The Danes.--Alfred The Great (836-901.)
For nearly four centuries the Saxons had been established in
Britain; they had become the sole masters of the country, and had
there forgotten the original source of their wealth. But the
nation from which they had sprung was still prolific in warriors,
vigorous, enterprising, and possessed of nothing in the world but
their arms and their ships, for all the property of the family
belonged by right to the eldest son: warriors too ardent in
conquering and in obtaining wealth at the point of the sword. The
peninsula of Jutland and the provinces still further north of
Scandinavia sent year by year to the French and English coasts a
great number of ships, manned by the "Sea-kings," as they styled
themselves: "The tempest is our friend," they would say; "it
takes us wherever we wish to go." Repulsed three times from the
coast of England by Egbert, these pirates soon reappeared under
the reign of his son Ethelwulf; the whole island became
surrounded by their light skiffs. The Saxons had been compelled
to organize along the shores a continual resistance, and to
appoint officers whose duty it was to call out the people in a
body to repulse the enemy. Three serious contests took place in
839--at Rochester, at Canterbury, and at London. King Ethelwulf
himself was wounded in battle. But shortly after, the internal
dissensions which were agitating the whole of France, attracted
the pirates as the dead body attracts the vulture. During twelve
years the Danish fleets altered their course, and repaired to the
French coasts.
{38}
When they reappeared, in 831, in England, their successes were at
first alarming; three hundred and fifty of their vessels ascended
the Thames as far as London, and the town was sacked. But the
king awaited the enemy at Oakley: they were defeated, and
suffered great losses. After having met with severe reverses at
several other parts of the Saxon territory, the Danes withdrew
from there, and respected the English coasts during the remainder
of the reign of Ethelwulf.
It is at this period that there appears in the pages of history
the name of the fourth son of Ethelwulf, him whom England was one
day to call Alfred the Great, Alfred the Well-beloved. He had
first seen the light of day at Wantage, in the heart of the
forests of Berkshire, in 849, two years before the departure of
the Danes. His mother Osberga, a noble and pious woman, gave
herself up entirely to the task of rearing her little son, who
soon began to excite the hope and admiration of all who saw him.
Doubtless the predilection which his father had for this little
child, induced him to give a startling proof of his affection,
for Alfred was scarcely four years of age when he was sent to
Rome with a numerous suite of nobles and servants, to ask for
himself, of Pope Leo IV., the title of king, and the holy
unction. The Pope was aware of the piety of the Saxon monarch,
and he consecrated with his own hands the little king, and even
administered to him the sacrament of confirmation. Alfred
returned to England, and it was no doubt the recollection of what
he had seen at Rome, which began thenceforward to instil into his
soul the desire to gain knowledge, the pursuit of which was
probably very rare among the young Saxons. His mother, one day,
was holding a pretty manuscript in her hand, a collection of
ancient Saxon poems, and was showing it to her four sons, who
were playing beside her. "I will give this pretty book," she
said, "to whichever of you shall learn it the soonest by heart."
{39}
Ethelbald, Ethelbert, and Ethelred eyed the book with
indifference, and went on with their game; but little Alfred
approached his mother: "Really," said he, "will you give this
beautiful manuscript to whoever shall learn it by heart the
quickest and who shall come and repeat it all to you?" The large,
round eyes of the child were fixed upon his mother: she repeated
her promise, and even gave up the manuscript into the keeping of
the little prince. He quickly hurried away with it to his master,
who was able to read aloud to him the verses which it contained,
for, alas! Alfred could not read until he was twelve years of
age. He soon returned, triumphant, repeated the lines, received
the book from his mother, and preserved thenceforth throughout
his life a taste for the old Saxon ballads of which he had thus
first made the acquaintance.
Alfred was six years old and had lost his mother, when his
father, wishing to make the pilgrimage to Rome in his turn, took
his youngest son with him: the Saxon king spent a year with the
Pope, carrying from church to church his sumptuous devotion. On
his return journey, he stopped at the court of Charles the Bold,
a court elegant and polite in comparison with the still rude
customs of the Saxons; and, attracted by the beauty as well as
the arts of Princess Judith, daughter of Charles, Ethelwulf
married her, notwithstanding the disparity in their ages, and
brought her in triumph into his kingdom. But the two persons whom
the old king loved best, his young wife and his youngest son,
were distrusted by the rest of his family, as well as by his
people; Judith claimed a share of the sovereign power, according
to the old custom in Britain and Germany, which had become odious
to the Saxons by reason of the crimes of several queens; the
elder sons of Ethelwulf feared that their young brother, so dear
to their father, might be raised above themselves; the eldest,
Ethelbald, revolted, and his father found a general rising
against him when he returned to England.
