The White Horse King: The Life of Alfred the Great

by Benjamin R. Merkle

  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:

  “We never pay any-one Dane-geld,

  No matter how trifling the cost,

  For the end of that game is oppression and shame,

  And the nation that plays it is lost!”

  —RUDYARD KIPLING , “DANE-GELD”

  In AD 871, Alfred received a heavy crown, weighted with the responsibility of protecting a kingdom on the brink of conquest, the last Anglo-Saxon nation to remain standing against the Viking invasion. Throughout that spring, the raiding army pushed deeper and deeper into the heart of Wessex. On the very day Alfred attended Æthelred’s funeral at Wimbourne Minster (a church later to be destroyed by raiding Danes), Wessex forces confronted a Viking host who had poured out of Reading to rampage and plunder throughout the northeastern regions of the nation. The Wessex resistance had grown weaker, however, d 7m3ore of these Viking pillaging forays went unchecked.

  Finally, one month after Æthelred’s death, Alfred led the Wessex army out in a desperate attempt at drawing the Danes into a decisive battle, hoping to halt the Viking advance. Alfred’s forces caught the Viking army at Wilton, less than thirty miles east of Winchester. The proximity of this battle to Alfred’s capital city was clear proof that the Viking conquest of Wessex was making very steady progress, venturing deeper and deeper into the heart of the young ruler’s kingdom.

  The Wessex army was significantly depleted by the carnage of this war. Alfred’s biographer recorded that at this point, in addition to countless smaller skirmishes, the armies of Wessex had fought eight separate battles against the Vikings and had been virtually annihilated. Englefield, Reading, Ashdown, Basing, Merton, and several other unnamed battles had taken a serious toll on the Wessex shieldwall. Conversely, the Viking army was now swollen with fresh recruits, newly arrived from the European continent and hungry for plunder.

  But it wasn’t just the casualties of war that had so weakened the shieldwalls of Wessex. The awkwardness of the Anglo-Saxon military structure was an important factor in the depletion of forces. Though Alfred had his own contingent of professional warriors attached to his court, their number was small, less than a hundred men, and hardly constituted an army. Whenever the king of Wessex needed to gather an army to fend off an enemy invasion, it was necessary that he assemble the fyrd, a voluntary ad hoc militia.

  The numerous landowning noblemen of Wessex, the ealdormen who commanded the loyalty of the local farmers and craftsmen of 74 the individual shires, held the fyrd together. These ealdormen ruled the shires on the king’s behalf, enforcing the rule of law, ensuring that taxes were gathered, and preparing the shires to defend themselves in case of attack. Each ealdorman had the ability to summon a fyrd from his shire, a force numbering up to several thousand men. Then when a national emergency arose, the king could call his ealdormen, along with their shire fyrds, creating one large national fyrd, numbering as many as ten thousand men. The fyrd system totally depended on the corresponding obligations of a man to his lord and the lord back to his subjects. These simple instincts, the faithfulness to a master and the love for a people, forged a strong and compelling bond that time and again held the warriors of Wessex together in the clash of the shieldwalls.

  But there was a clumsiness and inefficiency to this system as well. First, this was not a standing army. This was a force that had to be summoned for each individual action, a process that could take weeks to complete. Armies that moved and struck swiftly, like the Viking raiding armies, had way too much time to advance untouched. Second, because the fyrd was composed of a loose combination of smaller shire fyrds, the national fyrd had very geographically divided loyalties. For instance, when the national fyrd was involved in a retreating campaign, as Alfred was at this point, the various shire fyrds often dropped out of the army as their shire was conquered.

  These men were prompted to drop out of the war not because of cowardice but because of a need to return to protect their families who now lived behind the lines of an advancing enemy. So once the Wessex fyrd had lost the battle at Merton, the men of Berkshire and Hampshire returned to their homes to protect their families from the raping and plundering Viking conquerors while the rest of the Wessex army moved on to the next battle at Wilton. No matter how noble this defection may have been, it continually depleted the Wessex battle lines.

  The disparity between these two forces became all too clear once the two shieldwalls lined up to face one another on the battlefield of Wilton. The haggard Wessex line was dwarfed by the enormous Viking troop. Whatever misgivings Alfred may have had about the number of Wessex warriors, however, once the shieldwall was formed, there was no choice but to move resolutely into battle. Although now an experienced veteran of several gruesome battles with this particular enemy, this was the first time Alfred would lead the men of Wessex into battle as their king. If he wanted to continue to command his men’s respect and loyalty, it was important that he conduct himself throughout the battle courageously and decisi
vely.

