Ethelred the Unready was glad enough,I dare say,to be rid of this holy saint;but,left to himself,he was a poor weak king,and his reign was a reign of defeat and shame.The restless Danes,led by SWEYN,a son of the King of Denmark who had quarrelled with his father and had been banished from home,again came into England,and,year after year,attacked and despoiled large towns.To coax these sea-kings away,the weak Ethelred paid them money;but,the more money he paid,the more money the Danes wanted.At first,he gave them ten thousand pounds;on their next invasion,sixteen thousand pounds;on their next invasion,four and twenty thousand pounds:to pay which large sums,the unfortunate English people were heavily taxed.But,as the Danes still came back and wanted more,he thought it would be a good plan to marry into some powerful foreign family that would help him with soldiers.So,in the year one thousand and two,he courted and married Emma,the sister of Richard Duke of Normandy;a lady who was called the Flower of Normandy.
And now,a terrible deed was done in England,the like of which was never done on English ground before or since.On the thirteenth of November,in pursuance of secret instructions sent by the King over the whole country,the inhabitants of every town and city armed,and murdered all the Danes who were their neighbours.
Young and old,babies and soldiers,men and women,every Dane was killed.No doubt there were among them many ferocious men who had done the English great wrong,and whose pride and insolence,in swaggering in the houses of the English and insulting their wives and daughters,had become unbearable;but no doubt there were also among them many peaceful Christian Danes who had married English women and become like English men.They were all slain,even to GUNHILDA,the sister of the King of Denmark,married to an English lord;who was first obliged to see the murder of her husband and her child,and then was killed herself.
When the King of the sea-kings heard of this deed of blood,he swore that he would have a great revenge.He raised an army,and a mightier fleet of ships than ever yet had sailed to England;and in all his army there was not a slave or an old man,but every soldier was a free man,and the son of a free man,and in the prime of life,and sworn to be revenged upon the English nation,for the massacre of that dread thirteenth of November,when his countrymen and countrywomen,and the little children whom they loved,were killed with fire and sword.And so,the sea-kings came to England in many great ships,each bearing the flag of its own commander.
Golden eagles,ravens,dragons,dolphins,beasts of prey,threatened England from the prows of those ships,as they came onward through the water;and were reflected in the shining shields that hung upon their sides.The ship that bore the standard of the King of the sea-kings was carved and painted like a mighty serpent;and the King in his anger prayed that the Gods in whom he trusted might all desert him,if his serpent did not strike its fangs into England's heart.
And indeed it did.For,the great army landing from the great fleet,near Exeter,went forward,laying England waste,and striking their lances in the earth as they advanced,or throwing them into rivers,in token of their making all the island theirs.
In remembrance of the black November night when the Danes were murdered,wheresoever the invaders came,they made the Saxons prepare and spread for them great feasts;and when they had eaten those feasts,and had drunk a curse to England with wild rejoicings,they drew their swords,and killed their Saxon entertainers,and marched on.For six long years they carried on this war:burning the crops,farmhouses,barns,mills,granaries;killing the labourers in the fields;preventing the seed from being sown in the ground;causing famine and starvation;leaving only heaps of ruin and smoking ashes,where they had found rich towns.