King Eadmund was now gathering a greater force than ever from all parts of England.^[783] Meanwhile the Danes, finding all their attempts on London fruitless, set out on a plundering expedition on a great scale. They sailed away from London, they coasted along the shores of Essex; they then entered the Orwell, and thence they marched across East-Anglia and spread themselves over Mercia, plundering, burning, slaying, according to their wont. Then, gorged with plunder, those who were on foot went back to their ships, and sailed up the Medway, the fierce and swift-flowing stream which washed the fair walls of Rochester.^[784] Those who had horses seemed to have reached the same trysting-place by land. But King Eadmund followed them with his fourth army, which must have been partly at least levied in Mercia, as he was |Fifth battle, at Otford; victory of Eadmund.| now north of the Thames. He crossed the river at Brentford, the scene of his last success, he followed the Danes into Kent, met them at Otford, and gained an easy victory. The Danes fled with their horses into Sheppey—the |855.| corner of England in which a Danish host had first wintered.^[785] The King pressed on and slew as many as he could; but his evil genius Eadric now again appeared |Further treasons of Eadric; he saves the Danes from destruction.| in his old character. By the same incomprehensible means of which we have so often heard, Eadmund was hindered from following up his victory. The traitor contrived to detain the King at Aylesford, and the Danish army was saved from utter destruction.

The last act of this great drama was now drawing near. Since the end of April, Eadmund had gathered four armies; he had fought five pitched battles; he had been decidedly victorious in four of them, and he had, to say the least, not been decidedly defeated in any. Never had the efforts of one man been greater or more successful; Ælfred himself, in his most hard-fought campaigns, had not worked for England with a truer heart |Eadmund collects a fifth army from all England.| than his valiant descendant. Eadmund again marched westward, he gathered a fifth army, and made ready for a sixth battle. The war, which in the beginning might have almost passed for a local struggle, had now become thoroughly national. Cnut had now to fight, not against Wessex, but against England, and there is nothing which leads us to think that he now had any English followers under his banners. Eadmund’s new host was gathered from all parts of England, even from districts whose inhabitants were largely of Danish origin. We have no complete list of the shires which sent contingents, but we incidentally find that men came from districts as far apart from each other as Herefordshire, East-Anglia, and Lindesey. The Danes meanwhile sailed along the coast of Essex, and entered the estuary of the Crouch. There they left their ships, while the army went on a plundering expedition into Mercia, which is spoken of as being more fearful than any that had gone before it. After this they returned towards their ships, the latter part of their course leading them along the high ground |Sixth and last battle, at Assandun.| which lies south of the Crouch. Along these heights Eadmund followed them, and at last overtook and engaged them in the sixth and last battle of this wonderful year, the memorable fight of Assandun.^[786] At the end of the range, two hills of slight positive height, but which seem lofty in the low lands of the East of England, look down on the swampy plain watered by the tidal river. Between the hills and this lowest ground lies a considerable level at an intermediate height, which seems to have been the actual site of the battle. Of the two hills one still keeps the name of Ashington, an easy corruption of the ancient form, while the other, in its name of Canewdon, perhaps preserves the memory of the Danish conqueror himself. On Assandun then, a site marked by entrenchments which are perhaps witnesses of that day’s fight, perhaps of yet earlier warfare, Eadmund drew up his forces in three ranks, he made the speech usual before action, and at first seemed disposed to await the attack of the enemy.^[787] The King took the post which immemorial usage fixed for a royal general, between the two ensigns which were displayed over an English army, the golden Dragon, the national ensign of Wessex, and the Standard, seemingly the personal device of the King.^[788] But Cnut had no mind to attack; most likely he wished to avoid a battle altogether, and merely sought to get back to his ships with his plunder. At all events he had no mind to attack the English as long as they were posted on a spot where the ground gave them the advantage. Yet the moment was favourable for battle; the Raven fluttered her wings, and Thurkill, overjoyed at the happy omen, called for immediate action.^[789] But Cnut, young as he was, was wary, and would fight only after his own fashion. He gradually led his troops off the hills into the level ground,^[790] that is, the intermediate height between the hills and the swampy plain. The main object of Eadmund was to cut off the Danes from their ships; he had therefore no choice but to leave his strong post and to come down to the lower ground. This movement differed from that of those English troops at Senlac, who, in defiance of Harold’s orders, left the hill to pursue the Normans in their real or pretended flight. At Senlac, in withstanding horsemen, the one thing to be done was to keep the strong post against all assaults; at Assandun, English and Danes, using much the same tactics and the same weapons, could meet on equal terms on the level ground. If Eadmund gave up the advantage of his strong position for defence, he gained the advantage of the charge down hill for his |First attack of the English.| attack. He accordingly began the battle with a furious assault upon the Danes; he even forsook the royal post, and, charging sword in hand in the front rank, he burst like a thunderbolt upon the thickest of the enemy.^[791] The Danes held their ground manfully, and the fight was kept up with equal valour, and with frightful slaughter, on both sides. But on the whole the Danes had the worse, and they were beginning to give way, when Eadric again betrayed his lord and King and all the people of English kin.^[792] He was in command of the Magesætas or men of Herefordshire and of the forces of some other parts of his |Treacherous flight of Eadric.| old earldom; at the head of these troops, according to a previous agreement with Cnut, the English Ealdorman, the brother-in-law of the King, took to flight. The battle however was kept up till sunset, and even by the light of the moon; but, after the flight of Eadric, the English had to maintain the struggle on very unequal terms. All England fought against Cnut; but Cnut had the victory.^[793] |Slaughter of the English nobility.| The slaughter of the English nobility,^[794] of the chief leaders and of the King’s own following, was fearful. There died Godwine, Ealdorman of Lindesey, wiping out, it may be, by a valiant death the errors of an earlier stage of his life.^[795] There died the hero Ulfcytel, brave and faithful as ever; the first English leader who had checked the career of Swegen, and who now ended his glorious life by dying sword in hand in fight against the son of his old enemy.^[796] There died one of the many Ælfrics of our story, redeeming on this hard-fought field the infamy which his more celebrated namesake had brought upon his very name. There died one personally unknown to us, but a scion of a house than which none has been more famous in our history, the East-Anglian Æthelweard, the son of Æthelwine the Friend of God.^[797] And, in times like these, not only the temporal chiefs, but Bishops and Abbots also, had not scrupled to take the field against the invader. Wulfsige of Ramsey came with the heir of the great house to which his monastery owed so much. Five and twenty years before he had played the churl towards the host of Brihtnoth on its march to Maldon.^[798] Like Godwine of Lindesey, long years of national wretchedness had brought him to a more patriotic frame of mind, and he now, in his old age, came to give to his King and country such help as his years and calling allowed him. Eadnoth of Dorchester,^[799] once Provost of Wulfsige’s minster, came, either through love of his old companions or in the train of Godwine and the valiant men of his own diocese. These holy men, we are told, came only to pray and not to fight,^[800] and in the case of the aged Wulfsige we may well believe that it was so. But we cannot forget that other English prelates, before and after, did not shrink from wearing weapons and commanding armies. We have seen that, in this age, Archbishop Ælfric not only bequeathed ships to his dioceses, but personally commanded fleets,^[801] and it may well be that the arm of Eadnoth, if not that of Wulfsige, was found as strong as those of Ealhstan in an earlier, and of Ealdred in a later, generation.^[802] At all events, whether they came to pray or to fight, the prelates met with no more mercy from |Victory of the Danes.| the Danish sword than the lay chieftains. At last, under cover of night, the King and the remnant of his army escaped; Eadmund Ironside, for the first time in this year of battles, was a fugitive. The Danes hardly dared to pursue; but they kept possession of the place of slaughter. They tarried on the field all night; in the morning they buried their own dead; they gathered the spoils of the slain English, and left their bodies to the fowls of the air and to the beasts of the land.^[803] They then went to their ships and sailed towards London,^[804] most likely meaning to begin the siege a fourth time. When they were gone, some of the scattered English ventured to return and carry off the bodies of the slain leaders. Æthelweard and Wulfsige found an honourable grave in their own church at Ramsey; the body of Eadnoth lay in the rival minster of Ely, the resting-place of Brihtnoth.^[805]

