ALFRED AND THE SAVING OF WESSEX
The stubborn resistance of Aethelred and Alfred had for the moment
saved Wessex; but its immediate effect was to throw the whole force
of the Northmen upon the rest of England. The host with which Alfred
had been contending withdrew to London, and there it stayed through
the winter. A most remarkable fact is that while there Halfdene minted
coins, bearing his own name indeed, but distinctively Roman in type. In
873 the unhappy Burhred of Mercia subsidized the invaders to depart,
but, as usual, they only shifted their quarters. This time they settled
down at Torksey, in Lindsey. A second tribute induced them to move
again, but with grim humour they now went forward into the very heart
of Mercia and encamped at Repton, near Nottingham. This finally broke
the spirit of Burhred, who, in despair, fled to Rome, where he died not
long afterwards as a monk. The Danish host thereupon set up a puppet
king of their own, in the person of Coelwulf, whom the Chronicle calls
an ‘unwise king’s thegn,’ and Asser ‘a certain foolish minister.’ With
them he concluded a miserable arrangement, to the effect that when they
called upon him he was to resign to them such of his lands as they
needed to settle upon. So in utter ignominy the kingdom which had once
been the greatest of the English states dragged out its few remaining
years.
[Illustration: End View.
PLANKS TAKEN FROM A NINTH-CENTURY WAR VESSEL SUNK IN THE HAMBLE
RIVER, PERHAPS BY ALFRED THE GREAT.
End and side views of portion of a ship, 130 feet in length,
excavated near Warsash on the River Hamble. The planks were
caulked with moss, now almost fossilized.
(_Now in West Gate Museum, Winchester._)]
The ‘Great Army’ now separated. One division under Halfdene went
northward to complete the conquest of Northumbria. He wintered on the
Tyne (875-876), and harried Bernicia, Strathclyde, and the lands beyond
the Forth, now beginning to be known as Scotland, from the nationality
of its reigning royal house. In 876 he took up his abode as king at
York. Deira was parcelled out among the chiefs and warriors, and the
Danish kingdom of York came into being. Bernicia was not annexed; it
paid tribute, but lasted on--in a miserable fashion indeed--under the
High-Reeves of Bamborough until better days arrived.
The rest of the Vikings--a vast force, says the Chronicle--under three
war-kings, Guthrum, Oskytel and Amund, wintered at Cambridge, where
they appear to have been joined by fresh bands from abroad. Indeed,
seeing that there is no record of Viking ravages either in France or
Ireland for some years after 873, it seems that there was something
like a grand concentration of all the Scandinavian pirate bands
against Wessex. Aethelweard distinctly states that they had planned
their attack in conjunction with the Viking hosts that were tormenting
Ireland.
For four years Alfred had been unmolested by the Vikings, and had,
beyond doubt, been working hard at the reorganization of his defences.
Probably his military reforms were on the line of those which he
effected later--recruiting the thegnhood, the military class, which
was bound to follow the King to war, improving the arrangements
for mobilizing the _land-fyrd_, and fortifying the chief towns and
strategic points. But he did more than this. With a farsightedness
which raises him above all early mediæval Western monarchs, save
Charles the Great, he saw that the only sure way to curb the Vikings
was to meet them at sea, and began to build a fleet. Under the date
875 the Chronicle says: ‘This summer went Ælfred the King out to sea
with an armed fleet, and fought with seven pirate ships. One he took,
and the others dispersed.’ That obscure sea-skirmish has a hallowed
interest, for it was the first victory of the world-conquering British
Navy.
But as yet Alfred’s great reforms were in their infancy; his plans were
only traced out, not yet executed. The flood was rising, and burst
over devoted Wessex before the barriers which were to stay it had been
raised.
[Illustration:
AN ANGLO-SAXON WEARING A HELMET OF LEATHER STRENGTHENED WITH METAL
BANDS.]
As soon as the season permitted, the ‘Great Army’ left Cambridge,
made a night march to the Thames, and crossing it unopposed, rushed
by forced marches across Wessex to Wareham, in Dorsetshire. It is to
be noted that Winchester was avoided; evidently it had been fortified
since the sack of 860. At Wareham the Danes were well placed for
attacks on Wessex, and for a junction with their allies from Ireland,
who came up immediately afterwards with a fleet of 120 ships. But
Alfred was as prompt as his foes, and scarcely had the Vikings effected
their junction when he blockaded Wareham with a large army. The result
was that the Danes could only effect some sporadic raids of Dorset by
sea. They finally extricated themselves by an act of treachery. They
opened negotiations, and Alfred was ready to buy them off. Every year
of immunity from pillage gained was to his advantage. The Viking chiefs
swore a peculiarly solemn oath to observe the fact on a sacred ring or
bracelet. Having thus thrown their enemies off their guard, the whole
mounted part of the host sallied out from their entrenchments, cut
their way through Alfred’s lines, and dashed through Dorset into Devon.
Alfred, leaving part of his force to continue the blockade, promptly
pursued, and finally besieged his treacherous foes in Exeter.
We hear nothing all this time of naval operations, but now Asser
appears to imply that an English squadron assisted in the blockade of
Exeter. The Danes at Wareham embarked early in 877 on the ships from
Ireland in order to join their comrades, but the fleet was caught in a
storm and cast ashore near Swanage. Scarce a ship escaped, and almost
all the crews were drowned or massacred. The army in Exeter was now
isolated, and late in the summer, having exhausted its provisions,
offered to treat. ‘They gave him as many and as great hostages as he
demanded, and swore solemn oaths to observe strictest friendship.’
They retired to Cirencester.
The wretched Coelwulf II. was now called upon to surrender his kingdom,
according to the ignominious treaty of 874, and the Northmen proceeded
to settle down. Ultimately they occupied the whole of Mercia, east of a
line extending roughly from Macclesfield to Oxford; but probably only a
beginning of the settlement was made in this year. A large portion of
the host remained at Cirencester under Guthrum, and it now, in defiance
of its solemn engagements, concerted a fresh attack on Alfred with the
Vikings of Ireland. A force of the latter, under Hubba, was in South
Wales, and communication was easy. The levies of Wessex had dispersed
after their long service. Alfred was keeping his New Year festivities
when the stunning tidings came that the treacherous horde had ‘stolen’
from Cirencester into Wessex, and was entrenching itself at Chippenham.
Defence was impossible. Raiding bands at once began to burn and waste
the heart out of the astounded peasantry; the foul treachery and
suddenness of the attack made its success complete. It seemed as if all
were lost. Many districts submitted; many people fled terror-stricken
to France.
Yet it was but for a moment. Amid the panic and confusion there were
brave men who kept their heads. The King, with his immediate following,
retreated to the Isle of Athelney, in the marshes of the Parret, and
there entrenched himself. His position was inaccessible, and he was
able to rally the levies of the neighbourhood, and to commence a series
of counter-attacks on the Danish raiding columns. Aethelnoth, Ealdorman
of Somerset, succeeded in collecting some more of his country levies,
and entrenched himself in the woods, while Ealdorman Odda gathered the
men of North Devon at Cynuit, perhaps, as tradition indicates, Kenwith,
or Henniborough (? Cynuit-burh), near Bideford. In the west, at least,
there was no thought of surrender. The King was able to send out
messengers to summon the _fyrd_, and though his position was critical,
there is no reason whatever to believe that he was ever a solitary
fugitive.
Still, it must not be forgotten that at this supreme moment the outlook
was very black. Did the Danes hear of Alfred’s intended mobilization,
they might destroy the shire contingents in detail as they moved up to
the rendezvous at ‘Ecgberht’s Stone,’ by Selwood Forest. As a matter of
fact, they appear to have been in a state of over-confident security.
There is not a sign to indicate that they attempted to interfere with
the concentration.
Meanwhile the first blow against the invaders had been struck. Hubba
had duly made his attack. After ravaging the coast of Devon, he had
sat down before Cynuit with twenty-three ships’ crews. The place was
strong by nature, though ill fortified with a rough palisade; and
Hubba did not care to assault it, but trusted to a blockade. Odda and
his following did not wait to be starved out. They made a desperate
sortie upon the Viking camp, and gained a complete victory, slaying
840 or 1,200 men, with Hubba himself, and capturing the most famous
of the Viking ‘Land-ravager’ standards, a raven banner that had been
embroidered by Ragnar’s three daughters for their three terrible
brothers.
The victors probably then marched to join the King, and in the seventh
week after Easter Alfred was able to move. The men of Somerset,
Wiltshire, Hampshire, and Dorset, had at last gathered at ‘Ecgberht’s
Stone,’ and now they were joined by the King amid a scene of wild
enthusiasm. Next day the united army marched to Iglea, near Warminster,
and on the following morning encountered the Danes, who, hearing of
the concentration, had advanced from Chippenham to Ethandune (probably
Edington). The English were formed in a _densa testudo_, which,
perhaps, means that Alfred concentrated a heavy column against part of
the enemy’s line. At any rate, his victory was complete; the Danish
army was thoroughly broken. Its remains took refuge in the camp at
Chippenham, where they were immediately blockaded, and, after fourteen
days of siege, forced by famine to surrender.
Alfred’s terms show how far he rose above his contemporaries. His
beaten foes were to give hostages, Guthrum and the principal chiefs
were to become Christians, and the army was to leave Wessex. That
the terms were faithfully observed may be fairly ascribed not to any
feeling of moral obligation on the part of the Northmen, but to the
fact that they had been thoroughly defeated, and to the influence of
the great King’s personality.
So Wessex was safe, for it was probable that the Vikings would be very
slow to attack the gallant state again. Though a fresh pirate horde
arrived at Fulham in 879 while Guthrum was moving to settle in East
Anglia, their predecessors would not join with them, and the new-comers
returned across the Channel and attacked Flanders. Guthrum himself took
his Christianity very seriously, and paid special honour to the name of
St. Eadmund; but his kingly power appears to have been somewhat vague,
and his followers were unruly. Alfred was left in peaceful possession
of his sorely-tried heritage, and set himself to that wonderful task of
reorganization and civilization, the execution of which is his noblest
title to fame.
The parts of England that still retained independence were Wessex,
Sussex, Kent, and Western Mercia, the latter under the rule of several
ealdormen, of whom the chief was a certain Aethelred, who is usually
given the quasi-royal title of ‘Lord.’ It is not quite certain,
however, whether he did homage to Alfred until some years later.
Alfred’s domestic reforms need not be more than mentioned here. His
military reorganization included the enlargement of the thegnhood by
admitting into it prosperous farmers and merchants, and organization
of the _fyrd_, so that a competent force could take the field without
allowing the land to fall out of cultivation--a most important
matter in days when army and people were one. Fortification was
systematically carried out, and garrisons were provided by a plan
which was consciously or unconsciously based on that of the Roman
military colonies. To each fortress were attached estates cultivated
by military settlers, but the latter were regularly stationed in the
burh, and probably had their residences there. They constituted the
famous _burh-ware_ (_lit._ fort-folk), which played a great part in the
defence of England during the next century. Above all, Alfred steadily
added to his fleet, though it was not until the end of his reign that
it was able to play an important part.
For some years after 878 Alfred remained in peace, energetically
pushing on his reforms, and drawing closer to Mercia and the distracted
Christian states of Wales, which were beginning to find that the
‘Saxon’ was better as a friend than the Viking. The Vikings were
ranging about Western Europe, inflicting upon it the direst misery that
it had experienced since the Roman eagles flew away, but only once in
fourteen years did they attack Alfred. In 885 a part of their main
horde sailed up the Medway and besieged Rochester. It was gallantly
defended by its _burh-ware_, and in the midst of the siege Alfred came
up with a strong force and routed the Vikings, driving them to their
ships and capturing their camp, horses, and baggage.
The effect of the raid, however, had been to unsettle some of the East
Anglian Danes, who had given the besiegers of Rochester assistance.
The English fleet made a retaliatory raid along the East Anglian
coast, and captured sixteen ships at the mouth of the Stour, but was
then defeated. It was clearly as yet too weak for its work.
Failing to obtain satisfaction from Guthrum or his jarls, Alfred next
year attacked the ‘Danelaw’ by land. After severe fighting, London was
retaken, and south-eastern Mercia overrun as far as the Lea and Great
Ouse. Alfred’s conquests were definitely confirmed to him next year by
a treaty with Guthrum. The Roman walls of London were repaired, and the
city occupied by a strong military colony.
The result of these successes was that not only the Mercians under
Ealdorman Aethelred, but also the princes of Wales, formally paid
homage to Alfred. He strengthened the tie with Mercia by giving
Aethelred his daughter Aethelflaed to wife. He also placed him in
charge of the reconquered districts, which had been mainly Mercian;
but evidently not for that reason, but as a personal possession.
The English were at last beginning to draw together. For six years
Alfred was able to pursue his life-work in peace. The East Anglian
Danes observed the treaty of 886; those of Northumbria also had a
Christianized chief, Guthred by name, who kept the peace with Alfred,
and when the Vikings again attacked him he was well prepared.
In 891 the Northmen were heavily defeated by Arnulf, King of the East
Franks, at Louvain. Thereupon they resolved to turn upon England. They
gathered from all quarters to Boulogne, and there remained for several
months collecting and building ships. They now, on their short voyages,
carried their horses with them, and had done so in the raid of 885. In
all they mustered 250 ships, and, perhaps, 10,000 men. A second fleet
of eighty ships under Hæsten, the most famous of the Scandinavian
sea-kings, assembled farther south. The connection between the two
hordes is not clear. Professor Oman suggests that while their action
may have been concerted, it is possible that the leaders of the larger
force held aloof from Hæsten owing to his selfishness and greed. The
evidence of the campaign that followed gives the impression that the
two forces acted in concert.
Alfred had also to fear that the settlers of the Danelaw would join the
invaders against him. Guthrum of East Anglia had died in 890, and the
friendly chief of Deira was associated with a certain Siegfred who was
hostile to Alfred. For the present the settlers gave hostages to Alfred
as a pledge that they would keep the peace, but they broke it without
scruple when occasion offered.
The ‘Great Army’ landed at Lympne, in Kent, late in the autumn of 892.
It was a bad base of operations, for it was practically shut off from
the inland by the Andredsweald; but the ports were now so well defended
that a landing-place was difficult to find. The Danes easily captured
an old earthwork at Appledore which the local peasantry tried to
defend, and, towing their ships up the harbour, entrenched themselves.
‘Soon after,’ says the Chronicle, ‘came Hæsten with eighty ships into
the mouth of the Thames, and wrought him there a work at Middeltun.’
Serious fighting did not begin until the spring of 893. Alfred
entrenched himself midway between the two Viking armies, and soon
reduced Hæsten to straits, perhaps by the aid of a fleet from London.
Hæsten offered to depart and, as a proof of sincerity, handed over his
two sons to be baptized. But with the usual Viking treachery, he merely
transferred himself to Bemfleet, in Essex. The East Anglian Danes
received him with open arms, and a great plan of operations was framed.
While Hæsten ‘contained’ the English on the Thames, the ‘Great Army’
was to penetrate across the Weald into Wessex, sending a detachment
with the fleet to Hæsten. Meanwhile forty Northumbrian Danish ships
were to enter the Bristol Channel, and 100 more, partly Northumbrian,
partly East Anglian, would sail down the east coast and attack Wessex
from the south.
The ‘Great Army’ passed safely through the Weald, and began to waste
eastern Wessex. Alfred himself seems to have been in the west; but the
English army, under his son Eadward, abandoned its central position in
Kent, and, hurrying through Surrey, overtook the Vikings at Farnham,
and defeated them with great loss. Their chief ‘king’ was wounded, and
they fled in disorder across the Thames into Herts, where they took
refuge on Thorney Isle, in the Colne. Eadward followed and blockaded
them; but then, hearing that his father was coming with fresh forces,
allowed his half-starved county levies to return home. Alfred was near
at hand when he heard that the Anglo-Danish fleets were attacking
Exeter and northern Devon. Thereupon he turned back, sending only
a detachment to Eadward. With these troops the prince resumed the
blockade, and was soon joined by Ealdorman Aethelred and the Mercians.
The Vikings then promised to depart, and gave hostages; but they only
dispersed into the Danelaw, and were soon in arms again.
Hæsten at Bemfleet had been joined by the main Viking fleet, and was
wasting Mercia with part of his force, the rest being left to guard the
camp. Aethelred and Eadward did not waste time in pursuing him; but
turned back to London, gathered up its _burh-ware_, and marched against
Bemfleet. ‘Then came the King’s men and defeated the enemy, broke down
the work, took all that was therein--money, women, and children--and
brought all to London.’ Hundreds of ships must have been taken, and
among the prisoners were Hæsten’s wife and his two sons. Hæsten,
returning from his raid, found only ruins at Bemfleet.
He must be credited at least with admirable pertinacity and courage. He
established himself at Shoebury, and rallied there the broken sections
of the Viking host. Reinforced by East Anglians, he again made a dash
westward, hurrying along the Thames Valley to the Lower Severn, and
then turning northward. At Buttington, on the Severn, he was overtaken
by the Mercians under Aethelred, supported by reinforcements brought up
from Wessex by Ealdormen Aethelhelm, and Aethelnoth, and other troops
from Wales. He was defeated and blockaded in his camp, only escaping to
Shoebury after heavy loss. His hope appears to have been to join the
Northumbrian fleet, but Alfred had relieved Exeter, and the discomfited
squadrons had gone.
However, Shoebury had become the rendezvous of adventurers from all
quarters, and Hæsten, late in the year, broke out once more. Marching
night and day, he suddenly appeared in the desolate ruins of Deva,
the ‘Chester’ where once Legio Valeria Victrix had made its home, and
entrenched himself behind its ramparts. The Mercians were too late to
overtake him, and could only waste the neighbourhood so as to straiten
him for food.