  Surprisingly, the initial clash again favored the men of Wessex. The shieldwall held against the massive Viking onslaught, and the men of Wessex unleashed a torrent of punishing blows on the front rank of the Viking swarm. Whether it was an innate quality in the Wessex blood or perhaps a common quality that arises in men who defend their homeland, the soldiers of Wessex regularly managed to hold their ground despite being significantly outnumbered. The Viking forces—fighting only for the opportunity to plunder their opponents—were less driven. Lacking the frenzied desperation that drove their opponent, the Viking forces were often easily repulsed. And so the battle of Wilton raged throughout the day. The Danish forces learned that what the Saxon shieldwall lacked in numbers was more than compensated by grim resolve.

  Soon the Viking troop grew weary of the attack, and their shieldwall began to falter and crumble. Once their protective formation had failed, there was no choice for the Danes but to run from the field, leaving Alfred standing bewilderingly triumphant with his exhausted men on the battlefield.

  However, the warriors of Wessex had failed to learn an important lesson from their experience at the battle of Merton. Just as at Merton, the Saxons had driven the Viking force from the battlefield without pressing the retreat, and once more the men of Wessex stood reveling in their victory and enjoying a seemingly well-earned rest instead of pursuing the enemy. The retreating Viking horde soon sensed this tactical blunder, and the Viking flight quickly transformed into a regrouping for the next attack. A moment later, as the Danish line came rumbling forward once more, the thrill of victory converted instantly into a nauseating dread as the men of the Wessex line attempted to reform. However, the spirit had been knocked out of Alfred’s army, and the feeble attempt at a second shieldwall was easily overwhelmed. Soon it was the men of Wessex who were running from the battlefield, leaving the place of slaughter and the plunder ripe for the victorious raiding army.

  Of the many battles now fought between Wessex and the raiding army, Wessex had won only the smaller conflict at Englefield and the great battle of Ashdown. In every other engagement, the victory had ultimately gone to the Danish marauders, whose advance seemed inexorable and certain. It was difficult at this time for Alfred to imagine how his people could continue resisting these relentless invaders. Despite how grim things may have seemed for the people of Wessex, it likely would have been surprising to them to discover that the Viking kings were growing frustrated and impatient with their own progress. The resistance of all the other Saxon kingdoms had crumbled quickly after one decisive battle. No Saxon kingdom had put up anywhere near the resistance that Wessex had. Even when Wessex lost a battle, it did so at such a great cost to the Viking numbers that, in the end, the Viking victory was negligible.

  The Danes had grown anxious to find a more profitable prey, a people who would surrender their wealth more eagerly. And so, shortly after the battle of Wilton, the Vikings settled on a deal with Alfred to end their occupation of Wessex. The accounts of this arrangement give no details and say only that Alfred made peace with the Vikings on the condition that they would move on. It is fairly certain, however, that “made peace” is a nicer way of saying that Alfred paid the Vikings an enormous sum of money in exchange for their withdrawal. This payment was known commonly as the danegeld, a ransom paid for peace. It may seem strange to think that at the very moment when the Viking army was finally positioned to crush the Wessex resistance, they were suddenly willing to abandon their prospects of conquest and settle for a quick cash payment after pursuing a protracted, bloody, and unprofitable campaign in Wessex for so long. For more than a century, however, the raiding armies of Northmen had cultivated a habit of searching out the path of least resistance to plunder. They had begun with the unguarded riches of monasteries and then moved on to the wealth easily extracted from weak kings and small nations on the brink of collapse. The campaign in Wessex had been too costly for the Danes, who preferred much more easily gotten spoils.

  The Viking army happily received the offer of danegeld, promptly abandoned their fortress at Reading, and withdrew to Mercian London, weighed down with the wealth of Wessex as they traveled.

  The wisdom of paying the danegeld has been much debated throughout the years, spurred on by Kipling’s summary of the lesson to be learned from this chapter of history—“if once you pay him the Dane-geld, you never get rid of the Dane.” Scholars tend to dismiss Kipling’s wisdom as naïvely idealistic and unacquainted with the real-world complications of kingship. Kipling’s policy may seem ever so noble and heroic, but many would suggest that sometimes survival requires a number of very ignoble and unheroic choices. Many would argue that Alfred’s payment of the danegeld was the most prudent course of action that realistically could have been pursued.

  No matter how overly idealistic Kipling’s foreign policy may have been, it can’t be denied there was a good deal of truth to the poet’s conclusion. Paying the danegeld never buys more than short-term peace. The payment reveals a weakness, a willingness to give up wealth without a fight. And, like the scent of blood to sharks, this message could do nothing other than attract future Viking attacks.

