CHAPTER VI

ALFRED AND THE SAVING OF WESSEX

The stubborn resistance of Aethelred and Alfred had for the moment saved Wessex; but its immediate effect was to throw the whole force of the Northmen upon the rest of England. The host with which Alfred had been contending withdrew to London, and there it stayed through the winter. A most remarkable fact is that while there Halfdene minted coins, bearing his own name indeed, but distinctively Roman in type. In 873 the unhappy Burhred of Mercia subsidized the invaders to depart, but, as usual, they only shifted their quarters. This time they settled down at Torksey, in Lindsey. A second tribute induced them to move again, but with grim humour they now went forward into the very heart of Mercia and encamped at Repton, near Nottingham. This finally broke the spirit of Burhred, who, in despair, fled to Rome, where he died not long afterwards as a monk. The Danish host thereupon set up a puppet king of their own, in the person of Coelwulf, whom the Chronicle calls an ‘unwise king’s thegn,’ and Asser ‘a certain foolish minister.’ With them he concluded a miserable arrangement, to the effect that when they called upon him he was to resign to them such of his lands as they needed to settle upon. So in utter ignominy the kingdom which had once been the greatest of the English states dragged out its few remaining years.

The ‘Great Army’ now separated. One division under Halfdene went northward to complete the conquest of Northumbria. He wintered on the Tyne (875-876), and harried Bernicia, Strathclyde, and the lands beyond the Forth, now beginning to be known as Scotland, from the nationality of its reigning royal house. In 876 he took up his abode as king at York. Deira was parcelled out among the chiefs and warriors, and the Danish kingdom of York came into being. Bernicia was not annexed; it paid tribute, but lasted on--in a miserable fashion indeed--under the High-Reeves of Bamborough until better days arrived.

The rest of the Vikings--a vast force, says the Chronicle--under three war-kings, Guthrum, Oskytel and Amund, wintered at Cambridge, where they appear to have been joined by fresh bands from abroad. Indeed, seeing that there is no record of Viking ravages either in France or Ireland for some years after 873, it seems that there was something like a grand concentration of all the Scandinavian pirate bands against Wessex. Aethelweard distinctly states that they had planned their attack in conjunction with the Viking hosts that were tormenting Ireland.

For four years Alfred had been unmolested by the Vikings, and had, beyond doubt, been working hard at the reorganization of his defences. Probably his military reforms were on the line of those which he effected later--recruiting the thegnhood, the military class, which was bound to follow the King to war, improving the arrangements for mobilizing the _land-fyrd_, and fortifying the chief towns and strategic points. But he did more than this. With a farsightedness which raises him above all early mediæval Western monarchs, save Charles the Great, he saw that the only sure way to curb the Vikings was to meet them at sea, and began to build a fleet. Under the date 875 the Chronicle says: ‘This summer went Ælfred the King out to sea with an armed fleet, and fought with seven pirate ships. One he took, and the others dispersed.’ That obscure sea-skirmish has a hallowed interest, for it was the first victory of the world-conquering British Navy.

But as yet Alfred’s great reforms were in their infancy; his plans were only traced out, not yet executed. The flood was rising, and burst over devoted Wessex before the barriers which were to stay it had been raised.

As soon as the season permitted, the ‘Great Army’ left Cambridge, made a night march to the Thames, and crossing it unopposed, rushed by forced marches across Wessex to Wareham, in Dorsetshire. It is to be noted that Winchester was avoided; evidently it had been fortified since the sack of 860. At Wareham the Danes were well placed for attacks on Wessex, and for a junction with their allies from Ireland, who came up immediately afterwards with a fleet of 120 ships. But Alfred was as prompt as his foes, and scarcely had the Vikings effected their junction when he blockaded Wareham with a large army. The result was that the Danes could only effect some sporadic raids of Dorset by sea. They finally extricated themselves by an act of treachery. They opened negotiations, and Alfred was ready to buy them off. Every year of immunity from pillage gained was to his advantage. The Viking chiefs swore a peculiarly solemn oath to observe the fact on a sacred ring or bracelet. Having thus thrown their enemies off their guard, the whole mounted part of the host sallied out from their entrenchments, cut their way through Alfred’s lines, and dashed through Dorset into Devon. Alfred, leaving part of his force to continue the blockade, promptly pursued, and finally besieged his treacherous foes in Exeter.

