---------- SECTION II. The Danish Expeditions.—The Danish Conquest. A fate similar to that which the Anglo-Saxons had formerly brought upon the Britons, now partly became the lot of the Anglo-Saxons themselves. The same sea, the North Sea, or, as the old inhabitants of Scandinavia called it, “England’s Sea,” which in the fifth century had borne the Anglo-Saxons to England, and which had afterwards served to maintain the peaceful connections of trade, and the intercourse between kinsmen in England and in their northern fatherland, now suddenly teemed with the numberless barks of the Vikings, which, from the close of the eighth century, constantly showed themselves in all the harbours and rivers of England. For about three centuries the Danes were the terror of the Anglo-Saxons. They generally anchored their ships at the mouths of rivers, or lay under the islands on the coasts. Thence they would sail up the rivers to the interior of the country, where they frequently mounted on horseback, and conveyed themselves with incredible speed from one place to another. Their frightful sabre-cuts resounded everywhere. Their progress was marked by the burning of churches and convents, castles, and towns; and great multitudes of people were either killed or dragged away into slavery. In a short time they began to take up their abode in the country for the winter, and in the spring they renewed their destructive incursions. The terrified inhabitants imagined they beheld a judgment of God in the devastations of the Vikings, which had been foretold in ancient prophecies.