paid, by their total destruction, the
penalty of the disorders which they had committed.
[FN [k] Asser. p. 9. M. West. p. 179.]

In this manner Alfred repelled several inroads of these piratical
Danes, and maintained his kingdom, during some years, in safety and
tranquillity. A fleet of a hundred and twenty ships of war was
stationed upon the coast; and being provided with warlike engines, as
well as with expert seamen, both Frisians and English, (for Alfred
supplied the defects of his own subjects by engaging able foreigners
in his service,) maintained a superiority over these smaller bands
with which England had so often been infested [l]. [MN 893.] But at
last Hastings, the famous Danish chief, having ravaged all the
provinces of France, both along the seacoast and the Loire and Seine,
and being obliged to quit that country, more by the desolation which
he himself had occasioned, than by the resistance of the inhabitants,
appeared off the coast of Kent with a fleet of 330 sail. The greater
part of the enemy disembarked in the Rother, and seized the fort of
Apuldore. Hastings himself, commanding a fleet of eighty sail,
entered the Thames, and fortifying Milton in Kent, began to spread his
forces over the country, and to commit the most destructive ravages.
But Alfred, on the first alarm of this descent, flew to the defence of
his people, at the head of a select band of soldiers, whom he always
kept about his person [m]; and gathering to him the armed militia from
all quarters, appeared in the field with a force superior to the
enemy. All straggling parties whom necessity, or love of plunder, had
drawn to a distance from their chief encampment, were cut off by the
English [n]; and these pirates, instead of increasing their spoil,
found themselves cooped up in their fortifications, and obliged to
subsist by the plunder which they had brought from France. Tired of
this situation, which must in the end prove ruinous to them, the Danes
at Apuldore rose suddenly from their encampment, with an intention of
marching towards the Thames, and passing over into Essex: but they
escaped not the vigilance of Alfred, who encountered then at Farnham,
put them to rout [o], seized all their horses and baggage, and chased
the runaways on board their ships, which carried them up the Colne to
Mersey, in Essex, where they intrenched themselves. Hastings, at the
same time, and probably by concert, made a like movement; and
deserti