Chapter III: His Translations and His Will (1)

His translations—Bede’s _Ecclesiastical History of the
English Race_—_The Pastoral Care_—State of learning in
Wessex, Mercia, and Northumbria—Ideal of a bishop’s
life—Orosius—Boethius—Alfred’s religious opinions—John
the Scot—Alfred’s will—Hyde Abbey—State of Rome—Religious
references—Religious bequests—Slaves.

The general drift of Alfred’s opinion as to the sort of learning most needed by his people is to be gathered from his choice of books to be put before them in their native language. These were four. For general history, and for history and geography relating to their own race on the continent of Europe, he chose Orosius: for mental study, the _Consolation_ of Boethius: for realisation of the true principles of the life and work of religion, the _Pastoral Care_: for the Church history of the English people, of course the great and priceless book of the Venerable Bede. Of this last we need say nothing. Nor need we dwell upon the fact that Alfred may be said to have created the continuity of early English history by his establishment of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle under Plegmund.

The preface to Alfred’s translation into English from the Latin of Pope Gregory’s _Pastoral Care_, a treatise on the life and work of a bishop, gives us so clear an insight into the king’s mind, and such valuable information as to the state of learning in his time, that it deserves to be printed in full. Three of the copies of which the king speaks are in existence, one addressed to Archbishop Plegmund of Canterbury, one to Bishop Wulfsige of Sherborne, and the third to Bishop Werefrith of Worcester.

THIS BOOK IS FOR WORCESTER

King Alfred greets Bishop Wærferth with loving words and with
friendship. I let it be known to thee that it has very often
come into my mind, what wise men there formerly were throughout
England, both of sacred and secular orders; and how happy
times there were then throughout England; and how the kings
who had power over the nation in those days obeyed God and his
ministers; and they preserved peace, morality, and order at
home, and at the same time enlarged their territory abroad;
and how they prospered both with war and with wisdom; and
also the sacred orders how zealous they were both in teaching
and learning, and in all the services they owed to God; and
how foreigners came to this land in search of wisdom and
instruction, and how we should now have to get teachers from
abroad if we were to have them. So general was the decay in
England that there were very few on this side of the Humber
who could understand their rituals in English, or translate a
letter from Latin into English; and I believe that there were
not many beyond the Humber. There were so few of them that I
cannot remember a single one south of the Thames when I came
to the throne. Thanks be to God Almighty that we have any
teachers among us now. And therefore I command thee to do as
I believe thou art willing, to disengage thyself from worldly
matters as often as may be, that thou mayest apply the wisdom
which God has given thee wherever thou canst.[18] Consider what
punishments would come upon us on account of this world, if we
neither loved wisdom ourselves nor suffered other men to obtain
it: we should love the name only of Christian, and very few
of the virtues. When I considered all this I remembered also
how I saw in my own early days, before all had been ravaged
and burnt, how the churches throughout the whole of England
stood filled with treasures and books, and there was also a
great multitude of God’s servants. But they had very little
knowledge of the books, for they could not understand anything
of them because they were not written in their own language.
As if they had said: “Our forefathers, who formerly held these
places, loved wisdom, and through it they obtained wealth and
bequeathed it to us. In this we can still see their tracks, but
we cannot follow them, and therefore we have lost both the
wealth and the wisdom, because we would not incline our hearts
after their example.” When I remembered all this, I wondered
extremely that the good and wise men who were formerly all over
England, and had perfectly learnt all the books, did not wish
to translate them into their own language. But again I soon
answered myself and said: They did not think that men would
ever be so careless, and that learning would thus decay; so
they abstained from translating, and they hoped that wisdom in
this land would increase, and our knowledge of languages. Then
I remembered how the law was first known in Hebrew, and again,
when the Greeks had learnt it, they translated the whole of
it into their own language, and all other books besides. And
again, the Romans, when they had learnt it, they translated
the whole of it through learned interpreters into their own
language. And also all other Christian nations translated parts
of it into their own languages. Therefore it seems better to
me, if ye think so, for us also to translate some books which
are most needful for all men to know into the language which
we can all understand. And I would have you do as we very
easily can if we have tranquillity enough, that is, set all
the youth now in England of free men, who are rich enough to
be able to devote themselves to it, to learn, as long as they
are not old enough for other occupations, until they are well
able to read English writing. And let those be afterwards
taught more in the Latin language who are to continue learning
and be promoted to a higher rank. When I remembered how the
knowledge of Latin had formerly decayed throughout England,
and yet many could read English writing, I began, among other
various and manifold troubles of this kingdom, to translate
into English the book which is called in Latin _Pastoralis_,
and in English _Shepherd’s Book_, sometimes word for word and
sometimes according to the sense, as I had learnt it from
Plegmund my archbishop, and Asser my bishop, and Grimbold my
mass-priest, and John my mass-priest.[19] And when I had learnt
it as I could best understand it and as I could most clearly
interpret it, I translated it into English; and I will send a
copy to every bishopric in my kingdom; and on each there is a
[clasp and chain][20] worth fifty mancuses. And I command in
God’s name that no man take the [clasp] from the book or the
book from the minster. It is uncertain how long there may be
such learned bishops as, thanks be to God, there now are nearly
everywhere; therefore I wish these books always to remain in
their place, unless the bishop wish to take them with him, or
they be lent out anywhere, or any one make a copy from them.

