ed to commence the execution every
where on the same day, and the festival of St. Brice, which fell on
a Sunday, [November 13,] the day on which the Danes usually bathed
themselves, was chosen for that purpose. It is needless to repeat the
accounts transmitted concerning the barbarity of this massacre: the rage
of the populace, excited by so many injuries, sanctioned by authority,
and stimulated by example, distinguished not between innocence and
guilt, spared neither sex nor age, and was not satiated without the
tortures as well as death of the unhappy victims. Even Gunilda, sister
to the king of Denmark, who had married Earl Paling, and had embraced
Christianity, was, by the advice of Edric, earl of Wilts, seized and
condemned to death by Ethelred, after seeing her husband and children
butchered before her face. This unhappy princess foretold, in the
agonies of despair, that her murder would soon be avenged by the total
ruin of the English nation.

{1003.} Never was prophecy better fulfilled; and never did barbarous
policy prove more fatal to the authors. Sweyn and his Danes, who wanted
but a pretence for invading the English, appeared off the western
coast, and threatened to take full revenge for the slaughter of their
countrymen. Exeter fell first into their hands, from the negligence
or treachery of Earl Hugh, a Norman, who had been made governor by the
interest of Queen Emma. They began to spread their devastations over the
country, when the English, sensible what outrages they must now expect
from their barbarous and offended enemy, assembled more early, and
in greater numbers than usual, and made an appearance of vigorous
resistance. But all these preparations were frustrated by the treachery
of Duke Alfric, who was intrusted with the command, and who, feigning
sickness, refused to lead the army against the Danes, till it was
dispirited, and at last dissipated, by his fatal misconduct. Alfric soon
after died, and Edric, a greater traitor than he, who had married the
king's daughter, and had acquired a total ascendant over him, succeeded
Alfric in the government of Mercia, and in the command of the English
armies. A great famine, proceeding partly from the bad seasons, partly
from the decay of agriculture, added to all the other miseries of the
inhabitants.

{1007} The country, wasted by the Danes, harassed by the fruitless
expeditions of its own forces, was reduced to the utmost desolation, and
at last submitt