第98章

The feast glittered with golden bowls, and was laden with shining goblets, many of them studded with flashing jewels.The place was filled with an immense luxury; the tables groaned with the dishes, and the bowls brimmed over with divers liquors.Nor did they use wine pure and simple, but, with juices sought far and wide, composed a nectar of many flavours.The dishes glistened with delicious foods, being filled mostly with the spoils of the chase; though the flesh of tame animals was not lacking either.

The natives took care to drink more sparingly than the guests;for the latter felt safe, and were tempted to make an orgy; while the others, meditating treachery, had lost all temptations to be drunken.So the Danes, who, if I may say so with my country's leave, were seasoned to drain the bowl against each other, took quantities of wine.The Britons, when they saw that the Danes were very drunk, began gradually to slip away from the banquet, and, leaving their guests within the hall, made immense efforts, first to block the doors of the palace by applying bars and all kinds of obstacles, and then to set fire to the house.The Danes were penned inside the hall, and when the fire began to spread, battered vainly at the doors; but they could not get out, and soon attempted to make a sally by assaulting the wall.And the Angles, when they saw that it was tottering under the stout attack of the Danes, began to shove against it on their side, and to prop the staggering pile by the application of large blocks on the outside, to prevent the wall being shattered and releasing the prisoners.But at last it yielded to the stronger hand of the Danes, whose efforts increased with their peril; and those pent within could sally out with ease.Then Frode bade the trumpet strike in, to summon the band that had been posted in ambush; and these, roused by the note of the clanging bugle, caught the enemy in their own trap; for the King of the Britons, with countless hosts of his men, was utterly destroyed.Thus the band helped Frode doubly, being both the salvation of his men and the destruction of his enemies.

Meantime the renown of the Danish bravery spread far, and moved the Irish to strew iron calthrops on the ground, in order to make their land harder to invade, and forbid access to their shores.

Now the Irish use armour which is light and easy to procure.

They crop the hair close with razors, and shave all the hair off the back of the head, that they may not be seized by it when they run away.They also turn the points of their spears towards the assailant, and deliberately point their sword against the pursuer; and they generally fling their lances behind their back, being more skilled at conquering by flight than by fighting.

Hence, when you fancy that the victory is yours, then is the moment of danger.But Frode was wary and not rash in his pursuit of the foe who fled so treacherously, and he routed Kerwil (Cearbal), the leader of the nation, in battle.Kerwil's brother survived, but lost heart for resistance, and surrendered his country to the king (Frode), who distributed among his soldiers the booty he had won, to show himself free from all covetousness and excessive love of wealth, and only ambitious to gain honour.

After the triumphs in Britain and the spoiling of the Irish they went back to Denmark; and for thirty years there was a pause from all warfare.At this time the Danish name became famous over the whole world almost for its extraordinary valour.Frode, therefore, desired to prolong and establish for ever the lustre of his empire, and made it his first object to inflict severe treatment upon thefts and brigandage, feeling these were domestic evils and intestine plagues, and that if the nations were rid of them they would come to enjoy a more tranquil life; so that no ill-will should mar and hinder the continual extention of peace.

He also took care that the land should not be devoured by any plague at home when the enemy was at rest, and that intestine wickedness should not encroach when there was peace abroad.At last he ordered that in Jutland, the chief district of his realm, a golden bracelet, very heavy, should be set up on the highways (as he had done before in the district of Wik), wishing by this magnificent price to test the honesty which he had enacted.Now, though the minds of the dishonest were vexed with the provocation it furnished, and the souls of the evil tempted, yet the unquestioned dread of danger prevailed.For so potent was the majesty of Frode, that it guarded even gold that was thus exposed to pillage, as though it were fast with bolts and bars.The strange device brought great glory upon its inventor.After dealing destruction everywhere, and gaining famous victories far and wide, he resolved to bestow quiet on all men, that the cheer of peace should follow the horrors of war, and the end of slaughter might be the beginning of safety.He further thought that for the same reason all men's property should be secured to them by a protective decree, so that what had been saved from a foreign enemy might not find a plunderer at home.

About the same time, the Author of our general salvation, coming to the earth in order to save mortals, bore to put on the garb of mortality; at which time the fires of war were quenched, and all the lands were enjoying the calmest and most tranquil peace.It has been thought that the peace then shed abroad so widely, so even and uninterrupted over the whole world, attended not so much an earthly rule as that divine birth; and that it was a heavenly provision that this extraordinary gift of time should be a witness to the presence of Him who created all times.

Meantime a certain matron, skilled in sorcery, who trusted in her art more than she feared the severity of the king, tempted the covetousness of her son to make a secret effort for the prize;promising him impunity, since Frode was almost at death's door, his body failing, and the remnant of his doting spirit feeble.