Then the book itself is made to speak, as the Cross speaks in the early Anglian Dream of the Holy Rood:—

This message Augustine over the salt sea brought from the
south to the islanders, as the Lord’s champion had formerly
indited it, the Pope of Rome. The wise Gregorius was versed in
many true doctrines through the wisdom of his mind, his hoard
of studious thoughts. For he gained over most of mankind to
the Guardian of heaven, best of Romans, wisest of men, most
gloriously famous. Afterwards King Alfred brought every word of
me into English, and sent me to his scribes south and north;
ordered more such to be brought to him, that he might send them
to his bishops, for some of them needed it, who knew but little
Latin.

(_Cottonian Library_)]

It is not our business here to consider the contents of Pope Gregory’s treatise on the shepherding of the people. But the headings of two or three of the sixty-five chapters will show what the attraction for Alfred’s mind was. The first chapter argues “that unlearned men are not to presume to undertake teaching.” To prevent this was a purpose with Alfred; he faced obloquy, it is said, rather than fill bishoprics with unlearned men. The second chapter forbids even learned men to undertake to teach if they are not ready to live in accordance with their own precepts. The third and fourth chapters no doubt appealed to himself as a secular governor, though they related to spiritual government, “how he who governs must despise all hardships, and how afraid he must be of every luxury,” and “how often the occupations of power and government distract the mind of the ruler.” The sixty-fifth chapter brings the whole to a conclusion with an argument thoroughly after Alfred’s own heart: “When any one has performed all the duties of his pastoral charge, let him then consider and understand his own self, lest either his exemplary life or his successful teaching puff him up.”

In his translation of the history and geography of Orosius he does not interpolate information where we might not unnaturally have expected him to do so. Of his large and valuable interpolations of a geographical character, and in regard to the history of the Teutonic races, mention is no doubt made in another chapter. In the sixth book, to mention two cases where Orosius writes of the times of Constantius and Constantine, and makes references to Britain, he does not speak of Christianity here, and Alfred does not add anything. Orosius speaks of many martyrs under Diocletian, not localising any. Again, Alfred does not add anything. Two quaint phrases the king employs:—“In those days Arius the mass-priest was in error with regard to the right faith”;—“Constantine was the first emperor who ordered churches to be built, and locked up the devil’s houses.”

It is not to be wondered at that Alfred determined to translate into English the _Consolation_ of Boethius, and his interpolations show how dear the book was to his heart and to his reason. King and people alike had gone through much trial and suffering, and such happiness and prosperity as they had was at best very precarious. The book of _Consolation_ which Boethius wrote in the sad days when all his great prosperity had passed from him, and he waited in chains for the last fatal word of the tyrant, was well suited for men and women situated as the English then were. Boethius himself, who was executed in 524, was both a very learned Christian and a deeply-read student of classical philosophy. His Consolations are taken entirely from philosophy, but they have the Christian spirit. They thus supplement the help which the Christian religion gives to those in anxiety, and put into the troubled mind fresh and useful trains of thought. This is probably one main reason for the attraction which the book had in the Middle Ages, and we cannot doubt that Alfred had this in view in giving it to his people. Why he did not at the same time have the New Testament translated into English is not clear, for he himself pointed out, in his Preface to the _Pastoral Care_, that the law was first given in Hebrew, and then necessarily translated into Greek, and Latin, and the languages of the various nations which embraced Christianity. William of Malmesbury tells us that the king did as a matter of fact set about translating the Psalter, but died before the first part was done.

Besides the hint which his translation of Boethius gives, it is on another account probable that Alfred took a broad view of religious questions. If the evidence is to be accepted as sufficient, he was a patron of Johannes Scotus Erigena. John the Scot, that is, as we should now say, the Irishman, had made the Continent too hot to hold him by the breadth of his religious views. He refused to distinguish religion from philosophy, an attitude of mind which may have specially influenced Alfred, who had probably known him as a boy at the court of Charles the Bald, where John acted as tutor to Judith. He had maintained, too, that authority, when it is not confirmed by reason, is of no value. He had made a determined stand against the new and materialistic teaching on the Real Presence, known as transubstantiation. He found a refuge at the court of Alfred. This can scarcely have meant less than that Alfred, to some extent at least, shared his opinions; and if that was so, we see an additional reason for Alfred’s admiration of Boethius, and we have some explanation of the character of the provisions of the will by which the king disposed of his property.

