bearing, it is impossible not to be struck by the obliqueness of the
religious references. Of his reliance on divine help and his trust in
divine assistance there is no doubt. He clearly regarded these as
powers actually at work in the world, and as the one only means by which
the actions of those who should follow him might be rightly guided. It
is by God’s support that he trusts his will may be carried out. He is
king by God’s grace. He has considered of his soul’s health, and of the
inheritance which God and his ancestors did give; but he is reserved
and allusive where other men of the time were detailed and definite.
The air of reserve would almost seem to indicate that the teaching of
John the Erin-born, while it had not in the least shaken the confidence
of his faith and trust, had seriously indisposed him to speak in
confident detail of the relations of man’s service to God’s help. “Let
them distribute, for me and for my father and for the friends that he
interceded for and I intercede for, 200 pounds; 50 to the mass-priests
all over my kingdom, 50 to the poor servants of God, 50 to the distressed
poor, 50 to the church where I shall rest.” “And I will that they do
restore to the families at Domersham their land-deeds and their liberty
to choose any man they will [_i.e._ to continue to live under that lord
or to choose another], for me and for Ælflæd [his eldest daughter] and
for the friends that she did intercede for and I do intercede for.” “And
let them also seek with a living price[21] for my soul’s health so far
as may be[22] and as is fitting and as ye to give me shall be disposed.”
It has been clearly shown that _on cwicum ceape_ was a recognised phrase
for “with live stock.” The reserve of Alfred’s language in this, the
most important part of his will in mediæval opinion, is worthy of note.
Indeed, the absence of definite words which might have been expected is
so marked that in another Latin copy, a very incorrect translation of
part of the Anglo-Saxon will, they are added, but curiously enough are
connected solely with the restoration of the land-books to the people at
Domersham. The freeing of slaves was a religious work. It will be seen
that as a religious work Alfred himself regarded it. “I beseech in God’s
name and in the name of His Saints that no one of my relations or heirs
obstruct the freedom of those whom I have redeemed. The West-Saxon Witan
have pronounced it lawful that I may leave them free or bond as I will.
But I, for God’s love and for my soul’s advantage, will that they be
master of their freedom and of their will; and in the name of the living
God I bid that none disturb them, neither by money exaction nor by any
manner of means.”
It is a well-known fact that the Church set before men the duty of giving
slaves their freedom. Late in the seventh century, Bishop Wilfrith
released 250 men and women whom he found attached as slaves to his
estate of Selsey; and Archbishop Theodore denied Christian burial to the
kidnapper, and prohibited the sale of children by their parents after the
age of seven. In the year 816, the archbishop and bishops of the southern
province, thirteen in number, met in council at Celchyth (Chelsea), and
bound themselves by canon to free at their death every Englishman, who,
during their tenure of the lands of the bishoprics, had become a slave,
the usual causes of enslavement in time of peace being poverty or crime.
There is a canon of that council, directed against the abstraction of
monastic charters and lists of landed property, which has a very modern
sound about its title, “that monasteries be not deprived of their
telligraphs.”
We cannot close this chapter better than with Alfred’s own right royal
words. “I can assert this in all truth, that during the whole course of
my existence I have always striven to live in a becoming manner, and at
my death to leave to those who follow me a worthy memorial in my works.”
ALFRED AS WARRIOR
BY CHARLES OMAN
ALFRED AS WARRIOR
Of all the aspects of Alfred’s many-sided life there is none more
interesting, yet more baffling, than his military career. We know its
outlines: his lot fell in the direst time of storm and stress that
had ever come upon the English; he weathered the tempest which had so
sorely buffeted his father and his brothers, and steered the ship of the
state into calmer waters. We have a not inconsiderable bulk of records
concerning his campaigns, yet again and again the why and the wherefore
of triumph and defeat elude us. The all-important details which would
explain why things went ill in 872 and well in 878, why Basing saw a
disaster and Buttington a victory, are withheld. The unwearied king
marches east and marches west, now with a large army, now with a mere
handful of men; he reaches his foes and brings them to bay; then “the
heathen are put to flight,” or, on the other hand, “after great slaughter
on both sides the Danes hold possession of the place of battle”; but
whether superior tactics, or superior numbers, or superior endurance
won the day is concealed from us. It is seldom that even the most vague
and general features of the fight are narrated: of really important
engagements like Ashdown or Eddington, or the struggle on the Lea, we
know only just enough to make us desire to know more.
