=54. The Danes defeated at Cynwit.=[118]--In that same year the brother[119] of Inwar[120] and Halfdene, with twenty-three ships, came, after many massacres of the Christians, from Dyfed,[121] where he had wintered, and sailed to Devon, where with twelve hundred others he met with a miserable death, being slain, while committing his misdeeds, by the king’s thanes, before the fortress of Cynwit,[122] in which many of the king’s thanes, with their followers, had shut themselves up for safety. The heathen, seeing that the fortress was unprepared and altogether unfortified, except that it merely had fortifications after our manner, determined not to assault it, because that place is rendered secure by its position on all sides except the eastern, as I myself have seen, but began to besiege it, thinking that those men would soon surrender from famine, thirst, and the blockade, since there is no water close to the fortress. But the result did not fall out as they expected; for the Christians, before they began at all to suffer from such want, being inspired by Heaven, and judging it much better to gain either victory or death, sallied out suddenly upon the heathen at daybreak, and from the first cut them down in great numbers, slaying also their king, so that few escaped to their ships. =55. Alfred at Athelney.=[123]--The same year, after Easter, King Alfred, with a few men, made a stronghold in a place called Athelney,[124] and from thence sallied with his vassals of Somerset to make frequent and unwearied assaults upon the heathen. And again, the seventh week after Easter, he rode to Egbert’s Stone,[125] which is in the eastern part of Selwood Forest (in Latin ‘Great Forest,’ and in Welsh Coit Maur). Here he was met by all the neighboring folk of Somersetshire and Wiltshire, and such of Hampshire as had not sailed beyond sea for fear of the heathen; and when they saw the king restored alive, as it were, after such great tribulation, they were filled, as was meet, with immeasurable joy, and encamped there for one night. At daybreak of the following morning, the king struck his camp, and came to Æglea,[126] where he encamped for one night.