The White Horse King: The Life of Alfred the Great (10 page)

The men of the raiding armies lived off theft and not labor. Their parasitic diet of pillage and plunder made it impossible to stay behind the walls of Reading for any period of time. Thus the livelihood of Wessex depended on its troops returning home to work, while the livelihood of the raiding army depended on their continued ravaging of the countryside.

In the days immediately following their tremendous victory, Æthelred and Alfred found it impossible to maintain an army large enough to follow up their hard-fought victory with an assault on the Viking stronghold in Reading. Having driven the Danes back to their makeshift fortress, one last decisive attack on the Viking camp would rid Wessex entirely of the raiding army, but the war-weary and wounded men of Wessex felt they had been absent from their home villages for far too long. During the next few days, an endless parade of men filed out of the Wessex camp, returning to the countless villages of the countryside.

Soon Æthelred and Alfred were left with only a skeleton of an army, hardly the mighty force they had led to victory at Ashdown. Still, they moved their camp close to the Viking fortress at Reading and looked for opportunities to harass the Danes as they recovered from their wounds. For months, this meant primarily looking to intercept the smaller Viking scavenging parties as they scoured the countryside in search of supplies. Alfred spent the bulk of his time during these months leading smaller bands of Wessex soldiers on horseback, hunting for Danish plunderers in the environs surrounding Reading.

Although the few brief hours of combat at the battle of Ashdown had taught him much about war, the following months offered him his first prolonged study of the people who were to become his lifelong nemeses. Day after day, he learned to transfer the skill of tracking and hunting the wild beasts of England’s woods, which he had honed throughout his youth, to the skill of tracking and hunting his enemy. He studied their customs and habits, what tactics were effective, and how to predict their movements. And he also studied the men whom Æthelred had entrusted to him—what motivated them, how to use their strengths most effectively, and what their greatest weaknesses were.

Two things became clear during the course of Alfred’s studies. First, there was nothing superhuman about the Viking warrior. Alfred had seen clearly that an Anglo-Saxon warrior was more than capable of holding his own against a Viking combatant in an equal fight. Alfred had drawn Viking blood, and he knew he could kill them. But the second thing that became more and more apparent as the frigid winter months dragged on was that the inability of Wessex to keep a sizable force armed and prepared to fight was crippling their chances of overcoming the Viking invaders.

This second lesson was driven home only two weeks after the battle of Ashdown. The Viking army ventured out once more in full force and began marching directly toward Winchester, the capital of Wessex. It is unlikely the Viking army really intended to strike at Winchester at this point, but the boldness of this move demanded that the severely weakened army of Wessex respond. Æthelred and Alfred led their men to intercept the advancing Vikings at Basing, nineteen miles south of Reading. Once more the two shieldwalls clashed. But this time the thinness of the Wessex wall would receive no miraculous reinforcements halfway through the battle. Despite a valiant effort to hold off the Viking advance, the shieldwall soon gave way, and the Saxons were forced to retreat in humiliation, conceding the place of slaughter to the raiding army.

The defeat at Basing was a bitter disappointment and an ill portent of things to come. However, it was not an entirely devastating loss. The Viking troops were not able to pursue the Saxon troops and inflict the same kind of punishment on the Wessex soldiers as the Northmen had received at Ashdown. The Viking approach toward Winchester was halted at Basing, so the battle at Basing was not an 66 all-out loss. But Basing became just the first in a series of defeats that slowly pushed the Saxon forces backward as the Viking grip on the throat of Wessex tightened each week.

Alfred continued to lead a small host of men to harass and harry the occasional Viking foraging parties, but he found it impossible to muster a force large enough to assault the fortifications at Reading and drive the Vikings completely off Wessex soil. Even worse, as the winter months came to an end and the spring sun climbed higher in the sky, the possibility grew that any day another wave of Danish troops might cross the channel to join the raiding army and try their luck at plundering Wessex.

At this point, the perilous position of the nation of Wessex became more and more evident to Æthelred and Alfred. The fall of Northumbria and Essex, and the complete capitulation of Mercia, left Wessex standing defiantly alone against the Viking invaders. The precariousness of their position impressed upon the two brothers the constant need for an experienced and respected leader, whom all of Wessex could follow with complete loyalty. There was a real need to formalize on paper what might have already been assumed between the two brothers about the succession of the crown. Uncertainty on this point threatened to bring calamitous civil unrest if the king of Wessex should have an untimely death.

With this concern in mind, a
witan
, a meeting of the wise men of Wessex, was summoned to Swinbeorg to discuss the succession of the crown. The
witan
provided the opportunity to receive the wisdom of the elders of the nation, without which no successful king of Wessex could rule. Here it was decided that, between Æthelred and Alfred, the brother to survive the longest would claim the throne for himself and his sons. Great care was taken to ensure provision for the sons of the brother who perished first. When their father, Æthelwulf, had died, he had divided a collection of private estates among each of his five sons.

With Solomonic insight, it was decided before the
witan
that the brother to ultimately inherit the crown would ensure that the children of the deceased received the share of these estates that had been passed on to their father, as well as the share of the estates received by the still living, and then ruling, son. Essentially the brothers agreed that in exchange for the crown the surviving brother would forfeit a portion of his own inheritance to his nephews.

