The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 - Various
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Here the Somersetshire men can keep up constant communication with him,
and a small army grows together. They are soon strong enough to make
forays into the open country, and in many skirmishes they cut off
parties of the pagans and supplies. "For, even when overthrown and cast
down," says Malmesbury, "Alfred had always to be fought with; so, then
when one would esteem him altogether worn down and broken, like a snake
slipping from the hand of him who would grasp it, he would suddenly
flash out again from his hiding-places, rising up to smite his foes in
the height of their insolent confidence, and never more hard to beat
than after a flight."
But it was still a trying life at Athelney. Followers came in slowly,
and provender and supplies of all kinds are hard to wring from the
pagan, and harder still to take from Christian men. One day, while it
was yet so cold that the water was still frozen, the King's people had
gone out "to get them fish or fowl, or some such purveyance as they
sustained themselves withal." No one was left in the royal hut for the
moment but himself, and his mother-in-law Eadburgha. The King--after his
constant wont whensoever he had opportunity--was reading from the Psalms
of David, out of the Manual which he carried always in his bosom. At
this moment a poor man appeared at the door and begged for a morsel of
bread "for Christ his sake." Whereupon the King, receiving the stranger
as a brother, called to his mother-in-law to give him to eat. Eadburgha
replied that there was but one loaf in their store, and a little wine in
a pitcher, a provision wholly insufficient for his own family and
people. But the King bade her nevertheless to give the stranger part of
the last loaf, which she accordingly did. But when he had been served
the stranger was no more seen, and the loaf remained whole, and the
pitcher full to the brim. Alfred, meantime, had turned to his reading,
over which he fell asleep, and dreamt that St. Cuthbert of Lindisfarne
stood by him, and told him it was he who had been his guest, and that
God had seen his afflictions and those of his people, which were now
about to end, in token whereof his people would return that day from
their expedition with a great take of fish. The King awakening, and
being much impressed with his dream, called to his mother-in-law and
recounted it to her, who thereupon assured him that she too had been
overcome with sleep and had had the same dream. And while they yet
talked together on what had happened so strangely to them, their
servants come in, bringing fish enough, as it seemed to them, to have
fed an army.
The monkish legend goes on to tell that on the next morning the King
crossed to the mainland in a boat, and wound his horn thrice, which drew
to him before noon five hundred men. What we may think of the story and
the dream, as Sir John Spelman says, "is not here very much material,"
seeing that, whether we deem it natural or supernatural, "the one as
well as the other serves at God's appointment, by raising or dejecting
of the mind with hopes or fears, to lead man to the resolution of those
things whereof he has before ordained the event."
Alfred, we may be sure, was ready to accept and be thankful for any
help, let it come from whence it might, and soon after Easter it was
becoming clear that the time is at hand for more than skirmishing
expeditions. Through all the neighboring counties word is spreading that
their hero King is alive and on foot again, and that there will be
another chance for brave men ere long of meeting once more these
scourges of the land under his leading.
A popular legend is found in the later chroniclers which relates that at
this crisis of his fortunes Alfred, not daring to rely on any evidence
but that of his own senses as to the numbers, disposition, and
discipline of the pagan army, assumed the garb of a minstrel and with
one attendant visited the camp of Guthrum. Here he stayed, "showing
tricks and making sport," until he had penetrated to the King's tents,
and learned all that he wished to know. After satisfying himself as to
the chances of a sudden attack, he returns to Athelney, and, the time
having come for a great effort, if his people will but make it, sends
round messengers to the aldermen and king's thanes of neighboring
shires, giving them a tryst for the seventh week after Easter, the
second week in May.
On or about the 12th of May, 878, King Alfred left his island in the
great wood, and his wife and children and such household gods [sic] as
he had gathered round him there, and came publicly forth among his
people once more, riding to Egbert's Stone--probably Brixton--on the
east of Selwood, a distance of twenty-six miles. Here met him the men of
the neighboring shires--Odda, no doubt, with his men of Devonshire, full
of courage and hope after their recent triumph; the men of
Somersetshire, under their brave and faithful alderman Ethelnoth; and
the men of Wilts and Hants, such of them at least as had not fled the
country or made submission to the enemy. "And when they saw their King
alive after such great tribulation, they received him, as he merited,
with joy and acclamation." The gathering had been so carefully planned
by Alfred and the nobles who had been in conference or correspondence
with him at Athelney that the Saxon host was organized and ready for
immediate action on the very day of muster. Whether Alfred had been his
own spy we cannot tell, but it is plain that he knew well what was
passing in the pagan camp, and how necessary swiftness and secrecy were
to the success of his attack.
