THE DANES.
The landing of Hengist and Horsa, the first of the Anglo-Saxons, took
place in the year 449, according to the commonly received chronology.
It was more than two hundred years after this before the Britons were
entirely subdued, and the Saxon authority established throughout the
island, unquestioned and supreme. One or two centuries more passed
away, and then the Anglo-Saxons had, in their turn, to resist a new
horde of invaders, who came, as they themselves had done, across the
German Ocean. These new invaders were the Danes.
The Saxons were not united under one general government when they came
finally to get settled in their civil polity. The English territory
was divided, on the contrary, into seven or eight separate kingdoms.
These kingdoms were ruled by as many separate dynasties, or lines of
kings. They were connected with each other by friendly relations and
alliances, more or less intimate, the whole system being known in
history by the name of the Saxon Heptarchy.
The princes of these various dynasties showed in their dealings with
one another, and in their relations with foreign powers, the same
characteristics of boldness and energy as had always marked the action
of the race. Even the queens and princesses evinced, by their courage
and decision, that Anglo-Saxon blood lost nothing of its inherent
qualities by flowing in female veins.
For example, a very extraordinary story is told of one of these Saxon
princesses. A certain king upon the Continent, whose dominions lay
between the Rhine and the German Ocean, had proposed for her hand in
behalf of his son, whose name was Radiger. The consent of the princess
was given, and the contract closed. The king himself soon afterward
died, but before he died he changed his mind in respect to the
marriage of his son. It seems that he had himself married a second
wife, the daughter of a king of the Franks, a powerful continental
people; and as, in consequence of his own approaching death, his son
would come unexpectedly into possession of the throne, and would need
immediately all the support which a powerful alliance could give him,
he recommended to him to give up the Saxon princess, and connect
himself, instead, with the Franks, as he himself had done. The
prince entered into these views; his father died, and he immediately
afterward married his father's youthful widow--his own step-mother--a
union which, however monstrous it would be regarded in our day, seems
not to have been considered any thing very extraordinary then.
The Anglo-Saxon princess was very indignant at this violation of his
plighted faith on the part of her suitor. She raised an army and
equipped a fleet, and set sail with the force which she had thus
assembled across the German Ocean, to call the faithless Radiger to
account. Her fleet entered the mouth of the Rhine, and her troops
landed, herself at the head of them. She then divided her army into
two portions, keeping one division as a guard for herself at her own
encampment, which she established near the place of her landing, while
she sent the other portion to seek and attack Radiger, who was, in the
mean time, assembling his forces, in a state of great alarm at this
sudden and unexpected danger.
In due time this division returned, reporting that they had met and
encountered Radiger, and had entirely defeated him. They came back
triumphing in their victory, considering evidently, that the faithless
lover had been well punished for his offense. The princess, however,
instead of sharing in their satisfaction, ordered them to make a
new incursion into the interior, and not to return without bringing
Radiger with them as their prisoner. They did so; and after hunting
the defeated and distressed king from place to place, they succeeded,
at last, in seizing him in a wood, and brought him in to the
princess's encampment. He began to plead for his life, and to make
excuses for the violation of his contract by urging the necessities of
his situation and his father's dying commands. The princess said she
was ready to forgive him if he would now dismiss her rival and fulfill
his obligations to her. Radiger yielded to this demand; he repudiated
his Frank wife, and married the Anglo-Saxon lady in her stead.
Though the Anglo-Saxon race continued thus to evince in all their
transactions the same extraordinary spirit and energy, and met
generally with the same success that had characterized them at the
beginning, they seemed at length to find their equals in the Danes.
These Danes, however, though generally designated by that appellation
in history, were not exclusively the natives of Denmark. They came
from all the shores of the Northern and Baltic Seas. In fact, they
inhabited the sea rather than the land. They were a race of bold and
fierce naval adventurers, as the Anglo-Saxons themselves had been
two centuries before. Most extraordinary accounts are given of their
hardihood, and of their fierce and predatory habits. They haunted the
bays along the coasts of Sweden and Norway, and the islands which
encumber the entrance to the Baltic Sea. They were banded together in
great hordes, each ruled by a chieftain, who was called a _sea king_,
because his dominions scarcely extended at all to the land. His
possessions, his power, his subjects pertained all to the sea. It is
true they built or bought their vessels on the shore, and they sought
shelter among the islands and in the bays in tempests and storms; but
they prided themselves in never dwelling in houses, or sharing, in
any way, the comforts or enjoyments of the land. They made excursions
every where for conquest and plunder, and were proud of their
successful deeds of violence and wrong. It was honorable to enter into
their service. Chieftains and nobles who dwelt upon the land sent
their sons to acquire greatness, and wealth, and fame by joining these
piratical gangs, just as high-minded military or naval officers, in
modern times, would enter into the service of an honorable government
abroad.
Besides the great leaders of the most powerful of these bands, there
was an infinite number of petty chieftains, who commanded single ships
or small detached squadrons. These were generally the younger sons of
sovereigns or chieftains who lived upon the land, the elder brothers
remaining at home to inherit the throne or the paternal inheritance.
It was discreditable then, as it is now in Europe, for any branches
of families of the higher class to engage in any pursuit of honorable
industry. They could plunder and kill without dishonor, but they could
not toil. To rob and murder was glory; to do good or to be useful in
any way was disgrace.
These younger sons went to sea at a very early age too. They were
sent often at twelve, that they might become early habituated to the
exposures and dangers of their dreadful combats, and of the wintery
storms, and inured to the athletic exertions which the sea rigorously
exacts of all who venture within her dominion. When they returned
they were received with consideration and honor, or with neglect and
disgrace, according as they were more or less laden with booty and
spoil. In the summer months the land kings themselves would organize
and equip naval armaments for similar expeditions. They would cruise
along the coasts of the sea, to land where they found an unguarded
point, and sack a town or burn a castle, seize treasures, capture men
and make them slaves, kidnap women, and sometimes destroy helpless
children with their spears in a manner too barbarous and horrid to be
described. On returning to their homes, they would perhaps find their
own castles burned and their own dwellings roofless, from the visit of
some similar horde.
Thus the seas of western Europe were covered in those days, as they
are now, with fleets of shipping; though, instead of being engaged as
now, in the quiet and peaceful pursuits of commerce, freighted with
merchandise, manned with harmless seamen, and welcome wherever they
come, they were then loaded only with ammunition and arms, and crowded
with fierce and reckless robbers, the objects of universal detestation
and terror.
One of the first of these sea kings who acquired sufficient individual
distinction to be personally remembered in history has given a sort of
immortality, by his exploits, to the very rude name of Ragnar Lodbrog,
and his character was as rude as his name.
[Illustration: THE SEA KINGS]
Ragnar's father was a prince of Norway. He married, however, a Danish
princess, and thus Ragnar acquired a sort of hereditary right to
a Danish kingdom--the territory including various islands and
promontories at the entrance of the Baltic Sea. There was, however, a
competitor for this power, named Harald. The Franks made common cause
with Harald. Ragnar was defeated and driven away from the land. Though
defeated, however, he was not subdued. He organized a naval force, and
made himself a sea king. His operations on the stormy element of the
seas were conducted with so much decision and energy, and at the same
time with so much system and plan, that his power rapidly extended. He
brought the other sea kings under his control, and established quite
a maritime empire. He made more and more distant excursions, and
at last, in order to avenge himself upon the Franks for their
interposition in behalf of his enemy at home, he passed through the
Straits of Dover, and thence down the English Channel to the mouth
of the Seine. He ascended this river to Rouen, and there landed,
spreading throughout the country the utmost terror and dismay. From
Rouen he marched to Paris, finding no force able to resist him on his
way, or to defend the capital. His troops destroyed the monastery of
St. Germain's, near the city, and then the King of the Franks, finding
himself at their mercy, bought them off by paying a large sum of
money. With this money and the other booty which they had acquired,
Ragnar and his horde now returned to their ships at Rouen, and sailed
away again toward their usual haunts among the bays and islands of the
Baltic Sea.
