REVERSES.
The historians say that Alfred was very unwilling to assume the crown
when the death of Ethelred presented it to him. If it had been an
object of ambition or desire, there would probably have been a rival
claimant, whose right would perhaps have proved superior to his own,
since it appears that one or more of the brothers who reigned before
him left a son, whose claim to the inheritance, if the inheritance
had been worth claiming, would have been stronger than that of their
uncle. The _son_ of the oldest son takes precedence always of the
_brother_, for hereditary rights, like water, never move laterally so
long as they can continue to descend.
The nobles, however, and chieftains, and all the leading powers of the
kingdom of Wessex, which was the particular kingdom which descended
from Alfred's ancestors, united to urge Alfred to take the throne. His
father had, indeed, designated him as the successor of his brothers by
his will, though how far a monarch may properly control by his will
the disposal of his realm, is a matter of great uncertainty. Alfred
yielded at length to these solicitations, and determined on assuming
the sovereign power. He first went to Wimborne to attend to the
funeral solemnities which were to be observed at his royal brother's
burial. He then went to Winchester, which, as well as Wimborne, is in
the south of England, to be crowned and anointed king. Winchester was,
even in those early days, a great ecclesiastical center. It was for
some time the capital of the West Saxon realm. It was a very sacred
place, and the crown was there placed upon Alfred's head, with the
most imposing and solemn ceremonies. It is a curious and remarkable
fact, that the spots which were consecrated in those early days by the
religious establishments of the times, have preserved in almost every
case their sacredness to the present day. Winchester is now famed all
over England for its great Cathedral church, and the vast religious
establishment which has its seat there--the annual revenues and
expenditures of which far exceed those of many of the states of this
Union. The income of the bishop alone was for many years double that
of the salary of the President of the United States. The Bishop of
Winchester is widely celebrated, therefore, all over England, for his
wealth, his ecclesiastical power, the architectural grandeur of the
Cathedral church, and the wealth and importance of the college of
ecclesiastics over which he presides.
[Illustration: CORONATION CHAIR.]
It was in Winchester that Alfred was crowned. As soon as the ceremony
was performed, he took the field, collected his forces, and went
to meet the Danes again. He found the country in a most deplorable
condition. The Danes had extended and strengthened their positions.
They had got possession of many of the towns, and, not content with
plundering castles and abbeys, they had seized lands, and were
beginning to settle upon them, as if they intended to make Alfred's
new kingdom their permanent abode. The forces of the Saxons, on the
other hand, were scattered and discouraged. There seemed no hope left
to them of making head against their pestiferous invaders. If they
were defeated, their cruel conquerors showed no moderation and no
mercy in their victory; and if they conquered, it was only to suppress
for a moment one horde, with a certainty of being attacked immediately
by another, more recently arrived, and more determined and relentless
than those before them.
Alfred succeeded, however, by means of the influence of his personal
character, and by the very active and efficient exertions that he
made, in concentrating what forces remained, and in preparing for a
renewal of the contest. The first great battle that was fought was at
Wilton. This was within a month of his accession to the throne. The
battle was very obstinately fought; at the first onset Alfred's troops
carried all before them, and there was every prospect that he would
win the day. In the end, however, the tide of victory turned in favor
of the Danes, and Alfred and his troops were driven from the field.
There was an immense loss on both sides. In fact, both armies were,
for the time, pretty effectually disabled, and each seems to have
shrunk from a renewal of the contest. Instead, therefore, of fighting
again, the two commanders entered into negotiations. Hubba was the
name of the Danish chieftain. In the end, he made a treaty with
Alfred, by which he agreed to retire from Alfred's dominions, and
leave him in peace, provided that Alfred would not interfere with him
in his wars in any other part of England. Alfred's kingdom was Wessex.
Besides Wessex, there was Essex, Mercia, and Northumberland. Hubba and
his Danes, finding that Alfred was likely to prove too formidable an
antagonist for them easily to subdue, thought it would be most prudent
to give up one kingdom out of the four, on condition of not having
Alfred to contend against in their depredations upon the other three.
They accordingly made the treaty, and the Danes withdrew. They
evacuated their posts and strong-holds in Wessex, and went down the
Thames to London, which was in Mercia, and there commenced a new
course of conquest and plunder, where they had no such powerful foe to
oppose them.
Buthred was the king of Mercia. He could not resist Hubba and his
Danes alone, and he could not now have Alfred's assistance. Alfred was
censured very much at the time, and has been condemned often since,
for having thus made a separate peace for himself and his own
immediate dominions, and abandoned his natural allies and friends, the
people of the other Saxon kingdoms. To make a peace with savage
and relentless pagans, on the express condition of leaving his
fellow-Christian neighbors at their mercy, has been considered
ungenerous, at least, if it was not unjust. On the other hand, those
who vindicate his conduct maintain that it was his duty to secure the
peace and welfare of his own realm, leaving other sovereigns to take
care of theirs; and that he would have done very wrong to sacrifice
the property and lives of his own immediate subjects to a mere point
of honor, when it was utterly out of his power to protect them and his
neighbors too.
However this may be, Buthred, finding that he could not have Alfred's
aid, and that he could not protect his kingdom by any force which he
could himself bring into the field, tried negotiations too, and he
succeeded in buying off the Danes with money. He paid them a large
sum, on condition of their leaving his dominions finally and forever,
and not coming to molest him any more. Such a measure as this is
always a very desperate and hopeless one. Buying off robbers, or
beggars, or false accusers, or oppressors of any kind, is only to
encourage them to come again, after a brief interval, under some
frivolous pretext, with fresh demands or new oppressions, that they
may be bought off again with higher pay. At least Buthred found it so
in this case. Hubba went northward for a time, into the kingdom of
Northumberland, and, after various conquests and plunderings there, he
came back again into Mercia, on the plea that there was a scarcity of
provisions in the northern kingdom, and he was _obliged_ to come
back. Buthred bought him off again with a larger sum of money. Hubba
scarcely left the kingdom this time, but spent the money with his
army, in carousings and excesses, and then went to robbing and
plundering as before. Buthred, at last, reduced to despair, and seeing
no hope of escape from the terrible pest with which his kingdom was
infested, abandoned the country and escaped to Rome. They received him
as an exiled monarch, in the Saxon school, where he soon after died a
prey to grief and despair.
The Danes overturned what remained of Buthred's government. They
destroyed a famous mausoleum, the ancient burial place of the Mercian
kings. This devastation of the abodes of the dead was a sort of
recreation--a savage amusement, to vary the more serious and dangerous
excitements attending their contests with the living. They found an
officer of Buthred's government named Ceolwulf, who, though a Saxon,
was willing, through his love of place and power, to accept of the
office of king in subordination to the Danes, and hold it at their
disposal, paying an annual tribute to them. Ceolwulf was execrated
by his countrymen, who considered him a traitor. He, in his turn,
oppressed and tyrannized over them.
In the mean time, a new leader, with a fresh horde of Danes, had
landed in England. His name was Halfden. Halfden came with a
considerable fleet of ships, and, after landing his men, and
performing various exploits and encountering various adventures in
other parts of England, he began to turn his thoughts toward Alfred's
dominions. Alfred did not pay particular attention to Halfden's
movements at first, as he supposed that his treaty with Hubba had
bound the whole nation of the Danes not to encroach upon _his_ realm,
whatever they might do in respect to the other Saxon kingdoms. Alfred
had a famous castle at Wareham, on the southern coast of the island.
It was situated on a bay which lies in what is now Dorsetshire. This
castle was the strongest place in his dominions. It was garrisoned and
guarded, but not with any special vigilance, as no one expected an
attack upon it. Halfden brought his fleet to the southern shore of the
island, and, organizing an expedition there, he put to sea, and before
any one suspected his design, he entered the bay, surprised and
attacked Wareham Castle, and took it. Alfred and the people of his
realm were not only astonished and alarmed at the loss of the castle,
but they were filled with indignation at the treachery of the Danes in
violating their treaty by attacking it. Halfden said, however, that
he was an independent chieftain, acting in his own name, and was not
bound at all by any obligations entered into by Hubba!
There followed after this a series of contests and truces, during
which treacherous wars alternated with still more treacherous and
illusive periods of peace, neither party, on the whole, gaining
any decided victory. The Danes, at one time, after agreeing upon a
cessation of hostilities, suddenly fell upon a large squadron of
Alfred's horse, who, relying on the truce, were moving across the
country too much off their guard. The Danes dismounted and drove off
the men, and seized the horses, and thus provided themselves with
cavalry, a species of force which it is obvious they could not easily
bring, in any ships which they could then construct, across the German
Ocean. Without waiting for Alfred to recover from the surprise
and consternation which this unexpected treachery occasioned, the
newly-mounted troop of Danes rode rapidly along the southern coast of
England till they came to the town of Exeter. Its name was in those
days Exancester. It was then, as it is now, a very important town. It
has since acquired a mournful celebrity as the place of refuge, and
the scene of suffering of Queen Henrietta Maria, the mother of Charles
the Second.[1] The loss of this place was a new and heavy cloud over
Alfred's prospects. It placed the whole southern coast of his realm in
the hands of his enemies, and seemed to portend for the whole interior
of the country a period of hopeless and irremediable calamity.
