A .D. 878.] THE DANES AT CHffPENHAM. 209 made an unexpected attack on the king's cavalry, the whole of whom they cut in pieces ; after which they made for the town of Exeter. King Alfred thereupon assembled his army and pursued them; but inasmuch as they had already entered the city, he suffered them to winter there. The same year Halden, king of the Danes, took possession of Northumberland, which he parcelled out among his servants, and made his army cultivate the lands ; which so affected Eicsy, the king of that province, that he died of a broken heart, and was succeeded by Egbert. The numbers of the Danes increase. In the year of our Lord 877, in the autumnal season, a part of the wicked band of pagans remained in Exeter, and a part retired to ravage Mercia. The numbers too of the unbelievers increased daily ; for if thirty thousand of them were slain one day, the loss was doubly supplied by fresh arrivals. King Alfred thereupon commanded galleys, or ships of war, to be built throughout his kingdom, to fight with the fresh comers on the sea, and placing pirates in them, he committed to them the custody of the seas. Himself hastened with an army to Exeter, where the pagans were wintering, and, shutting them in, he blockaded the city and directed his seamen to cut them off from all supplies by sea. As the king's ships were hastening thither in obedience to his command, they fell in with a hundred and fifty vessels full of armed men, coming to the help of their countrymen. Which, when the king's servants saw they were filled with pagan soldiers, they flew to arms, and attacked the barbarous hordes with great spirit ; the pagans, too, gave battle, but to no purpose, for they had been tossed about on the sea for nearly a month in great peril of shipwreck, so that they were broken immediately, and all of them were sunk in the sea at a place called Swanwick.* The country of the West-Saxons is ravaged. In the year of our Lord 878, the army of pagans that had wintered in Exeter quitted that city and went to Chippenham, a royal vili in Wiltshire, and there wintered. Fur * Supposed by Carte to be Sanewick, on the coast of Dorsetshire ; but Tindal says it is Swanwick in Hampshire. VOL. I. Ρ