leasure, as
they could by this means exhaust their enemies and enrich themselves
with little danger or trouble. With very short intermissions they still
returned, continually increasing in their demands. In a few years they
extorted upwards of 160,000_l._ from the English, besides an annual
tribute of 48,000_l._ The country was wholly exhausted both of money and
spirit. The Danes in England, under the protection of the foreign Danes,
committed a thousand insolencies; and so infatuated with stupidity and
baseness were the English at this time, that they employed hardly any
other soldiers for their defence.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1002]

[Sidenote: A.D. 1003]

In this state of shame and misery, their sufferings suggested to them a
design rather desperate than brave. They resolved on a massacre of the
Danes. Some authors say, that in one night the whole race was cut off.
Many, probably all the military men, were so destroyed. But this
massacre, injudicious as it was cruel, was certainly not universal; nor
did it serve any other or better end than to exasperate those of the
same nation abroad, who the next year landed in England with a powerful
army to revenge it, and committed outrages even beyond the usual tenor
of the Danish cruelty. There was in England no money left to purchase a
peace, nor courage to wage a successful war; and the King of Denmark,
Sweyn, a prince of capacity, at the head of a large body of brave and
enterprising men, soon mastered the whole kingdom, except London.
Ethelred, abandoned by fortune and his subjects, was forced to fly into
Normandy.

[Sidenote: Edmund Ironside, A.D. 1016.]

As there was no good order in the English affairs, though continually
alarmed, they were always surprised; they were only roused to arms by
the cruelty of the enemy, and they were only formed into a body by being
driven from their homes: so that they never made a resistance until they
seemed to be entirely conquered. This may serve to account for the
frequent sudden reductions of the island, and the frequent renewals of
their fortune when it seemed the most desperate. Sweyn, in the midst of
his victories, dies, and, though succeeded by his son Canute, who
inherited his father's resolution, their affairs were thrown into some
disorder by this accident. The English were encouraged by it. Ethelred
was recalled, and the Danes retired out of the kingdom; but it was only
to return the nest year with a greater and better appoin