What aggravated these calamities, the nobility, mostly disaffected to the king, and entertaining very little regard to their country, made, some of them, a weak and cowardly opposition to the enemy; some actually betrayed their trust; some even were found who undertook the trade of piracy themselves. It was in this condition, that Edric, Duke of Mercia, a man of some ability, but light, inconstant, and utterly devoid of all principle, proposed to buy a peace from the Danes. The general weakness and consternation disposed the king and people to take this pernicious advice. At first 10,000_l._ was given to the Danes, who retired with this money and the rest of their plunder. The English were now, for the first time, taxed to supply this payment. The imposition was called Danegelt, not more burdensome in the thing than scandalous in the name. The scheme of purchasing peace not only gave rise to many internal hardships, but, whilst it weakened the kingdom, it inspired such a desire of invading it to the enemy, that Sweyn, King of Denmark, came in person soon after with a prodigious fleet and army. The English, having once found the method of diverting the storm by an inglorious bargain, could not bear to think of any other way of resistance. A greater sum, 48,000_l._, was now paid, which the Danes accepted with pleasure, as they could by this means exhaust their enemies and enrich themselves with little danger or trouble. With very short intermissions they still returned, continually increasing in their demands. In a few years they extorted upwards of 160,000_l._ from the English, besides an annual tribute of 48,000_l._ The country was wholly exhausted both of money and spirit. The Danes in England, under the protection of the foreign Danes, committed a thousand insolencies; and so infatuated with stupidity and baseness were the English at this time, that they employed hardly any other soldiers for their defence. [Sidenote: A.D. 1002] [Sidenote: A.D. 1003] In this state of shame and misery, their sufferings suggested to them a design rather desperate than brave. They resolved on a massacre of the Danes. Some authors say, that in one night the whole race was cut off. Many, probably all the military men, were so destroyed. But this massacre, injudicious as it was cruel, was certainly not universal; nor did it serve any other or better end than to exasperate those of the same nation abroad, who the next year landed in England with a powerful army to revenge it, and committed outrages even beyond the usual tenor of the Danish cruelty. There was in England no money left to purchase a peace, nor courage to wage a successful war; and the King of Denmark, Sweyn, a prince of capacity, at the head of a large body of brave and enterprising men, soon mastered the whole kingdom, except London. Ethelred, abandoned by fortune and his subjects, was forced to fly into Normandy. [Sidenote: Edmund Ironside, A.D. 1016.]