2). King alfred – the leader of anglo-saxon resistance to the danes

Pre-reading tasks:

1. Trace the main events in Alfred’s life.

2. What is the Twelveth night mentioned in the text?

The Vikings arrived first in about 789 at Portland in Dorset. They killed many and then withdrew. A small incident, but important to the inhabitants of these islands, for this landing and these murders were the beginnings of the age of the Vikings. They returned in 793, as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records.

C+ When the next year the raiders returned and landed near Jarrow they were stoutly attacked while harassed by bad weather. Many were killed. Their 'king' was captured and put to a cruel death, and the fugitives carried so grim a tale back to Denmark that for forty years the English coasts were unravaged. This was probably a small group from a much larger fleet of long snips. They sailed on to the north of Scotland and landed. They set up encampments in Caithness and Sutherland, in the Orkneys and in Shetland. They went on to Ireland and eventually conquered a small community and it is thougnt that the Viking king, Olaf, founded what is now called Dublin. In ad 865 the great invasion of the East coast of England started. And the pickings were great. England was proud of its Christianity, the Church had thrived. The people believed that all they had to do was to pay for the absolution of their many sins. And pay they did. So in church and monastery were stored great treasures and the Vikings were delighted. None more so than the one they called Ivar the Boneless. His father was Ragnar Lodbrok. Ragnar Lodbrok was captured by the King of Northumbria and thrown into a pit of poisonous adders to the. When the four sons of Ragnar Lodbrok heard this, each swore the vengeance known as Blood-Red Eagle. The killer of their father should be captured, his flesh and ribs cut and turned back so that the avenging son could tear out the living lungs - or so legend has it. However, whatever its form, no son took this oath of revenge more seriously than Ivar the Boneless.

C+He it was who planned the great campaigns... In the spring of 866 his powerful army rode north along the old Roman road and was ferried across the Humber. He laid siege to York. And now - too late - the Northumbrians, who had been divided in their loyalties between the two rival kings, forgot their feuds and united in one final effort. They attacked the Danish army before York. At first they were successful; the heathens were driven back upon the city walls. The defenders sallied out and in the confusion the Vikings defeated them all with grievous slaughter, killing both their kings. This was the end of Northumbria. The North of England never recovered its ascendancy.

It is now the century of Alfred the Great. He lived for fifty years, born in 849, died in 899. Most people have heard of Alfred, but few are quite sure what he did, apart from burning some cakes. He tried to keep the Danes at bay by paying them not to fight him - which is where the expression 'Danegeld' comes from. And he has been called the father of the British navy. But he was far more than all these things. He was the grandson of King Egbert, the man who laid the foundations of resistance to the Danes, and younger brother of King Aethelred (not Aethelred the Unready). The two brothers fought the Vikings several times. On one occasion, Aethelred, a pious man, was still at his prayers when one of the battles was joined. But Alfred led the charge against Vikings, 'like a wild boar' according to Bishop Asser of Sherborne.

C+The fight was long and hard. King Ethelred, his spiritual duty done, soon joined his brother. 'The heathens', said the Bishop, 'had seized the higher ground and the Christians had to advance uphill. There was in that place a single stunted thorn-tree which we have seen with our own eyes. Round about this tree, then, the opposing ranks met in conflict, with great shouting from all men — one side bent on evil, the other side fighting for life and their loved ones and their native land. 'At last the Danes gave way, and, hotly pursued, fled back to Reading. They fled till nightfall; they fled through the night and the next day, and the whole breadth of Ashdown - meaning the Berkshire Hills - was strewn with their corpses, among which were found the body of one of the Viking kings and five of his earls. ... in a fortnight they were again in the field. But the Battle of Ashdown justly takes its place among historic encounters because of the greatness of the issue. If the West Saxons had been beaten all England would have sunk into heathen anarchy. Since they were victorious the hope still burned for the civilised Christian existence in this Island. This was the first time the invaders had been beaten in the field… Alfred had made Saxons feel confidence in themselves again They could hold their own in open fight. Shortly after Easter 871, Aethelred died and was buried at Wimborne. Alfred became King but if he had indeed, as Winston Churchill writes, given the people of Wessex confidence, it didn't last. Within a month of becoming king, he was fighting the Danes just outside Salisbury, at Wilton. His losses were horrific. According to The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, after that battle at Wilton, there were at least nine major campaigns against the Vikings in the soutn. And says the Chronicle, 'In the course of this year were slain nine jarls and one king; and this year the West Saxons made peace with the host.' In other words, Alfred bought them off with the Danegeld. The Vikings moved for the winter to London and it's here that coins with the Danish king, Halfdan, on one side and the monogram of London on the other first appeared. The Vikings were intent on staying, if not in London, in England.

