842, a Danish host defeated Æthelwulf himself at Charmouth in Dorset;
and in the succeeding summer "the ealdorman Eanulf, with the Somerset
levy, and Bishop Ealhstan and the ealdorman Osric, with the Dorset levy,
fought at Parretmouth with the host, and made a muckle slaughter, and
won the day."

The utter weakness of the first English resistance is well shown in
these facts. A terrible flood of heathen savagery was let loose upon the
country, and the people were wholly unable to cope with it. There was
absolutely no central organisation, no army, no commissariat, no ships.
The heathen host landed suddenly wherever it found the people
unprepared, and fell upon the larger towns for plunder. The local
authority, the ealdorman or the under-king, hastily gathered together
the local levy in arms, and fell upon the pirates tumultuously with the
men of the shire as best 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 Æthelwulf
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