1016
Battle of Assandun
Cnut the Dane met Edmund Ironside on Essex downland, and after a day of hacking at shield walls, treachery by the ealdorman Eadric Streona broke the English line. Edmund fled; the two kings later met at Alney and partitioned England between them. Edmund would be dead within six weeks, and suspicion of foul play followed Cnut's rapid consolidation of the entire kingdom.
Rajendra Chola completes conquest of Sri Lanka
Chola forces overwhelmed the last Sinhalese resistance in the south of the island, incorporating all of Lanka into the Tamil empire. The Sinhalese king fled to the jungles of Rohana, where a guerrilla resistance would smolder for decades. Tamil administrators and settlers transformed the island's northern provinces into an extension of the Chola heartland.
Death of Edmund Ironside
England's last Anglo-Saxon warrior king, defeated but still ruling Wessex under the Alney treaty, died suddenly at just twenty-five years old. Chroniclers muttered poison. Cnut became sole ruler of England and began dispatching the remaining Saxon claimants. A Viking dynasty wore the English crown. Edmund's infant sons were smuggled abroad, eventually finding refuge at the court of Hungary far from Danish reach.
Death of Ethelred the Unready
The long-suffering English king who had spent forty years paying Danegeld and watching his kingdom burn finally died at London, leaving his unlucky son Edmund Ironside to fight Cnut for the throne. He was buried at St. Paul's. Anglo-Saxon rule was a year from its abrupt end. His epithet unraed, meaning ill-counseled, was a pun on his name, which ironically meant noble counsel.