As for King Æthelred himself, when he received news that the viking army was on its way to London, he began vomiting more terribly than anyone has ever been known to, and lay bedridden in an out-of-the-way dwelling. Æthelred's men were either killed or taken captive, apart from those who retreated inland and managed to hide themselves in forests or farms.
The Vikings held course for London, arriving in the evening and mooring their ships tightly together on the river below London Bridge; they prepared to storm the town walls at daybreak. There was no army in the town, and none to defend it but the townsfolk themselves. When the Londoners came to realize that an overwhelming force was marching on their town, every one of them made preparations to defend his home and his possessions, each with the weapon, implement, or tool that he had at hand — there being a general shortage of arms normally considered suitable for war, and fighting men to wield them. Most of those who had any skill in arms were at work in the fields of their masters or served in Æthelred's army, or had hired themselves out to other kinds or sailed away on trading voyages. The men left in town were mainly old or children or youths, besides numerous women and cripples. There were also large numbers of lepers and beggars, as well as noseless fornicators and handless thieves.
When the horns signaled the attack, and the Vikings, shouting and screaming, rushed onto the piers, rattled their weapons, and erected ladders against the city walls, they encountered these folk, each jabbing with his own lance. Some of the townsfolk fought with brooms, others with pokers, some with shovels or pitchforks, and many with clubs and sledgehammers. Graybeards and paupers, as well as maimed thieves, fought with their crutches, and children with their toys. The townsfolk showered rocks on the Vikings, while respectable dames and poor women joined in the attack, some pregnant, others carrying babies in swaddling clothes on their backs. Unspoiled maidens and foul whores stood side-by-side and poured boiling urine over the attacker, while others hurled simmering pitch or pumped water on them from the river. Flaming brands were cast at the fleet — fires broke out widely and leapt from ship to ship. It was not long before the fleet was one massive blaze, and great numbers of the Vikings' ships sank. The townsfolk also managed to wreck all the ramps and ladders that the Vikings had thought would gain them access to the city. Every Viking that did manage to make it over the wall was surrounded and thronged by the crowd and pummeled with all sorts of base bludgeons, or stabbed with carving knives and table knives, files and awls, pins and knitting needles and shears, or bitten to death by the inhabitants and ripped to living shreds and thrown to the dogs.
English books say that at this point, when King Æthelred hears this news, he is so terrified that the spew sticks fast in his throat, like an avalanche obstructed by a narrow gully — for the fear that a land's rulers have of foreign conquerors is slight compared to their fear of their own subjects. When Æthelred hears how the townspeople of London are relentlessly burning and sinking the Norsemen's ships, and boiling the Vikings in piss and carving them up with table knives, he feels utterly betrayed— to learn that now, in the space of one morning, the wisdom handed down by sage English kings of old, that the Norsemen are invincible, is to be proven false by a crazy rabble, weaponless and ignorant of warfare, after England's army has fled to the woods or hidden itself in manger stalls.
Æthelred rises from his bed, hale once more, and sends men in haste to Thorkell Strutharaldsson the Tall to deliver the message that he wishes to parley with him and sue for peace with the Vikings. The Vikings respond quickly by retreating from the town and rowing their ships down the river — those that were not burned or sunk. They summon King Æthelred to meet them at the mouth of the river. There they make a pact that is often cited in English books, with King Æthelred promising to pay the Vikings a tribute of four-hundred-and-eighty hundreds in silver. Æthelred, being penniless, offers to open every door in London to the Vikings, and to designate them protectors of the city, and he pledges to command that they be honored above all others by the people of the land and loved most fervently of all their leaders, and to place at their disposal, beyond all other authorities in England, all the city's property and revenue. Thorkell and most of his men, being landless from birth, had never imagined claiming lands or kingdoms for themselves, but only of pillaging for kind or cash. In return for King Æthelred's offer, they pledge their true willingness to defend him from those subjects of his who stubbornly pit themselves against illustrious warlords and eminent conquerors using table knives and ladles, brooms and crutches, or who pour piss on the heads of men of renown.
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| Guests from Overseas «Заморские гости» Nicholas Roerich, 1901 oil on canvas, 85 by 112.5cm |
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