United States or Switzerland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Under the anarchical but despotic nobility and higher clergy, stood the serfs, embracing nine-tenths of the whole population, who were without protection against the greed and tyranny of their lords. The Anglo-Dutch fleet came to Charles's assistance. He landed his troops in Zealand. The Danes gave up their alliance, and sued for peace.

The inhabitants of Schleswig were perhaps half Danes, while those of Holstein were more than two-thirds Germans. These Germans had protested against certain actions of the Danish government, and were threatening to revolt. Taking advantage of this trouble, Prussia and Austria, as the leading states of the German Federation, declared war on little Denmark.

On the Grütli, where once they met to swear the oath which freed their country, lie the three founders of the Swiss Federation in a cleft of the rock. The Danes have appropriated Olger, who, Grimm says, really belongs to the Ardennes; and in a vaulted chamber under the castle of Kronburg he sits, with a number of warriors clad in mail, about a stone table, into which his beard has grown.

For example, it began at St Giles's and the Westminster end of the town, and it was in its height in all that part by about the middle of July, viz., in St Giles-in-the-Fields, St Andrew's, Holborn, St Clement Danes, St Martin-in-the-Fields, and in Westminster.

The great effort which really broke the Danish power forever in Ireland was at the battle of Clontarf, on Dublin Bay, Good Friday, 1014, when King Brian Boru, at the head of 30,000 men, utterly defeated the Danes of Dublin and the Danes of oversea.

These were posted on the walls at each side of the gaps to shoot down at the backs of the Danes after they had entered. On the inner semicircular mounds the Saxon force gathered four deep. With loud shouts the Danes rushed forward, climbed the outer mounds, and reached the breaches.

And the end of that foolishness was that they bore me thither, for it was not far, with a great crowd of all sorts following and shouting. And there must I stand with all that tail after me while they beat on the gates in such sort that the poor nuns must have thought the Danes at their doorstep.

Here for a long time they resisted the efforts of the whole of the Danes, surrounding themselves with a heap of slain; but at length one by one they succumbed to the Danish onslaught, each fighting valiantly to the last. From his position at a distance Edmund watched the last desperate struggle.

"I don't know which is more to blame, the seed that I sowed, or the soil on which it fell," said Salemina, laughing heartily at Francesca's whimsical nightmares; "but as I said, this is an anniversary. The famous battle of Clontarf was fought here in Dublin on this very day eight hundred years ago, and Brian Boru routed the Danes in what was the last struggle between Christianity and heathenism.

She could not endure that Omund rule over the Norwegians, and she had declared war against all the subjects of the Danes. Omund, when he heard of this, commissioned his most active men to suppress the rising. Rusla conquered them, and, waxing haughty on her triumph, was seized with overweening hopes, and bent her mind upon actually acquiring the sovereignty of Denmark.