o have been of a very formidable character.

At first these excursions were made in the summer season only, and,
after collecting their plunder, the marauders would return in the
autumn to their own shores, and winter in the bays and among the
islands there. At length, however, they grew more bold. A large band
of them landed, in the autumn of 851, on the island of Thanet where
the Saxons themselves had landed four centuries before, and began very
coolly to establish their winter quarters on English ground. They
succeeded in maintaining their stay during the winter, and in the
spring were prepared for bolder undertakings still.

They formed a grand confederation, and collected a fleet of three
hundred and fifty ships, galleys, and boats, and advanced boldly
up the Thames. They plundered London, and then marched south to
Canterbury, which they plundered too. They went thence into one of the
Anglo-Saxon kingdoms called Mercia, the inhabitants of the country not
being able to oppose any effectual obstacle to their marauding march.
Finally, a great Anglo-Saxon force was organized and brought out to
meet them. The battle was fought in a forest of oaks, and the Danes
were defeated. The victory, however, afforded the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms
only a temporary relief. New hordes were continually arriving and
landing, growing more and more bold if they met with success, and but
little daunted or discouraged by temporary failures.

The most formidable of all these expeditions was one organized and
commanded by the sons and relatives of Ragnar, whom, it will be
recollected, the Saxons had cruelly killed by poisonous serpents in
a dungeon or den. The relatives of the unhappy chieftain thus
barbarously executed were animated in their enterprise by the double
stimulus of love of plunder and a ferocious thirst for revenge. A
considerable time was spent in collecting a large fleet, and in
combining, for this purpose, as many chieftains as could be induced to
share in the enterprise. The story of their fellow-countryman expiring
under the stings of adders and scorpions, while his tormentors were
exulting around him over the cruel agonies which their ingenuity
had devised, aroused them to a phrensy of hatred and revenge. They
proceeded, however, very deliberately in their plans. They did nothing
hastily. They allowed ample time for the assembling and organizing
of the confederation. When all was ready, they found that there were
eight king