twofold
rapacity they threw themselves on the more remote abbeys which seemed
to derive protection from their inaccessibility, and to guarantee it
by their dignity; in searching for the treasures which they believed
had been placed in them for security, they destroyed the monuments and
means of instruction which were really there; in Medeshamstede, where
there was a rich library, the flames raged for fourteen days. The
half-formed union of the various districts into one kingdom seems to
have crippled rather than strengthened the power of local resistance:
the Danes became masters of Kent and of East-Anglia, of
Northumberland, and even of Mercia; at last Wessex too, after already
suffering many losses, was invaded; from both sides at the same
moment, from the inland and from the coast, the deluge of
robber-hordes poured over its whole extent.

Things had come to such a point that the Anglo-Saxon community seemed
inevitably devoted to the same ruin which had overtaken first the
Britons and then the Romans, they seemed doomed to make way for
another reconstruction. Britain would have become an outpost of the
restored heathenism, which could then have been with difficulty
repulsed from the Eastern and Western Frankish empires, afflicted as
they were by similar attacks, and governed by the discordant and weak
princes who then ruled them. At this moment of peril King Alfred
appeared. It was not merely for his own interests, nor merely for
those of England, but for those of the world, that he fought. He is
rightly called 'the Great;' a title fairly due only to those who have
maintained great universal interests, and not merely those of their
own country.

The distress of the moment, and the deliverance from it, have been
kept in imperishable remembrance by popular sagas and church legends.
It is well worth the trouble to trace out in the authenticated
traditions, brief as they are, the causes that decided the event. We
may state them as follows:--Since the attacks of the Vikings were
especially ruinous, from their occupation of the strong places whence
they could command and plunder the open country, one step in the work
of liberation was taken when Alfred, for the first time, wrested from
them a stronghold which they had seized, deep in the west. Then he,
too, occupied strong positions, and knew how to defend them. With the
bravest and most devoted of his nobles, and of the population that had
not yet submitted, he establi