C+Alfred and the men of Wessex had proved too stubborn a foe for easy subjugation. Some of the Danes wished to settle on the lands they already held. Henceforward they began to till the ground for a livelihood. Here was a great change. We must remember their discipline and organization. The ships' companies, acting together, had hitherto fought ashore as soldiers. The sailors had turned soldiers, and the soldiers had turned yeomen. The whole of the East of England thus received a class of cultivator who, except for purposes of common defence, owed allegiance to none, who had won his land with the sword, and was loyal only to the army organization which enabled him to keep it. From Yorkshire to Norfolk this sturdy, upstanding stock took root. But this was not to be peace for the Saxons and the Danes. Certainly King Alfred didn't think so. True, he had bought some sort of peace, and he had started to build his famous navy. But The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells that in 875, Alfred 'sailed out to sea with a fleet and fought against seven ships' companies and captured one of them and put the others to flight'.

C+Then in January 878 occurred the most surprising reversal of Alfred's fortunes. His headquarters and Court lay at Chippenham, in Wiltshire. It was Twelfth Night, and the Saxons were off their guard, engaged in pious exercises, or perhaps even drunk. Down swept the ravaging foe. The whole army of Wessex, sole guarantee of England south of the Thames, was dashed into confusion. Many were killed. The most part stole away to their houses. A strong contingent fled overseas. Refugees arrived with appeals at the Court of France. Only a handful of officers and personal attendants hid themselves with Alfred in the marshes and forests of Somerset and the Isle of Athelney which rose from the quags. This was the darkest hour of Alfred's fortunes. Alfred was on the run from the Danes. Some of his own people actually believed him to be dead, or even to have fled the country. But Alfred was hiding and then came a massive and decisive engagement when Alfred gathered his Saxons together, filled with a new spirit. Alfred advanced to Ethandun- now Edington- and on the bare downs was fought the largest and culminating battle of Alfred’s wars… Guthrum, king of the Viking army, found himself penned in his camp… But Alfred meant to make a lasting peace with Guthrum. He had him and his army in his power. He could have starved them into surrender and slaughtered them to a man. He wished instead to divide the land with them, and that the two races, in spite of fearful injuries given and received, should dwell together in amity. He received Guthrum, entertained him for twelve days, presented him and his warriors with costly gifts; Alfred called Guthrum his son. The Danish army moved to East Anglia. But a new Viking army sailed foe England and camped at Fulham. By 886 the situation was so serious that Alfred and the West Saxons fought and took London. Alfred was now the great leader, obeyed, with the exception of the Dane lands, by all the English-speaking peoples.

Alfred the Great made an uneasy truce with the Vikings - or the Danes -in the late 800s, the last years of his life. The map of England, Scotland and Wales looked something like this: Wales was much as it is now. Wessex was a triangle with one comer in Land's End, another in North Foreland on the far Kent coast and the top comer on the north-west coast at about Liverpool. In that corner is what was called English Mercia. The rest, including East Anglia, was Danish, known as Danelaw. Danelaw's northern boundary was a squiggly line from the North Sea coast, about thirty miles south of'Durham, across to the Cumbrian coast. The cauldron of peace bought in bribes (Danegeld), inter­marriages and baptisms was about to boil over. But the fire was lit, not in England, but on the Continent where, as Churchill wrote, the Viking raiders, were at war.

C+One final war awaited Alfred. It was a crisis in the Viking story. In 885 they had rowed up the Seine with hundreds of ships and an army of 40,000 men... For six years they ravaged the interior of Northern France. Famine followed in their footsteps. The fairest regions had been devoured; where could they turn?.. . Such men make plans, and certainly their descent upon England was one of the most carefully considered and elaborately prepared villainies of that dark time.

Now here, the timing is important, because the Viking King, Guthrum, who lived in England, was about to the. It was the last decade of the ninth century. A few years earlier, in 878, Guthrum had been defeated by Alfred, but spared. What is more, Alfred had converted Guthrum to Christianity and was his godfather. Hence the uneasy peace. But The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle notes that that era was about to end.

*And Guthrum, the northern King, whose baptismal name was Athelstan, passed away. In the year 892 the great host... went again from the kingdom of the east Franks westward to Boulogne and were there provided with ships, so that they crossed in one voyage, horses and all, and then they came up into the mouth of the Lympne with 250 ships. The river flows out from the forest; they rowed their ships up as far as the forest, four miles from the entrance to the estuary and there stormed a fort within the fen; occupying it were a few peasants and it was half built. Then soon after this, Haesten came with eighty ships into the mouth of the Thames and made himself a fort at Milton Regis.Milton Regis is still there, just a couple of miles from Sittingbourne. But it is now flat, muddy creeked country, the village with some fine old houses and sometimes not so fine modern ones and there is no great forest. But back to the battle. Three fascinating points emerge:

First, Alfred once again offered gold to the invaders. This was a common practice. It was partly common sense, a recognition that if gold could buy peace then why not buy it. Second, Alfred, having paid up and so delayed the attack, persuaded the Viking King, Haesten, to have his two young sons baptized. And third, King Alfred was, perhaps, in failing health because he gave way to a younger leader, Edward, his twenty-two-year-old son. Alfred also had an ally, the young Mercian prince, Aethelred. The Vikings, as expected, broke their oaths of peace and Edward and Aethelred prepared for battle.

