he might. But he had no provisions for a long
campaign: and when the levy had fought once, it melted away immediately,
every man going back again of necessity to his own home. If it won the
battle, it went home to drink over its success: if it lost, it
dissolved, demoralized, and left the burghers to fight for their own
walls, or to buy off the heathen with their own money. But every shire
and every kingdom fought for itself alone. If the Dorset men could only
drive away the host from Charmouth and Portland, they cared little
whether it sailed away to harry Sussex and Hants. If the Northumbrians
could only drive it away from the Humber, they cared little whether it
set sail for the Thames and the Solent. The North Folk of East Anglia
were equally happy to send it off toward the South Folk. While there was
so little cohesion between the parts of the same kingdoms, there was no
cohesion at all between the different kingdoms over which AEthelwulf
exercised a nominal over-lordship. The West Saxon kings fought for
Dorset and for Kent, but there is no trace of their ever fighting for
East Anglia or for Northumbria. They left their northern vassals to take
care of themselves. "It was never a war between the Danes and the
national army," says Prof. Pearson, "but between the Danes and a local
militia." It would have been impossible, indeed, to resist the wickings
effectually without a strong central system, which could move large
armies rapidly from point to point: and such a system was quite undreamt
of in the half-consolidated England of the ninth century. Only war with
a foreign invader could bring it about even in a faint degree: and that
was exactly what the Danish invasion did for Wessex.

The year 851 marks an important epoch in the English resistance. The
annual horde of wickings had now become as regular in its recurrence as
summer itself; and even the inert West Saxon kings began to feel that
permanent measures must be taken against them. They had built ships,
and tried to tackle the invaders in the only way in which so partially
civilised a race could tackle such tactics as those of the Danes--upon
the sea. A host of wickings came round to Sandwich in Kent. The
under-king AEthelstan fell upon them with his new navy, and took nine of
their ships, putting the rest to flight with great slaughter. But in the
same year another great host of 250 sail, by far the largest fleet of
which we have yet heard, came to the mouth of