In 851, a new variety of Norsemen arrives on the Irish coast. They are called the Black Heathens, the Black Foreigners, the Black Lochlannachs, in contradistinction to the Fair Heathens, Fair Foreigners, or Fair Lochlannachs who had been here before them. The Welsh chronicle, the Annales Cambriae, makes it fairly clear that these Black Heathens were the Danes. They came in hostility to the Norwegians, with whom they fought fierce battles; and we have already seen that for a number of years the Danes held the chief power in the Hebrides. At this point of time, about the middle of the ninth century, the Norsemen must have seemed to be about to become masters of all northern Europe from the west of Ireland to the banks of the Volga. England was crumbling under their attacks. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells how Norse armies marched up and down through the country without resistance, then moved off to the Continent. They occupied Ghent in Flanders for a year. They defeated the Franks in battle and supplied themselves with horses from their captures, pushed up the Meuse into France, encamped there for another year; went up the Scheldt to Condé and sat there for a year; up the Somme to Amiens, and sat there for a year. Then up the Seine, and took up their winter quarters beside Paris. Then the "army went up through the bridge at Paris, and thence up along the Seine as far as the Marne, and thence up the Marne to Cheny, and then sat down, there and on the Yonne, two winters in the two places." Then they crossed from the Seine to the borders of Brittany, where the Bretons attacked and defeated them, driving them into their ships, which apparently had been sent round by sea to co-operate with them. Turning again eastward they were defeated next year in Germany, but held together in France for two years more, when they came down to Boulogne, and finding shipping for their whole force, including horses, crossed over to England in two hundred and fifty ships, Alfred being then king in England. Afterwards they crossed England, passing up the Thames and then up the Severn. Alfred, assisted by the Welsh, defeated them. They fell back on Essex, mustered fresh forces there, once more crossed England and laid siege to Chester, invaded Wales and were driven out of it. Some settled down in the conquered lands of East Anglia and Northumbria, the rest made a fresh expedition into France. Though Alfred was a great and admirable king, and justly held up to renown in English history, he could do no more than hold a minor part of England against these invaders, and at his death in 901 they were undisputed masters of about two thirds of that country.