Local traditions cannot be much relied upon for events which took place
a thousand years ago, but where there is clearly nothing improbable in
them they are at least worth mentioning. We may note, then, that
according to Somersetshire tradition, first collected by Dr.
Giles--himself a Somersetshire man, and one who, besides his _Life of
Alfred_ and other excellent works bearing on the time, is the author of
the _Harmony of the Chroniclers_, published by the Alfred Committee in
1852--the signal for the actual gathering of the West Saxons at Egbert's
Stone was given by a beacon lighted on the top of Stourton hill, where
Alfred's Tower now stands. Such a beacon would be hidden from the Danes,
who must have been encamped about Westbury, by the range of the
Wiltshire hills, while it would be visible to the west over the low
country toward the Bristol Channel, and to the south far into
Dorsetshire.
Not an hour was lost by Alfred at the place of muster. The bands which
came together there were composed of men well used to arms, each band
under its own alderman, or reeve. The small army he had himself been
disciplining at Athelney, and training in skirmishes during the last few
months, would form a reliable centre on which the rest would have to
form as best they could. So after one day's halt he breaks up his camp
at Egbert's Stone and marches to Aeglea, now called Clay hill, an
important height, commanding the vale to the north of Westbury, which
the Danish army were now occupying. The day's march of the army would be
a short five miles. Here the annals record that St. Neot, his kinsman,
appeared to him, and promised that on the morrow his misfortunes would
end.
There are still traces of rude earthworks round the top of Clay hill,
which are said to have been thrown up by Alfred's army at this time. If
there had been time for such a work, it would undoubtedly have been a
wise step, as a fortified encampment here would have served Alfred in
good stead in case of a reverse. But the few hours during which the army
halted on Clay hill would have been quite too short time for such an
undertaking, which, moreover, would have exhausted the troops. It is
more likely that the earthworks, which are of the oldest type, similar
to those at White Horse hill, above Ashdown, were there long before
Alfred's arrival in May, 878. After resting one night on Clay hill,
Alfred led out his men in close order of battle against the pagan host,
which lay at Ethandune. There has been much doubt among the antiquaries
as to the site of Ethandune, but Dr. Giles and others have at length
established the claims of Edington, a village seven miles from Clay
hill, on the northeast, to the spot where the strength of the second
wave of pagan invasion was utterly broken and rolled back weak and
helpless from the rock of the West Saxon kingdom.
Sir John Spelman, relying apparently only on the authority of Nicholas
Harpesfeld's _Ecclesiastical History of England_, puts a speech into
Alfred's mouth, which he is supposed to have delivered before the battle
of Edington. He tells them that the great sufferings of the land had
been yet far short of what their sins had deserved. That God had only
dealt with them as a loving Father, and was now about to succor them,
having already stricken their foe with fear and astonishment, and given
him, on the other hand, much encouragement by dreams and otherwise. That
they had to do with pirates and robbers, who had broken faith with them
over and over again; and the issue they had to try that day was whether
Christ's faith or heathenism was henceforth to be established in
England.
There is no trace of any such speech in the _Saxon Chronicle_ or Asser,
and the one reported does not ring like that of Judas Maccabaeus. That
Alfred's soul was on fire that morning, on finding himself once more at
the head of a force he could rely on, and before the enemy he had met so
often, we may be sure enough, but shall never know how the fire kindled
into speech, if indeed it did so at all. In such supreme moments many of
the strongest men have no word to say--keep all their heat within.