Two months after Basing, a well-rested Viking army moved out once more in full force to challenge whatever troops Æthelred and Alfred were able to assemble. Despite the importance of spring work on the Saxon farms, a significant force gathered to Æthelred when the call to arms was given. Overtaking the Danes at Merton, the Saxons attempted to repeat their earlier tactic of splitting their men into two units, one commanded by Æthelred and the other by Alfred. Once more, the Saxon shieldwall stood stouthearted and ready for the battle rush. Once more, they drove their ashen spears hard into the enemy line with a deafening crack and a roar of righteous wrath.

Again the two foes stood within a few feet of one another, stabbing and slashing at every piece of flesh or bone left unprotected or uncovered in the shieldwall. With blow after earthshaking blow, the two armies worked at one another like blacksmiths, hammering away defiantly at one another’s iron will. And once more, after hours of deadly diligence, the Viking line began to crumble. Just as before, after the Viking line began to break, the entire Danish horde sprinted from the battlefield, leaving the weary Saxons elated in their exhaustion.

But unlike before, the Viking retreat was only temporary. The Saxon forces, failing to press the retreat hard and drive the running soldiers into the sort of frenzied panic they had achieved at Ashdown, had thought their victory was sealed and relaxed their pursuit. The flood of Danes streaming from the battlefield began to slow and form again into another shieldwall, and the retreat turned into a regrouping. Soon the jubilation of the temporarily triumphant Saxons dissolved, and they began frantically reforming their shield-wall to hold off another swelling attack. Again the Viking crush rushed over the Saxon shieldwall, and, like the successive waves of an incoming tide, this second breaker came harder and stronger than before. The shield-wall shivered and splintered, and the men of Wessex lost hope in one chaotic instant.

Æthelred and Alfred lost all control of their men as the entire Wessex army fled madly, leaving the Viking host the proud masters of the place of slaughter. In the panicked retreat, countless Saxons were cut down. By the time the field had cleared, the ground was littered with the dead, both Viking and Saxon. Most tragically for the people of Wessex, the good bishop of Sherborne, Bishop Heahmund, was among the dead on the field of the slain.
³
But even more seriously, when Alfred was finally able to find his brother in the panicked retreat, he discovered that Æthelred had been gravely wounded.

During the next several weeks, Æthelred’s condition grew worse and worse. Weakened from the initial loss of blood, the king’s body now slowly began to succumb to the infections that swelled his gory wounds. The leeching of the court healers, though likely well-intentioned, did little to reverse his gradual decline into a tormented and feverish delirium. As the fallen king’s cuts turned septic, the festering wounds reopened again and again, spilling blood and puss, and giving off a suffocating stench. Though those who cared for him gave themselves to hopeful prayer for his recovery, the certain death of the king loomed over the court of Wessex.

Under the shadow of this morbid expectation, Alfred greeted the Easter of 871. The grim mood of the Wessex court could have easily made celebrating a festival such as Easter nearly impossible, but there was a certain resonance between Alfred’s personal story and the gospel narrative declared in the Easter liturgy. Easter promised a hope beyond death. In fact, Easter promised a hope that came as a direct result of death. Easter told the story of one man’s fatal sacrifice, a sacrifice that conquered death by first seeming to give in to death. At Easter, Alfred was reminded of a resurrection that undid all the suffering of death.

Taking this message to heart might have changed how Alfred interpreted the state of Wessex. Perhaps even in this time of terrible darkness, even as all of Wessex was slowly engulfed by an ever-advancing godless foe, even as the king of Wessex writhed in a fatal agony, perhaps God was about to bring about a resurrecting deliverance in their midst.

If Alfred thought this, he could not have been more wrong. Immediately after Easter, King Æthelred died. After mourning the death of his brother, Alfred received the crown of Wessex, and the burden of defending her fell squarely on his shoulders. Shortly after this, he received news that a fresh fleet of Viking ships had just arrived at Reading to join Halfdan. Sailing up the Thames, this fleet brought thousands of new Viking men intent on quick plunder, led by three new Viking kings—Guthrum, Oscetel, and Anwend. Word had spread of the easy wealth to be gained from looting the English countryside. Vikings who had been scattered all along the rivers of the European continent now focused their attentions on the island of Britain. The easily gotten gold drew them from thousands of miles away—a ninth-century gold rush.

1
The strange little mountain looks out of place in the valley, but modern descriptions of Dragon Hill always begin with the assertion that “it is a completely natural formation and not man-made.”

2
In an age when the importance of a thorough cleaning of the wound was not adequately understood, there was a high likelihood that many of the cuts and gashes would become septic. Anglo-Saxon poetry often referred to the blades and spear points of their enemies as “poisonous,” and when taking into account the likelihood of a deadly infection following a more superficial wound, there was good reason to have thought so. Many of these stab wounds would become unnecessarily lethal a few days following the combat.

3
Anglo-Saxon Britain had, of course, a very different set of expectations for their clergy than that of the modern church. Priests and bishops were expected to be leaders of men, and this obligation didn’t vanish during times of war. Thus Anglo-Saxon armies were often commanded by members of the clergy who, like Heahmund, fought and died along with the men of their parishes.

CHAPTER 4
Danegeld

It is always a temptation to an armed and agile nation,
To call upon a neighbour and to say:

“We invaded you last night—we are quite
prepared to fight,

Unless you pay us cash to go away.”

And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you’ve only to pay ’em the Dane-geld
And then you’ll get rid of the Dane!

It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say:

“Though we know we should defeat you, we have
not the time to meet you.

We will therefore pay you cash to go away.”

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;

But we’ve proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.

It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any
nation,

For fear they should succumb and go astray,

So when you are requested to pay up or be
molested,

You will find it better policy to say: