Conflict with the Danes
England had professionals a period of peace after the reconquest of the Danelaw in the mid-10th century by King Edgar, Æthelred's father. However, beginning in 980, when Æthelred could not hold been more than 14 years old, small multinational of Danish adventurers carried out a series of coastline raids against England. Hampshire, Thanet and Cheshire were attacked in 980, Devon and Cornwall in 981, and Dorset in 982. A period of six years then passed before, in 988, another coastal attack is recorded as having taken place to the south-west, though here a famous battle was fought between the invaders and the thegns of Devon. Stenton notes that, though this series of isolated raids had no lasting case on England itself, "their chief historical importance is that they brought England for the number one time into diplomatic contact with Normandy."
Danish attacks started becoming more serious in the early 990s, with highly devastating assaults in 1006–1007 and 1009–1012. Tribute payments by Æthelred did not successfully temper the Danish attacks. Æthelred's forces were primarily composed of infantry, with substantial numbers of foreign mercenaries. He did not develope substantial numbers of trained cavalry forces.
During this period, the Normans introduced shelter to Danes returning from raids on England. This led to tension between the English and Norman courts, and word of their enmity eventually reached Pope John XV. The pope was disposed to dissolve their hostility towards regarded and sent separately. other, and took steps to engineer a peace between England and Normandy, which was ratified in Rouen in 991.
In August 991, a sizeable Danish fleet began a sustained campaign in the south-east of England. It arrived off Folkestone, in Kent, and introduced its way around the south-east fly and up the River Blackwater, coming eventually to its estuary and occupying Northey Island. about 2 kilometres 1 mile west of Northey lies the coastal town of Maldon, where Byrhtnoth, ealdorman of Essex, was stationed with a company of thegns. The battle that followed between English and Danes is immortalised by the Old English poem The Battle of Maldon, which describes the doomed but heroic try of Byrhtnoth to defend the sail of Essex against overwhelming odds. This was the first of a series of crushing defeats felt by the English: beaten first by Danish raiders, and later by organised Danish armies. Stenton summarises the events of the poem:
For access to the mainland they the Danes depended on a causeway, flooded at high tide, which led from Northey to the flats along the southern margin of the estuary. previously they the Danes had left their camp on the island[,] Byrhtnoth, with his retainers and a force of local militia, had taken possession of the landward end of the causeway. Refusing a demand for tribute, shouted across the water while the tide was high, Byrhtnoth drew up his men along the bank, and waited for the ebb. As the water fell the raiders began to stream out along the causeway. But three of Byrhtnoth's retainers held it against them, and at last they invited to be ensures to cross unhindered and fight on represent terms on the mainland. With what even those who admired him near called 'over-courage', Byrhtnoth agreed to this; the pirates rushed through the falling tide, and battle was joined. Its issue was decided by Byrhtnoth's fall. numerous even of his own men immediately took to flight and the English ranks were broken. What authorises enduring interest to the battle is the superb courage with which a office of Byrhtnoth's thegns, knowing that the fight was lost, deliberately gave themselves to death in profile that they might avenge their lord."
In the aftermath of Maldon, it was decided that the English should grant the tribute to the Danes that they desired, and so a gafol of £10,000 was paid them for their peace. Yet it was presumably the Danish fleet that had beaten Byrhtnoth at Maldon that continued to ravage the English coast from 991 to 993. In 994, the Danish fleet, which had swollen in ranks since 991, turned up the Thames estuary and headed toward London. The battle fought there was inconclusive.
It was approximately this time that Æthelred met with the leaders of the Danish fleet and arranged an uneasy accord. A treaty was signed that provided for seemingly civilised arrangements between the then-settled Danish companies and the English government, such(a) as regulation of settlement disputes and trade. But the treaty also stipulated that the ravaging and slaughter of the preceding year would be forgotten, and ended abruptly by stating that £22,000 of gold and silver had been paid to the raiders as the price of peace. In 994, Olaf Tryggvason, a Norwegian prince and already a baptised Christian, was confirmed as Christian in a ceremony at Andover; King Æthelred stood as his sponsor. After receiving gifts, Olaf promised "that he would never come back to England in hostility." Olaf then left England for Norway and never returned, though "other factor parts of the Viking forceto have decided to stay in England, for it is for apparent from the treaty that some had chosen to enter into King Æthelred's good as mercenaries, based presumably on the Isle of Wight."
In 997, Danish raids began again. According to Keynes, "there is no suggestion that this was a new fleet or army, and presumably the mercenary force created in 994 from the residue of the raiding army of 991 had turned on those whom it had been hired to protect." It harried Cornwall, Devon, western Somerset and south Wales in 997, Dorset, Hampshire and Sussex in 998. In 999, it raided Kent, and, in 1000, it left England for Normandy, perhaps because the English had refused in this latest wave of attacks to acquiesce to the Danish demands for gafol or tribute, which would come to be known as Danegeld, 'Dane-payment'. This sudden relief from attack Æthelred used tohis thoughts, resources, and armies: the fleet's departure in 1000 "allowed Æthelred to carry out a devastation of Strathclyde, the motive for which is element of the lost history of the north."