Nor have we any clew to the numbers who fought on either side at
Ethandune, or indeed in any of Alfred's battles. In the _Chronicles_
there are only a few vague and general statements, from which little can
be gathered. The most precise of them is that in the _Saxon Chronicle_,
which gives eight hundred and forty as the number of men who were slain,
as we heard, with Hubba before Cynuit fort, in Devonshire, earlier in
this same year. Such a death-roll, in an action in which only a small
detachment of the pagan army was engaged, would lead to the conclusion
that the armies were far larger than one would expect. On the other
hand, it is difficult to imagine how any large bodies of men could find
subsistence in a small country, which was the seat of so devastating a
war, and in which so much land remained still unreclaimed. But whatever
the power on either side amounted to we may be quite sure that it had
been exerted to the utmost to bring as large a force as possible into
line at Ethandune.
Guthrum fought to protect Chippenham, his base of operations, some
sixteen miles in his rear, and all the accumulated plunder of the busy
months which had passed since Twelfth Night; and it is clear that his
men behaved with the most desperate gallantry. The fight began at
noon--one chronicler says at sunrise, but the distance makes this
impossible unless Alfred marched in the night--and lasted through the
greater part of the day. Warned by many previous disasters the Saxons
never broke their close order, and so, though greatly outnumbered,
hurled back again and again the onslaughts of the Northmen. At last
Alfred and his Saxons prevailed, and smote his pagan foes with a very
great slaughter, and pursued them up to their fortified camp on Bratton
hill or Edge, into which the great body of the fugitives threw
themselves. All who were left outside were slain, and the great spoil
was all recovered. The camp may still be seen, called Bratton Castle,
with its double ditches and deep trenches, and barrow in the midst sixty
yards long, and its two entrances guarded by mounds. It contains more
than twenty acres, and commands the whole country side. There can be
little doubt that this camp, and not Chippenham, which is sixteen miles
away, was the last refuge of Guthrum and the great northern army on
Saxon soil.
So, in three days from the breaking up of his little camp at Athelney,
Alfred was once more King of all England south of the Thames; for this
army of pagans, shut up within their earthworks on Bratton Edge, are
little better than a broken and disorderly rabble, with no supplies and
no chance of succor from any quarter. Nevertheless he will make sure of
them, and above all will guard jealously against any such mishap as that
of 876, when they stole out of Wareham, murdered the horsemen he had
left to watch them, and got away to Exeter. So Bratton camp is strictly
besieged by Alfred with his whole power.
Guthrum, the destroyer, and now the King of East Anglia, the strongest
and ablest of all the Northmen who had ever landed in England, is now at
last fairly in Alfred's power. At Reading, Wareham, Exeter, he had
always held a fortified camp, on a river easily navigable by the Danish
war-ships, where he might look for speedy succor or whence at the worst
he might hope to escape to the sea. But now he, with the remains of his
army, is shut up in an inland fort with no ships on the Avon, the
nearest river, even if they could cut their way out and reach it, and no
hopes of reinforcements overland. Halfdene is the nearest viking who
might be called to the rescue, and he, in Northumbria, is far too
distant. It is a matter of a few days only, for food runs short at once
in the besieged camp. In former years, or against any other enemy,
Guthrum would probably have preferred to sally out and cut his way
through the Saxon lines, or die sword in hand as a son of Odin should.
Whether it were that the wild spirit in him is thoroughly broken for the
time by the unexpected defeat at Ethandune, or that long residence in a
Christian land and contact with Christian subjects have shaken his faith
in his own gods, or that he has learned to measure and appreciate the
strength and nobleness of the man he had so often deceived, at any rate
for the time Guthrum is subdued. At the end of fourteen days he sends to
Alfred, suing humbly for terms of any kind; offering on the part of the
army as many hostages as may be required, without asking for any in
return; once again giving solemn pledges to quit Wessex for good; and,
above all, declaring his own readiness to receive baptism. If it had not
been for the last proposal, we may doubt whether even Alfred would have
allowed the ruthless foes with whom he and his people had fought so
often, and with such varying success, to escape now. Over and over again
they had sworn to him, and broken their oaths the moment it suited their
purpose; had given hostages, and left them to their fate. In all English
kingdoms they had now for ten years been destroying and pillaging the
houses of God and slaying even women and children. They had driven his
sister's husband from the throne of Mercia, and had grievously tortured
the martyr Edmund. If ever foe deserved no mercy, Guthrum and his army
were the men.
