Now came a time when the victory was ours, and it seemed that at last the strong hand had come.  For men would follow Eadmund, and he had the power of making them fight as he would.  Yet there was nothing that would keep our levies together.  Had they done so we had surely conquered, but it was ever the same.  They fought and dispersed, and all the work and loss was for nought.  I think it would have been the same with the Danish host had they been in their own country; but here they must needs hold together, and Cnut and his jarls wielded that mighty force as a man wields his sword.  Eadmund smote as a man who fells his enemy with a staff that breaks in the smiting, so that he must needs seek another while his fallen foe rises again, sword in hand.

But our men were called from home and fireside to fight, and when they won and their own fields and houses were safe, they thought they had done all, and went home again, at ease, and maybe boasting overmuch.

We marched on London and relieved the city, driving the Danes in flight to their ships.  And Eadmund slept that night among a great host; and in the morning the Wessex men were going home, and only his own housecarles and the men who followed him from ruined Mercia and East Anglia and Kent would bide around him.  London could take care of herself now.  But Eadmund strove to gather them for one more blow, and we had a great fight at Brentford, for the Danes had gone up river, and we won.  Yet the Danes turned on us when the ships were reached, and we lost many men in the river, for they scattered in their eagerness to plunder the ships that they thought were already won, and so, without order or leaders, were driven to their death in the swift water.

Then Wessex disbanded, and all the work of gathering our forces must be done over again; and at once the Danes closed in round London when Eadmund had gone back to Salisbury.

Surely it would have broken the heart of any man but Eadmund the Ironside that thus it must be, but he would say: 

“England is waking; we shall win yet.”

Then Cnut recalled the ships and host from London, and they raised the siege, and went into the Orwell, and once again began to march across the heart of our land.

This fourth levy that Eadmund the king had made was the best that he had had.  And word must have come thereof to the Danes, for they went back to their fleet; and so waited for a little while, thinking doubtless that this levy would melt away in idleness as ever.  For they came back into the Medway with the booty they had, and there we fell on them and drove them headlong to their ships, and I surely thought that we had done with Cnut for good and all.

Then fell the shadow of ill on us.  Edric Streone and his men met us at Aylesford, and he came in to the king and made most humble submission to him.

And that was what Olaf had told Eadmund would happen when once again he had the victory.  Therefore when I saw the earl come into the camp to speak with Eadmund I said: