At this moment the double traitor Eadric deserted Cnut, and made his peace with the far too magnanimous Eadmund, apparently because he brought with him his Magesaetan (Hereford and Shropshire) levies, which had hitherto been aiding Cnut. The indefatigable Danish king, however, did not give up the game. He once more transferred his army into Essex, and when Eadmund advanced against him he stood to fight at Assandune (Ashington). He may have counted upon Eadric’s treachery; it seems impossible that the abominable desertion that followed had not been concerted. In the heat of the battle the traitor left the line and ‘began the flight with the Magesaetas, and so betrayed his true lord and all the people of England.’ The result was fearful disaster. The whole English army was broken and destroyed; ‘all the nobility of the English race was there undone.’ Eadmund, undaunted still, retreated to Gloucestershire, and set to work to collect another army. But he must have been almost in despair, and it was well for him that the Danes were also wearied out and ready to come to terms. On the Isle of Alney, near Deerhurst, the kings met and concluded a treaty, by which the gallant English leader saved a part of his shattered realm, to be, as he might hope, a base for the future recovery of the whole. He kept Wessex, East Anglia, and West Mercia, while Cnut took Northumbria and the old Mercian ‘Danelaw.’ The reconquest to which Eadmund must have looked forward was not to be. On November 30 the brave King died at Oxford. Cnut at once put forward his claim to be his successor, and was accepted by the Witan without opposition. It must have been general exhaustion and despair, as well as lack of leaders, that impelled the decision. Cnut proved an able and successful ruler, and identified himself thoroughly with the nation which had accepted him under compulsion. The deduction to be made from the melancholy story of the Danish Conquest is obviously that national unity was still lacking in England. Neither was patriotism other than a local feeling. So far as can be seen, the peasantry simply followed the magnates, and these latter, with some honourable exceptions, were clearly, as a class, worthless. A ‘redeless’ king was betrayed by contemptible and treacherous advisers and nobles, and the ill-compacted people, without national sentiment, and with no means of expressing its opinion, was unable then to redeem the blunders and cowardice of its nominal leaders. Between 991 and 1018 the total payments made on account of ‘Danegeld’ amounted to 216,500 pounds of silver, probably equivalent to £7,000,000 in modern value. CHAPTER IX THE INVASIONS OF 1066