Chapter III.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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