We hear nothing all this time of naval operations, but now Asser appears to imply that an English squadron assisted in the blockade of Exeter. The Danes at Wareham embarked early in 877 on the ships from Ireland in order to join their comrades, but the fleet was caught in a storm and cast ashore near Swanage. Scarce a ship escaped, and almost all the crews were drowned or massacred. The army in Exeter was now isolated, and late in the summer, having exhausted its provisions, offered to treat. ‘They gave him as many and as great hostages as he demanded, and swore solemn oaths to observe strictest friendship.’ They retired to Cirencester.

The wretched Coelwulf II. was now called upon to surrender his kingdom, according to the ignominious treaty of 874, and the Northmen proceeded to settle down. Ultimately they occupied the whole of Mercia, east of a line extending roughly from Macclesfield to Oxford; but probably only a beginning of the settlement was made in this year. A large portion of the host remained at Cirencester under Guthrum, and it now, in defiance of its solemn engagements, concerted a fresh attack on Alfred with the Vikings of Ireland. A force of the latter, under Hubba, was in South Wales, and communication was easy. The levies of Wessex had dispersed after their long service. Alfred was keeping his New Year festivities when the stunning tidings came that the treacherous horde had ‘stolen’ from Cirencester into Wessex, and was entrenching itself at Chippenham. Defence was impossible. Raiding bands at once began to burn and waste the heart out of the astounded peasantry; the foul treachery and suddenness of the attack made its success complete. It seemed as if all were lost. Many districts submitted; many people fled terror-stricken to France.

Yet it was but for a moment. Amid the panic and confusion there were brave men who kept their heads. The King, with his immediate following, retreated to the Isle of Athelney, in the marshes of the Parret, and there entrenched himself. His position was inaccessible, and he was able to rally the levies of the neighbourhood, and to commence a series of counter-attacks on the Danish raiding columns. Aethelnoth, Ealdorman of Somerset, succeeded in collecting some more of his country levies, and entrenched himself in the woods, while Ealdorman Odda gathered the men of North Devon at Cynuit, perhaps, as tradition indicates, Kenwith, or Henniborough (? Cynuit-burh), near Bideford. In the west, at least, there was no thought of surrender. The King was able to send out messengers to summon the _fyrd_, and though his position was critical, there is no reason whatever to believe that he was ever a solitary fugitive.

Still, it must not be forgotten that at this supreme moment the outlook was very black. Did the Danes hear of Alfred’s intended mobilization, they might destroy the shire contingents in detail as they moved up to the rendezvous at ‘Ecgberht’s Stone,’ by Selwood Forest. As a matter of fact, they appear to have been in a state of over-confident security. There is not a sign to indicate that they attempted to interfere with the concentration.

Meanwhile the first blow against the invaders had been struck. Hubba had duly made his attack. After ravaging the coast of Devon, he had sat down before Cynuit with twenty-three ships’ crews. The place was strong by nature, though ill fortified with a rough palisade; and Hubba did not care to assault it, but trusted to a blockade. Odda and his following did not wait to be starved out. They made a desperate sortie upon the Viking camp, and gained a complete victory, slaying 840 or 1,200 men, with Hubba himself, and capturing the most famous of the Viking ‘Land-ravager’ standards, a raven banner that had been embroidered by Ragnar’s three daughters for their three terrible brothers.

The victors probably then marched to join the King, and in the seventh week after Easter Alfred was able to move. The men of Somerset, Wiltshire, Hampshire, and Dorset, had at last gathered at ‘Ecgberht’s Stone,’ and now they were joined by the King amid a scene of wild enthusiasm. Next day the united army marched to Iglea, near Warminster, and on the following morning encountered the Danes, who, hearing of the concentration, had advanced from Chippenham to Ethandune (probably Edington). The English were formed in a _densa testudo_, which, perhaps, means that Alfred concentrated a heavy column against part of the enemy’s line. At any rate, his victory was complete; the Danish army was thoroughly broken. Its remains took refuge in the camp at Chippenham, where they were immediately blockaded, and, after fourteen days of siege, forced by famine to surrender.