This exploit, of course, gave Ragnar Lodbrog's barbarous name a very
wide celebrity. It tended, too, greatly to increase and establish his
power. He afterward made similar incursions into Spain, and finally
grew bold enough to brave the Anglo-Saxons themselves on the green
island of Britain, as the Anglo-Saxons had themselves braved the
aboriginal inhabitants two or three centuries before. But Ragnar seems
to have found the Anglo-Saxon swords and spears which he advanced to
encounter on landing in England much more formidable than those which
were raised against him on the southern side of the Channel. He was
destroyed in the contest. The circumstances were as follows:
In making his preparations for a descent upon the English coast, he
prepared for a very determined contest, knowing well the character of
the foes with whom he would have now to deal. He built two enormous
ships, much larger than those of the ordinary size, and armed and
equipped them in the most perfect manner. He filled them with selected
men, and sailing down along the coast of Scotland, he watched for a
place and an opportunity to land. Winds and storms are almost always
raging among the dark and gloomy mountains and islands of Scotland.
Ragnar's ships were caught on one of these gales and driven on shore.
The ships were lost, but the men escaped to the land. Ragnar, nothing
daunted, organized and marshaled them as an army, and marched into
the interior to attack any force which might appear against them. His
course led him to Northumbria, the most northerly Saxon kingdom. Here
he soon encountered a very large and superior force, under the command
of Ella, the king; but, with the reckless desperation which so
strongly marked his character, he advanced to attack them. Three
times, it is said, he pierced the enemy's lines, cutting his way
entirely through them with his little column. He was, however, at
length overpowered. His men were cut to pieces, and he was himself
taken prisoner. We regret to have to add that our cruel ancestors put
their captive to death in a very barbarous manner. They filled a den
with poisonous snakes, and then drove the wretched Ragnar into it. The
horrid reptiles killed him with their stings. It was Ella, the king of
Northumbria, who ordered and directed this punishment.
The expedition of Ragnar thus ended without leading to any permanent
results in Anglo-Saxon history. It is, however, memorable as the first
of a series of invasions from the Danes--or Northmen, as they are
sometimes called, since they came from all the coasts of the Baltic
and German Seas--which, in the end, gave the Anglo-Saxons infinite
trouble. At one time, in fact, the conquests of the Danes threatened
to root out and destroy the Anglo-Saxon power from the island
altogether. They would probably have actually effected this, had the
nation not been saved by the prudence, the courage, the sagacity, and
the consummate skill of the subject of this history, as will fully
appear to the reader in the course of future chapters.
Ragnar was not the only one of these Northmen who made attempts to
land in England and to plunder the Anglo-Saxons, even in his own day.
Although there were no very regular historical records kept in those
early times, still a great number of legends, and ballads, and ancient
chronicles have come down to us, narrating the various transactions
which occurred, and it appears by these that the sea kings generally
were beginning, at this time, to harass the English coasts, as well as
all the other shores to which they could gain access. Some of these
invasions would seem to have been of a very formidable character.
At first these excursions were made in the summer season only, and,
after collecting their plunder, the marauders would return in the
autumn to their own shores, and winter in the bays and among the
islands there. At length, however, they grew more bold. A large band
of them landed, in the autumn of 851, on the island of Thanet where
the Saxons themselves had landed four centuries before, and began very
coolly to establish their winter quarters on English ground. They
succeeded in maintaining their stay during the winter, and in the
spring were prepared for bolder undertakings still.
