On 864 or 865, a great Scandinavian fleet of Dragon ships, or Drakkars, beached themselves at Thanet in Kent. For the people of the south, this would have been terrifying It had been scarcely more than a decade since the last fleet of Drakkars landed in Thanet, and the army exploded forth from those ships went on to raid Canterbury, London, and may have taken Winchester had they not been stopped by King AEthelwulf and AEthelbald. And here they were again… but now King AEthelwulf was dead, as was his son, AEthelbald… all of the South was in threat. Where would the Vikings go this time? Would they strike Canterbury again? Loot the treasure chest of the south, London? Unless something was done, everyone was vulnerable. The nobility, likely under King AEthelberht’s leadership, tried to head off the disasterand sent emissaries to the Vikingr army. These emissaries promised vast sums of money in exchange for peace. This tribute would become known as the Danegeld… the Dane Payment. It was exactly what it sounds like. A bribe for peace. The hope being that, if they could just give the opportunistic raiders what they were after, material wealth, then they might stay in their camp…why risk your life if you can get paid for sitting on the beach? But there were two problems with the Danegeld. The first problem was one of simple economics. The south was no stranger to troubles, they had suffered numerous raids over the years, sometimes winning, sometimes losing. But even victorious battles have a cost and these raids were straining the Southern economy. In fact, shortly after the last great fleet landed in Thanet in 851, coin production halted entirely … and then suddenly AEthelstan, the crown prince and previous ruler of Kent, vanished. We don’t know what exactly happened, but the interruption and sudden disappearance of the crown prince is suspect. While the Chronicler’s are quick to laud the royal family’s military success at places like Aclea (which was described as the greatest slaughter of a heathen army ever seen) and the naval successes in battles like Sandwich, this sudden quiet in the record suggest there were significant troubles underlying the story… and Wessex (and it’s subkingdom of Kent) was getting stretched thin. Wessex may have been outmatched by their Scandinavian enemies.
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