In those days, and in days earlier still, to teach an unpopular opinion was a dangerous thing. Great violence was not unknown in schools of learning. Even in modern times we hear a good deal of the violence of students in Paris and in other universities of the Continent. When Archbishop Theodore came over to England in 664 and began to teach, there were very sharp passages at arms between the teacher and the Irish students who attended his lectures. Aldhelm was a student at Canterbury at the time, and he describes one of these encounters, where the Irish students baited their lecturer, Archbishop though he was. The old student and lecturer of the University of Athens was more than a match for them. “He treated them,” Aldhelm wrote to a friend, “as the truculent boar treats the Molossian hounds. He tore them with the tusk of grammar, and shot them with the deep and sharp syllogisms of chronography, till they cast away their weapons and hurriedly fled to the recesses of their dens.” In Wessex the students went further still. One John—almost certainly not the famous John of whom we are speaking, though mediæval writers took him to be the same—so irritated the students of the great school of Malmesbury, that they set on him with the sharp iron styles of the time, which represented our modern pens, and inflicted wounds of which he died. William of Malmesbury gives the epitaph of this John from a tomb on the left side of the altar at Malmesbury; he is described as the holy sophist John, and is said to have been a martyr. William does not absolutely identify him with Johannes Erigena, but he describes him as Johannes Scottus, and says that he had been at the court of Charles the Bald, and was attracted by the munificence of Alfred. We may fairly say that William believed their John to be the Erigena, and we may almost certainly say that in that belief he was wrong.

John the Erin-born is usually said to have died about 886. There is thus no difficulty on the score of dates in the way of his being at Alfred’s court. He must have been an oldish man, for he was a prominent controversialist as early as 854.

Alfred’s will is on all accounts a document of very great interest. We have noticed already the provisions of his father’s will, so far as they have been preserved for us, and with these we cannot but contrast the corresponding parts of Alfred’s disposition of his property. Many details of the will we must for our present purpose pass by, notwithstanding their general importance: they are no doubt dealt with in another chapter.

Alfred’s will exists in an Anglo-Saxon form and in a Latin form. It is preserved in the Register of Newminster, which Alfred founded at Winchester. This institution was afterwards moved to Hyde. The will was copied into the Register now known as the Register of Hyde Abbey, about the years 1028-1032.

Ethelwulf had bequeathed considerable sums to the Church of St. Peter and the Church of St. Paul at Rome, and to the Pope. Alfred had sent presents to Rome. From 883 to 890 there are four records of West Saxon gifts. But after 890 there is no record, and in Alfred’s will no mention is made of the chief city of the Western world or of the spiritual head of the Church of the West. One explanation may be that at his death the sad period had already begun which makes men of all Christian creeds hang their heads with shame that such things could be. King Alfred’s court was unique among secular courts in its purity and order; the papal court had entered upon one of those phases in its existence where it has stood out prominently among the most impure and disorderly spots on the face of the known earth. It is enough, for any one who knows the meaning of the references, to glance at the table of contents of a Church history for the years 896 and 897:—“Death of Pope Formosus; Pope Boniface VII.; trial and condemnation of the body of Formosus by Pope Stephen VI.; Pope Stephen strangled; Pope Romanus; Pope Theodorus II.; Pope John IX.; Pope Sergius IV.; Marquisate of Tusculum; Theodora and Marozia.” We can well understand that not all Alfred’s reverence for the place where lay the bodies of St. Peter and St. Paul could overcome the effect of a record so grievous as that.

Turning to those parts of Alfred’s will which have a directly religious bearing, it is impossible not to be struck by the obliqueness of the religious references. Of his reliance on divine help and his trust in divine assistance there is no doubt. He clearly regarded these as powers actually at work in the world, and as the one only means by which the actions of those who should follow him might be rightly guided. It is by God’s support that he trusts his will may be carried out. He is king by God’s grace. He has considered of his soul’s health, and of the inheritance which God and his ancestors did give; but he is reserved and allusive where other men of the time were detailed and definite. The air of reserve would almost seem to indicate that the teaching of John the Erin-born, while it had not in the least shaken the confidence of his faith and trust, had seriously indisposed him to speak in confident detail of the relations of man’s service to God’s help. “Let them distribute, for me and for my father and for the friends that he interceded for and I intercede for, 200 pounds; 50 to the mass-priests all over my kingdom, 50 to the poor servants of God, 50 to the distressed poor, 50 to the church where I shall rest.” “And I will that they do restore to the families at Domersham their land-deeds and their liberty to choose any man they will [_i.e._ to continue to live under that lord or to choose another], for me and for Ælflæd [his eldest daughter] and for the friends that she did intercede for and I do intercede for.” “And let them also seek with a living price[21] for my soul’s health so far as may be[22] and as is fitting and as ye to give me shall be disposed.” It has been clearly shown that _on cwicum ceape_ was a recognised phrase for “with live stock.” The reserve of Alfred’s language in this, the most important part of his will in mediæval opinion, is worthy of note. Indeed, the absence of definite words which might have been expected is so marked that in another Latin copy, a very incorrect translation of part of the Anglo-Saxon will, they are added, but curiously enough are connected solely with the restoration of the land-books to the people at Domersham. The freeing of slaves was a religious work. It will be seen that as a religious work Alfred himself regarded it. “I beseech in God’s name and in the name of His Saints that no one of my relations or heirs obstruct the freedom of those whom I have redeemed. The West-Saxon Witan have pronounced it lawful that I may leave them free or bond as I will. But I, for God’s love and for my soul’s advantage, will that they be master of their freedom and of their will; and in the name of the living God I bid that none disturb them, neither by money exaction nor by any manner of means.”