Alfred’s terms show how far he rose above his contemporaries. His beaten foes were to give hostages, Guthrum and the principal chiefs were to become Christians, and the army was to leave Wessex. That the terms were faithfully observed may be fairly ascribed not to any feeling of moral obligation on the part of the Northmen, but to the fact that they had been thoroughly defeated, and to the influence of the great King’s personality.

So Wessex was safe, for it was probable that the Vikings would be very slow to attack the gallant state again. Though a fresh pirate horde arrived at Fulham in 879 while Guthrum was moving to settle in East Anglia, their predecessors would not join with them, and the new-comers returned across the Channel and attacked Flanders. Guthrum himself took his Christianity very seriously, and paid special honour to the name of St. Eadmund; but his kingly power appears to have been somewhat vague, and his followers were unruly. Alfred was left in peaceful possession of his sorely-tried heritage, and set himself to that wonderful task of reorganization and civilization, the execution of which is his noblest title to fame.

The parts of England that still retained independence were Wessex, Sussex, Kent, and Western Mercia, the latter under the rule of several ealdormen, of whom the chief was a certain Aethelred, who is usually given the quasi-royal title of ‘Lord.’ It is not quite certain, however, whether he did homage to Alfred until some years later.

Alfred’s domestic reforms need not be more than mentioned here. His military reorganization included the enlargement of the thegnhood by admitting into it prosperous farmers and merchants, and organization of the _fyrd_, so that a competent force could take the field without allowing the land to fall out of cultivation--a most important matter in days when army and people were one. Fortification was systematically carried out, and garrisons were provided by a plan which was consciously or unconsciously based on that of the Roman military colonies. To each fortress were attached estates cultivated by military settlers, but the latter were regularly stationed in the burh, and probably had their residences there. They constituted the famous _burh-ware_ (_lit._ fort-folk), which played a great part in the defence of England during the next century. Above all, Alfred steadily added to his fleet, though it was not until the end of his reign that it was able to play an important part.

For some years after 878 Alfred remained in peace, energetically pushing on his reforms, and drawing closer to Mercia and the distracted Christian states of Wales, which were beginning to find that the ‘Saxon’ was better as a friend than the Viking. The Vikings were ranging about Western Europe, inflicting upon it the direst misery that it had experienced since the Roman eagles flew away, but only once in fourteen years did they attack Alfred. In 885 a part of their main horde sailed up the Medway and besieged Rochester. It was gallantly defended by its _burh-ware_, and in the midst of the siege Alfred came up with a strong force and routed the Vikings, driving them to their ships and capturing their camp, horses, and baggage.

The effect of the raid, however, had been to unsettle some of the East Anglian Danes, who had given the besiegers of Rochester assistance. The English fleet made a retaliatory raid along the East Anglian coast, and captured sixteen ships at the mouth of the Stour, but was then defeated. It was clearly as yet too weak for its work.

Failing to obtain satisfaction from Guthrum or his jarls, Alfred next year attacked the ‘Danelaw’ by land. After severe fighting, London was retaken, and south-eastern Mercia overrun as far as the Lea and Great Ouse. Alfred’s conquests were definitely confirmed to him next year by a treaty with Guthrum. The Roman walls of London were repaired, and the city occupied by a strong military colony.

The result of these successes was that not only the Mercians under Ealdorman Aethelred, but also the princes of Wales, formally paid homage to Alfred. He strengthened the tie with Mercia by giving Aethelred his daughter Aethelflaed to wife. He also placed him in charge of the reconquered districts, which had been mainly Mercian; but evidently not for that reason, but as a personal possession. The English were at last beginning to draw together. For six years Alfred was able to pursue his life-work in peace. The East Anglian Danes observed the treaty of 886; those of Northumbria also had a Christianized chief, Guthred by name, who kept the peace with Alfred, and when the Vikings again attacked him he was well prepared.

In 891 the Northmen were heavily defeated by Arnulf, King of the East Franks, at Louvain. Thereupon they resolved to turn upon England. They gathered from all quarters to Boulogne, and there remained for several months collecting and building ships. They now, on their short voyages, carried their horses with them, and had done so in the raid of 885. In all they mustered 250 ships, and, perhaps, 10,000 men. A second fleet of eighty ships under Hæsten, the most famous of the Scandinavian sea-kings, assembled farther south. The connection between the two hordes is not clear. Professor Oman suggests that while their action may have been concerted, it is possible that the leaders of the larger force held aloof from Hæsten owing to his selfishness and greed. The evidence of the campaign that followed gives the impression that the two forces acted in concert.

