|991.|
In the early part of this monarch’s reign we meet with much obscurity, much contradiction. We are told that in return for his rebellion against his father, and for his restoration of paganism, he was doomed to great bitterness of suffering; that he was thrice a prisoner among the pirates, and thrice redeemed by his people. For the last act of redemption he is said to have been indebted to Danish ladies, who, seeing that the money of the state was wholly exhausted by the preceding ransoms, contributed their choicest ornaments for that purpose. For this generosity, adds Saxo, the grateful Sweyn passed a law, that, in future, females should, like males, succeed, by inheritance, to a portion of their father’s property. Such a law certainly existed, and it may possibly be referred to Sweyn; but in regard to the circumstances which gave rise to it, there is room for scepticism. That a powerful monarch—for such Sweyn always was—should be thrice captured by pirates,—the pirates, too, of Jomsberg,—is surely unparalleled in the history of the world. Yet the relation alike of Saxo and Sweyn Aggesen must have had some foundation in truth. The probability is, that the king, prior to his accession, was once a captive, and that the monastic writers of the following age mistook the time and multiplied the circumstances.[[103]] Those venerable fathers, struck with horror at the filial no less than the religious impiety of this king, were ready to adopt, without examination, the most unfavourable reports concerning him. Another statement, that Sweyn was expelled from his kingdom by Eric of Sweden, and that he remained almost fifteen years in exile, fourteen of which he spent in Scotland, is entitled to just the same credit. His father, we are told, died in 991; yet in 994 he was powerful enough to begin the conquest of England; and from that year to the period of his death, in 1014, he was always in this country, or in Denmark. Where, then, are these sixteen years to be inserted? Assuredly no chasm can be found for them between 991 and 1014. Other circumstances demonstrate the falsehood of the relation,—a relation, however, adopted by the most recent historians. On his expulsion, we are told, he applied for the common rights of hospitality to Olaf Trygveson of Norway, but was spurned by that prince. This conduct of Olaf, says Saxo, was the less justifiable, as Sweyn had assisted him to regain the throne of Norway. Let us for a moment attend to dates. Sweyn’s restoration to his country, after his fifteen years of exile, is placed in the year 994; and as Olaf was the first monarch to whom he applied, this application must have been made about 979. But Olaf did not return to Norway before 996. How much earlier than this year must he have been assisted by Sweyn? Yet for this, as for the preceding relation, there was probably some basis. If Sweyn ever was in exile,—and there is some reason to infer that he was, during his hostility with his father,—that exile was before the death of Harald, and consequently before his accession to the monarchy. It may possibly be that he was at one time prior to that event king of some portion of the monarchy,—perhaps of Scania; and this conjecture would at once account for the facility with which Eric expelled him. However this be, there can be no doubt that if this banishment be a fact, it must be referred to a period long prior to 991. What confirms this conjecture is, the statement of Saxo, that the monarch to whom Sweyn next applied was Edward king of England. This was evidently Edward the Martyr, who ascended the throne in 975, and was assassinated in 978,—a period which will exactly agree with the duration assigned to his exile.[[104]]
|991 to 993.|
All writers allow that Sweyn, soon after his accession, sent or led an armament against Hako, the usurper of Norway. Snorro assures us that this expedition was planned by the Jomsberg pirates, who were invited to celebrate the funeral solemnities of Harald (that is, to get drunk) at the court of Sweyn; and he adds that the same vow was taken in regard to England. The vows of drunken men are not usually remembered; but these pirates remembered theirs but too well. With sixty vessels, filled by the bravest heroes of the republic, they hastened to the Norwegian coast; there they separated, and were separately assailed by jarl Hako, his son, and other chiefs of the kingdom. But, desperate as was the valour of the pirates, their numbers were too few, in comparison with those of the enemy, to fulfil their oath of taking Harald alive, or expelling him from Norway. They were signally defeated, though not until prodigies of valour had been effected by them. The contempt in which they beheld death is horribly illustrated by Snorro. Thirty of them being captured, their feet were tied by a rope, and they were carried on shore. They were placed on benches, in a right line, each near to the other, awaiting their death. Thorkil, a Norwegian jarl, advanced with a huge sword, and anticipated much pleasure from the exercise of killing them in detail. Accosting the chief of them, he said, “So, Vagne, thou madest a vow to put me to death; but it seems more likely that I shall have the honour of sending thee with my apology.” The pirate looked at him with much contempt. Beginning at the end of the line, he struck off the heads of many in succession, who faithfully observed the condition of their order,—never to exhibit the shadow of a fear. One desired the jarl to strike him in the forehead, and to look whether he should so much as blink his eyes. The next victim held in his hand the backbone of a fish. “I will wager thee,” he said to Thorkil, “that, after my head is off, I shall be able to plunge this bone into the ground!” But the boast was vain: when his head left his body, the bone fell from his hand. “Injure not my hair!”[[105]] cried another, as he stretched out his neck to receive the blow. An attendant held the long tresses with both hands, while the executioner struck; but, at the moment, the pirate threw back his head, and the sword amputated the two hands of the courtier, without injuring the pirate. Great was the triumph of the latter; and Eric, the son of Hako, admiring his intrepidity, procured his pardon. Another, Vagne, one of the chiefs, was pushed against the executioner by his next fellow; Thorkil fell, and, in so doing, his sword cut the rope which bound the pirate, who, seizing the weapon, beheaded the Norwegian jarl. Eric, too, procured his pardon. Eighteen being in this manner slain, the visitors began to feel some admiration for the rest. “Wilt thou accept the offer of thy life?” was demanded of the next. “That,” replied the man, who would not receive even life from an ignoble hand, “depends on the dignity of the giver!” Jarl Eric, the son of Hako, was named, and the offer was accepted. “Wilt thou?” was addressed to another. “Not unless my companions are spared also!” was the reply; and they were spared.[[106]]
