When Alfred returned from Exeter, he found Hastings once more intrenched in Essex, with his forces greatly strengthened by the Northumbrian and East Anglian Danes, who had joined him in Mercia. A less active king than Alfred would never have kept pace with the rapid motions of the Danish monarch. Hastings now boldly sailed up the Thames. He then marched across to the Severn, where he was followed by the governor of Mercia, and attacked by the united forces of the Saxons and the men of South Wales. Alfred again advanced to join them, and the invaders were hemmed round by the Saxon army in the strong fortress of Buttington on the Severn. Here Hastings and his followers were compelled to endure all the horrors of a sharp siege, for to such straits were the Danes driven, that they were under the necessity of killing their horses for food. Blockaded alike on the land and on the river, and reduced to such a state of famine that numbers perished, the Northmen resolved at last to sally out upon the Saxons, and either to force a passage through the besieging army, or perish in the attempt. They rushed out headlong from their intrenchments, with a determined valour, worthy of a better cause. Thousands were either slain or drowned; and the remnant, with Hastings at their head, again escaped into Essex. The loss on the part of the Saxons was also severe; since, exhausted as the Danes must have been by siege and famine, it would not have been difficult to have cut off their retreat, had not the battle been so desperate; for Alfred had to fight with an enemy who was compelled either to conquer or perish; who had been defeated and driven from nearly every kingdom on the continent, and who seemed to pine for a home in a fertile country, where so many of his brethren had taken up their abode. The very bread he ate depended upon the chances of plunder; he would have been contented to settle down peaceably, as Godrun had beforetime done, but when Alfred saw the East Anglian and Northumbrian Danes rendering their aid to every new-comer, and eager, as of old, to oppose him, he found that a further extension of such lenient policy would soon wrest the remainder of the island entirely from his hands, and he resolved they should yet feel that a Saxon arm grasped the sceptre of England. None of the sea-kings had kept their faith like Godrun; he, alone, regarded the oaths which he swore on the golden bracelets that were sacred to his gods, and remained true to his allegiance.