At last the heart of the oppressed people turned to its king, and the time arrived for a war of liberation. But on the morrow of victory Alfred compromised with the Northmen. He despaired, it seems, of their final expulsion, and thought it better, if possible, to make them Englishmen and Christians, and, to convert them into a barrier against their foreign and heathen brethren. We see in this politic moderation at once a trait of national character and a proof that the exploits of Alfred are not mythical. By the treaty of Wedmore, the northeastern part of England became the portion of the Dane, where he was to dwell in peace with the Saxon people, and in allegiance to their king, but under his own laws--an arrangement which had nothing strange in it when law was only the custom of the tribe. As a part of the compact, Guthorm led over his Northmen from the allegiance of Odin to that of Christ, and was himself baptized by the Christian name of Athelstan. When religions were national, or rather tribal, conversions were tribal too. The Northmen of East Anglia had not so far put off their heathen propensities or their savage perfidy as to remain perfectly true to their covenant: but, on the whole, Alfred's policy of compromise and assimilation was successful. A new section of heathen Teutonism was incorporated into Christendom, and England absorbed a large Norse population whose dwelling-place is still marked by the names of places, and perhaps in some measure by the features and character of the people. In the fishermen of Whitby, for example, a town with a Danish name, there is a peculiarity which is probably Scandinavian. The transaction resembled the cession of Normandy to Rolf and his followers by the Carlovingian King of France. But the cession of Normandy marked the dissolution of the Carlovingian monarchy: from the cession of East Anglia to Guthorm dates a regeneration of the monarchy of Cerdic.