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. 331