It is a well-known fact that the Church set before men the duty of giving slaves their freedom. Late in the seventh century, Bishop Wilfrith released 250 men and women whom he found attached as slaves to his estate of Selsey; and Archbishop Theodore denied Christian burial to the kidnapper, and prohibited the sale of children by their parents after the age of seven. In the year 816, the archbishop and bishops of the southern province, thirteen in number, met in council at Celchyth (Chelsea), and bound themselves by canon to free at their death every Englishman, who, during their tenure of the lands of the bishoprics, had become a slave, the usual causes of enslavement in time of peace being poverty or crime. There is a canon of that council, directed against the abstraction of monastic charters and lists of landed property, which has a very modern sound about its title, “that monasteries be not deprived of their telligraphs.”

We cannot close this chapter better than with Alfred’s own right royal words. “I can assert this in all truth, that during the whole course of my existence I have always striven to live in a becoming manner, and at my death to leave to those who follow me a worthy memorial in my works.”

ALFRED AS WARRIOR

BY CHARLES OMAN

ALFRED AS WARRIOR

Of all the aspects of Alfred’s many-sided life there is none more interesting, yet more baffling, than his military career. We know its outlines: his lot fell in the direst time of storm and stress that had ever come upon the English; he weathered the tempest which had so sorely buffeted his father and his brothers, and steered the ship of the state into calmer waters. We have a not inconsiderable bulk of records concerning his campaigns, yet again and again the why and the wherefore of triumph and defeat elude us. The all-important details which would explain why things went ill in 872 and well in 878, why Basing saw a disaster and Buttington a victory, are withheld. The unwearied king marches east and marches west, now with a large army, now with a mere handful of men; he reaches his foes and brings them to bay; then “the heathen are put to flight,” or, on the other hand, “after great slaughter on both sides the Danes hold possession of the place of battle”; but whether superior tactics, or superior numbers, or superior endurance won the day is concealed from us. It is seldom that even the most vague and general features of the fight are narrated: of really important engagements like Ashdown or Eddington, or the struggle on the Lea, we know only just enough to make us desire to know more.

Fortunately we are able to make out a good deal more about the strategy than about the tactics of Alfred’s campaigns. His itineraries are generally preserved, and the natural features of hill and vale and marsh and wood can easily be ascertained. Similarly there is a certain amount to be recovered concerning his work as a military organiser, though here our authorities give us hints rather than facts, and make it very hard to disentangle his reforms from those of his worthy successor, Edward the Elder.

When Alfred first looked upon the face of war, the English had been already engaged for some seventy years in their great struggle to drive off the Vikings, and were prospering little in the attempt. The period during which the invaders had contented themselves with sporadic descents on the towns and monasteries hard by the sea, was long over. They were now cutting their way deep into England from every side, and prolonging their stay more and more every year. While Alfred was still a child by his mother’s knee, a yet more threatening stage had been reached: instead of returning to their homes by the Danish and Norwegian fiords, when autumn drew to an end, the enemy had begun to fortify some ness or island by the English shore, and to abide there all the winter months. The period of objectless plunder was drawing near its end, and that of settlement and conquest was approaching.

It is not hard to make out the main causes of the ineffectiveness of the resistance which the English kingdoms offered to the invader; they were much the same as those which were to be seen in the Frankish empire on the other side of the British Channel—the want of any central organisation for combined defence—the want of any large bodies of professional fighting-men, fully equipped with the best arms of the day—the scarcity of fortified places—the non-existence of a war-fleet. In respect of the first of these matters the English were in some ways more unfortunate, in others happier, than the Franks. On the Continent the Vikings were confronted by a vast empire which was beginning to drop to pieces from its own weight; the realm of Charlemagne would have split up into national kingdoms even if there had been no invaders from outside to hasten the process. Particularism and heritage-partition were the order of the day; it was impossible to hope that the numerous descendants of the great Carling house would loyally aid each other against the external enemy, or that their heterogeneous subjects would care much for the woes of their neighbours. In England, on the other hand, the national evolution of the times was tending towards union. Even before the effects of the Danish invasions began to be felt, the states of the Heptarchy were already beginning to draw together into larger units. Offa the Mercian (755-794) had been suzerain of all England in a far truer sense than any of the early “Bretwalda” kings that were before him. He had annexed kingdoms like Kent, Essex, East Anglia, instead of merely making their monarchs do him homage. These states rose again for a short space at his death; but when Egbert won the supremacy for Wessex a few years later, the same tendency was apparent: that great warrior was able to incorporate the old realms of Kent and Sussex with his ancestral dominions, nor did they ever again free themselves from dependence on the house of Cerdic. It was clear that England was tending to group itself into no more than three or four large states: the smaller tribal nationalities were beginning to be absorbed in the greater. Thus, though Egbert and his successor Ethelwulf were kings south of Thames alone, and only enjoyed a precarious suzerainty north of it, yet there was some hope for the future. The fatal disruptive tendencies visible among the Franks were not paralleled on this side of the Channel.

