[Sidenote:  A.D. 1003]

In this state of shame and misery, their sufferings suggested to them a design rather desperate than brave.  They resolved on a massacre of the Danes.  Some authors say, that in one night the whole race was cut off.  Many, probably all the military men, were so destroyed.  But this massacre, injudicious as it was cruel, was certainly not universal; nor did it serve any other or better end than to exasperate those of the same nation abroad, who the next year landed in England with a powerful army to revenge it, and committed outrages even beyond the usual tenor of the Danish cruelty.  There was in England no money left to purchase a peace, nor courage to wage a successful war; and the King of Denmark, Sweyn, a prince of capacity, at the head of a large body of brave and enterprising men, soon mastered the whole kingdom, except London.  Ethelred, abandoned by fortune and his subjects, was forced to fly into Normandy.

[Sidenote:  Edmund Ironside, A.D. 1016.]

As there was no good order in the English affairs, though continually alarmed, they were always surprised; they were only roused to arms by the cruelty of the enemy, and they were only formed into a body by being driven from their homes:  so that they never made a resistance until they seemed to be entirely conquered.  This may serve to account for the frequent sudden reductions of the island, and the frequent renewals of their fortune when it seemed the most desperate.  Sweyn, in the midst of his victories, dies, and, though succeeded by his son Canute, who inherited his father’s resolution, their affairs were thrown into some disorder by this accident.  The English were encouraged by it.  Ethelred was recalled, and the Danes retired out of the kingdom; but it was only to return the nest year with a greater and better appointed force.  Nothing seemed able to oppose them.  The king dies.  A great part of the land was surrendered, without resistance, to Canute.  Edmund, the eldest son of Ethelred, supported, however, the declining hopes of the English for some time; in three months he fought three victorious battles; he attempted a fourth, but lost it by the base desertion of Edric, the principal author of all these troubles.  It is common with the conquered side to attribute all their misfortunes to the treachery of their own party.  They choose to be thought subdued by the treachery of their friends rather than the superior bravery of their enemies.  All the old historians talk in this strain; and it must be acknowledged that all adherents to a declining party have many temptations to infidelity.