POLITICAL HISTORY 



Continental invaders reappeared in England in the ninth century. 

 The mere plundering incursions of the Danes and Norsemen were 

 succeeded by forays on a larger scale, aiming at richer prey and prepara- 

 tory to settlement in the country. In 851 the most formidable Danish 

 attack so far made upon the south of England, perhaps upon any part of 

 Britain, was frustrated in Surrey. The course of the story illustrates 

 very fairly the kind of events of which the position of the county made 

 it the scene, for the Danes were defeated on this march through Surrey, 

 while aiming at something beyond. 



The invasion came about in this wise. 1 About Duurstede, near the 

 mouth of the Rhine, two Scandinavian chiefs, Harold and Ruric, either 

 brothers or an uncle and nephew, had extorted a settlement from the 

 emperor Lewis the Pious. They were intended to bar the mouth of the 

 river against others, as Rollo was expected to bar the mouth of the 

 Seine. 2 Harold was killed and Ruric quarrelled with the emperor Lothair 

 and was expelled, but reinstated himself by the aid of a body of Danish 

 adventurers set free by the cessation of a civil war in Denmark and 

 Scania, and turned loose to seek their fortunes. Ruric seems to have 

 stayed at the mouth of the Rhine, but his followers finding the place 

 too strait for them, and probably not thinking the then swamps and 

 sands of Friesland very desirable habitations, broke off into two raiding 

 parties. One plundered in Flanders, the other came by ship to Sand- 

 wich. Ethelstan, underking of Kent, Sussex, Essex and Surrey under 

 Ethelwulf his father, 3 had already had a fight with a roving squadron 

 of Danes and had beaten them, but now collapsed before the invasion of 

 the main body. By one account they had 350 ships, big fishing boats 

 we should call them, sufficient in size for coasting from Denmark to 

 Holland and for running across to Kent. It is impossible to say how 

 many men they carried, nor need we rely implicitly on the number of 

 ships given. Clearly it was a great invasion. The three kings of the 

 south and midlands were in arms against it. The Danes sacked Canter- 

 bury, Ethelstan being apparently overmatched. They then went up the 

 Thames to London and defeated Beorhtwulf, King of the Mercians, who 

 fled amongst his own people, and according to Henry of Huntingdon 

 never held up his head afterwards. Ethelwulf of Wessex, overlord of 

 Beorhtwulf and Ethelstan, was the only king left in the field, and his 

 city, Winchester, the only unsacked great city of the south. 



There were three roads by which the Danes could seek Winchester. 

 They would use roads if they could, and not strike across country 

 through forests and marshes. They usually seized horses where they 

 came ; they would want to carry some supplies and plunder with them, 

 and they would find more inhabitants and more supplies on the line 



1 The Annales Bertiniani attributed to Prudentius of Troyes, connect the Danish civil war with 

 this invasion. If they are his they are strictly contemporary. They claim to be contemporary whoever 

 the author was. 



* Rudolf of Fulda Annales, anno 850 (ed. Pertz, p. 366). Compare for the whole story Annalts 

 Bertiniani, anno 850, and Chronicon de Gestii Normannorum in Francia, anno 852. 



3 Or his brother, according to one version of the A.-S. Chronicle. 



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