The real blow to England in this battle was the loss of so many of the chief men whom it was hard to replace. This remarkable slaughter of the nobility is emphatically pointed out in all our narratives,^[806] and it is not unlikely that it had a real political effect, like the cutting off of the mediæval baronage in the Wars of the Roses. But as a mere military success, Cnut’s victory at Assandun does not seem to have been very decisive. At any rate, instead of being followed up by any vigorous blow, it led only to a conference and a compromise between |Eadmund prepares for a seventh battle.| the contending Kings. Neither the spirit nor the resources of Eadmund were worn out. Indeed he seems to have been readier than his rival to try his fate once more in a seventh battle. As undaunted as ever, he made his way into Gloucestershire, and there began gathering recruits for a new campaign.^[807] He seems to have been actually ready with a fresh army, when Cnut, with his victorious host, came after him. But no battle took place. Eadric—still, strange to say, in the King’s confidence—and the other Witan who were with him, the relics of Assandun, persuaded Eadmund, much against his will,^[808] to consent to a conference and a division of the kingdom. The two Kings drew near to the Severn from opposite sides, Eadmund from the west, Cnut from |Conference of Olney.| the east. They met in an island of the river, called Olney,^[809] to which the Kings were, seemingly together with chosen witnesses,^[810] rowed over from their several banks of the river. The meeting was a friendly one; we can well believe that two such valiant captains as Cnut and Eadmund might, in the course of their warfare, conceive a real respect for each other. But, among the many great qualities which Cnut, in after times, gradually developed out of his original barbarism, this particular virtue of generosity towards personal rivals is one of which we see few signs. Without imputing to Cnut any actual treachery, we may feel sure that in this, as in most other acts of his life, he was guided by policy rather than by sentiment. Still, from whatever motives, the two Kings treated one another with the utmost courtesy. |Division of the kingdom between Eadmund and Cnut.| A division of the kingdom was the essential principle of the treaty; the two Kings now agreed on details. They settled the extent of their respective dominions, and also the amount of money which, as a necessary consequence of any treaty with Danes, was to be paid to the Danish fleet. They moreover swore oaths of friendship and brotherhood, and, like the heroes of Homer,^[811] they exchanged arms in token of mutual good will.^[812] The terms of the treaty, indeed the fact of Cnut’s consenting to any treaty at all, show how formidable the power of Eadmund must still have seemed. The Imperial dignity remained to the English King, who, unlike his rival, was already a King in the fullest sense of the word, a King crowned and anointed. With this over-lordship of the whole realm, Eadmund kept the immediate dominion of all England south of the Thames, together with East-Anglia, Essex, and London. Cnut took the remainder, the larger portion of the kingdom. As compared with the division between Ælfred and Guthrum, the dominions of Eadmund were larger on one side and smaller on another. Eadmund gained Essex and East-Anglia, which, in the earlier division, fell to the lot of the Danes, while he lost the part of Mercia which was kept—or, more strictly, won back—by Ælfred. It would seem that each prince was to succeed to the dominions of the other, at all events if he died childless. The brothers of the two Kings seem to have been formally shut out. The sons of Eadmund were left in the usual position of minors. No immediate provision or stipulation was made for them; but their position as Æthelings, entitled to a preference on any future vacancy, seems to have been distinctly acknowledged. It is hardly possible that a lasting separation of the two parts of the kingdom was seriously meant. Such a division could not have lasted longer than the joint lives of the two reconciled competitors, and it would probably have been annulled at no distant time by the first quarrel between them.^[813]

England had thus once more for a moment, as in the days of Eadwig and Eadgar, two Kings. But her two Kings were this time not hostile kinsmen, but reconciled enemies. After the conference at Olney, the newly made brothers parted. Cnut’s army returned to their ships, which had doubtless stayed in the Thames near London. The citizens beneath whose walls the power of Cnut and his father had been so often shattered, now made peace |The Danes winter in London.| with the Danish host. As usual, money was paid to them, and they were allowed to winter as friends within the unconquered city.