and departed with impunity. Six
years after, they made a like attempt in the west, and met with like
success. The invaders, having now found affairs in a very different
situation from that in which they formerly appeared, encouraged
their countrymen to assemble a greater force, and to hope for more
considerable advantages.

{991} They landed in Essex, under the command of two leaders; and
having defeated and slain, at Maldon, Brithnot, duke of that county,
who ventured with a small body to attack them, they spread their
devastations over all the neighboring provinces. In this extremity,
Ethelred, to whom historians give the epithet of the _Unready_,
instead of rousing his people to defend with courage their honor and
their property, hearkened to the advice of Siricius, archbishop of
Canterbury, which was seconded by many of the degenerate nobility;
and paying the enemy the sum of ten thousand pounds, he bribed them
to depart the kingdom. This shameful expedient was attended with the
success which might be expected. The Danes next year appeared off the
eastern coast, in hopes of subduing a people who defended themselves
by their money, which invited assailants, instead of their arms, which
repelled them. But the English, sensible of their folly, had in the
interval assembled in a great council, and had determined to collect
at London a fleet able to give battle to the enemy;[*] though that
judicious measure failed of success, from the treachery of Alfric, duke
of Mercia, whose name is infamous in the annals of that age, by the
calamities which his repeated perfidy brought upon his country. This
nobleman had, in 983, succeeded to his father, Alfere, in that extensive
command; but, being deprived of it two years after, and banished the
kingdom, he was obliged to employ all his intrigue, and all his power,
which was too great for a subject, to be restored to his country, and
reinstated in his authority. Having had experience of the credit and
malevolence of his enemies, he thenceforth trusted for security, not to
his services, or to the affections of his fellow-citizens, but to the
influence which he had obtained over his vassals, and to the public
calamities, which he thought must, in every revolution, render his
assistance necessary. Having fixed this resolution, he determined to
prevent all such successes as might establish the royal authority, or
render his own situation dependent or precarious. As the English had
fo