C+In 893... the young leaders struck hard...They fell upon a column of the raiders near the modern Aldershot, routed them, and pursued them for twenty miles till they were glad to swim the Thames and shelter behind the Colne the enemy escaped.

The Danes had fortified themselves at Benfleet, on the Thames below London. This the princes now assaulted and put the army to flight. In the captured stronghold the victors found Haeston's wife and his two sons. These were precious hostages, and King Alfred was much criticized at the time because he restored them to Haesten. The Danes, instead of attempting to take English Mercia, roamed and pillaged Wales before returning to the safety of East Anglia and then the Thames estuary. The long term result was a stalemate. Thanks to earlier Viking successes, the Danes were always going to be able to rely on support in Northumbria and East Anglia. Alfred was never going to get any more support than he had. Peace was impossible. And so it was that his kingdom was still at war when Alfred died in 899. He had ruled for almost twenty-nine years. His son, Edward, succeeded him.

C+A quarrel arose between Edward and his cousin, Ethelwald, who fled to the Danelaw and aroused the Vikings of Northumbria and East Anglia to a renewed inroad upon his native land. In 902, Ethelwald and the Danish king crossed the upper reaches of the Thames at Cricklade and ravaged part of Wiltshire. Edward in retaliation ordered the invasion of East Anglia but the Kentish contingent, being slow to withdraw, was overtaken and brought to battle by the infuriated Danes. The Danes were victorious, and made a great slaughter: but, as fate would have it, both Eric, the Danish king, and the renegade Ethelwald perished on the field, and the new king, Guthrum II, made peace with Edward on the basis of Alfred's treaty of 886. In 910 this treaty was broken by the Danes and the war was renewed in Mercia… in heavy fighting at Tettenhall in Staffordshire, the Danes were decisively defeated. This English victory was a milestone in the long conflict. The Danish armies in Northumbria never recovered from the battle, and the Danish Midlands and East Anglia thus lay open to English conquest… now the tide had turned.

Edward’s sister was Aethelfleda. It was she who married the Mercian leader, Aethelred. He died and she succeeded and so the legend of the Lady of the Mercians was born. Aethelfleda joined her Mercian warriors alongside her brother's men of Wessex. Together they set out, over the next ten years, to conquer the five boroughs of Danelaw. And they did. From The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in the year 921:

*King Edward marched to Stamford and had a fortress built on the south bank of the river. During the stay he made there his sister died at Tamworth, twelve days before midsummer; thereupon he took over the fortress at Tamworth and all the people of Mercia who had been under allegiance to his sister turned in submission to him.

Edward pressed north and the Danes knew there was little they could do to stop him. And they knew this in Wales too. These were the outposts of the Britons, not the English. The Welsh princes declared for Edward and soon the task started by Alfred the Great was completed. Then, in 924, Edward died and in 925, the year that St Dunstan was born. Edward's son, the remarkable Athelstan. came to the throne. If it is at all possible to say who the first King of all England was, then that person was Athelstan.

It is said that Alfred had known that, one day, his grandson would be king and that he had cloaked the child in scarlet and then invested him with the Royal Saxon sword with a golden hilt, the symbol of regal dignity. Athelstan was the first King of Wesscx who was truly part of the Mercian aristocracy. His father wasn't. Certainly Alfred the Great wasn't. So Athelstan held a unique position one of great respect, when he joined with the Mercians against Northumbria - still known as Danelaw and still an alien territory to the southern Kingdom.

C+Athelstan, the third of the great West Saxon kings, sought at accordance with the traditions of his house, peaceful relations with the unconquered parts of the Danelaw; but upon disputes arising he marched into Yorkshire in 926, and there established himself. Northumbria submitted; the Kings of the Scots and оf Strathclyde acknowledged him as their 'father and lord’ and the Welsh princes agreed to pay tribute. There was an uneasy interlude; then in 933 саmе a general rebellion and renewed war, organized by all the hitherto defeated characters in the drama. The whole of North Britain, Celtic, Danish and Norwegian, pagan and Christian, together presented a hostile front under Constantine King of the Scots, and Olaf of Dublin, with Viking reinforcement from Norway. On this occasion neither life nor time was wasted in manoeuvres.