997.
This composition brought only a short interval to the miseries of the English. The Danish pirates appeared soon after in the Severn; and having committed spoil in Wales, as well as in Cornwall and Devonshire, they sailed round to the south coast, and entering the Tamar, completed the devastation of these two counties. They then returned to the Bristol Channel; and penetrating into the country by the Avon, spread themselves over all that neighborhood, and carried fire and sword even into Dorsetshire. They next changed the seat of war; and after ravaging the Isle of Wight, they entered the Thames and Medway, and laid siege to Rochester, where they defeated the Kentish men in a pitched battle. After this victory, the whole province of Kent was made a scene of slaughter, fire, and devastation. The extremity of these miseries forced the English into counsels for common defence, both by sea and land; but the weakness of the king, the divisions among the nobility, the treachery of some, the cowardice of others, the want of concert in all, frustrated every endeavor; their fleets and armies either came too late to attack the enemy, or were repulsed with dishonor; and the people were thus equally ruined by resistance or by submission. The English, therefore, destitute both of prudence and unanimity in council, of courage and conduct in the field, had recourse to the same weak expedient which, by experience, they had already found so ineffectual: they offered the Danes to buy peace, by paying them a large sum of money, These ravagers rose continually in their demands; and now required the payment of twenty-four thousand pounds, to which the English were so mean and imprudent as to submit.[*]
[* Hoveden, p. 429. Chron. Malm. p. 153.]
The departure of the Danes procured them another short interval of repose, which they enjoyed as if it were to be perpetual without making any effectual preparations for a more vigorous resistance upon the next return of the enemy.
Besides receiving this sum, the Danes were engaged by another motive to depart a kingdom which appeared so little in a situation to resist their efforts. They were invited over by their countrymen in Normandy, who at this time were hard pressed by the arms of Robert, king of France, and who found it difficult to defend the settlement, which, with so much advantage to themselves, and glory to their nation, they had made in that country. It is probable, also, that Ethelred, observing the close connections thus maintained among all the Danes, however divided in government or situation, was desirous of forming an alliance with that formidable people. For this purpose, being now a widower, he made his addresses to Emma, sister to Richard II., duke of Normandy, and he soon succeeded in his negotiation. The princess came over this year
1001.
to England, and was married to Ethelred.[*]
[* H, Hunting, p. 359. Higden, p. 271.]
In the end of the ninth and beginning of the tenth century—when the north, not yet exhausted by that multitude of people, or rather nations, which she had successively emitted, sent forth a new race, not of conquerors, as before, but of pirates and ravagers, who infested the countries possessed by her once warlike sons—lived Rollo, a petty prince or chieftain in Denmark, whose valor and abilities soon en gaged, the attention of his countrymen. He was exposed in his youth to the jealousy of the king of Denmark, who attacked his small but independent principality, and who, being foiled in every assault, had recourse at last to perfidy for effecting his purpose, which he had often attempted in vain by force of arms.[**]
[** Dudo, ex edit. Duchesne, p. 70, 71. Gul.
Gemeticenia, lib. ii, cap. 2, 3.]