leaders of the northern warriors, but for every war-
rior there was the ceaseless pressure of the pirates'
greed ¹ Now that its abbeys were wrecked, there
was little booty to be got from Ireland; and even
Gaul, wasted as it had been for half a century, was
ceasing to be a prey worth much fighting for.
Britain, however, still lay practically untouched.
No spoiler's hand had fallen on most of its greater
monasteries. No pirate's hand had as yet wrung
ransom from its royal hoards. From the opening
of Æthelred's reign, therefore, Britain became the
main field of northern attack.

The name, however, under which its assailants
were known suggests that a reason for the choice
of this new field of warfare, even more powerful
than greed or ambition, lay in the appearance of a
new body of assailants. ² It is now that we first hear
of the Danes. The assailants of the Franks had
been drawn, as we have seen, from the Northmen of
South Jutland, those of Ireland from the Northmen
of Norway. But while these earlier Wikings were
doing their work on either side of Britain, another
people of the same Scandinavian blood had been
taking form along the southwestern coast of the
present Sweden, and had spread from thence over
Zeeland with its fellow-isles and the north of our
Jutland. ³ These were the men who now came to

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