It was in the year 832—seventeen years before the birth of Alfred—that the Danes first made their appearance on these shores. Their incursions began and continued exactly in the same way as those of the Saxons themselves 400 years before. They came over in their ships: they found the north seas without defence: they found no fleets guarding the island from the pirates, as of old: the people, ready to believe that things would go on for ever unaltered, had actually abandoned their ships; had lost the art of ship-building; and were no longer accustomed to the sea. The Danish fleet swooped down upon the coast: harried the country: murdered the people: sacked the monasteries and the churches, and went away again. They found the coast, like the seas, defenceless: the monastic houses had drained the country of the fighting nobles: the warlike spirit of the people was wasting itself in petty tribal wars. The Danes, until the old spirit returned, were far more than a match for the Saxons. They appeared suddenly, without warning, now on the coast of Kent: now on that of Dorsetshire: now at the mouth of the Parret, in Somerset: now up the Thames: now at Southampton: they came in fleets of a hundred and fifty ships, carrying each sixty or seventy warriors: an army greater than anything that could be hastily got together against them: by the time that an army was collected the Danes had gone, leaving ruined churches: villages destroyed by fire: monasteries pillaged of their treasures: and murdered monks lying beside the scattered relics, which could not protect them. The Danes, their foray over, had gone off, bearing their treasures with them, to their own country. Next year they landed again: but on another part of the island.