{40}
The old king did not resist: he ceded to his son the greater
portion of his states and died at the end of two years, having
shared equally between his sons his kingdom of Wessex, previously
enlarged by the addition of Kent and Sussex. The tributary states
of Northumbria and Mercia had shaken off the feeble authority of
Ethelwulf and had recommenced their internal wars. The Danes
profited by these disputes, and had taken up with renewed ardor
their terrible incursions upon the English coasts.
In this alarming situation of affairs the sons of Ethelwulf
foresaw that the division of Wessex would be their ruin; instead,
therefore, of sharing it among themselves they agreed that each
should reign over the whole in turn, according to their ages. The
reigns of the three eldest were short. Supported successively by
their brothers, they fought against the Danes, and all died in
the flower of their youth; the last, Ethelred, was still on the
throne, when an invasion of the Danes, who penetrated as far as
Reading, called all the men of Wessex to arms. The war had a
short time before assumed a new aspect; the Danes did not content
themselves with descending upon the most fertile portions of the
coast with their long ships, or with taking possession of all the
horses. Overrunning the country, they ravaged and sacked
everything in their passage, and re-embarked in their vessels
before the frightened inhabitants had had time to rise up to
resist them. From pirates, the Danes had become conquerors, and
desired to establish themselves in that England which their
predecessors, the Saxons, had formerly snatched from the Britons.
Already possessed of East Anglia and a portion of Northumbria,
they were threatening Wessex, and had intrenched themselves at
Reading.
{41}
Alfred had recently been married to a princess of Mercia, but his
new relations did not give him any support against the Danes,
when, having beaten several detached corps of the pirates,
Ethelred and Alfred attacked the citadel. The greater number of
the Danes sprang outside the walls, "like veritable wolves," says
Asser, the historian of Alfred, and the struggle recommenced.
The Danes were nearly all tall men; their wandering and
adventurous life favored the development of their muscular
powers; they did not fear death, for the Walhalla or Paradise of
their god Odin, promised to the brave warriors who fell in battle
all the pleasure which they esteemed most on earth. The figure of
the raven, the confidant of their god, floated on the red flags
of the Danes; if its dark wings fluttered on the long folds of
silk, victory was certain; if they remained motionless, the
Northmen feared defeat. The wings of the raven were fluttering
triumphantly before Reading, for the Saxons were defeated and
were obliged to retreat.
They had not lost courage, however, and four days later they
returned to give battle once more to their enemies; the Danes had
already issued forth from their intrenchments, but Ethelred was
still in his tent, attending holy mass, and would not hurry to
the scene of battle, in spite of urgent messages from Alfred. The
latter, therefore, attacked their opponents single-handed,
opposite a little tree which the Danes had chosen as a
rallying-spot. The Saxons fought with the fury of despair;
Ethelred soon came to support his brother, and the Danes, beaten
upon the great plain of Assendon, took to flight; but only to
return a fortnight afterwards, their number swelled by the
reinforcements which were continually arriving by sea.
{42}
Wessex alone had sustained eight battles in one year; her
resources were becoming exhausted in such an unequal struggle;
Ethelred, wounded, had just died, and Alfred found himself alone
at the age of twenty-two years (871), subject to a peculiar
illness which had succeeded to a slow fever of his boyhood, and
of which the attacks would frequently bring him to the very verge
of the grave. His men and his resources exhausted, a ninth and
unfortunate battle completely disabled him; he was compelled to
sue for peace. The Danes willingly consented to his proposal;
there were other princes to vanquish, other territories to
conquer, less valiantly defended than Wessex, on which they
proposed to revenge themselves when it should stand alone in its
resistance to them. In 875 they had finished their conquest;
Wessex alone still preserved its independence, and three Danish
kings who had passed the winter at Cambridge embarked secretly,
by night, to attack the coast of Dorset. Vainly did Alfred strive
to resist his enemies by sea; his ships were beaten, and soon the
long line of incendiarism and murder which always marked the
progress of the Danes extended as far as Wareham. This was past
endurance, and Alfred, stricken down on a sick-bed, asked for and
obtained peace at the price of gold. The Danes retired after
having sworn friendship upon some relics brought by the Christian
king and on their sacred bracelets steeped in the blood of their
victims, exchanging hostages, whose fate they troubled themselves
very little about. The very night after peace was concluded, the
Saxon horsemen were destroyed and cut up piecemeal by the Danes,
who took possession of their horses in order to make a raid into
the interior of the country. The remonstrances of Alfred were
powerless to stop these disastrous expeditions, so easy for an
enemy who threatened the country from all sides.
{43}
Alfred took to arms once more; and for awhile the issue of the
war seemed to incline in his favor; he had been the first to see
the necessity for attacking the Danes on the ocean, which was
incessantly bringing them inexhaustible reinforcements, and his
vessels having met the pirates during a storm had defeated and
dispersed them, thus cutting off all hope of succor to the Danes
whom Alfred was besieging in Exeter. This glimmering of success
did not last however; in 878 the enemy was once more invading
Wessex in two formidable troops; one of them was stopped and even
defeated by some faithful retainers of Alfred's, but the second
army, which had entered the kingdom by land, was advancing
without opposition from town to town. The subjects of Alfred were
weary and discouraged. The king, on whom they had founded such
great hopes, had lost in their eyes his prestige; brave but
uncertain, he had not profited by the advantages which his
military genius had sometimes given him, and his people
complained of his inflexibility, of his pride, of the severity
which he manifested towards offenders; of the indifference which
he displayed towards the unfortunate. They did not enter with any
spirit into the struggle against the invaders, and the Saxon
kings held no power but by the free will of their subjects. The
clergy, who were especially hated by the pagan enemy, fled to
France, carrying with them from their country its relics and the
treasures from the churches. The agricultural population
submitted to cultivate the land for the Danes. The latter were
seeking Alfred; but the king had suddenly abandoned his post, and
left by the struggle sick and wounded to the heart by the
defection of his subjects, he had disappeared, his place of
concealment being unknown and not even suspected.
{44}
The fugitive king did not know where to go. Wandering from forest
to forest, from cave to cave, he went his way, trying to conceal
his deep disgrace, learning in his cruel wanderings, as his
historian and friend Asser says, "that there is one Lord alone,
Master of all things and all men, before whom every knee bends,
who holds in His hand the hearts of kings, and who sometimes
makes His happy servants feel the lash of adversity, to teach
them, when they suffer, not to despair of the Divine mercy, and
to be without pride when they prosper."
Alfred wanted confidence in God, when he arrived in the island of
the Nobles (Ethelingaia), now called Athelney, in order to hide
himself there in the hovel of a cowherd. He received him at first
as a traveller who had lost his way, and ended by learning in
confidence from his guest that he was a Saxon noble of the court
of King Alfred, flying from the vengeance of the Danes. The
worthy Ulfoath was perfectly satisfied with the explanation, and
allowed the fugitive to remain at his house.
His wife was not in the secret, and was annoyed, no doubt, to see
her work increased by the presence of this unknown guest. She
would ask him at times to perform little services, and would
leave him in charge of some household duties. One Sunday, while
the husband was gone to lead the beasts to the field and the wife
was busy with several little matters, she had left some loaves or
thin cakes by the fire, which were baking slowly on the red stone
of the hearth. Alfred had been commissioned to watch them, but,
absorbed in his sad meditations, he had forgotten that the bread
was burning; the smell warned the housewife; she sprang at a
bound to the fireplace, and quickly turning her cakes, she called
out angrily to the king, "Whoever you may be, are you too proud
to turn the loaves? You will not take the slightest heed of them,
but you will be very glad to eat some of them presently." Alfred
did not lose his temper; he laughed, and helped the woman to
finish her task. A few days later the cowherd's wife learnt with
dismay the name of the guest whom she had thus scolded.
[Image]
Alfred in the Herdsman's Hut.
{45}
Some of the faithful subjects of Alfred, pursued by the Danes,
took refuge also in the island of Nobles, where they discovered
to their great astonishment their king. Secretly and by degrees
the rumor that Alfred was living spread through his family, who
came in search of him. The little band became greater day by day,
and the king was beginning to gain courage. In his solitude and
humiliation, God had taken charge of this great soul which had
hitherto forgotten Him, and which regained through religious
faith the necessary energy to struggle against the enemies of his
country.
The Danes had not profited by their victory. They had established
themselves in the conquered country as plunderers, and not as
owners. The inhabitants of Wessex were writhing under their cruel
and capricious rule. They had now forgotten the rigorous acts
with which they had reproached Alfred, and regretted that the
Christian king was no longer at their head. Exasperated by their
sufferings, the Saxons were ripe for revolt.
Such were Alfred's prospects when he began with his companions
the work of re-establishing himself in his country. A solid
bridge, defended by two towers, enabled the king to issue out
easily from his retreat in his fortress. He gathered around him
all the malcontents before making anybody aware of his identity,
and without announcing his great projects; each day he saw his
little army swell in numbers, and he defeated the Danes in every
skirmish which he chanced to have with them. He then went back to
the island of Nobles. It is even said that he went by day,
disguised as a minstrel, into the very camp of the Danes, in
order to ascertain their numerical strength.
{46}
In the month of May, 878, he finally decided to attack them
openly. Secret messengers were despatched through the
neighborhood, who said to the Saxons; "King Alfred is alive.
Assemble in the forest of Selwood, at Egbert's field; he will be
there, and you shall all march together against the Danes." The
Saxons, desperate, were rushing there in crowds, and soon
Alfred's standard, bearing the golden dragon, was boldly unfurled
before the Danish raven.
The secret had been well kept. The Danish king, Godrun, was
vaguely aware that a number of Saxons were assembled in the
neighborhood, but he knew neither how many they mustered, nor the
name of their chief, when he found himself suddenly attacked on
the plain of Ethandune. The Saxons were in high spirits: "It is
for your own sakes that you are about to fight," Alfred had said
to them. "Show that you are men, and deliver your country from
the hands of these strangers." The Danes had not had time to
recover from their surprise before Alfred was upon them, his
whole army following him. The standard-bearer was pushing to the
front, accomplishing prodigies of valor: "It is St. Neots
himself," Alfred cried, designating a saint held in great
reverence by the Saxons, and an ancestor of his own. His soldiers
gained fresh courage at these words; the Danes were beaten, and
pursued, and they perished in great numbers. King Godrun, shut up
with his court at the fortress of Chippenham, was compelled to
surrender after a siege which lasted three weeks. He gave
hostages without taking any in exchange, a proceeding very
humiliating to the Danes, and Alfred wisely imposed upon him an
agreement useful in securing the definitive tranquillity of
England, if not consistent with the spiritual welfare of the
Danes; the conqueror exacted that the defeated enemy should
embrace the Christian religion.
{47}
Godrun and his son were baptized and settled in the portion of
land which Alfred conceded to them. Finding the impossibility of
driving from the country the whole of the Danes, who were already
masters of the land in Northumbria, in Mercia, and in East
Anglia, Alfred hoped to accomplish, by the aid of Christianity
and his right over part of the land, a fusion of the Danish and
Saxon races, and to secure by that union a kind of rampart
against any new Scandinavian invasions.
He was not mistaken. In the year following, a Danish fleet
entered the Thames; but in vain did the warriors call for help to
Godrun, who was established in the country He remained deaf to
their voices, and they, discouraged by his refusal, went away
again and pursued their ravages on the coast of Flanders.
For more than thirteen years peace reigned over all England. One
or two little isolated invasions served to exercise the energy of
Alfred's troops, and each day his forces were augmenting. But
Godrun was dead, and a dangerous enemy now threatened the Saxon
king: the famous pirate Hastings, already advanced in age, but
still passionately fond of the "game of war" was encamped upon
the coast of France, at Boulogne, in 892. Wherever he appeared,
death and ruin followed in his wake. The black raven always
unfurled its wings for him; he was always assured of victory
before the fray began. He sailed forth in the spring of 893, and
instead of descending upon the lands already held by the Danes,
he disembarked in Kent, a country rich and fertile, inhabited
entirely by Saxons; and dividing his army into two corps, he lay
awaiting Alfred, who was advancing in haste to resist him.
{48}
The Danish pirate had cleverly organized the attack. Already the
Danish population of East Anglia were profiting by his presence
to attack the Saxon towns; but Alfred had studied too well the
art of war to disperse his army over the country; he led the
whole of his available forces against Hastings. There the greater
portion of the enemy's army, protected by a forest and a river,
were met by the Saxon king, who sent out at the same time several
small bodies of men in pursuit of the Danish warriors who were
pillaging the country, staying by these means the progress of the
invasion, and opposing with exemplary patience the ruses of the
barbarians. Hastings appeared to grow weary of this: he asked for
peace, and sent his young sons as hostages. Alfred had just
returned them to him after having baptized them, when the Danes,
caring little for their plighted Word, began to march towards
Essex, which they intended to attack, passing by way of the
Thames. The king hastened at once in pursuit of them and to the
support of his eldest son, Edward, who was defending the
frontier. They joined their forces; a great battle was fought
near Farnham in the county of Surrey; the Danes were vanquished
and driven as far as the isle of Mersey, which they fortified for
their defence. The king attacked them at once; but while he had
been away recruiting his forces a Danish fleet threatened the
coast of Devonshire. Alfred marched against the new invaders,
while the forces which he left behind fought against Hastings,
and in a sortie got possession of the wife and children of that
chief. These were sent to Alfred; but the Christian warrior could
not forget that he had presented the young barbarians at the
baptismal fount, and sent them back to their father loaded with
presents.
{49}
The pirate, however, was not overcome by his foe's generosity. He
attacked Mercia, sustained by the Danish hordes established in
the country. Abandoning all thought of the conquests which he had
originally intended, and the kingdom which he had wished to
found, he once more took up the irregular invasions by which he
had acquired so much wealth, and thought only of plundering the
Saxon territory. But the subjects of Alfred had learnt some
useful lessons; they rose with one accord against the foreign
enemy, and when the king, returning in haste from Devonshire,
arrived in the vicinity of the Severn, he found himself at the
head of a numerous army which allowed him to completely surround
the trenches of Hastings. The Danes had been decimated by hunger:
they had even eaten their horses. Making a last desperate effort,
they opened up a passage straight through the ranks of their
enemies, and took refuge in Chester, where they spent the winter.
In the spring-time, the long vessels, the "water-serpents," as
the pirates would affectionately call them, invariably brought
reinforcements to them. In 895, Hastings began by attacking
Wales, finding the states of King Alfred too well defended. He
ended, however, by retreating to the isle of Mersey, from whence
he set out in 896 to establish himself on the river Lea, in the
north of London. He had raised a fortress and there defended
himself valiantly, when King Alfred perceived that he could stop
all the enemy's navigation by river. He accordingly constructed a
canal, and reduced the Danes to despair: their fleet was on dry
ground. They abandoned it, and marched in a northern direction.
This time the old pirate was beaten. Wearied by this struggle
against a man of energy equal to his own, and in the enjoyment of
the youth and vigor which he no longer possessed, he assembled
his vessels in the spring of 897, and leaving definitively the
English coast, he ascended the Seine and extorted from Charles
the Simple a donation of land in the vicinity of Chartres. He
established himself there, and Rollo found him there fifteen
years later, spending in peace the remainder of his stormy life.
{50}
The Danes who remained in England had reacquired a taste for
adventurous expeditions. They assembled along the coast of
Northumberland to organize an attack on the southern portion of
the kingdom; but Alfred had long resolved to fight his enemies
with their own weapons. Having ridded himself of Hastings, he had
had time to look to his navy, and the Danes found themselves
opposed by vessels larger and more rapid than their own. The
struggle began on all sides. Wherever the pirates advanced to the
attack they found Saxon vessels to check them. The contests were
of frequent occurrence; they were not invariably favorable to the
Saxons, but the Danes suffered great losses: their ships would
often founder on the coast and the cargo would be lost. In 897,
the last Danish ships disappeared from England. Alfred had now
only to heal his country of the wounds left on it after all its
struggles, which had cemented the union of the several kingdoms,
in calling them all to the common defence under a single chief
placed above them by reason of his conspicuous ability. After the
war with the Danes, Alfred, who had merely assumed the title of
King of Wessex, had added to his states Mercia, Wales, and Kent.