In the second point wherein the old Christian kingdoms were at a disadvantage when struggling with the Dane—the want of a large and well-armed body of trained fighting-men—England was probably in a worse condition than her continental neighbour. Both possessed two classes of warriors—a small body of wealthy landed vassals of the king, bound to him by special oaths of allegiance, and the general levy of the country-side, torn from the plough when necessity demanded. The former were more or less professional warriors: the English “_gesithcund_ man holding land,” if he neglected his lord’s summons to join the host, forfeited his estate and paid a crushing fine as well: the ordinary peasant, the “ceorlish man,” only suffered pecuniary punishment for the same offence. The _gesiths_, or _thegns_, as they were now beginning to be called, a wealthy, well-armoured military class, were the core of the national host. The rude masses of the half-armed country folk were a far less efficient part of the military forces of the realm. But in England the thegnhood does not appear in the ninth century to have reached nearly the same stage of relative importance as had the Frankish vassals. They would seem to have been less numerous in proportion to the size of the states, and less powerful in the realm. As a combatant body, too, they were inferior, for the Franks had taken to fighting on horseback, and every vassal came to the host not only well armed, but well mounted. The English were still fighting on foot like their ancestors: they did not, indeed, learn cavalry service till the eleventh century. In contending with an active and rapidly moving enemy like the Dane, this want of horsemen was a terrible drawback to the English host.

The third source of weakness which we have named—the scarcity of well-fortified strongholds—was felt both on this and on the other side of the Channel. Neither Frank nor Anglo-Saxon had made any systematic attempt to keep up the great fortresses which they had inherited from the Romans. But here again the English were at a greater disadvantage than their continental neighbours. They had neglected scientific fortification even more than the Franks. They mostly dwelt in open towns and villages; even the ancient Roman walls of great cities like London and York had been allowed to fall into decay. At most they surrounded important positions with a ditch and a stockade; of the building of an actual wall we hear only at one place, the Northumbrian capital of Bamborough. The Franks, among whom city life was far more important than in England, seem to have done somewhat more in the way of keeping up the old Roman _enceintes_ of their great towns. They had also taken of late to the building of strongholds destined to hold down conquered territory. Charlemagne had warred down the obstinate Saxons mainly by rearing line after line of _burgs_ among their heaths and forests. No great English king had yet tried to maintain his control over his vassal-states by such an expedient. Even if the Frankish _burgs_ were but concentric rings of ditch, mound, and palisade, they were by no means lacking in importance in the day of danger.

In the matter of naval defence, on the other hand, there was more hope for England than for her continental neighbours. The Saxons and Angles had always been seafarers: the Franks had never taken to the water. Neither of the nations possessed any regular war-fleet, but in the one the national genius was favourable to its creation; in the other it was not. We hear, indeed, long before Alfred’s day, of intermittent attempts of English kings to do something on the seas. The most notable was the assault on Ireland which the Northumbrian Ecgfrith made in 684. In the days of Alfred’s own father, Ethelwulf, there was at least one endeavour to meet the Danes upon the water: the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells how the Kentish alderman Ealhere “fought in ships” at Sandwich, and “took nine ships of the heathen, and put the rest to flight” (851). It is possible that the same chief was engaged in a second naval battle two years later, for in an unsuccessful attempt which he made to turn the Vikings out of Thanet “there was much slaughter and many men _drowned_ upon both sides.” Thanet being then separated from the Kentish mainland by a broad estuary, it is conceivable that there was some fighting on shipboard on this occasion also.

But any small naval resources which England possessed in the second half of the ninth century seemed hopelessly inadequate to impose the least check on the Danes. The invaders came in squadrons numbered by the hundred vessels. Even after Alfred had begun to take in hand a scheme for building a regular fleet, the English ships were only counted in tens or scores. In our own days a power possessing some few vessels, and expecting invasion, would turn them to use by setting them to watch for the enemy, discover him, and give early knowledge of his approach, or to follow his course and divine his intentions. But such tactics demand vessels that can keep the sea for long spaces of time and in any weather. Neither English nor Danish galleys were suited for such work: they preferred coasting voyages, and touched the shore frequently, creeping from cape to cape and from isle to isle. The only voyage across a broad and open sea was that which was made when a Viking fleet ran straight across from the southwestern cape of Norway instead of coasting along the Danish and Frisian shore. The Scandinavians were daring seamen, but their skill and pluck was shown rather by the way in which they felt their way along dangerous, rock-bound coasts, like those of the Hebrides or Western Ireland, than by passages across the high seas. For such crossings they waited for long spells of fine weather, in order to run the least possible risk. This was only natural, for their ships were but long, light, undecked vessels, depending mainly on their twelve or sixteen oars a side, and only using their sails when the wind set fair. To face a really serious Atlantic storm they were wholly unfitted, and even the rough weather of the Channel could be too much for them. In 877 a whole fleet of a hundred and twenty ships was wrecked near Swanage on the cliffs of the Isle of Purbeck. It was no wonder that they preferred to pick their weather, and to hug the shore, in order that they might run into the nearest haven when a tempest seemed at hand. The seamanship of the English was undoubtedly inferior to that of the Scandinavians in the ninth century, and we may guess that in handiness as well as in numbers they were wholly unable to vie with their enemies before Alfred’s day.