The events of the next year, 894, are rather obscure. Hæsten, forced
to evacuate Chester, wasted North Wales, and finally retreated to
Northumbria, and so back to East Anglia. Evidently hoping to be
safer so, the Danes established a new camp on Mersey Island, on the
Essex coast. Meanwhile the Northumbrian fleet was at last coming to
Hæsten’s aid. On its way from the west it attacked Chichester, but was
handsomely repulsed, with the loss of several ships. The main force,
however, reached Mersey safely, and late in the year the whole host
proceeded up the Thames and entrenched itself twenty miles up the Lea.
One hears nothing of Alfred or the main English army all the year.
It is possible that the King was trying to coerce the Northumbrians,
and there is a terribly confused and probably misdated entry in
Aethelweard’s Chronicle which seems to point to something of the kind.
The winter of 894-895 passed away with the Danes and the Londoners
watching each other on the Lea. So confident were the latter, that
early in 895 they, with ‘other folk,’ marched to attack the camp. They
were repulsed with loss, including that of four royal thegns. Still,
however, the Danes dared not advance on London, and the English were
able to cultivate the fields as usual. In the summer Alfred himself
with the main English army encamped close to the city, and under his
protection the harvest was safely gathered in. Forts were constructed
some distance below the Danish camp and the Lea blocked with stockades.
The enemy thereupon broke away northward, pursued by the English
mounted troops, while the Londoners, for the second time, triumphantly
towed a captured fleet into the Pool.
Meanwhile the retreating Danes had made a last dash into north-western
Mercia, and entrenched themselves at Quatbridge-on-Severn. There they
remained practically blockaded until the winter. The English army then,
unable to maintain itself longer, dispersed; but the Danes were half
starved and wholly dispirited, and in the spring of 896, when Alfred
began to assemble the host to make an end of them, they broke up and
scattered, some to the Danelaw: others who were penniless and desperate
hired or built ships and went back to France. Alfred’s victory was of
far more than local importance. The Vikings had tried their fortune
within a few years on both sides of the Channel, and both times had
been beaten. The dogged resistance of Alfred had fairly broken up their
main host, and it does not appear that so formidable a force was ever
again collected by them.
Alfred’s last years were comparatively peaceful. Small pirate
squadrons, however, continued to annoy the coast of Wessex, and to cope
with them he made great additions to his infant navy, employing in the
work members of seafaring Frisians to train his crews. The new ships,
however, appear to have been of his own designing--another instance
of his wonderful versatility. The chronicler definitely states that
they were built ‘as he [Alfred] himself thought they might be most
serviceable.’ They were twice as long as the old vessels, swifter,
steadier sea-boats, of higher free-board, and with sixty oars or more
in addition to their sails. In 897 nine of the new ships fought in
action with six Viking vessels in a Devonshire estuary, of which the
Chronicle gives what almost reads like the official account.
[Illustration: ENGLISH AND NORTHMEN AT THE DEATH OF ALFRED, A.D. 900.
The ‘Burhs’ of Alfred and Eadward I. are shown as squares with a dot in
the centre.]
Three of the Viking vessels were at anchor, the others beached higher
up the inlet. Two of the three anchored vessels were immediately
taken; the third escaped, but with only five sorely wounded men
surviving out of her crew. Meanwhile the tide was ebbing, and seems
to have compelled six of the English vessels to stand farther off the
shore, leaving the other three aground in the rapidly retreating waves.
The Danes on shore waded through shallow water and made desperate
attempts to board the stranded ships. Lucomon, a royal reeve (perhaps
the commodore of the squadron), was slain, and with him Æthelfrith, one
of the King’s herdsmen, three Frisian officers, and sixty-two seamen;
but they accounted for one hundred and twenty Danes, and the Viking
ships escaped only because the returning tide floated their light
craft before the heavier English vessels. Only one of the three Danish
vessels succeeded in reaching East Anglia, the other two went ashore
on the coast of Sussex, and their crews were captured and hanged at
Winchester, by order of the usually so merciful King.
The great King had now completed his gigantic task. He had welded
together the unconquered half of England so firmly that there was
no fear that the Vikings would overpower its united force. During
his reign of over twenty-eight years he was, to a very large extent,
occupied in resisting, and in organizing resistance to, the invaders.
The success that attended his operations was emphatically due to his
fine character, his capacity for organization, his steady concentration
on the work of uniting England against the common foe, and his
clear-sighted vision that saw the necessity of being able to attack by
sea as well as on land; and over and above all these qualities, his
power of inspiring men with something of his own exalted ideals. On
October 26, 900, he died; probably the greatest, beyond doubt the best
and noblest, monarch who has reigned over England.
[Illustration: NORSE SHIP FOUND AT GOKSTAD.
(_In the Museum at Christiania._)]