They formed a grand confederation, and collected a fleet of three
hundred and fifty ships, galleys, and boats, and advanced boldly
up the Thames. They plundered London, and then marched south to
Canterbury, which they plundered too. They went thence into one of the
Anglo-Saxon kingdoms called Mercia, the inhabitants of the country not
being able to oppose any effectual obstacle to their marauding march.
Finally, a great Anglo-Saxon force was organized and brought out to
meet them. The battle was fought in a forest of oaks, and the Danes
were defeated. The victory, however, afforded the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms
only a temporary relief. New hordes were continually arriving and
landing, growing more and more bold if they met with success, and but
little daunted or discouraged by temporary failures.
The most formidable of all these expeditions was one organized and
commanded by the sons and relatives of Ragnar, whom, it will be
recollected, the Saxons had cruelly killed by poisonous serpents in
a dungeon or den. The relatives of the unhappy chieftain thus
barbarously executed were animated in their enterprise by the double
stimulus of love of plunder and a ferocious thirst for revenge. A
considerable time was spent in collecting a large fleet, and in
combining, for this purpose, as many chieftains as could be induced to
share in the enterprise. The story of their fellow-countryman expiring
under the stings of adders and scorpions, while his tormentors were
exulting around him over the cruel agonies which their ingenuity
had devised, aroused them to a phrensy of hatred and revenge. They
proceeded, however, very deliberately in their plans. They did nothing
hastily. They allowed ample time for the assembling and organizing
of the confederation. When all was ready, they found that there were
eight kings and twenty earls in the alliance, generally the relatives
and comrades of Ragnar. The two most prominent of these commanders
were Guthrum and Hubba. Hubba was one of Ragnar's sons. At length,
toward the close of the summer, the formidable expedition set sail.
They approached the English coast, and landed without meeting with any
resistance. The Saxons seemed appalled and paralyzed at the greatness
of the danger. The several kingdoms of the Heptarchy, though they had
been imperfectly united, some years before, under Egbert, were still
more or less distinct, and each hoped that the one first invaded would
be the only one which would suffer; and as these kingdoms were rivals,
and often hostile to each other, no general league was formed against
what soon proved to be the common enemy. The Danes, accordingly,
quietly encamped, and made calm and deliberate arrangements for
spending the winter in their new quarters, as if they were at home.
During all this time, notwithstanding the coolness and deliberation
with which these avengers of their murdered countryman acted, the
fires of their resentment and revenge were slowly but steadily
burning, and as soon as the spring opened, they put themselves in
battle array, and marched into the dominions of Ella. Ella did all
that it was possible to do to meet and oppose them, but the spirit of
retaliation and rage which his cruelties had evoked was too strong to
be resisted. His country was ravaged, his army was defeated, he was
taken prisoner, and the dying terrors and agonies of Ragnar among the
serpents were expiated by tenfold worse tortures which they inflicted
upon Ella's mutilated body, by a process too horrible to be described.
After thus successfully accomplishing the great object of their
expedition, it was to have been hoped that they would leave the island
and return to their Danish homes. But they evinced no disposition
to do this. On the contrary, they commenced a course of ravage and
conquest in all parts of England, which continued for several years.
The parts of the country which attempted to oppose them they destroyed
by fire and sword. They seized cities, garrisoned and occupied them,
and settled in them as if to make them their permanent homes. One
kingdom after another was subdued. The kingdom of Wessex seemed alone
to remain, and that was the subject of contest. Ethelred was the king.
The Danes advanced into his dominions to attack him. In the battle
that ensued, Ethelred was killed. The successor to his throne was his
brother Alfred, the subject of this history, who thus found himself
suddenly and unexpectedly called upon to assume the responsibilities
and powers of supreme command, in as dark and trying a crisis of
national calamity and danger as can well be conceived. The manner in
which Alfred acted in the emergency, rescuing his country from her
perils, and laying the foundations, as he did, of all the greatness
and glory which has since accrued to her, has caused his memory to be
held in the highest estimation among all nations, and has immortalized
his name.