It was a kingdom composed of incongruous elements; but Alfred
understood the management of them by reason of his far-seeing
wisdom. In Mercia, originally peopled by the English, he
established a viceroy chosen from their royal family, the
Ealderman, or duke Ethelred, and gave him his own daughter in
marriage. When Ethelred died, after having faithfully served his
father-in-law, the Mercians themselves placed in the hands of his
widow Ethelfleda the reins of government.
{51}
Kent already belonged to Alfred. Its unhappy inhabitants, subject
more than any others to the Danish invasions, had displayed the
most passionate affection and gratitude towards the prince who
had effected their deliverance. The Welsh chiefs swore allegiance
to him. Alfred established one of them, Amorant, as viceroy of
Wales, leaving him thus all his prerogatives and full command
over his subjects.
While he was thus organizing his Saxon kingdom, Alfred was
maintaining firm and friendly relations with the Danish kingdom,
which he had allowed to be established near to his own. The
propagation of Christianity amongst the pagans was his principal
means of effecting the fusion of the races, which he foresaw and
which he hoped ardently to see accomplished, but which he could
not completely finish during his own lifetime. Some laws were
already in force and respected by both races: the crime of murder
was punished in the same manner in each state, and Alfred caused
the people to rigorously respect the treaties which bound them
together; the pirates of East Anglia who came to pursue their
ravages along the coasts, being hanged without mercy. The Danes
established in England had already become Englishmen in the eyes
of Alfred, and were compelled to observe the laws of the English
population.
But although thus providing for the future, Alfred felt
completely safe for the present. The Saxon kings had never
maintained a standing army: at the time of an invasion, when the
necessity for defending himself or attacking was felt by the
sovereign, he would send into the boroughs and through the
country a messenger carrying his sword, unsheathed, who would cry
aloud: "Whoever shall not wish to be held a worthless fellow, let
him leave his house and come and join in the expedition."
{52}
But the day after the battle the warriors would disperse, and if
the enemy should recommence hostilities, the king and the country
found themselves unprepared. Alfred divided into two great
divisions all his subjects capable of bearing arms: one was
always on a war footing, ready to march against the enemy; the
other portion of them would work in the fields and cultivate the
soil until the very day when they would be called out to follow
the golden dragon, while their companions would disperse and
quietly retire to their cottages. The king made use of these
soldiers in fortifying towns, in constructing citadels, and in
putting the whole country in a position to defend itself. It was
thus that he was able to withstand the attacks of Hastings, the
most severe which England had as yet encountered.
So much wisdom and foresight on the part of Alfred, naturally
increased his regal importance and authority. Until this time,
the Saxon kings had been essentially warriors; each "ealderman,"
or chief proprietor, ruled supreme in his own district, without
troubling his sovereign; the clergy were nearly upon an equality
with the king, and the offences committed against a bishop were
punished with the same penalties as those committed against the
king himself. Alfred re-established the royal supremacy by the
force of his own intellectual superiority; his ealdermen became
his officers, and his profound piety, as well as his respect for
the clergy, did not prevent his disengaging himself from any
servile submission to the Church. The priests had suffered and
trembled more than any other class under the rule of the pagan
Danes; they obeyed without a murmur the orders of their
liberator.
Justice was but badly administered in England, divided though it
had been for a long time into tythings, hundredths and counties,
and provided with local assemblies which corresponded to these
territorial denominations.
{53}
During the troubles which the Danish invasion had caused, and in
the miseries which had followed, the Saxon proprietors had ceased
to attend to their internal affairs; they neglected to select the
judges. The assessors, or free men who should be present on the
occasion of any trial, to help the judge with their advice, no
longer answered when called upon to do so; only small numbers of
witnesses would appear. The king undertook to re-establish order;
he himself nominated the judges, and punished them severely when
they ventured to give any decision in a case without previously
consulting the assessors, whom he re-established in their
original form--the germ of the institution now known as the jury.
He was not even satisfied with all these cares; it often happened
that he would revise the sentences of the judges, so zealously
did he occupy himself with the administration of justice in his
kingdom.