Alfred had also to fear that the settlers of the Danelaw would join the invaders against him. Guthrum of East Anglia had died in 890, and the friendly chief of Deira was associated with a certain Siegfred who was hostile to Alfred. For the present the settlers gave hostages to Alfred as a pledge that they would keep the peace, but they broke it without scruple when occasion offered.

The ‘Great Army’ landed at Lympne, in Kent, late in the autumn of 892. It was a bad base of operations, for it was practically shut off from the inland by the Andredsweald; but the ports were now so well defended that a landing-place was difficult to find. The Danes easily captured an old earthwork at Appledore which the local peasantry tried to defend, and, towing their ships up the harbour, entrenched themselves. ‘Soon after,’ says the Chronicle, ‘came Hæsten with eighty ships into the mouth of the Thames, and wrought him there a work at Middeltun.’

Serious fighting did not begin until the spring of 893. Alfred entrenched himself midway between the two Viking armies, and soon reduced Hæsten to straits, perhaps by the aid of a fleet from London. Hæsten offered to depart and, as a proof of sincerity, handed over his two sons to be baptized. But with the usual Viking treachery, he merely transferred himself to Bemfleet, in Essex. The East Anglian Danes received him with open arms, and a great plan of operations was framed. While Hæsten ‘contained’ the English on the Thames, the ‘Great Army’ was to penetrate across the Weald into Wessex, sending a detachment with the fleet to Hæsten. Meanwhile forty Northumbrian Danish ships were to enter the Bristol Channel, and 100 more, partly Northumbrian, partly East Anglian, would sail down the east coast and attack Wessex from the south.

The ‘Great Army’ passed safely through the Weald, and began to waste eastern Wessex. Alfred himself seems to have been in the west; but the English army, under his son Eadward, abandoned its central position in Kent, and, hurrying through Surrey, overtook the Vikings at Farnham, and defeated them with great loss. Their chief ‘king’ was wounded, and they fled in disorder across the Thames into Herts, where they took refuge on Thorney Isle, in the Colne. Eadward followed and blockaded them; but then, hearing that his father was coming with fresh forces, allowed his half-starved county levies to return home. Alfred was near at hand when he heard that the Anglo-Danish fleets were attacking Exeter and northern Devon. Thereupon he turned back, sending only a detachment to Eadward. With these troops the prince resumed the blockade, and was soon joined by Ealdorman Aethelred and the Mercians. The Vikings then promised to depart, and gave hostages; but they only dispersed into the Danelaw, and were soon in arms again.

Hæsten at Bemfleet had been joined by the main Viking fleet, and was wasting Mercia with part of his force, the rest being left to guard the camp. Aethelred and Eadward did not waste time in pursuing him; but turned back to London, gathered up its _burh-ware_, and marched against Bemfleet. ‘Then came the King’s men and defeated the enemy, broke down the work, took all that was therein--money, women, and children--and brought all to London.’ Hundreds of ships must have been taken, and among the prisoners were Hæsten’s wife and his two sons. Hæsten, returning from his raid, found only ruins at Bemfleet.

He must be credited at least with admirable pertinacity and courage. He established himself at Shoebury, and rallied there the broken sections of the Viking host. Reinforced by East Anglians, he again made a dash westward, hurrying along the Thames Valley to the Lower Severn, and then turning northward. At Buttington, on the Severn, he was overtaken by the Mercians under Aethelred, supported by reinforcements brought up from Wessex by Ealdormen Aethelhelm, and Aethelnoth, and other troops from Wales. He was defeated and blockaded in his camp, only escaping to Shoebury after heavy loss. His hope appears to have been to join the Northumbrian fleet, but Alfred had relieved Exeter, and the discomfited squadrons had gone.

However, Shoebury had become the rendezvous of adventurers from all quarters, and Hæsten, late in the year, broke out once more. Marching night and day, he suddenly appeared in the desolate ruins of Deva, the ‘Chester’ where once Legio Valeria Victrix had made its home, and entrenched himself behind its ramparts. The Mercians were too late to overtake him, and could only waste the neighbourhood so as to straiten him for food.

The events of the next year, 894, are rather obscure. Hæsten, forced to evacuate Chester, wasted North Wales, and finally retreated to Northumbria, and so back to East Anglia. Evidently hoping to be safer so, the Danes established a new camp on Mersey Island, on the Essex coast. Meanwhile the Northumbrian fleet was at last coming to Hæsten’s aid. On its way from the west it attacked Chichester, but was handsomely repulsed, with the loss of several ships. The main force, however, reached Mersey safely, and late in the year the whole host proceeded up the Thames and entrenched itself twenty miles up the Lea. One hears nothing of Alfred or the main English army all the year. It is possible that the King was trying to coerce the Northumbrians, and there is a terribly confused and probably misdated entry in Aethelweard’s Chronicle which seems to point to something of the kind.

The winter of 894-895 passed away with the Danes and the Londoners watching each other on the Lea. So confident were the latter, that early in 895 they, with ‘other folk,’ marched to attack the camp. They were repulsed with loss, including that of four royal thegns. Still, however, the Danes dared not advance on London, and the English were able to cultivate the fields as usual. In the summer Alfred himself with the main English army encamped close to the city, and under his protection the harvest was safely gathered in. Forts were constructed some distance below the Danish camp and the Lea blocked with stockades. The enemy thereupon broke away northward, pursued by the English mounted troops, while the Londoners, for the second time, triumphantly towed a captured fleet into the Pool.

Meanwhile the retreating Danes had made a last dash into north-western Mercia, and entrenched themselves at Quatbridge-on-Severn. There they remained practically blockaded until the winter. The English army then, unable to maintain itself longer, dispersed; but the Danes were half starved and wholly dispirited, and in the spring of 896, when Alfred began to assemble the host to make an end of them, they broke up and scattered, some to the Danelaw: others who were penniless and desperate hired or built ships and went back to France. Alfred’s victory was of far more than local importance. The Vikings had tried their fortune within a few years on both sides of the Channel, and both times had been beaten. The dogged resistance of Alfred had fairly broken up their main host, and it does not appear that so formidable a force was ever again collected by them.

Alfred’s last years were comparatively peaceful. Small pirate squadrons, however, continued to annoy the coast of Wessex, and to cope with them he made great additions to his infant navy, employing in the work members of seafaring Frisians to train his crews. The new ships, however, appear to have been of his own designing--another instance of his wonderful versatility. The chronicler definitely states that they were built ‘as he [Alfred] himself thought they might be most serviceable.’ They were twice as long as the old vessels, swifter, steadier sea-boats, of higher free-board, and with sixty oars or more in addition to their sails. In 897 nine of the new ships fought in action with six Viking vessels in a Devonshire estuary, of which the Chronicle gives what almost reads like the official account.

Three of the Viking vessels were at anchor, the others beached higher up the inlet. Two of the three anchored vessels were immediately taken; the third escaped, but with only five sorely wounded men surviving out of her crew. Meanwhile the tide was ebbing, and seems to have compelled six of the English vessels to stand farther off the shore, leaving the other three aground in the rapidly retreating waves. The Danes on shore waded through shallow water and made desperate attempts to board the stranded ships. Lucomon, a royal reeve (perhaps the commodore of the squadron), was slain, and with him Æthelfrith, one of the King’s herdsmen, three Frisian officers, and sixty-two seamen; but they accounted for one hundred and twenty Danes, and the Viking ships escaped only because the returning tide floated their light craft before the heavier English vessels. Only one of the three Danish vessels succeeded in reaching East Anglia, the other two went ashore on the coast of Sussex, and their crews were captured and hanged at Winchester, by order of the usually so merciful King.

The great King had now completed his gigantic task. He had welded together the unconquered half of England so firmly that there was no fear that the Vikings would overpower its united force. During his reign of over twenty-eight years he was, to a very large extent, occupied in resisting, and in organizing resistance to, the invaders. The success that attended his operations was emphatically due to his fine character, his capacity for organization, his steady concentration on the work of uniting England against the common foe, and his clear-sighted vision that saw the necessity of being able to attack by sea as well as on land; and over and above all these qualities, his power of inspiring men with something of his own exalted ideals. On October 26, 900, he died; probably the greatest, beyond doubt the best and noblest, monarch who has reigned over England.