Odin--is clearly one whom it is best to let alone, at any rate so long
as easy plunder and rich lands are to be found elsewhere, without such
poison-mad fighting for every herd of cattle and rood of ground. Indeed,
I think the careful reader may trace from the date of Ashdown a decided
unwillingness on the part of the Danes to meet Alfred, except when they
could catch him at disastrous odds. They succeeded, indeed, for a time
in overrunning almost the whole of his kingdom, in driving him an exile
for a few wretched weeks to the shelter of his own forests; but whenever
he was once fairly in the field they preferred taking refuge in strong
places, and offering treaties and hostages to the actual arbitrament of
battle.

So the pagan army quitted Reading, and wintered in 872 in the
neighborhood of London, at which place they received proposals from
Buhred, King of the Mercians, Alfred's brother-in-law, and for a money
payment pass him and his people contemptuously by for the time, making
some kind of treaty of peace with them, and go northward into what has
now become their own country. They winter in Lincolnshire, gathering
fresh strength during 873 from the never-failing sources of supply
across the narrow seas. Again, however, in this year of ominous rest
they renew their sham peace with poor Buhred and his Mercians, who thus
manage to tide it over another winter. In 874, however, their time has
come. In the spring, the pagan army under the three kings, Guthrum,
Oskytal, and Amund, burst into Mercia. In this one only of the English
Teutonic kingdoms they find neither fighting nor suffering hero to cross
their way, and leave behind for a thousand years the memory of a noble
end, cut out there in some half-dozen lines of an old chronicler, but
full of life and inspiration to this day for all Englishmen. The whole
country is overrun, and reduced under pagan rule, without a blow struck,
so far as we know, and within the year.