The judges hitherto had been charged with the civil
administration as well as that of justice; they were succumbing
under the weight of such onerous functions. Alfred relieved them,
however, by nominating dukes, earls, and viscounts, who were
entrusted with the administration of justice in the counties, the
tythings and hundreds. He himself compiled for these magistrates
a code of laws borrowed, some from the old mode of legislation in
Kent, Wessex, and Mercia, and others from the Bible, from the
books of Moses as well as from the New Testament; and they all
unmistakeably bore the imprint of, and were modified by, the real
Christian spirit which animated the king.
All these laws, the fruits of revealed wisdom or of the ancient
experience of the people, Alfred submitted for approval to his
subjects: "I have shown these laws to my wise men," said he in
the preamble at the beginning of his code, "and the result was
that they were unanimous in wishing that they should be
observed."
{54}
These wise men, or "witans," forming an assembly called a
"witenagemote" (an assembly of wise men), no longer represented,
under Alfred, the entire nation, as in the time when the Saxons
still preserved in their simplicity their Germanic institutions.
At that period all the free men (cearls), whether proprietors or
not, composed part of it. By degrees the free men disappeared
from it, and the "thanes," or proprietors, alone remained; but
the lower class of "thanes," although invested with the same
rights as the royal "thanes," were less wealthy; it was more
difficult for them to leave their affairs in order to repair to
the Witenagemote. In the time of Alfred, these great proprietors
alone made up this assembly of wise men, whose functions were as
vaguely defined as the number and the periods of their meetings
were uncertain, but who thenceforth maintained in England the
principle of a national representative assembly, or the
institution whereby the country undertakes its own government,
which is the foundation and key of English history.
While Alfred was drawing up laws of an equitable and merciful
character, while he was rebuilding the ruined convents and
churches, and erecting new ones, he did not forget the poorest
and most unhappy of his subjects. Slaves were numerous in
England, and suffering under a heavy yoke. The king provided for
their protection, granting to them the right of enjoying and
transmitting to their heirs whatever goods they might have
acquired; he even applied in favor of Christian slaves the
Biblical law, granting to them their freedom at the end of six
years of servitude. In his will he ordered that all the serfs on
his entire domains should be emancipated. His example was
followed: the serfs and the emancipated slaves became day by day
more numerous, and began thenceforth to form in England the lower
middle class, which did not yet exist anywhere upon the
Continent.
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So many efforts and so much foresight must necessarily have
proceeded from a great and enlightened mind. Alfred had neglected
nothing in order to add to his stock of knowledge. He had not
studied during his childhood, in spite of his ardent desire to
acquire knowledge, for there were no intellectual resources at
the court of King Ethelwulf. The ancient kind of erudition which
had already been remarkable in England, where the means of study,
at the beginning of the eighth century, were far superior to
anything of the kind which could be found upon the Continent, had
become extinct during the wars with the Danes. "When I began to
reign," wrote Alfred the Great in the preface to his translation
of the Pastoral of Gregory I., "very few people on this side of
the Humber could say their daily prayers in English, or could
explain in English a Latin epistle, and I suspect that there was
not a greater number on the other side of the Humber." It was
thus that, notwithstanding his eagerness to instruct himself,
Alfred had arrived at the age of thirty-five years without
understanding Latin, and he only began the study of it in 884,
after having made prodigious efforts to secure masters who were
to instruct himself and his people. In the way of embassies,
presents, negotiations, he spared no trouble in order to attract
John, the old Saxon of the monastery of Corbie; Grimbald, monk at
Saint-Omcr; and Plecmund, a learned Mercian, who had taken refuge
in a solitary island of the county of Chester during the Danish
wars, and whom he made archbishop of Canterbury; finally, he
invited the monk Asser, living at the extremity of Wales, in the
convent of St. David, and whom he soon secured, not only as a
master, but as a friend. It is to Asser that we owe a biography
of Alfred, so minute in its details that it proves beyond
question the great intimacy which existed between the monarch and
the historian.