It seems, too, from various unequivocal statements and allusions
contained in the narratives of the times, that Alfred did not possess,
during this period of his reign, the respect and affection of his
subjects. He is accused, or, rather, not directly accused, but spoken
of as generally known to be guilty of many faults which alienated the
hearts of his countrymen from him, and prepared them to consider his
calamities as the judgments of Heaven. He was young and ardent, full
of youthful impetuosity and fire, and was elated at his elevation to
the throne; and, during the period while the Danes left him in peace,
under the treaties he had made with Hubba, he gave himself up to
pleasure, and not always to innocent pleasure. They charged him, too,
with being tyrannical and oppressive in his government, being so
devoted to gratifying his own ambition and love of personal indulgence
that he neglected his government, sacrificed the interests and the
welfare of his subjects, and exercised his regal powers in a very
despotic and arbitrary manner.
It is very difficult to decide, at this late day how far this
disposition to find fault with Alfred's early administration of his
government arose from, or was aggravated by, the misfortunes and
calamities which befell him. On the one hand, it would not be
surprising if, young, and arduous, and impetuous as he was at this
period of his life, he should have fallen into the errors and faults
which youthful monarchs are very prone to commit on being suddenly
raised to power. But then, on the other hand, men are prone, in all
ages of the world, and most especially in such rude and uncultivated
times as these were, to judge military and governmental action by
the sole criterion of success. Thus, when they found that Alfred's
measures, one after another, failed in protecting his country, that
the impending calamities burst successively upon them, notwithstanding
all Alfred's efforts to avert them, it was natural that they should
look at and exaggerate his faults, and charge all their national
misfortunes to the influence of them.
There was a certain Saint Neot, a kinsman and religious counselor of
Alfred, the history of whose life was afterward written by the
Abbot of Crowland, the monastery whose destruction by the Danes was
described in a former chapter. In this narrative it is said that Neot
often rebuked Alfred in the severest terms for his sinful course of
life, predicting the most fatal consequences if he did not reform, and
using language which only a very culpable degree of remissness and
irregularity could justify. "You glory," said he, one day, when
addressing the king, "in your pride and power, and are determined and
obdurate in your iniquity. But there is a terrible retribution in
store for you. I entreat you to listen to my counsels, amend your
life, and govern your people with moderation and justice, instead of
tyranny and oppression, and thus avert if you can, before it is too
late, the impending judgments of Heaven."
Such language as this it is obvious that only a very serious
dereliction of duty on Alfred's part could call for or justify; but,
whatever he may have done to deserve it, his offenses were so fully
expiated by his subsequent sufferings, and he atoned for them so
nobly, too, by the wisdom, the prudence, the faithful and devoted
patriotism of his later career, that mankind have been disposed to
pass by the faults of his early years without attempting to scrutinize
them too closely. The noblest human spirits are always, in some
periods of their existence, or in some aspects of their characters,
strangely weakened by infirmities and frailties, and deformed by sin.
This is human nature. We like to imagine that we find exceptions,
and to see specimens of moral perfection in our friends or in the
historical characters whose general course of action we admire; but
there are no exceptions. To err and to sin, at some times and in some
ways, is the common, universal, and inevitable lot of humanity.
At the time when Halfden and his followers seized Wareham Castle and
Exeter, Alfred had been several years upon the throne, during which
time these derelictions from duty took place, so far as they existed
at all. But now, alarmed at the imminence of the impending danger,
which threatened not only the welfare of his people, but his own
kingdom and even his life--for one Saxon monarch had been driven from
his dominions, as we have seen, and had died a miserable exile at
Rome--Alfred aroused himself in earnest to the work of regaining
his lost influence among his people, and recovering their alienated
affections.
He accordingly, as his first step, convened a great assembly of the
leading chieftains and noblemen of the realm, and made addresses to
them, in which he urged upon them the imminence of the danger which
threatened their common country, and pressed them to unite vigorously
and energetically with him to contend against their common foe. They
must make great sacrifices, he said, both of their comfort and ease,
as well as of their wealth, to resist successfully so imminent a
danger. He summoned them to arms, and urged them to contribute the
means necessary to pay the expense of a vigorous prosecution of the
war. These harangues, and the ardor and determination which Alfred
manifested himself at the time of making them, were successful. The
nation aroused itself to new exertions, and for a time there was a
prospect that the country would be saved.
[Illustration: THE FIRST BRITISH FLEET.]
Among the other measures to which Alfred resorted in this emergency
was the attempt to encounter the Danes upon their own element by
building and equipping a fleet of ships, with which to proceed to
sea, in order to meet and attack upon the water certain new bodies
of invaders, who were on the way to join the Danes already on the
island--coming, as rumor said, along the southern shore. In attempting
to build up a naval power, the greatest difficulty, always, is to
provide seamen. It is much easier to build ships than to train
sailors. To man his little fleet, Alfred had to enlist such
half-savage foreigners as could be found in the ports, and even
pirates, as was said, whom he induced to enter his service, promising
them pay, and such plunder as they could take from the enemy. These
attempts of Alfred to build and man a fleet are considered the first
rude beginnings from which the present vast edifice of British naval
power took its origin. When the fleet was ready to put to sea, the
people thronged the shores, watching its movements with the utmost
curiosity and interest, earnestly hoping that it might be successful
in its contests with the more tried and experienced armaments with
which it would have to contend.
Alfred was, in fact, successful in the first enterprises which he
undertook with his ships. He encountered a fleet of the Danish ships
in the Channel, and defeated them. His fleet captured, moreover, one
of the largest of the vessels of the enemy; and, with what would be
thought in our day unpardonable cruelty, they threw the sailors and
soldiers whom they found on board into the sea, and kept the vessel.
After all, however, Alfred gained no conclusive and decisive victory
over his foes. They were too numerous, too scattered, and too firmly
seated in the various districts of the island, of some of which they
had been in possession for many years. Time passed on, battles were
fought, treaties of peace were made, oaths were taken, hostages
were exchanged, and then, after a very brief interval of repose,
hostilities would break out again, each party bitterly accusing the
other of treachery. Then the poor hostages would be slain, first by
one party, and afterward, in retaliation, by the other.
In one of these temporary and illusive pacifications, Alfred attempted
to bind the Danes by Christian oaths. Their customary mode of binding
themselves, in cases where they wished to impose a solemn religious
obligation, was to swear by a certain ornament which they wore upon
their arms, which is called in the chronicles of those times a
_bracelet_. What its form and fashion was we can not now precisely
know; but it is plain that they attached some superstitious, and
perhaps idolatrous associations of sacredness to it. To swear by this
bracelet was to place themselves under the most solemn obligation that
they could assume. Alfred, however, not satisfied with this pagan
sanction, made them, in confirming one treaty, swear by the Christian
relics, which were certain supposed memorials of our Saviour's
crucifixion, or portions of the bodies of dead saints miraculously
preserved, and to which the credulous Christians of that day attached
an idea of sacredness and awe, scarcely less superstitious than that
which their pagan enemies felt for the bracelets on their arms. Alfred
could not have supposed that these treacherous covenanters, since they
would readily violate the faith plighted in the name of what they
revered, could be held by what they hated and despised. Perhaps he
thought that, though they would be no more likely to keep the new oath
than the old, still, that their violation of it, when it occurred,
would be in itself a great crime--that his cause would be subsequently
strengthened by their thus incurring the special and unmitigated
displeasure of Heaven.
Among the Danish chieftains with whom Alfred had thus continually to
contend in this early part of his reign, there was one very famous
hero, whose name was Rollo. He invaded England with a wild horde which
attended him for a short time, but he soon retired and went to France,
where he afterward greatly distinguished himself by his prowess and
his exploits. The Saxon historians say that he retreated from England
because Alfred gave him such a reception that he saw that it would be
impossible for him to maintain his footing there. His account of it
was, that, one day, when he was perplexed with doubt and uncertainty
about his plans, he fell asleep and dreamed that he saw a swarm of
bees flying southward. This was an omen, as he regarded it, indicating
the course which he ought to pursue. He accordingly embarked his
men on board his ships again, and crossed the Channel, and sought
successfully in Normandy, a province of France the kingdom and the
home which, either on account of Alfred or of the bees, he was not to
enjoy in England.
The cases, however, in which the Danish chieftains were either
entirely conquered or finally expelled from the kingdom were very
few. As years passed on, Alfred found his army diminishing, and the
strength of his kingdom wasting away. His resources were exhausted,
his friends had disappeared, his towns and castles were taken, and, at
last, about eight years after his coronation at Winchester as monarch
of the most powerful of the Saxon kingdoms, he found himself reduced
to the very last extreme of destitution and distress.
[Footnote 1: For an account of Henrietta's adventures and sufferings
at Exeter, see the History of Charles II., chap. iii]