eeblest of the Danish race were better
than the strongest men of other nations; and it did the young men great
good, each of those chosen being eager to wipe off the reproach of
indolence. Also he enacted that every piece of litigation should be
referred to the judgment of twelve chosen elders, all ordinary methods
of action being removed, the accuser being forbidden to charge, and the
accused to defend. This law removed all chance of incurring litigation
lightly. Thinking that there was thus sufficient provision made against
false accusations by unscrupulous men, he lifted up his arms against
Britain, and attacked and slew in battle its king, Hame, the father of
Ella, who was a most noble youth. Then he killed the earls of Scotland
and of Pictland, and of the isles that they call the Southern or
Meridional (Sudr-eyar), and made his sons Siward and Radbard masters of
the provinces, which were now without governors. He also deprived Norway
of its chief by force, and commanded it to obey Fridleif, whom he also
set over the Orkneys, from which he took their own earl.

Meantime, some of the Danes who were most stubborn in their hatred
against Ragnar were obstinately bent on rebellion. They rallied to the
side of Harald, once an exile, and tried to raise the fallen fortunes of
the tyrant. By this hardihood they raised up against the king the most
virulent blasts of civil war, and entangled him in domestic perils when
he was free from foreign troubles. Ragnar, setting out to check them
with a fleet of the Danes who lived in the isles, crushed the army of
the rebels, drove Harald, the leader of the conquered army, a fugitive
to Germany, and forced him to resign unbashfully an honour which he had
gained without scruple. Nor was he content simply to kill his prisoners:
he preferred to torture them to death, so that those who could not be
induced to forsake their disloyalty might not be so much as suffered to
give up the ghost save under the most grievous punishment. Moreover, the
estates of those who had deserted with Harald he distributed among those
who were serving as his soldiers, thinking that the fathers would be
worse punished by seeing the honour of their inheritance made over to
the children whom they had rejected, while those whom they had loved
better lost their patrimony. But even this did not sate his vengeance,
and he further determined to attack Saxony, thinking it the refuge of
his foes and the retreat of Harald.