The Devil's Dyke and the Fleam Dyke are by this time known as "the two dykes of St. Edmund," and now play their latest part in history as defences. Edward is no Ostorius, being a valiant warrior of the cautious rather than the daring type, and the Fleam Dyke brings his avenging host to a standstill. Finally he resolves that to storm it would cost too much, and retires his command. But his levies from Kent are of another temper, and positively refuse to obey what they look upon as an ignominious order. One after another, seven royal messengers repeat it in vain; and finally the main body of the English army marches off under the Royal banner, leaving the mutineers still before the Dyke--probably at the very point where the Icknield Way cuts it. This is the Danes' opportunity. They have now safely deposited their plunder, and are ready for another outbreak. With their whole force they sally forth, and fall upon these stubborn Kentish men, and the fighting becomes desperate. The Kentish Alderman (who combined the offices of High Sheriff and Lord Lieutenant) is slain, so is the Danish King Eric, so is Ethelwald "the Atheling" himself, "and very many with them. And great was the slaughter there made on either hand; and of the Danish folk were there the more slain, yet won they the field."[161] And thus, after so many ages of warfare, does the Fleam Dyke, or Balsham Ditch, as it is also called, enter on its millennium of peace. [Footnote 161: _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle._] [Illustration: _Balsham Tower._] For it played no part in the tragedy which, a hundred years after this last fight, is associated with its alternative name. Once more Danes and Englishmen are at hand-grips; but now it is no mere loose aggregate of private hordes pressing, each on its own, into the land, but Swend Forkbeard, the monarch of a great Scandinavian Empire purposing to add England also to his dominions. And under the weak sceptre of Ethelred the Unready, nothing beyond local resistance has been offered him; and here alone is the local resistance serious. East Anglia is under the governorship of the hero Ulfcytel, who has already given the Danes an unforgotten taste of his "hand-play," and he gathers her whole force to meet them at Ringmere. But the appalling tidings of what Swend has done elsewhere, "lighting his war-beacons as he went" throughout the length and breadth of the land, "with his three wonted comrades, fire, famine, and slaughter," have taken all the heart out of the English levies. For "all England did quake before him like a reed-bed rustling in the wind." The battle is speedily over. "Soon fled the East Angles; there stood Grantabryg-shire fast only."