=49. Movements of the Danes.=[107]--In the year of our Lord’s incarnation 876, being the twenty-eighth year of King Alfred’s life, the oft-mentioned army of the heathen, leaving Cambridge by night, entered a fortress called Wareham,[108] where there is a monastery of nuns between the two rivers Froom <and Tarrant>, in the district which is called in Welsh Durngueir,[109] but in Saxon Thornsæta,[110] placed in a most secure location, except on the western side, where there was a territory adjacent. With this army Alfred made a solemn treaty to the effect that they should depart from him, and they made no hesitation to give him as many picked hostages as he named; also they swore an oath on all the relics in which King Alfred trusted next to God,[111] and on which they had never before sworn to any people, that they would speedily depart from his kingdom. But they again practised their usual treachery, and caring nothing for either hostages or oath, they broke the treaty, and, sallying forth by night, slew all the horsemen [horses?] that they had,[112] and, turning off, started without warning for another place called in Saxon Exanceastre, and in Welsh Cairwisc, which means in Latin ‘The City <of Exe>,’ situated on the eastern bank of the river Wisc,[113] near the southern sea which divides Britain from Gaul, and there passed the winter. =50. Halfdene partitions Northumbria.=--In that same year Halfdene, king of that part of Northumbria, divided up the whole region between himself and his men, and settled there with his army. =51. Division of Mercia.=[114]--The same year, in the month of August, that army went into Mercia, and gave part of the district of the Mercians to one Ceolwulf,[115] a weak-minded thane of the king; the rest they divided among themselves. =52. The Danes at Chippenham.=[116]--In the year of our Lord’s incarnation 878, being the thirtieth of King Alfred’s life, the oft-mentioned army left Exeter, and went to Chippenham, a royal vill, situated in the north of Wiltshire, on the east bank of the river which is called Avon in Welsh, and there wintered. And they drove many of that people by their arms, by poverty, and by fear, to voyage beyond sea, and reduced almost all the inhabitants of that district to subjection. =53. Alfred in Somersetshire.=--At that same time the above-mentioned King Alfred, with a few of his nobles, and certain soldiers and vassals, was leading in great tribulation an unquiet life among the woodlands and swamps of Somersetshire; for he had nothing that he needed except what by frequent sallies he could forage openly or stealthily from the heathen or from the Christians who had submitted to the rule of the heathen.[117]