  A century later, Alfred’s great, great grandson, Æthelred II, would pursue a disastrous policy of regularly paying the danegeld, which resulted in a series of successive Danish invasions, each of which was rewarded by an even larger payment of the danegeld. Eventually the Danes gained control of all of England, and King Æthelred II was exiled. This was the course Alfred himself had begun to take.

  Not only did Alfred’s decision guarantee future Danish campaigns into Wessex, but it also required Alfred to raise an enormous amount of money for the danegeld payment, an amount he was not capable of personally producing from his royal holdings. This meant that Alfred must exact from his people a sudden, enormous, and unreasonable tax, a tax that fell primarily on the churches, the largest haven of wealth in the ninth century. In the years to come, a number of Wessex churches would find it hard to forgive Alfred for the financial burden that was put onto them in the summer of 871.

  Alfred’s decision to pay the danegeld could not have come at a better time for the Viking commander, Halfdan. Not only had Halfdan’s army grown terribly weary of the heavy losses brought on by the Wessex campaign, but also the Viking grip on the other Anglo-Saxon territories had begun to fail during the prolonged invasion of Wessex. In the early winter months of 872, the Danes returned to London, where they again successfully demanded danegeld from the Mercian king, Burgred, Alfred’s brother-in-law. Accepting the danegeld obligated the Vikings to leave the Mercian kingdom, and Halfdan soon had his men on the move once more. The departure from London, however, had less to do with honoring an agreement with King Burgred and more to do with reasserting Viking control over the Anglo-Saxons in general. While wintering in London, Halfdan received word that the Northumbrians had taken advantage of the long Viking absence and had cast out the puppet king and bishop whom the Danes had installed in York.

  In response to this rebellion, Halfdan led his forces from London north to Torksey, a town that lay inside the borders of Mercia but was ideally located for forays into Northumbria. At Torksey, a canal connected the Trent to the river Witham, giving the Danish army passageways deep into Northumbria, Mercia, and East Anglia. The site was ideal for reminding these conquered nations of the Viking supremacy.

  Torksey lay within the borders of Mercia, meaning the Viking army had not left King Burgred’s borders, despite having taken his danegeld. This alarmed the weak Mercian king, who soon began to wonder if the Vikings planned to betray their implicit agreement that he was allowed to rule Mercia if he would regularly bow and scrape before the Danish rulers. Burgred attempted to appease the Viking overlords by welcoming into his court the puppet king and bishop whom the Northumbrians had ousted. Then, to make his subservience doubly clear, Burgred paid Halfdan the danegeld one more time.

  Not surprisingly, Burgred’s attempts at conciliation only hastened the
end of his reign. Rather than gratefully receiving Burgred’s desperate offers of friendship and peace, the Danes sensed profound weakness in the Mercian king, a weakness that begged to be exploited. Immediately after accepting the second offering of danegeld, Halfdan sent a small force sailing up the Trent to Repton, where they constructed a small earthen fortress along the riverbank. Though the force was not large enough to launch a viable assault on Burgred in Nottingham, the move still spooked the jittery Mercian king. Burgred immediately abandoned Nottingham and fled England along with his wife Ælswith, Alfred’s sister.

  The Mercian king and queen left their thrones to become pilgrims of the holy city of Rome. Soon their names were entered into the book of guests recorded by the monks of Brescia, the same book that had recorded Alfred’s pilgrimage as a young boy. Burgred and Ælswith took up residence in the Saxon quarter of Rome, where Alfred and his father had lived during their visit. Burgred was later buried in the Church of Saint Maria in the Schola Saxonum, which Alfred’s father had renovated during his visit.

  The Mercian throne was then filled by a Danish appointment— Ceolwulf, a puppet king—much like the king the Danes had previously left in charge of Northumbria. Ceolwulf would later be remembered as a foolish and worthless stooge of his Danish masters. At this point, the Viking army split up. Halfdan led a force to the north to crush the Northumbrian rebellion, and Guthrum led another army to Cambridge in East Anglia, from where he would control East Anglia and Mercia.

  For Alfred, the Northumbrian rebellion and the collapse of Mercia may have seemed to provide a welcome respite in that it demanded the Danish forces to devote their attention elsewhere for several years. However, this interlude allowed the Vikings to more firmly establish their grip on the rest of Britain, and it put them in a much more powerful position from which to launch their next assault on Wessex. Had Alfred used these years well and addressed the real weaknesses of the Wessex defenses, the Viking kings may have regretted giving him several years of peace. Even though Alfred was keenly aware of where the Wessex army had fallen short, he still lacked either the insight or the means to address these shortcomings. During these few years, the Wessex king heard regular reports about the conquests by the Danish armies throughout Britain. All the while, he was at a loss as to how he would be able to withstand the next invasion.