Three of the Danish sea-kings, named Godrun, Oskitul, and Amund, having, with their army, wintered at Cambridge, set out again, early in the spring, to attack Wessex; to give Alfred another proof how useless it was by either treaty or concession to hope to put off the evil day. This time they brought a large force to oppose him, and besides crossing the country, they sailed round by Dorsetshire, where they stormed the castle of Wareham; and though Alfred destroyed their ships, those who passed inland devastated the country for miles around. Alfred seems at this period to have grown weary of war, to have lost all heart and hope, and, for the first time, he purchased peace of them with gold; nor was he long before he had to repent of such timid policy, for although they swore as usual upon their bracelets, and even, at his request, pledged themselves solemnly upon the relics of the Christian saints, yet only a few nights after this useless ceremony, they rushed upon his encampment, slew a great portion of his cavalry, and, carrying off the horses, mounted their own soldiers upon them, and rode off to Exeter, where they passed the following winter. Though weary and dispirited, Alfred did not remain idle, but commenced building larger ships and galleys, so that he might be better able to compete with his enemies upon the ocean. Such a plan, had it been pursued earlier by the Saxon kings, would have caused thousands of the Northmen to have found their graves in the ocean ere their feet touched our coast; but now the whole land behind him was filled with enemies, from the edge of the Channel, which his own kingdom overlooked, deep down, and far inland, to where the green lands of England stretched unto the Frith of Forth. Hopeless as it now was, Alfred boldly sallied forth with his ships, to encounter a fleet of Northmen off the Hampshire coast, where, having suffered much damage in a previous storm, the Danes were defeated, with the loss of one hundred and twenty of their ships. Emboldened by this success, Alfred collected his army and went forth to attack the Danes in their stronghold at Exeter. Here, however, instead of renewing the assault, and turning to advantage the victory which he had obtained at sea, he contented himself with a few hostages, and a renewal of the oaths, which his experience ought to have taught him they would break on the first favourable occasion, and allowed them once more to depart into Mercia. We can only account for this strange conduct on the part of Alfred by believing that the population of Wessex had been greatly thinned by the rapid succession of battles which had been fought at the close of the reign of Ethelred.