From time to time, the great horde under Haesten poured across the country, cutting the corn and driving away the cattle, and retreating into East Anglia, or Northumbria, or the peninsula of the Wirrall, whenever they were seriously worsted.

"Thanks be to God," says the Chronicle pathetically "the host had not wholly broken up all the English kin;" but the misery of England must have been intense.

AElfred, however, introduced two military changes of great importance.

He set on foot something like a regular army, with a settled commissariat, dividing his forces into two bodies, so that one-half was constantly at home tilling the soil while the other half was in the field; and he built large ships on a new plan, which he manned with Frisians, as well as with English, and which largely aided in keeping the coast fairly free from Danish invasion during the two intervals of peace.
Throughout the whole of the ninth century, however, and the early part of the tenth, the whole history of England is the history of a perpetual pillage.

No man who sowed could tell whether he might reap or not.