Fortunately we are able to make out a good deal more about the strategy
than about the tactics of Alfred’s campaigns. His itineraries are
generally preserved, and the natural features of hill and vale and marsh
and wood can easily be ascertained. Similarly there is a certain amount
to be recovered concerning his work as a military organiser, though here
our authorities give us hints rather than facts, and make it very hard to
disentangle his reforms from those of his worthy successor, Edward the
Elder.
When Alfred first looked upon the face of war, the English had been
already engaged for some seventy years in their great struggle to drive
off the Vikings, and were prospering little in the attempt. The period
during which the invaders had contented themselves with sporadic descents
on the towns and monasteries hard by the sea, was long over. They were
now cutting their way deep into England from every side, and prolonging
their stay more and more every year. While Alfred was still a child
by his mother’s knee, a yet more threatening stage had been reached:
instead of returning to their homes by the Danish and Norwegian fiords,
when autumn drew to an end, the enemy had begun to fortify some ness or
island by the English shore, and to abide there all the winter months.
The period of objectless plunder was drawing near its end, and that of
settlement and conquest was approaching.
It is not hard to make out the main causes of the ineffectiveness of
the resistance which the English kingdoms offered to the invader; they
were much the same as those which were to be seen in the Frankish
empire on the other side of the British Channel—the want of any central
organisation for combined defence—the want of any large bodies of
professional fighting-men, fully equipped with the best arms of the
day—the scarcity of fortified places—the non-existence of a war-fleet.
In respect of the first of these matters the English were in some ways
more unfortunate, in others happier, than the Franks. On the Continent
the Vikings were confronted by a vast empire which was beginning to
drop to pieces from its own weight; the realm of Charlemagne would have
split up into national kingdoms even if there had been no invaders from
outside to hasten the process. Particularism and heritage-partition
were the order of the day; it was impossible to hope that the numerous
descendants of the great Carling house would loyally aid each other
against the external enemy, or that their heterogeneous subjects would
care much for the woes of their neighbours. In England, on the other
hand, the national evolution of the times was tending towards union. Even
before the effects of the Danish invasions began to be felt, the states
of the Heptarchy were already beginning to draw together into larger
units. Offa the Mercian (755-794) had been suzerain of all England in a
far truer sense than any of the early “Bretwalda” kings that were before
him. He had annexed kingdoms like Kent, Essex, East Anglia, instead of
merely making their monarchs do him homage. These states rose again for a
short space at his death; but when Egbert won the supremacy for Wessex a
few years later, the same tendency was apparent: that great warrior was
able to incorporate the old realms of Kent and Sussex with his ancestral
dominions, nor did they ever again free themselves from dependence on
the house of Cerdic. It was clear that England was tending to group
itself into no more than three or four large states: the smaller tribal
nationalities were beginning to be absorbed in the greater. Thus, though
Egbert and his successor Ethelwulf were kings south of Thames alone, and
only enjoyed a precarious suzerainty north of it, yet there was some hope
for the future. The fatal disruptive tendencies visible among the Franks
were not paralleled on this side of the Channel.
In the second point wherein the old Christian kingdoms were at a
disadvantage when struggling with the Dane—the want of a large and
well-armed body of trained fighting-men—England was probably in a worse
condition than her continental neighbour. Both possessed two classes of
warriors—a small body of wealthy landed vassals of the king, bound to him
by special oaths of allegiance, and the general levy of the country-side,
torn from the plough when necessity demanded. The former were more
or less professional warriors: the English “_gesithcund_ man holding
land,” if he neglected his lord’s summons to join the host, forfeited
his estate and paid a crushing fine as well: the ordinary peasant, the
“ceorlish man,” only suffered pecuniary punishment for the same offence.
The _gesiths_, or _thegns_, as they were now beginning to be called, a
wealthy, well-armoured military class, were the core of the national
host. The rude masses of the half-armed country folk were a far less
efficient part of the military forces of the realm. But in England the
thegnhood does not appear in the ninth century to have reached nearly
the same stage of relative importance as had the Frankish vassals. They
would seem to have been less numerous in proportion to the size of the
states, and less powerful in the realm. As a combatant body, too, they
were inferior, for the Franks had taken to fighting on horseback, and
every vassal came to the host not only well armed, but well mounted. The
English were still fighting on foot like their ancestors: they did not,
indeed, learn cavalry service till the eleventh century. In contending
with an active and rapidly moving enemy like the Dane, this want of
horsemen was a terrible drawback to the English host.
The third source of weakness which we have named—the scarcity of
well-fortified strongholds—was felt both on this and on the other side
of the Channel. Neither Frank nor Anglo-Saxon had made any systematic
attempt to keep up the great fortresses which they had inherited from the
Romans. But here again the English were at a greater disadvantage than
their continental neighbours. They had neglected scientific fortification
even more than the Franks. They mostly dwelt in open towns and villages;
even the ancient Roman walls of great cities like London and York had
been allowed to fall into decay. At most they surrounded important
positions with a ditch and a stockade; of the building of an actual wall
we hear only at one place, the Northumbrian capital of Bamborough. The
Franks, among whom city life was far more important than in England,
seem to have done somewhat more in the way of keeping up the old Roman
_enceintes_ of their great towns. They had also taken of late to the
building of strongholds destined to hold down conquered territory.
Charlemagne had warred down the obstinate Saxons mainly by rearing line
after line of _burgs_ among their heaths and forests. No great English
king had yet tried to maintain his control over his vassal-states by such
an expedient. Even if the Frankish _burgs_ were but concentric rings of
ditch, mound, and palisade, they were by no means lacking in importance
in the day of danger.
In the matter of naval defence, on the other hand, there was more hope
for England than for her continental neighbours. The Saxons and Angles
had always been seafarers: the Franks had never taken to the water.
Neither of the nations possessed any regular war-fleet, but in the one
the national genius was favourable to its creation; in the other it was
not. We hear, indeed, long before Alfred’s day, of intermittent attempts
of English kings to do something on the seas. The most notable was the
assault on Ireland which the Northumbrian Ecgfrith made in 684. In the
days of Alfred’s own father, Ethelwulf, there was at least one endeavour
to meet the Danes upon the water: the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells how the
Kentish alderman Ealhere “fought in ships” at Sandwich, and “took nine
ships of the heathen, and put the rest to flight” (851). It is possible
that the same chief was engaged in a second naval battle two years
later, for in an unsuccessful attempt which he made to turn the Vikings
out of Thanet “there was much slaughter and many men _drowned_ upon both
sides.” Thanet being then separated from the Kentish mainland by a broad
estuary, it is conceivable that there was some fighting on shipboard on
this occasion also.
But any small naval resources which England possessed in the second
half of the ninth century seemed hopelessly inadequate to impose the
least check on the Danes. The invaders came in squadrons numbered by the
hundred vessels. Even after Alfred had begun to take in hand a scheme
for building a regular fleet, the English ships were only counted in
tens or scores. In our own days a power possessing some few vessels, and
expecting invasion, would turn them to use by setting them to watch for
the enemy, discover him, and give early knowledge of his approach, or
to follow his course and divine his intentions. But such tactics demand
vessels that can keep the sea for long spaces of time and in any weather.
