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him putting his men on horseback; he began to fortify
and garrison important points, and he continued improving
his fleet. Consequently, when Hástein came,
circumstances were far less favourable to his enterprise
than they would have been twenty years earlier ; and
not even his army of veterans, highly organised, well
equipped, and thoroughly trained as they were, could
succeed where Halfdan and Guthorm had failed. He
was a daring adventurer; his exploits in Spain and
the Mediterranean read like a romance (see C. F.
Keary, The Vikings in Western Christendom, pp. 320-326),
and in France he had been the terror of the
Loire for twenty years. Of late he had moved to
Flanders, with his head-quarters at Louvain. He
came to England, not with the great designs of Ivar,
but rather through necessity; being beaten with a
signal defeat on the Dyle (Sept. i, 891), and starved
out by the famine of 892, he was forced to seek a new
home.
In the autumn of 892 a fleet of 250 ships came over
from Boulogne to the Roman Portus Lemanis and up
the river Limen (then in existence) to Appledore, in
Kent. There the Vikings found a fort in process of
building, which they seized and completed. Soon
afterwards Hástein himself with 80 ships entered the
Thames, and fortified a position at Milton, near
Sittingbourne. Ælfred tried to forestall interference
by exacting pledges—which proved in vain—that
East Anglia and Northumbria would not help
the invaders. He negotiated with Hástein, who
allowed his sons to be baptised, but refused—or was
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