Consequently, the ships
equipped must be seven hundred and eighty-five. The cavalry
was thirty thousand four hundred and fifty men.]
Brightric pursued him with a fleet of eighty sail; but his ships being
shattered in a tempest, and stranded on the coast, he was suddenly
attacked by Wolfnoth, and all his vessels burnt and destroyed. The
imbecility of the king was little capable of repairing this misfortune.
The treachery of Edric frustrated every plan for future defence; and
the English navy, disconcerted, discouraged, and divided, was at last
scattered into its several harbors.
It is almost impossible, or would be tedious, to relate particularly all
the miseries to which the English were henceforth exposed. We hear of
nothing but the sacking and burning of towns; the devastation of the
open country; the appearance of the enemy in every quarter of the
kingdom; their cruel diligence in discovering any corner which had
not been ransacked by their former violence. The broken and disjointed
narration of the ancient historians is here well adapted to the nature
of the war, which was conducted by such sudden inroads, as would have
been dangerous even to a united and well-governed kingdom, but proved
fatal where nothing but a general consternation and mutual diffidence
and dissension prevailed.
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