The stubborn resistance of Aethelred and Alfred had for the moment saved Wessex; but its immediate effect was to throw the whole force of the Northmen upon the rest of England. The host with which Alfred had been contending withdrew to London, and there it stayed through the winter. A most remarkable fact is that while there Halfdene minted coins, bearing his own name indeed, but distinctively Roman in type. In 873 the unhappy Burhred of Mercia subsidized the invaders to depart, but, as usual, they only shifted their quarters. This time they settled down at Torksey, in Lindsey. A second tribute induced them to move again, but with grim humour they now went forward into the very heart of Mercia and encamped at Repton, near Nottingham. This finally broke the spirit of Burhred, who, in despair, fled to Rome, where he died not long afterwards as a monk. The Danish host thereupon set up a puppet king of their own, in the person of Coelwulf, whom the Chronicle calls an ‘unwise king’s thegn,’ and Asser ‘a certain foolish minister.’ With them he concluded a miserable arrangement, to the effect that when they called upon him he was to resign to them such of his lands as they needed to settle upon. So in utter ignominy the kingdom which had once been the greatest of the English states dragged out its few remaining years. [Illustration: End View. PLANKS TAKEN FROM A NINTH-CENTURY WAR VESSEL SUNK IN THE HAMBLE RIVER, PERHAPS BY ALFRED THE GREAT. End and side views of portion of a ship, 130 feet in length, excavated near Warsash on the River Hamble. The planks were caulked with moss, now almost fossilized. (_Now in West Gate Museum, Winchester._)] The ‘Great Army’ now separated. One division under Halfdene went northward to complete the conquest of Northumbria. He wintered on the Tyne (875-876), and harried Bernicia, Strathclyde, and the lands beyond the Forth, now beginning to be known as Scotland, from the nationality of its reigning royal house. In 876 he took up his abode as king at York. Deira was parcelled out among the chiefs and warriors, and the Danish kingdom of York came into being. Bernicia was not annexed; it paid tribute, but lasted on--in a miserable fashion indeed--under the High-Reeves of Bamborough until better days arrived. The rest of the Vikings--a vast force, says the Chronicle--under three war-kings, Guthrum, Oskytel and Amund, wintered at Cambridge, where they appear to have been joined by fresh bands from abroad. Indeed, seeing that there is no record of Viking ravages either in France or Ireland for some years after 873, it seems that there was something like a grand concentration of all the Scandinavian pirate bands against Wessex. Aethelweard distinctly states that they had planned their attack in conjunction with the Viking hosts that were tormenting Ireland.