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.