When David smote the children of Moab, he "measured them with a line,
casting them down to the ground; even with two lines measured he to put
to death, and with one full line to keep alive." When he took Rabbah of
the children of Ammon, "he brought forth the people that were therein,
and put them under saws and under harrows of iron, and under axes of
iron, and made them pass through the brick-kiln." That was the old
Hebrew method, even under King David, and in the ninth century
Christianity had as yet done little to soften the old heathen custom of
"woe to the vanquished." Charlemagne's proselytizing campaigns had been
as merciless as Mahomet's. But there is about this English King a divine
patience, the rarest of all virtues in those who are set in high places.
He accepts Guthrum's proffered terms at once, rejoicing over the chance
of adding these fierce heathen warriors to the church of his Master, by
an act of mercy which even they must feel. And so the remnant of the
army are allowed to march out of their fortified camp, and to recross
the Avon into Mercia, not quite five months after the day of their
winter attack and the seizing of Chippenham. The northern army went away
to Cirencester, where they stayed over the winter, and then returning
into East Anglia settled down there, and Alfred and Wessex hear no more
of them. Never was triumph more complete or better deserved; and in all
history there is no instance of more noble use of victory than this. The
West Saxon army was not at once disbanded. Alfred led them back to
Athelney, where he had left his wife and children; and while they are
there, seven weeks after the surrender, Guthrum and thirty of the
bravest of his followers arrive to make good their pledge.
The ceremony of baptism was performed at Wedmore, a royal residence
which had probably escaped the fate of Chippenham, and still contained a
church. Here Guthrum and his thirty nobles were sworn in, the soldiers
of a greater King than Woden, and the white linen cloth, the sign of
their new faith, was bound round their heads. Alfred himself was
godfather to the viking, giving him the Christian name of Athelstan; and
the chrism-loosing, or unbinding of the sacramental cloths, was
performed on the eighth day by Ethelnoth, the faithful alderman of
Somersetshire. After the religious ceremony there still remained the
task of settling the terms upon which the victors and vanquished were
hereafter to live together side by side in the same island; for Alfred
had the wisdom, even in his enemy's humiliation, to accept the
accomplished fact, and to acknowledge East Anglia as a Danish kingdom.
The Witenagemot had been summoned to Wedmore, and was sitting there, and
with their advice the treaty was then made, from which, according to
some historians, English history begins.
We have still the text of the two documents which together contain
Alfred and Guthrum's peace, or the treaty of Wedmore; the first and
shorter being probably the articles hastily agreed on before the
capitulation of the Danish army at Chippenham; the latter the final
terms settled between Alfred and his witan, and Guthrum and his thirty
nobles, after mature deliberation and conference at Wedmore, but not
formally executed until some years later.
The shorter one, that made at the capitulation, runs as follows:
"ALFRED AND GUTHRUM'S PEACE.--This is the peace that King Alfred and
King Guthrum, and the witan of all the English nation, and all the
people that are in East Anglia have all ordained, and with oaths
confirmed, for themselves and their descendants, as well for born as
unborn, who reck of God's mercy or of ours.
"First, concerning our land boundaries. These are upon the Thames, and
then upon the Lea, and along the Lea unto its source, then straight to
Bedford, then up the Ouse to Watling Street.
"Then there is this: if a man be slain we reckon all equally dear,
English and Dane, at eight half marks of pure gold, except the churl who
dwells on gavel land and their leisings, they are also equally dear at
two hundred shillings. And if a king's thane be accused of manslaughter,
if he desire to clear himself, let him do so before twelve king's
thanes. If any man accuse a man who is of less degree than king's thane,
let him clear himself with eleven of his equals and one king's thane.
And so in every suit which be for more than four mancuses; and if he
dare not, let him pay for it threefold, as it may be valued.
"_Of Warrantors_.--And that every man know his warrantor, for men, and
for horses, and for oxen.
"And we all ordained, on that day that the oaths were sworn, that
neither bondman nor freeman might go to the army without leave, nor any
of them to us. But if it happen that any of them from necessity will
have traffic with us, or we with them, for cattle or goods, that is to
be allowed on this wise: that hostages be given in pledge of peace, and
as evidence whereby it may be known that the party has a clean book."
