HKB
over the waves, which roll away affrighted before its wrath. The field was strewn with the dead; never before had the Danes met with so sudden and decisive a defeat.
Godrun retreated with the shattered remnant of his army into the intrenchments. Alfred surrounded him in his stronghold; every day which saw the Danish garrison grow weaker for want of provisions and water, saw the army of Alfred strengthened by the arrival of new forces. The Saxon king had not left his enemies a single passage by which they could escape, without first fighting their way through the besieging army. On the fourteenth day, Godrun capitulated, and humbly sued for peace. Generous as he was brave, Alfred readily acceded to his request, on such mild terms as must have made the invaders ashamed of the cruelties they had formerly inflicted upon their conquerors. Alfred well knew the little value that the Danes placed either upon their oaths or their hostages; the former they had ever broken the moment they escaped; and as to the latter, they left them either to perish or be liberated, just as chance directed. They cared not to come back and redeem their pledges when there was plunder before them. Alfred knew that England was ample enough for them both; and he proposed that if they would abandon their pagan creed, and settle down peaceably, to cultivate the soil, instead of the arts of war, they should for the future be friends, and he would give them East Anglia for an inheritance. Godrun thankfully accepted the noble offer, and was baptized. Alfred became answerable for the "promises and vows" made by the Danish king at the font. The boundaries of the two nations were sworn to in a solemn treaty, and Godrun was installed in his new territory, which he parcelled out amongst his followers. The immense space of ground which Alfred allotted to the Danish king and his soldiers consisted of that which is now occupied by the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, and Essex, together with portions of Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, and even a part of Huntingdonshire. But Alfred did not rest content with merely presenting them with such vast territory; he also protected them with the same equal laws; he made no distinction in the punishment of a crime, whether it was committed by a Dane or a Saxon--each was to be alike tried by a jury of twelve men. He made Ethelred, who afterwards married his daughter Ethelfleda, commander over the kingdom of Mercia, strengthened his army, and thus planted a strong barrier between that kingdom and the Danish settlements of Deiri and Bernicia. Cities, and castles, and fortifications which had fallen into neglect and ruin, he repaired and rebuilt; he separated the country into hundreds and tythings, and established a militia, which were to serve for a given number of weeks, then return home again, and their places to be supplied by others, each changing about in succession. Hitherto, the Saxons had but little to defend; but now the country was so well protected, that the soldier came and went with a cheerful heart, for he no longer found a pile of blackened ashes to mark the spot where his home had once stood. Instead of shuddering lest he should see the mangled remains of his wife and children, or the Danish fires reddening the sky, he now approached the calm comforts of his humble English home, and slept securely in the assurance that the eagle eye of Alfred was ever sweeping over sea and land, and that ten thousand Saxon swords were always ready to be uplifted at his bidding. Saxon carols were chaunted in the harvest-fields at the close of the summer of 878; and merry voices were heard, where only the year before there sounded "the wailing tones of sad lament," for a mighty mind was now engrossed with the welfare of the people.