The years 840-880 were the darkest period in the dismal century of the Viking raids. Neither in England nor on the Continent had there been found any effective way of resisting the invaders, nor any great warrior who could inspire his subject with the energy and courage that was needed to face the ever-growing evil. Kings like Ethelwulf or Charles the Bald, however good their intentions, were wholly inadequate to the task. Their warlike sons, Louis III., the victor of Saucourt, and Ethelred, the victor of Ashdown, were cut off in the prime of their years, just when they were beginning to win themselves a name. The Danes went where they would, no longer taking to their ships when the national levy came out against them, but stockading a camp and defying the owners of the soil to evict them from it. Almost always the assaults made on these strongholds ended in disastrous failures: it is hard to say whether the repulse of Charles the Bald at Givald’s Foss (852), of Ethelred at Reading (871), or of Charles the Fat at Ashloh (882), was the more heart-breaking to the landsfolk. It seemed impossible to burst through the bristling line of stakes and ditch manned by the veteran axemen of the heathen bands.

The fact was that the rank and file of the Viking hosts were individually superior to the peasant-levies that strove to overwhelm them. In a Frankish or an English army only counts and aldermen, thegns and wealthy vassals, wore the steel helm and the ring-mail byrnie: the masses that followed them to the field had no more than spear and shield, possessing no defensive armour whatever. The Vikings, on the other hand, were professional fighting-men, armed not only with the “war-nets” that their own smiths could make, but with the spoils of a hundred victorious fights. It was no wonder that they could hold out against very superior numbers of the raw, half-armed militia of the English _Fyrd_ and the Frankish _Ban_. In the ages when personal skill with axe and sword and trained agility of body counted for so much, one practised warrior was worth two farmers fresh from the plough. It required a vast preponderance of force, or a very skilled and fortunate leader, to enable the Christian host to inflict a really crushing defeat on the invaders.

When Alfred was a child the problem seemed growing more hopeless day by day. Even the greatest cities of Western Christendom were falling a prey to the heathen. London had been taken and sacked in 851, Tours in 853, Paris in 857, Winchester in 860. The invading hordes, now carried in fleets of three or four hundred sail, came ashore where they would, seized horses in the country-side and rode across the land, plundering far and wide, to some appointed spot to which their fleet came round and joined them. Or they would draw their ships ashore at some convenient estuary, set a guard over them, and send the rest of the host to make a circular raid, which finally took them back to their camp and their vessels. The former plan was the better, since if the ships ran out to sea after throwing ashore the landing force, the defenders of the realm did not know where the march of the enemy would be directed; while if the fleet was immobilised on some ness or island, it was easy to intercept the raiders, who were bound to make their way back to their base.

The lowest pitch of despair seemed to be reached when in many regions rulers and people ceased to try to defend themselves against the Danes, and merely strove to procure a precarious respite from their oppressors by bribing them to depart and transfer their ravages to other shores. This was done in 865 by the Kentishmen, in 866 by the East Angles, in 869 by the Mercians. Of course the expedient was futile; the news that one Viking host had received a handsome tribute only drew down another, set on obtaining similar booty.

Finally, there came the last step of all: not content with plunder and blackmail the invaders began to think of taking up their permanent residence in the land and making its unfortunate inhabitants their subjects. The idea had already occurred to Jarl Thorgils in Ireland, but his ephemeral kingdom had disappeared at his murder. Now it was renewed in England in 868, after the battle of York, the most fearful disaster which had yet befallen any of the Christian kingdoms. The Danes had stormed the Northumbrian capital: they had slain the two rival kings, Osbert and Ella, who combined to attack them: all the thegnhood of the northern realm had perished. Taking up their quarters in the ancient city of Edwin and Oswald, the conquerors began to parcel out the neighbouring region among themselves as a permanent possession.

It was in the year after this terrible downfall of the Northern Kingdom that Alfred made his first campaign. He was now nineteen, and had just married his Mercian bride, Ealhswith, the daughter of Alderman Ethelred. The enterprise in which he was engaged was one of a very typical character—a dozen expeditions with the same unfortunate end could be cited from the English and Frankish annals of the third quarter of the ninth century. A large Viking host had entered Mercia and forced its way up the Trent as far as Nottingham. King Burgred sent to Wessex to beg the aid of his brother-in-law Ethelred, who marched to his help, taking his brother Alfred with him as second in command. The united hosts of the two English realms were too large for the Vikings to dare to face them in the open field. They stockaded themselves in a great camp on the banks of the Trent and waited to be attacked. The landsfolk laid siege to the stronghold, and strove to storm it; but they utterly failed to break their way in. After lying some time before it, they dispersed in despair: Ethelred and Alfred went home: the unfortunate Burgred then asked for terms, and got rid of the Vikings for a short space by paying them a large tribute. The Danes returned to York, lay there for one year, and then threw themselves upon the East Angles. They slew King Edmund, “the Martyr,” scattered his army, sacked the towns and monasteries of Norfolk and Suffolk, and made themselves masters of the whole realm (870).

