ey fled; but being reduced to extremity by
want and hunger, they had recourse to the clemency of the victor, and
offered to submit on any conditions. The king, no less generous than
brave, gave them their lives, and even formed a scheme for converting
them from mortal enemies into faithful subjects and confederates. He
knew that the kingdoms of East Anglia and Northumberland were totally
desolated by the frequent inroads of the Danes, and he now proposed to
repeople them, by settling there Guthrum and his followers. He hoped
that the new planters would at last betake themselves to industry, when,
by reason of his resistance, and the exhausted condition of the country,
they could no longer subsist by plunder; and that they might serve him
as a rampart against any future incursions of their countrymen. But
before he ratified these mild conditions with the Danes, he required
that they should give him one pledge of their submission, and of
their inclination to incorporate with the English, by declaring their
conversion to Christianity.[*] Guthrum and his army had no aversion to
the proposal; and, without much instruction, or argument, or conference,
they were all admitted to baptism. The king answered for Guthrum at the
font, gave him the name of Athelstan, and received him as his adopted
son.[**]

[* Chron. Sax. p. 85.]

[** Asser. p. 10. Chron. Sax. p. 90.]

The success of this expedient seemed to correspond to Alfred's hopes:
the greater part of the Danes settled peaceably in their new quarters:
some smaller bodies of the same nation, which were dispersed in Mercia,
were distributed into the five cities of Derby, Leicester, Stamford,
Lincoln, and Nottingham, and were thence called the Fif or Five-burgers.
The more turbulent and unquiet made an expedition into France, under the
command of Hastings;[*] and except by a short incursion of Danes, who
sailed up the Thames, and landed at Fulham, but suddenly retreated to
their ships, on finding the country in a posture of defence, Alfred was
not for some years infested by the inroads of those barbarians.[**]

[* W. Malms, lib. ii. cap. 4. Ingulph. p. 26.]

[** Asser. p. 11.]

The king employed this interval of tranquillity in restoring order to
the state, which had been shaken by so many violent convulsions; in
establishing civil and military institutions; in composing the minds of
men to industry and justice; and in providing against the return of like
c