The winter of 894-895 passed away with the Danes and the Londoners watching each other on the Lea. So confident were the latter, that early in 895 they, with ‘other folk,’ marched to attack the camp. They were repulsed with loss, including that of four royal thegns. Still, however, the Danes dared not advance on London, and the English were able to cultivate the fields as usual. In the summer Alfred himself with the main English army encamped close to the city, and under his protection the harvest was safely gathered in. Forts were constructed some distance below the Danish camp and the Lea blocked with stockades. The enemy thereupon broke away northward, pursued by the English mounted troops, while the Londoners, for the second time, triumphantly towed a captured fleet into the Pool. Meanwhile the retreating Danes had made a last dash into north-western Mercia, and entrenched themselves at Quatbridge-on-Severn. There they remained practically blockaded until the winter. The English army then, unable to maintain itself longer, dispersed; but the Danes were half starved and wholly dispirited, and in the spring of 896, when Alfred began to assemble the host to make an end of them, they broke up and scattered, some to the Danelaw: others who were penniless and desperate hired or built ships and went back to France. Alfred’s victory was of far more than local importance. The Vikings had tried their fortune within a few years on both sides of the Channel, and both times had been beaten. The dogged resistance of Alfred had fairly broken up their main host, and it does not appear that so formidable a force was ever again collected by them. Alfred’s last years were comparatively peaceful. Small pirate squadrons, however, continued to annoy the coast of Wessex, and to cope with them he made great additions to his infant navy, employing in the work members of seafaring Frisians to train his crews. The new ships, however, appear to have been of his own designing--another instance of his wonderful versatility. The chronicler definitely states that they were built ‘as he [Alfred] himself thought they might be most serviceable.’ They were twice as long as the old vessels, swifter, steadier sea-boats, of higher free-board, and with sixty oars or more in addition to their sails. In 897 nine of the new ships fought in action with six Viking vessels in a Devonshire estuary, of which the Chronicle gives what almost reads like the official account. [Illustration: ENGLISH AND NORTHMEN AT THE DEATH OF ALFRED, A.D. 900. The ‘Burhs’ of Alfred and Eadward I. are shown as squares with a dot in the centre.]