Next year the turn of Wessex came: the Mercians had at least bought two years of respite by the treaty of Nottingham. Marching from East Anglia the “Grand Army” of the Vikings crossed the Thames, seized Reading, and stockaded a great camp in the angle between the Kennet and the Thames to serve as a base for their ravaging parties. But in spite of a dozen disasters suffered during the last forty years at the hands of the same enemy, the spirit of Wessex was not yet quenched. Its shire-levies loyally answered King Ethelred’s call, and gathered in great strength opposite the Danish camp. The Berkshire fyrd even succeeded in bringing to bay and destroying at Englefield a large plundering party headed by a Jarl. But the main body of the Vikings was not so easily disposed of. A general attack on their stronghold, headed by Ethelred and Alfred, proved wholly unfortunate. When the assailants had wearied themselves in vain attempts to hew their way through the stockade, and drew off repulsed, the enemy made a sudden sortie: “bursting out of the gates like wolves,” they fell on the shattered ranks of the men of Wessex, drove them away, and held possession of the battle spot. Thinking apparently that the English were disposed of so far as further fighting was concerned, the Vikings now started for a raid westward along the Thames valley: the camps at Sinodun and Pusey, both large and formidable structures, possibly represent their halting-places on the first and second nights of their advance. The third day took them to Ashdown, in the “Vale of the White Horse.” But they found there was still heavy fighting in prospect: the untiring Ethelred and Alfred had rallied their beaten host, and were now hanging on the invaders’ heels and making it impossible for them to scatter after plunder. The heathen kings Halfdan and Bagsceg thereupon determined to take the offensive, and to attack and scatter the men of Wessex before proceeding farther with their raid. They were encamped high on the ridge of the Berkshire Downs, while Ethelred and Alfred lay at some distance below them.

Two such warriors as the sons of Ethelwulf were not likely to decline a fair battle in the open. When the Danes drew up in front of their camp in two heavy bodies, the English arrayed themselves in two corresponding masses. It is now that we get our first concrete and personal notice of Alfred as warrior. His brother the king, pious even to superstition as his father had been, lingered behind in his camp hearing the mass. News was brought him that the Danes were on the move, but he swore that he would not leave his tent till the priest had finished the last word of the service. Alfred meanwhile, not less pious but more practical than his brother, was in his proper place at the head of his division. He waited long for Ethelred, but the king came not, and meanwhile the Danes were drawing near, moving downward in good order along the hillside. If they struck the English host while it stood idly halted on the lower slope, it was certain that they would bear it down by their mere impetus. Then Alfred, taking all the responsibility upon himself, ordered the men of Wessex to advance up the ridge. The four hostile divisions met with a great crash on the down-side, where a single stunted thorn was long pointed out as the actual spot of collision. The struggle was long and fierce; but Alfred, “pushing uphill like a fierce wild boar,” broke the Danish line, and finally the invaders gave way and fled. King Bagsceg and five earls, two Sihtrics, Osbiorn, Fraena, and Harald were slain, with many thousands of their men. Ethelred only arrived in time to urge the pursuit, which was continued for two days, till King Halfdan and the wrecks of his host succeeded in sheltering themselves behind the palisades of their camp at Reading.

Western Christendom had won few such victories over its invaders; yet all the fruits of the success vanished unaccountably in a few weeks. How it came to pass we cannot say, but only fourteen days after Ashdown another fight took place at Basing, a dozen miles south of Reading, and this time Ethelred was defeated. Two months later the war was still lingering on the borders of Berks and Wilts, and a battle was fought at Marton, near Bedwyn, in which Ethelred and Alfred were thoroughly beaten, and the king mortally wounded. He died at Eastertide, and his decease was at once followed by his brother’s election to the throne (871).

Hitherto, save at Ashdown, it has been impossible to separate Alfred’s doings from those of Ethelred. We may guess that much of the untiring energy shown by the men of Wessex was due to the activity of the Etheling rather than to that of his pious elder brother; but we can prove nothing. When, however, Alfred begins to reign in his own right, we can at last make him personally responsible for the conduct of the war.

At first, it must be confessed, we can detect little more than mere courage and perseverance in the young king’s conduct. Of generalship we find no evidence. His first battle was a disaster. The victors of Marton, strengthened by a large new “summer-army” from over-seas, pressed deeper into Wiltshire. Ere Alfred had been a month on the throne, he met them near Wilton, but his army was small. The spirit of Wessex had begun to fail after a year in which eight engagements with the invaders had already been fought, four of which had been bloody defeats. The thegnhood was terribly worn down in numbers, the shire-levies so discouraged that they came to the muster in number far smaller than usual. But Alfred nevertheless offered battle. Taking up a strong position on a hill, he repulsed the Danes with great slaughter when they attacked him. But his army, carried away by their ardour, charged down from its favourable post to cut up the defeated enemy. The Vikings rallied, and turned on their scattered pursuers, whom they finally drove from the field. Thus inauspiciously began Alfred’s independent military career. But in spite of their victory the Danes, who had suffered almost as much as the English in this year of battles, consented to retire from Wessex on receiving a moderate sum of money. Alfred paid them, though he must have been aware that he was only buying a short respite. Time, however, was all-valuable to a king who wished to reorganise his exhausted realm.

