deerhurst, the kings met and concluded a treaty, by which the gallant English leader saved a part of his shattered realm, to be, as he might hope, a base for the future recovery of the whole. He kept Wessex, East Anglia, and West Mercia, while Cnut took Northumbria and the old Mercian ‘Danelaw.’

The reconquest to which Eadmund must have looked forward was not to be. On November 30 the brave King died at Oxford. Cnut at once put forward his claim to be his successor, and was accepted by the Witan without opposition. It must have been general exhaustion and despair, as well as lack of leaders, that impelled the decision. Cnut proved an able and successful ruler, and identified himself thoroughly with the nation which had accepted him under compulsion.

The deduction to be made from the melancholy story of the Danish Conquest is obviously that national unity was still lacking in England. Neither was patriotism other than a local feeling. So far as can be seen, the peasantry simply followed the magnates, and these latter, with some honourable exceptions, were clearly, as a class, worthless. A ‘redeless’ king was betrayed by contemptible and treacherous advisers and nobles, and the ill-compacted people, without national sentiment, and with no means of expressing its opinion, was unable then to redeem the blunders and cowardice of its nominal leaders.

Between 991 and 1018 the total payments made on account of ‘Danegeld’ amounted to 216,500 pounds of silver, probably equivalent to £7,000,000 in modern value.