By the treaty of peace between Ælfred and Guðorm, a very considerable tract of country in the north and east of England was surrendered to the latter and his Scandinavian allies. It is clear that from very early periods this district had contained important cities and fortresses, but many of these had probably perished during the wars which expelled the Northumbrian and Mercian kings, and finally reduced their territories under the arms of the Danish invaders. The efforts of Ælfred had indeed succeeded in saving his ancestral kingdoms of Wessex and Kent, and by the articles of Wedmor he had become possessed of a valuable part of Mercia, between the Severn, the Ouse, the Thames and the Watling-street. To the east and north of these lines however, the Scandinavians had settled, dividing the lands, for the most part denuded of their Saxon population, or occupied by Saxons who had submitted to the invader and made common cause with him, against a king of Wessex to whom they owed no allegiance. The Eastanglians and a portion of the Northumbrians had adopted the kingly form of government; but there were still independent populations in those districts following their national Jarls, and in the North was a powerful confederation of five Burghs or cities, which sometimes included seven, comprising in one political unity, York, Lincoln, Leicester, Derby, Nottingham, Stamford and Chester[807]. The power of the Scandinavians however was frittered away in internal quarrels, and those two children of Wessex, Eádweard and his lion-hearted sister, determined upon carrying into the country of the Pagans the sufferings which they had so often inflicted upon others. A career of conquest was commenced from the west and the south; place after place was cleared of the intruding strangers, by men themselves intruders, but gifted with better fortune; the Scandinavians were either thrown back over the Humber, or compelled to submit to Saxon arms; and the country wrested from them was secured and bridled by a chain of fortresses erected and garrisoned by the victors. ----- Footnote 807: The “Five Burghs” were Lincoln, Nottingham, Derby, Leicester and Stamford. Chester and York could only be joined in a more distant alliance, but still when there was a common action among them, they were called the “Seven Burghs.” ----- In the course of this victorious career we learn that Æðelflǽd erected the following fortresses[808]:—In 910, the burh at Bremesbyrig: in 912, those at Scargate and Bridgnorth: in 913, those at Tamworth and Stafford: in 914, those at Eddisbury and Warwick: in 915, the fortresses of Cherbury, Warborough and Runcorn. In 917 she took the fortified town of Derby; and in 918, Leicester: and thus, upon the submission of York, in the same year, broke up the independent organization of the “Seven Burhs.” ----- Footnote 808: