recalled to contend with a more formidable enemy, Olaf of Norway. One year after the death of that monarch[110], that is, in 1001, the Danes returned to a country where they had found no enemies, but abundance of prey. Another heavy ransom, and extensive estates in different parts of the kingdom, procured a temporary cessation of hostilities.[111] [Sidenote: 1001 to 1003.] If Ethelred could not oppose the enemy in the field, and if his coffers were exhausted, he had still one resource left,—that of a general massacre. The day before the festival of St. Brice, the authorities of every city and town received secret letters from the court, commanding them and the people everywhere to rise at a certain hour, to fall on the unarmed, unsuspicious Danes, and not to spare one of them. The order was too well obeyed, and the English nation made itself equally guilty with its king. Many of the victims were naturalised; many had English husbands or wives; more were on terms of intimacy with the natives, and, at the moment this bloody mandate was executed, were sharing the hospitality of their huts. Nobody was spared: decrepit age and helpless infancy, youth and beauty, pleaded in vain. Even Gunhilda, sister of Sweyn, a convert to Christianity and the wife of an English earl, suffered with the rest; but not until she had seen her husband and son beheaded in her presence. This was not the mere act of the crown, nor that of a few courtiers, nor that of the municipal authorities: it was that of the English nation. Retribution, as Gunhilda had prophesied, was at hand; and every reader will rejoice that it was so. Sweyn no sooner heard of the massacre, than he swore never to rest until he had inflicted a terrible vengeance on the people. He no longer wished for booty, merely: he would also destroy. With a fleet of three hundred sail, he steered to the west of the island, landed in Cornwall, commenced his devastating career, reached Exeter, which he took by assault, set it on fire, and massacred the inhabitants. From thence he proceeded into Wiltshire, where fire and sword did their work, and passed by way of Salisbury to the sea coast, laden with plunder. No attempt was made to arrest his destructive progress: a Saxon force under Alfric had, indeed, assembled; but it would not fight, and it retired covered with the derision of the invaders.[112] [Sidenote: 1003 to 1009.]