For the next four years (872-875) there was comparative peace in Wessex: the enemy was employed partly on the Continent, partly in the conquest of Mercia, whose eastern half they annexed in 874, handing over the western part as a vassal kingdom to “an unwise thegn named Ceolwulf,” who fondly thought that it was possible to settle down as a vassal of the greedy Northmen. Alfred’s main endeavour in these years was to develop a navy; he “built galleys and long-ships,” and exerted himself to find trained crews for them, hiring “pirates”—converted Danes, we may suppose—to teach his own men seamanship. The beginnings of this national fleet must have been modest, for the chronicler thinks it a fact of note that the king’s galleys were able in 875 to attack seven Viking ships, take one, and chase the rest out to sea. Two years later, however, the squadron, as we shall see from its doings, must have developed to a more formidable strength.

It was not till 876 that Alfred’s reorganisation of his realm was put to the test. In that year a great Viking host under the kings Guthrum, Oskytel, and Amund made a sudden dash into Wessex, appeared in Dorsetshire, and seized Wareham, where they stockaded themselves between the Frome and the Trent in one of their usual water-girt camps. Alfred was soon upon them with the whole levy of Wessex, and held them so tightly blockaded—he made no attempt to storm their works after the experience of Reading—that they asked for terms, gave hostages, swore their greatest oath, and promised to depart. But when the king was off his guard all that part of the host that was provided with horses made a sudden sally, slipped through the English lines, and rode day and night till they reached Exeter, which they took by surprise. There they again stockaded themselves, and lay entrenched for the winter of 876-877. The indefatigable king followed them, again drew lines round their camp, and beleaguered them till they were oppressed with famine. They were depending for their relief on a squadron which was to run down the Channel and join them at the mouth of the Exe; but Alfred sent his fleet, such as it was, to intercept the incoming pirates. There was an engagement somewhere off the south coast, from which the Danes retired without winning a victory, and immediately after a great storm cast their vessels on the cliffs of the Isle of Purbeck. A hundred and twenty galleys, with all their crews, are said to have perished near Swanage. Reduced to despair by this news, the Danes at Exeter asked for terms, and departed for Mercia before the summer was out.

This campaign had been such a complete success for Alfred that the events of the next year are a perfect surprise to us—as indeed they were to the contemporary observer; “slay thirty thousand of these heathen in one day,” says Asser, “and on the next sixty thousand will appear.” In the first days of January 878 the main army of the Vikings, starting from Mercia, made a sudden and unexpected descent on Wiltshire, cutting the West-Saxon realm in twain. From a central camp at Chippenham they raided east and west into Hampshire on the one side and Somersetshire on the other. At the same time a separate pirate fleet which had spent its Yule in South Wales crossed the Bristol Channel and threw itself upon North Devon. It must have been the sudden and unexpected character of such an attack at mid-winter which for a moment seemed to have crushed Wessex. The king, who appears to have been in the west at the time, threw himself into the Isle of Athelney with a small band of his thegns and personal retainers, and there built his famous stockade in the marshes of the Parret. Elsewhere there was panic: many men of note fled over-seas to the Franks: large districts offered tribute and submission to the Danish king Guthrum.

But the worst of the panic only lasted a few weeks: before Easter the men of Devonshire rallied and cut to pieces at Kenwith the army from South Wales, slaying its leaders, Ingwar and Hubba, and 1200 of their followers, and capturing their famous Raven standard. Somewhat later the levies of Somerset, Wilts, and Hampshire assembled in the forest of Selwood under the king in person and marched against the Danish camp at Chippenham. The invaders, thinking they were strong enough to fight in the open, moved out to Eddington to meet the advancing English. There they were routed in a battle of which we know no details, save that the king’s men fought in one dense mass—not in two, as at Ashdown—and that the fight was long and desperate. The defeated host fled to its stronghold at Chippenham, on the east bank of the Avon. Alfred followed hard upon them, and, pushing up to the very gates of the stockade, built a camp almost in actual touch with it, so as to make any sortie well-nigh impossible. The Danes were quite unprepared for a siege; they had fondly imagined that Wessex was their own, and had accumulated no stores. In fourteen days they were starved out, and concluded with the king the famous pact which is often, but inaccurately, called the Peace of Wedmore. King Guthrum and thirty of his chiefs consented to receive baptism, did homage to Alfred, and undertook to withdraw from his realm and to trouble him no more. These conditions, it is surprising to find, were punctually fulfilled; the Viking became a Christian, and withdrew his host first to Cirencester in Mercia and then to East Anglia, where they all settled down and gave no trouble for some years. A great fleet which had come up the Thames as far as Fulham, and had been harassing Kent and Western Wessex, lingered some months after Guthrum’s defeat, but gave up its enterprise in the spring of 879, sailed off eastwards, and set itself to ravage Flanders.