The young Dane brought no such ideas to the campaign that he was now on the point of beginning. Being by race more a Slav than a Dane, it may be that he did not readily acquire Germanic ideas. His training with the Jomvikings, perhaps in his early youth, at least now in his British camp, where veterans from Jom were numerous and Thurkil the Tall was the chief warrior, ran counter to such notions. The Jomvikings would retreat, sometimes they would even take to flight, as we infer from a runic inscription that reads like a rebuke for cowardly retreat.[108]
] To add to the difficulties of England, Ethelred was stricken with an illness that ended his life a few months later. The hope of England now lay in the rebellious Edmund, who was still in the North country. He and Eadric were both gathering forces in Mercia; but when they joined disagreements seem to have arisen; for soon the Earl again played the traitor, deserted the Etheling, and with "forty ships" repaired to Canute and joined his host.
In the language of the day, the term "ship" did not necessarily refer to an actual sea-going craft; it was often used as a rude form of reckoning military forces, somewhat less than one hundred men, perhaps. It has been thought that Eadric's deserters were the remnant of Ethelred's Danish mercenary force[109]; but it is unlikely that so many vikings still remained in the English service. The chances are that they were Mercians, possibly Danish Mercians. Wessex now gave up the fight, accepted Canute as king, and provided horses for the invading army.
It must have been about Christmas time when Eadric marched his men down into the South to join the Danes. A few days later the restless Prince, with Eadric in his train, started northward, crossed the Thames at Cricklade in Wiltshire, and proceeded toward the Warwick country. Edmund had apparently come south to meet him, but the militia were an unwilling band. They suddenly became sticklers for legal form and regularity, and refused to go on without the presence of the King and the aid of London. As neither was forthcoming, the English dispersed. Once more the summons went abroad, and once more the men insisted that the King must be in personal command: let him come with what forces he could muster. Ethelred came, but the hand of death was upon him. Evidently the old King had neither courage nor strength. Whispers of treason came to him: "that they who should be a help to him intended to betray him"[110]; and he suddenly deserted the army and returned to the fastness of London.
The second attempt at resistance having failed, Edmund left the South to its fate, and rode into Northumbria to seek Earl Uhtred. No better evidence can be found of the chaos that existed in England at the time. The Saxon South accepts the invader, while a prince of the house of Alfred is looking for aid in the half-Scandinavian regions beyond the Humber that had once so readily submitted to Sweyn Forkbeard. What agreements and promises were made are not known; but soon we have the strange spectacle of Edmund and his new ally harrying English lands, the Mercian counties of Stafford, Salop, and Chester. Doubtless the plan was to punish Eadric, but it was a plan that did not lead to a united England.
The punishment of the deserters was probably incidental; evidently the allies were on the march southward to check Canute. Here was an opportunity for the young Dane to show some generalship, and the opportunity was improved. Turning eastward into Bucks, he marched his army in a northeasterly direction toward the Fenlands, and thence northward through Lincoln and Nottingham toward York. When Earl Uhtred learned of this attack on his territories, he hastened back to Northumbria. But he was not in position to fight, and, therefore,
driven by necessity, he submitted, and all Northumbria with him, and gave hostages. Nevertheless, on the advice of Eadric, he was slain, and with him Thurkil, the son of Nafna. And after that the king made Eric earl of Northumbria with all the rights that Uhtred had.[111]