By the treaty Alfred is thus established as King of the whole of England
south of the Thames; of all the old kingdom of Essex south of the Lea,
including London, Hertford, and St. Albans; of the whole of the great
kingdom of Mercia, which lay to the west of Watling Street, and of so
much to the east as lay south of the Ouse. That he should have regained
so much proves the straits to which he had brought the northern army,
who would have to give up all their new settlements round Gloster. That
he should have resigned so much of the kingdom which had acknowledged
his grandfather, father, and brothers as overlords proves how formidable
his foe still was, even in defeat, and how thoroughly the northeastern
parts of the island had by this time been settled by the Danes.
The remainder of the short treaty would seem simply to be provisional,
and intended to settle the relations between Alfred's subjects and the
army while it remained within the limits of the new Saxon kingdom. Many
of the soldiers would have to break up their homes in Glostershire; and,
with this view, the halt at Cirencester is allowed, where, as we have
already heard, they rest until the winter. While they remain in the
Saxon kingdom there is to be no distinction between Saxon and Dane. The
were-gild, or life-ransom, is to be the same in each case for men of
like rank; and all suits for more than four mancuses (about twenty-four
shillings) are to be tried by a jury of peers of the accused. On the
other hand, only necessary communications are to be allowed between the
northern army and the people; and where there must be trading, fair and
peaceful dealing is to be insured by the giving of hostages. This last
provision, and the clause declaring that each man shall know his
warrantor, inserted in a five-clause treaty, where nothing but what the
contracting parties must hold to be of the very first importance would
find place, are another curious proof of the care with which our
ancestors, and all Germanic tribes, guarded against social
isolation--the doctrine that one man has nothing to do with another--a
doctrine which the great body of their descendants, under the leading of
Schultze, Delitzsch, and others, seem likely to repudiate with equal
emphasis in these latter days, both in Germany and England.
Thus, in July, 878, the foundations of the new kingdom of England were
laid, for new it undoubtedly became when the treaty of Wedmore was
signed. The Danish nation, no longer strangers and enemies, are
recognized by the heir of Cerdic as lawful owners of the full half of
England. Having achieved which result, Guthrum and the rest of the new
converts leave the Saxon camp and return to Cirencester at the end of
twelve days, loaded with such gifts as it was still in the power of
their conquerors to bestow: and Alfred was left in peace, to turn to a
greater and more arduous task than any he had yet encountered.
JOHN RICHARD GREEN
Alfred was the noblest as he was the most complete embodiment of all
that is great, all that is lovable, in the English temper. He combined
as no other man has ever combined its practical energy, its patient and
enduring force, its profound sense of duty, the reserve and self-control
that steady in it a wide outlook and a restless daring, its temperance
and fairness, its frank geniality, its sensitiveness to action, its
poetic tenderness, its deep and passionate religion. Religion, indeed,
was the groundwork of Alfred's character. His temper was instinct with
piety. Everywhere throughout his writings that remain to us the name of
God, the thought of God, stir him to outbursts of ecstatic adoration.
But he was no mere saint. He felt none of that scorn of the world about
him which drove the nobler souls of his day to monastery or hermitage.
Vexed as he was by sickness and constant pain, his temper took no touch
of asceticism. His rare geniality, a peculiar elasticity and mobility of
nature, gave color and charm to his life. A sunny frankness and openness
of spirit breathe in the pleasant chat of his books, and what he was in
his books he showed himself in his daily converse. Alfred was in truth
an artist, and both the lights and shadows of his life were those of the
artistic temperament. His love of books, his love of strangers, his
questionings of travellers and scholars, betray an imaginative
restlessness that longs to break out of the narrow world of experience
which hemmed him in. At one time he jots down news of a voyage to the
unknown seas of the north. At another he listens to tidings which his
envoys bring back from the churches of Malabar.
And side by side with this restless outlook of the artistic nature he
showed its tenderness and susceptibility, its vivid apprehension of
unseen danger, its craving for affection, its sensitiveness to wrong. It
was with himself rather than with his reader that he communed as
thoughts of the foe without, of ingratitude and opposition within, broke
the calm pages of Gregory or Boethius.