[Sidenote: =Deposition of Aethelwulf, 856.--Winchester burnt, 864.=] The men of Wessex at last grew so discontented with Aethelwulf's weak rule that the Witan deposed him, and elected his son Aethelbald king in his stead (856). But they left the small kingdoms of Kent and Sussex to the old man for the term of his natural life, to maintain him in his royal state. Aethelwulf died two years later, and after him reigned his three short-lived sons--Aethelbald (856-860), Aethelbert (860-866), and Aethelred (866-871). The fifteen years, during which they ruled, proved a time of even greater misery and distress than the latter days of their father's troubled reign. The Danes not only penetrated into every nook and corner of Mercia and Northumbria, but even struck at the heart of Wessex, and burnt its capital, the ancient city of Winchester (864). [Sidenote: =Conquest of Northumbria by the Danes.=] But the sorest trial came two years later, in the time of King Aethelred. A vast confederacy of many Viking bands, which called itself the "Great Army," leagued themselves together and fell on England, no longer to plunder, but to subdue and occupy the whole land. Under two chiefs, called Ingwar and Hubba, they overran Northumbria in 867. The Northumbrians were divided by civil war, but the rival kings, Osbercht and Aella, joined their forces to resist the oncoming storm. Yet both of them were slain by the Danes in a great battle outside the gates of York, and the victors stormed and sacked the Northumbrian capital after the engagement. They then proceeded to divide up the land among themselves, and settled up all the old kingdom of Deira, from Tees to Trent. The English population was partly slain off, partly reduced to serfdom. So, after being for two hundred years a Christian kingdom, Deira became once more a community of wild heathen; the work of Oswald and Aidan seemed undone. [Sidenote: =Conquest of East Anglia.=] But the whole of the Danes of the "Great Army" could not find land in Deira. One division of them went off against the East Angles, under Jarl Ingwar, and fought a great battle with Edmund, the brave and pious king of that race. They took him prisoner, and when he would not do them homage or worship their gods, they shot him to death with arrows. His followers secretly buried his body, and raised over it a shrine which became the great abbey of St. Edmundsbury. East Anglia was then divided up among the victorious Danes, just as Yorkshire had been; but they did not settle down so thickly in the eastern counties as in the north, and the share of Danish blood in those districts is comparatively small (869). [Sidenote: =The Danes checked in Wessex.--Battle of Ashdown, 870.=]