He had annexed kingdoms like Kent, Essex, East Anglia, instead of merely making their monarchs do him homage. These states rose again for a short space at his death; but when Egbert won the supremacy for Wessex a few years later, the same tendency was apparent: that great warrior was able to incorporate the old realms of Kent and Sussex with his ancestral dominions, nor did they ever again free themselves from dependence on the house of Cerdic. It was clear that England was tending to group itself into no more than three or four large states: the smaller tribal nationalities were beginning to be absorbed in the greater. Thus, though Egbert and his successor Ethelwulf were kings south of Thames alone, and only enjoyed a precarious suzerainty north of it, yet there was some hope for the future. The fatal disruptive tendencies visible among the Franks were not paralleled on this side of the Channel. In the second point wherein the old Christian kingdoms were at a disadvantage when struggling with the Dane—the want of a large and well-armed body of trained fighting-men—England was probably in a worse condition than her continental neighbour. Both possessed two classes of warriors—a small body of wealthy landed vassals of the king, bound to him by special oaths of allegiance, and the general levy of the country-side, torn from the plough when necessity demanded. The former were more or less professional warriors: the English “_gesithcund_ man holding land,” if he neglected his lord’s summons to join the host, forfeited his estate and paid a crushing fine as well: the ordinary peasant, the “ceorlish man,” only suffered pecuniary punishment for the same offence. The _gesiths_, or _thegns_, as they were now beginning to be called, a wealthy, well-armoured military class, were the core of the national host. The rude masses of the half-armed country folk were a far less efficient part of the military forces of the realm. But in England the thegnhood does not appear in the ninth century to have reached nearly the same stage of relative importance as had the Frankish vassals. They would seem to have been less numerous in proportion to the size of the states, and less powerful in the realm. As a combatant body, too, they were inferior, for the Franks had taken to fighting on horseback, and every vassal came to the host not only well armed, but well mounted. The English were still fighting on foot like their ancestors: they did not, indeed, learn cavalry service till the eleventh century. In contending with an active and rapidly moving enemy like the Dane, this want of horsemen was a terrible drawback to the English host.