Similarly when the Anglo-Saxon conquest was complete, and the new kingdoms began to contend for mastery among themselves, there were many bloody battles, some of them of real importance to the history of our island, as marking the decisive points in the severe struggle between Christian Northumbria and heathen Mercia, but little or nothing more than their names is known. Hume in a well-known passage cites with apparent approval the saying of a greater man than himself, to the effect that the battles of the Heptarchy period were of no more interest than the conflicts of kites and crows. If this be overstated from the point of view of their permanent results, it is impossible to dispute its truth relatively to the military aspect of these wars. Little as is known about them, there is every reason to believe that the art of war formed no exception to the general rudeness and ignorance of the age.[1] Indeed there is positive evidence, in the fact that the first Danish invaders, who appeared before England had come to own a single ruler, found the English far their inferiors in arms, in skill, in everything but mere courage. The English had no coherent organisation, no practice in combined warfare, no defensive armour. Hence they were no match for the pirates, clad in mail shirt and iron cap, trained to rapid movement, and prompt to defend themselves behind rudely constructed fortifications when hard pressed.
Gradually the scene changed. The Danes who had begun as mere marauders, landing here and there to plunder and destroy and then return to their ships, remained in the land as conquering settlers. The English gradually adopted arms and equipment similar to those of their enemies, and learned to encounter them on equal terms. By degrees the Saxon kings of Wessex (their power, like good metal, rendered tougher by the hammering it had received from the Danes) became the effective rulers over the main part of the island, over Angles, Saxons and Danes alike, and at least nominally supreme over the Celtic fringe in the north and west. Gradually too the organisation took somewhat of a feudal character. The free ceorl bound by the general law to appear in arms for the defence of the country, becomes the "man" of a lord, bound to serve at his call. The Danish Cnut, who won the English crown by the sword after a long conflict in which there are no military differences traceable between Saxon and Dane, but who was in the end fully accepted by both alike, carried the approximation to feudalism still further. He divided England into great earldoms, resembling only too closely the duchies of Normandy and Burgundy in their tendency to become both hereditary and practically independent. When the Danish dynasty died out, the weakness of the restored Saxon king worked for good in one respect: the power of the crown was virtually wielded by Godwine, the ablest of the earls, and by his greater son after him. On the other hand the very preponderance of Godwine's house sharpened the antagonism of its rivals. When Harold, at length king in name as well as in fact, had to face the two-fold danger of invasion from Norway and from Normandy, he found those parts of England which were not ruled by himself or his brothers lukewarm in the national cause: the old separate traditions, the old race jealousy of Angle, Saxon, Dane, had resumed serious activity. The only solid support he had was the finest body of trained infantry which the world had seen since the decay of the Roman legion.