years before, found themselves anxious to treat, and a peace was patched up on the understanding that the Viking army should abandon its hold on Berkshire and withdraw across the Thames.
This peace shews well the complete want of national feeling in ninth-century England. It was now the turn of the Midlands to feel the fury of the "army"; but just as Burhred, entangled it would appear in a conflict with the Welsh, had not come forward to help his brother-in-law, Aethelred, in his peril, so now Alfred pledged himself to inactivity while the Vikings laid their plans for the final ruin of Mercia. Their first move was from Reading to London, where they spent the spring of 872, watched by the West Saxons from across the Thames, until Burhred agreed to ransom the town and its dependent districts by the payment of a heavy tribute. Worcestershire documents which allude to this levy, or geld as the Saxons called it, still exist, and also pennies minted by Halfdene at London. The promise to evacuate south-eastern Mercia was redeemed by the army transferring itself once again to Deira, but it soon came back to Lindsey and encamped for the winter at Torksey on Trent in the immediate vicinity of Lincoln. From this base it could ravage at leisure all the country watered by the tributaries of the Middle Trent, and by the end of 873 it had pushed so far into Mercia that it was able to winter at Repton, revered as the burying place of the Mercian dynasty, only a few miles from Tamworth and Lichfield. One would like to know details of this campaign and hear more of the fate that overtook Leicester and Nottingham, but unfortunately no native chronicle exists to give vividness to the death struggle of Mercia. All we know comes from the West Saxon account, which merely states that Burhred's spirit was so entirely broken that in 874 he abandoned his kingdom and fled abroad, dying at Rome shortly afterwards. His vacant throne was promptly filled by one Ceolwulf, "an unwise king's thegn," but this ruler was little more than a puppet set up with Halfdene's connivance, a semivir, as William of Malmesbury terms him, who was forced by the Danes to swear that he would hold his kingdom for the behoof of the army and deliver it up whenever required. This transaction is pretty good evidence that the Danes had overrun more territory than they could hope to hold, but that their leaders were expecting reinforcements, and anticipated in the near future a need for additional settlements. The "army" accordingly retired from Repton, and not being united on a common plan broke up into two sections, one of which withdrew to Deira under Halfdene, while the other, under Guthrum, Oscytel and Anwind, sea kings not hitherto mentioned, went to Cambridge.
Halfdene's plan was apparently to regain for York its former dependencies. He established his base for the winter on the Tyne, and from thence in 875 organised savage raids into every corner of Bernicia, then ruled by Ricsig, and also into the territories of the Picts and Strathclyde
