en difficult for
AEthelred to overpower the ealdormen even if he had had no other
enemies to deal with. Unluckily for him, new swarms of Danes and
Norwegians had already appeared in England. They began by plundering
the country, without attempting to settle in it. In =991= Brihtnoth,
Ealdorman of the East Saxons, was defeated and slain by them at
Maldon. AEthelred could think of no better counsel than to pay them
10,000_l._, a sum of money which was then of much greater value than
it is now, to abstain from plundering. It was not necessarily a bad
thing to do. One of the greatest of the kings of the Germans, Henry
the Fowler, had paid money for a truce to barbarians whom he was not
strong enough to fight. But when the truce had been bought Henry took
care to make himself strong enough to destroy them when they came
again. AEthelred was never ready to fight the Danes and Norwegians at
any time. In =994= Olaf Trygvasson, who had been driven from the
kingship of Norway, and Svend, who had been driven from the kingship
of Denmark, joined forces to attack London. The London citizens fought
better than the English king, and the two chieftains failed to take
the town. 'They went thence, and wrought the greatest evil that ever
any army could do, in burning, and harrying, and in man-slaying, as in
Essex, and in Kent, and in Sussex, and in Hampshire. And at last they
took their horses and rode as far as they could, and did unspeakable
evil.' The plunderers were now known as 'the army,' moving about where
they would. AEthelred this time gave them 16,000_l._ He got rid of
Olaf, who sailed away and was slain by his enemies, but he could not
permanently get rid of Svend. Svend, about the year =1000=, recovered
his kingship in Denmark, and was more formidable than he had been
before. Plunderings went on as usual, and AEthelred had no resource but
to pay money to the plunderers to buy a short respite. He then looked
across the sea for an ally, and hoped to find one by connecting
himself with the Duke of the Normans.

4. =The Norman Dukes. 912--1002.=--The country which lies on both
sides of the lower course of the Seine formed, at the beginning of the
tenth century, part of the dominions of Charles the Simple, king of
the West Franks, who had inherited so much of the dominions of Charles
the Great as lay west of a line roughly drawn from the Scheldt to the
Mediterranean through the lower course of the Rhone. Danes and
Norwegians, know