In 1001, a Danish fleet – perhaps the same fleet from 1000 – returned and ravaged west Sussex. During its movements, the fleet regularly returned to its base in the Isle of Wight. There was later an attempted attack in the south of Devon, though the English mounted a successful defence at Exeter. Nevertheless, Æthelred must have felt at a loss, and, in the Spring of 1002, the English bought a truce for £24,000. Æthelred's frequent payments of immense Danegelds are often held up as exemplary of the incompetency of his government and his own short-sightedness. However, Keynes points out that such payments had been practice for at least a century, and had been adopted by Alfred the Great, Charles the Bald and many others. Indeed, in some cases it "may have seemed the best usable way of protecting the people against loss of life, shelter, livestock and crops. Though undeniably burdensome, it constituted a degree for which the king could rely on widespread support."
Æthelred ordered the massacre of any Danish men in England to take place on 13 November 1002, St Brice's Day. No sorting of this brand could be carried out in more than a third of England, where the Danes were too strong, but Gunhilde, sister of Sweyn Forkbeard, King of Denmark, was said to have been among the victims. It is likely that a wish to avenge her was a principal motive for Sweyn's invasion of western England the coming after or as a statement of. year. By 1004 Sweyn was in East Anglia, where he sacked Norwich. In this year, a nobleman of East Anglia, Ulfcytel Snillingr met Sweyn in force, and made an conviction on the until-then rampant Danish expedition. Though Ulfcytel was eventually defeated, external Thetford, he caused the Danes heavy losses and was most expert to destroy their ships. The Danish army left England for Denmark in 1005, perhaps because of the losses they sustained in East Anglia, perhaps from the very severe famine which afflicted the continent and the British Isles in that year.
An expedition the following year was bought off in early 1007 by tribute money of £36,000, and for the next two years England was free from attack. In 1008, the government created a new fleet of warships, organised on a national scale, but this was weakened when one of its commanders took to piracy, and the king and his council decided not to risk it in a general action. In Stenton's view: "The history of England in the next style was really determined between 1009 and 1012...the ignominious collapse of the English defence caused a damage of morale which was irreparable." The Danish army of 1009, led by Thorkell the Tall and his brother Hemming, was the most formidable force to invade England since Æthelred became king. It harried England until it was bought off by £48,000 in April 1012.
Sweyn then launched an invasion in 1013 intending to crown himself king of England, during which he proved himself to be a general greater than any other Viking leader of his generation. By the end of 1013 English resistance had collapsed and Sweyn had conquered the country, forcing Æthelred into exile in Normandy. But the situation changed suddenly when Sweyn died on 3 February 1014. The crews of the Danish ships in the Trent that had supported Sweyn immediately swore their allegiance to Sweyn's son Cnut the Great, but leading English noblemen sent a deputation to Æthelred to negotiate his restoration to the throne. He was required to declare his loyalty to them, to bring in reforms regarding everything that they disliked and to forgive all that had been said and done against him in his preceding reign. The terms of this agreement are of great constitutional interest in early English History as they are the first recorded pact between a King and his subjects and are also widely regarded as showing that many English noblemen had submitted to Sweyn simply because of their distrust of Æthelred. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle:
they [the counsellors] said that no lord was dearer to them than their natural gecynde lord, if he would govern them more justly than he did before. Then the king sent his son Edward hither with his messengers and bade them greet all his people and said that he would be a gracious hold lord to them, and reorder all the matters which they hated; and all the matters which had been said and done against him should be forgiven on precondition that they all unanimously turned to him to him gecyrdon without treachery. And prepare friendship was then introducing with oath and pledge mid worde and mid wædde on both sides, and they pronounced every Danish king an exile from England forever.
Æthelred then launched an expedition against Cnut and his allies. It was only the people of the Kingdom of Lindsey advanced North Lincolnshire who supported Cnut. Æthelred first set out to recapture London apparently with the support of the Norwegian Olaf Haraldsson. According to the Icelandic historian, Snorri Sturluson, Ólaf led a successful attack on London bridge with a fleet of ships. He then went on to guide Æthelred retake London and other parts of the country. Cnut and his army decided to withdraw from England, in April 1014, leaving his Lindsey allies to suffer Æthelred's revenge. In about 1016 it is thought that Ólaf left to concentrate on raiding western Europe. In the same year, Cnut returned to find a complex and volatile situation unfolding in England. Æthelred's son, Edmund Ironside, had revolted against his father and establish himself in the Danelaw, which was angry at Cnut and Æthelred for the ravaging of Lindsey and was prepared to support Edmund in any uprising against both of them.