CHAPTER XII.

THE CLOSE OF LIFE.


It was twelve or fifteen years after Alfred's restoration to his
kingdom, by means of the victory at Edendune, that the great invasion
of Hastings occurred. That victory took place in the year 878. It was
in the years 893-897 that Hastings and his horde of followers infested
the island, and in 900 Alfred died, so that his reign ended, as it had
commenced, with protracted and desperate conflicts with the Danes.

Hastings was an old and successful soldier before he came to England.
He had led a wild life for many years as a sea king on the German
Ocean, performing deeds which in our day entail upon the perpetrator
of them the infamy of piracy and murder, but which then entitled the
hero of them to a very wide-spread and honorable fame. Afterward
Hastings landed upon the Continent, and pursued, for a long time,
a glorious career of victory and plunder in France. In these
enterprises, the tide, indeed, sometimes turned against him. On one
occasion, for instance, he found himself obliged to give way before
his enemies, and he retreated to a church, which he seized and
fortified, making it his castle until a more favorable aspect of his
affairs enabled him to issue forth from this retreat and take
the field again. Still he was generally very successful in his
enterprises; his terrible ferocity, and that of his savage followers,
were dreaded in every part of the civilized world.

Hastings had made one previous invasion of England; but Guthrum,
faithful to his covenants with Alfred, repulsed him. But Guthrum was