They sailed up the Thames, and ravaged Rochester and London, with great slaughter; after which they crossed the channel and fell upon Cwantawic, or Etaples, a commercial port in the Saxon land of the Boulonnais.

In 842, a Danish host defeated AEthelwulf himself at Charmouth in Dorset; and in the succeeding summer "the ealdorman Eanulf, with the Somerset levy, and Bishop Ealhstan and the ealdorman Osric, with the Dorset levy, fought at Parretmouth with the host, and made a muckle slaughter, and won the day." The utter weakness of the first English resistance is well shown in these facts.

A terrible flood of heathen savagery was let loose upon the country, and the people were wholly unable to cope with it.

There was absolutely no central organisation, no army, no commissariat, no ships.
The heathen host landed suddenly wherever it found the people unprepared, and fell upon the larger towns for plunder.

The local authority, the ealdorman or the under-king, hastily gathered together the local levy in arms, and fell upon the pirates tumultuously with the men of the shire as best he might.