But in 997 a new Viking fleet appeared, and wasted Devon, Cornwall, and Wales. This time it was not a half-political enterprise of two dispossessed princes, but a genuine plundering expedition of the old type. Next year the Vikings pillaged in Dorset, Hampshire, and Sussex, without resistance from the cowardly ealdorman Aelfric, the betrayer of 992. In 999 they extended their ravages into Kent. An army and fleet were raised to fight them, but the generals put off a decision until the force broke up. In the supposed world-ending year 1000 the Vikings tried their fortune in Normandy. One of their leaders, Pallig, husband of Sweyn’s sister Gunhild, took service with Aethelred, and there is in the Chronicle the surprising entry that the King took the offensive against the Irish Vikings with a great fleet and army and devastated Man and Cumberland. But in 1001 the ravages again began on the south coast. The Hampshire levies were beaten by an advanced force, and the raiders were soon joined by the fleet which had been attacking Normandy. Jarl Pallig also deserted to his former comrades. Wiltshire and Dorset were ravaged, and the local levies defeated at Penselwood. The Vikings marched, devastating, along the coast to Southampton Water, and there the old miserable story was repeated. The invaders were again bought off with 24,000 pounds of silver. The year was marked by the famous massacre on St. Brice’s Day, of Danes settled in England. The fact is undoubted, but the nature and extent of the slaughter are not known. It is to be supposed that it affected only the mercenaries in Aethelred’s service and the stragglers from the pirate fleets; but it is quite probable that many innocent persons were involved in it. The result was, of course, to add a natural exasperation to the thirst for plunder of the Vikings. Sweyn ‘Fork-beard’ had established himself in Denmark. He had also defeated and slain Olaf Tryggvason at the famous battle of Svöld, and now controlled Norway. In 1003 he appeared off the English coast with a large fleet, captured Exeter, and swept through Devon into Wiltshire. The cowardly ealdorman Aelfric once more deserted his troops, and Sweyn sacked Wilton and Sarum, withdrawing to his fleet unmolested, leaving in his wake a ghastly trail of smoking villages and farmsteads, desecrated and ruined churches, the mutilated bodies of the country-folk, and the immediate prospect of famine and pestilence. He landed in the following year in East Anglia, and sacked Norwich and Thetford, though gallantly opposed by the local _fyrd_ under Ealdorman Ulfkytel, evidently an Anglo-Dane. ‘If the main force had been there,’ moans the Chronicle, ‘never had the enemy returned to their ships ... they never met with worse hand-play than Ulfkytel brought them.’