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Alfred was looking about in all parts for learned men, and was
studying Latin like a schoolboy; but he understood that the
period of purely classical education had passed away. His
childish taste for Saxon poetry had not been obliterated, and his
reverence for his native tongue stimulated him to spread
education among those of his subjects who were not in a position
to devote themselves to the Greek and Latin languages. "It has
appeared to me very useful," he wrote to Bishop Wulfsege, "to
choose a certain number of books, those which it is most
important to render easily accessible to all, and to translate
them into the language which we all understand. We shall thus
easily insure, with God's help, and if peace continues, that all
the youth of this nation, and particularly the young men of rich
and free families, shall apply themselves to the study of
letters, and shall not sacrifice their time in any other exercise
than that of learning the Anglo-Saxon writers. The masters shall
then teach the Latin language to those who shall wish to know
more, and to attain a higher standard of instruction. After
having reflected upon the nature of this instruction, I have
chosen the book which is called in Latin _Pastoralis_, and
which we call _The Book of the Pastor_. The learned men whom
I have around me explained it to me, and when I fully arrived at
the precise meaning of it, I translated it into Anglo-Saxon,
sometimes literally, sometimes taking only the thoughts, and
writing them in the manner which appeared best in order to make
them easily comprehensible, and I have sent a copy of the work to
each bishop in the kingdom."
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After having begun this great work of clothing in a scarcely
formed language the beauties of classical literature, Alfred did
not remain idle. Impossible labors have been attributed to him; a
translation of the entire Bible; the revision of a portion of
_The Saxon Chronicles_, &c. It is positively known, however,
that he translated, besides _The Pastor_, long fragments of
_The Soliloquies_ of St. Augustine, which he called
_Culled Flowers;_ _The Ecclesiastical History_ of Bede;
the historian Orosius; and the book of Boethius on _The
Consolation of Philosophy_. There even exist of his, some
poems, translations or rather imitations of the verses which
Boethius had scattered throughout his book, and which Alfred
often altered to suit his own taste and the tastes of the race of
men for whom he was writing.
How can such great tasks, which would have sufficed to fill up
the lifetime of an author, have been accomplished during that of
a king whose reign was partly taken up by his wars against the
Danes? The good order which prevailed in all the undertakings of
Alfred can alone answer this problem. Subject to violent attacks
of sickness, loaded with work and with cares, he had divided his
time into three parts: the first belonged to his regal duties;
the second to his religion, to prayer and study; the third was
devoted to his repasts, to sleep, and to bodily exercise; but the
portion allotted to sleep was very short. The king was often
awake during a great portion of the night, and having neither a
clock, nor a sand time-measurer, he was struck with the idea of
having some tapers or candles made, which should burn for a
certain time, and by means of which he should be enabled to count
the hours. Unluckily, however, a gust of wind would sometimes
penetrate into the royal tent and make the candles burn too
rapidly, and then the king would suddenly lose all means of
reckoning the time, until the sun came to give him its infallible
direction.
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His strength was quickly consumed in this struggle against human
weakness. When scarcely fifty-two years of age, Alfred was dying.
He sent for his son Edward: "Come and stand beside me," he said;
"I feel that my last moment is near; we must part. I am going to
another world, and you will be alone with all my riches. I beg
you, for you are my beloved child, strive to be a good master and
a father to your people. Relieve the poor, support the weak, and
apply yourself with all your might to the redress of wrongs. And
then, my son, govern yourself according to your own laws; then
the Lord will help you and will grant you His supreme reward.
Invoke Him that He may advise and direct you in your
difficulties, and He will help you to accomplish as well as
possible your designs." It was in the same manner that, three
hundred and fifty years later, when dying upon the shore at
Tunis, St. Louis recommended his son to France. Great kings and
great Christians both, although very different in character and
ideas, Alfred and St. Louis both deserved the name of "pastors"
of their people, which the gratitude of Englishmen has accorded
to Alfred.
He died on the 20th of October, 901, after having reigned
twenty-nine years, and he was interred at Winchester, in the
monastery which he had founded there. It is not there, but at
Wantage--at the spot where he was born--that the grateful memory
of England caused the celebration of the jubilee on the occasion
of the thousandth anniversary of the birthday of Alfred the
Great. On the 25th of October, 1849, a vast concourse of people
went to Wantage to do honor to the memory of a king so much
beloved. The assemblage decided on the publication of his
complete works, a monument less durable than the gratitude graven
by his deeds on the heart of his people.
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