, they were ever ready to betray them to the foreign Danes, and
to associate themselves with all straggling parties of that nation.

The animosity between the inhabitants of English and Danish race had,
from these repeated injuries, risen to a great height, when Ethelred
(1002), from a policy incident to weak princes, embraced the cruel
resolution of massacring the latter throughout all his dominions. Secret
orders were despatched to commence the execution everywhere on the same
day, and the festival of St. Brice, which fell on a Sunday, 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 Gunhilda, 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.

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 ascendan