ABSTRACT
A NEW phase of operations began in 865. A Danish army came to Thanet and induced the Kentishmen, for the first time, to buy peace; but under cover of the peace and the promise of money the host went secretly inland by night and devastated all the eastern part of Kent. Far more important, in the autumn of that year a great heathen army came to England and took up winter quarters in East Anglia. Under the leadership of two great Viking chiefs Halfdan and Ivar the Boneless, the sons of that Ragnar Lodbrok who had led the force which sacked Paris in 845, it was a larger and more unified force than had ever previously come to England; and it was prepared to quarter itself in England until it had exhausted all the possibilities of plunder which a rich country offered.