|991 to 1001.|
If the expedition against Norway thus failed, very different was the issue of that directed against England. During the greater part of a century, this island had been unmolested by the pirates. Alfred, towards the close of his reign, had humbled them; Edward the elder had signally triumphed over them; and the name of Athelstane had been dreaded by all the rovers of the sea. There had been battles, indeed, with the Danish state of Northumberland, which, prior to Athelstane’s reign, had formed no part of the Saxon confederation; but the coasts of central and northern England had been undisturbed. On the accession of Ethelred, however, the scourge was resumed. In 991, a large force appeared before Ipswich, and marched to Malden, laying waste the country on every side. On this occasion Brithnoth, the Saxon governor of Essex, was slain; and his fate has been related in a poem, from which copious extracts may be found in a volume connected with the present.[[107]] These formidable invaders, as every child knows, were bribed to leave England; and, as every child knows, they soon returned in greater numbers than before. Even when steel, instead of gold, was to be the tribute, a cowardly and treacherous commander, Alfric of Mercia, was intrusted with the defence of England. In the following years, every province was desolated. In 994, Sweyn himself appeared in the Thames with a formidable fleet. He had an ally, Olaf, the son of Trygve, who, since infancy, had never been in Norway, and whose piratical exploits had been celebrated from Russia to Ireland.[[108]] His attack on London was repelled; but Essex, Kent, Sussex, and Hampshire suffered dreadfully from his depredations, and those of his ally. As before, though the number of pirates did not exceed 10,000, money was offered by the despicable Ethelred. Olaf, on receiving it, visited the court of the Saxon king, received the rite of confirmation (he had previously been baptized in one of the Scilly islands), and promised never again to molest the English coast. We hear no more of his depredations: but whether his forbearance was owing to his promise, or to his departure for Norway, the throne of which he ascended in little more than a year from this period, may well be doubted.[[109]] But Sweyn had no such moderation. In about three years from the payment of the 16,000l., he appeared in the south-west counties, advanced into Sussex and Hampshire, laying waste everything in his passage, and wintered as securely as if he had been naturalised: no opposition was made to his progress. Kent was next ravaged; and the whole of England would, no doubt, have become Danish, had not Sweyn been recalled to contend with a more formidable enemy, Olaf of Norway. One year after the death of that monarch[[110]], that is, in 1001, the Danes returned to a country where they had found no enemies, but abundance of prey. Another heavy ransom, and extensive estates in different parts of the kingdom, procured a temporary cessation of hostilities.[[111]]
|1001 to 1003.|
If Ethelred could not oppose the enemy in the field, and if his coffers were exhausted, he had still one resource left,—that of a general massacre. The day before the festival of St. Brice, the authorities of every city and town received secret letters from the court, commanding them and the people everywhere to rise at a certain hour, to fall on the unarmed, unsuspicious Danes, and not to spare one of them. The order was too well obeyed, and the English nation made itself equally guilty with its king. Many of the victims were naturalised; many had English husbands or wives; more were on terms of intimacy with the natives, and, at the moment this bloody mandate was executed, were sharing the hospitality of their huts. Nobody was spared: decrepit age and helpless infancy, youth and beauty, pleaded in vain. Even Gunhilda, sister of Sweyn, a convert to Christianity and the wife of an English earl, suffered with the rest; but not until she had seen her husband and son beheaded in her presence. This was not the mere act of the crown, nor that of a few courtiers, nor that of the municipal authorities: it was that of the English nation. Retribution, as Gunhilda had prophesied, was at hand; and every reader will rejoice that it was so. Sweyn no sooner heard of the massacre, than he swore never to rest until he had inflicted a terrible vengeance on the people. He no longer wished for booty, merely: he would also destroy. With a fleet of three hundred sail, he steered to the west of the island, landed in Cornwall, commenced his devastating career, reached Exeter, which he took by assault, set it on fire, and massacred the inhabitants. From thence he proceeded into Wiltshire, where fire and sword did their work, and passed by way of Salisbury to the sea coast, laden with plunder. No attempt was made to arrest his destructive progress: a Saxon force under Alfric had, indeed, assembled; but it would not fight, and it retired covered with the derision of the invaders.[[112]]
|1003 to 1009.|
The winter of 1003 Sweyn passed in Denmark; in the following year he was again in England. His destructive career now commenced in the eastern counties; but this year they terminated sooner than could have been foreseen. A famine—the result of preceding depredations—afflicted the land; and as provisions in sufficient abundance could not be found, the pirates returned home for a season. The deplorable cowardice of the troops, the imbecility of the governors, from Ethelred down to the meanest thane, was never equalled in any other country. This condition is well described by Turketul in a letter to Sweyn:—“A country illustrious and powerful; a king asleep, caring only for women and wine, trembling at the very mention of war, hated by his own people, despised by foreigners; generals envious of one another; governors who fly at the first shout of battle.” This weak and vicious king had the felicity to convert his friends into enemies at the very time he most needed their assistance. In 1002 he married the princess Emma of Normandy; but his behaviour to her was so grossly offensive, so brutal, that her father, duke Richard I., joined in making him still more contemptible by imprisoning or killing his subjects who happened to pass through Normandy. The pirates of Sweyn soon returned to consummate their work. In 1006 a heavy sum was paid them; the following year they demanded an equal sum, and declared that, in future, it must be annually paid by way of tribute. Some feeble efforts were made to defend the country; but the leaders of the fleet which had been raised turned their arms against one another. Thus fell the hopes of the nation, which prepared its neck for the most galling yoke that had ever afflicted it.[[113]]