Neither English nor Danish galleys were suited for such work: they
preferred coasting voyages, and touched the shore frequently, creeping
from cape to cape and from isle to isle. The only voyage across a broad
and open sea was that which was made when a Viking fleet ran straight
across from the southwestern cape of Norway instead of coasting along
the Danish and Frisian shore. The Scandinavians were daring seamen,
but their skill and pluck was shown rather by the way in which they
felt their way along dangerous, rock-bound coasts, like those of the
Hebrides or Western Ireland, than by passages across the high seas. For
such crossings they waited for long spells of fine weather, in order to
run the least possible risk. This was only natural, for their ships were
but long, light, undecked vessels, depending mainly on their twelve or
sixteen oars a side, and only using their sails when the wind set fair.
To face a really serious Atlantic storm they were wholly unfitted, and
even the rough weather of the Channel could be too much for them. In 877
a whole fleet of a hundred and twenty ships was wrecked near Swanage on
the cliffs of the Isle of Purbeck. It was no wonder that they preferred
to pick their weather, and to hug the shore, in order that they might run
into the nearest haven when a tempest seemed at hand. The seamanship of
the English was undoubtedly inferior to that of the Scandinavians in the
ninth century, and we may guess that in handiness as well as in numbers
they were wholly unable to vie with their enemies before Alfred’s day.
The years 840-880 were the darkest period in the dismal century of the
Viking raids. Neither in England nor on the Continent had there been
found any effective way of resisting the invaders, nor any great warrior
who could inspire his subject with the energy and courage that was needed
to face the ever-growing evil. Kings like Ethelwulf or Charles the Bald,
however good their intentions, were wholly inadequate to the task. Their
warlike sons, Louis III., the victor of Saucourt, and Ethelred, the
victor of Ashdown, were cut off in the prime of their years, just when
they were beginning to win themselves a name. The Danes went where they
would, no longer taking to their ships when the national levy came out
against them, but stockading a camp and defying the owners of the soil to
evict them from it. Almost always the assaults made on these strongholds
ended in disastrous failures: it is hard to say whether the repulse of
Charles the Bald at Givald’s Foss (852), of Ethelred at Reading (871), or
of Charles the Fat at Ashloh (882), was the more heart-breaking to the
landsfolk. It seemed impossible to burst through the bristling line of
stakes and ditch manned by the veteran axemen of the heathen bands.
The fact was that the rank and file of the Viking hosts were individually
superior to the peasant-levies that strove to overwhelm them. In a
Frankish or an English army only counts and aldermen, thegns and wealthy
vassals, wore the steel helm and the ring-mail byrnie: the masses
that followed them to the field had no more than spear and shield,
possessing no defensive armour whatever. The Vikings, on the other hand,
were professional fighting-men, armed not only with the “war-nets” that
their own smiths could make, but with the spoils of a hundred victorious
fights. It was no wonder that they could hold out against very superior
numbers of the raw, half-armed militia of the English _Fyrd_ and the
Frankish _Ban_. In the ages when personal skill with axe and sword and
trained agility of body counted for so much, one practised warrior was
worth two farmers fresh from the plough. It required a vast preponderance
of force, or a very skilled and fortunate leader, to enable the Christian
host to inflict a really crushing defeat on the invaders.
When Alfred was a child the problem seemed growing more hopeless day
by day. Even the greatest cities of Western Christendom were falling a
prey to the heathen. London had been taken and sacked in 851, Tours in
853, Paris in 857, Winchester in 860. The invading hordes, now carried
in fleets of three or four hundred sail, came ashore where they would,
seized horses in the country-side and rode across the land, plundering
far and wide, to some appointed spot to which their fleet came round and
joined them. Or they would draw their ships ashore at some convenient
estuary, set a guard over them, and send the rest of the host to make
a circular raid, which finally took them back to their camp and their
vessels. The former plan was the better, since if the ships ran out to
sea after throwing ashore the landing force, the defenders of the realm
did not know where the march of the enemy would be directed; while if the
fleet was immobilised on some ness or island, it was easy to intercept
the raiders, who were bound to make their way back to their base.
The lowest pitch of despair seemed to be reached when in many regions
rulers and people ceased to try to defend themselves against the Danes,
and merely strove to procure a precarious respite from their oppressors
by bribing them to depart and transfer their ravages to other shores.
This was done in 865 by the Kentishmen, in 866 by the East Angles, in 869
by the Mercians. Of course the expedient was futile; the news that one
Viking host had received a handsome tribute only drew down another, set
on obtaining similar booty.
Finally, there came the last step of all: not content with plunder and
blackmail the invaders began to think of taking up their permanent
residence in the land and making its unfortunate inhabitants their
subjects. The idea had already occurred to Jarl Thorgils in Ireland, but
his ephemeral kingdom had disappeared at his murder. Now it was renewed
in England in 868, after the battle of York, the most fearful disaster
which had yet befallen any of the Christian kingdoms. The Danes had
stormed the Northumbrian capital: they had slain the two rival kings,
Osbert and Ella, who combined to attack them: all the thegnhood of the
northern realm had perished. Taking up their quarters in the ancient city
of Edwin and Oswald, the conquerors began to parcel out the neighbouring
region among themselves as a permanent possession.
It was in the year after this terrible downfall of the Northern Kingdom
that Alfred made his first campaign. He was now nineteen, and had just
married his Mercian bride, Ealhswith, the daughter of Alderman Ethelred.
The enterprise in which he was engaged was one of a very typical
character—a dozen expeditions with the same unfortunate end could be
cited from the English and Frankish annals of the third quarter of the
ninth century. A large Viking host had entered Mercia and forced its way
up the Trent as far as Nottingham. King Burgred sent to Wessex to beg
the aid of his brother-in-law Ethelred, who marched to his help, taking
his brother Alfred with him as second in command. The united hosts of
the two English realms were too large for the Vikings to dare to face
them in the open field. They stockaded themselves in a great camp on the
banks of the Trent and waited to be attacked. The landsfolk laid siege
to the stronghold, and strove to storm it; but they utterly failed to
break their way in. After lying some time before it, they dispersed in
despair: Ethelred and Alfred went home: the unfortunate Burgred then
asked for terms, and got rid of the Vikings for a short space by paying
them a large tribute. The Danes returned to York, lay there for one year,
and then threw themselves upon the East Angles. They slew King Edmund,
“the Martyr,” scattered his army, sacked the towns and monasteries of
Norfolk and Suffolk, and made themselves masters of the whole realm (870).
Next year the turn of Wessex came: the Mercians had at least bought two
years of respite by the treaty of Nottingham. Marching from East Anglia
the “Grand Army” of the Vikings crossed the Thames, seized Reading, and
stockaded a great camp in the angle between the Kennet and the Thames
to serve as a base for their ravaging parties. But in spite of a dozen
disasters suffered during the last forty years at the hands of the same
enemy, the spirit of Wessex was not yet quenched. Its shire-levies
loyally answered King Ethelred’s call, and gathered in great strength
opposite the Danish camp. The Berkshire fyrd even succeeded in bringing
to bay and destroying at Englefield a large plundering party headed by a
Jarl. But the main body of the Vikings was not so easily disposed of. A
general attack on their stronghold, headed by Ethelred and Alfred, proved
wholly unfortunate. When the assailants had wearied themselves in vain
attempts to hew their way through the stockade, and drew off repulsed,
the enemy made a sudden sortie: “bursting out of the gates like wolves,”
they fell on the shattered ranks of the men of Wessex, drove them away,
and held possession of the battle spot. Thinking apparently that the
English were disposed of so far as further fighting was concerned,
the Vikings now started for a raid westward along the Thames valley:
the camps at Sinodun and Pusey, both large and formidable structures,
possibly represent their halting-places on the first and second nights of
their advance. The third day took them to Ashdown, in the “Vale of the
White Horse.” But they found there was still heavy fighting in prospect:
the untiring Ethelred and Alfred had rallied their beaten host, and were
now hanging on the invaders’ heels and making it impossible for them to
scatter after plunder. The heathen kings Halfdan and Bagsceg thereupon
determined to take the offensive, and to attack and scatter the men of
Wessex before proceeding farther with their raid. They were encamped high
on the ridge of the Berkshire Downs, while Ethelred and Alfred lay at
some distance below them.