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
