Offa and the Mercian Wars

by Chris Peers

  Fighting resumed in the south in the 894 season, and in the following year Alfred succeeded in bottling up the Danes in their stronghold on the River Lea, twenty miles above London. He built two forts of his own on either side of the river and blocked the channel between them, so that the enemy could not get their ships out. They therefore broke out overland and struck out northwestwards across Mercia to Bridgnorth on the Severn, where the name implies that there was already a bridge by which they could cross the river. This time no attempt seems to have been made to bring them to bay, although the Chronicle records that part of Alfred’s army – perhaps the men of Mercia under Aethelred – followed them while the rest remained behind to capture the Danish fleet and take the still-serviceable ships into London. Probably both sides were exhausted by this time, and the invaders were apparently allowed to stay at Bridgnorth unmolested until they dispersed of their own accord in the spring of 896. The crisis was over, and although fighting continued on a smaller scale, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was perhaps justified in playing down the threat presented by this latest ‘Great Army’. The entry for the year 896 remarks that, ‘by the grace of God’, the English had not been crushed, and had in fact suffered worse over the previous few years from human and cattle diseases and from the deaths of a number of leading ealdormen and thegns, apparently not by enemy action.

  King Alfred died in October 899, and was succeeded by his son Edward. However, the new king had a rival, his cousin Aethelwold, who made a bungled attempt to seize the throne. Edward cornered him at the royal manor of Wimborne in Dorset, but he escaped north to Northumbria and collected a motley following of Vikings and dissident Englishmen to support his bid for power. In 903 he launched a great raid on Mercia in alliance with the Danes of East Anglia under King Eric. Edward mustered an army containing contingents from Wessex, Kent and probably Mercia as well, and went in pursuit. He was apparently unable to catch them, however, before they reached safety in East Anglia, because the Chronicle records that he retaliated by devastating their country as far north as the Fens. In order to carry out this sort of ‘scorched earth’ strategy it was necessary to disperse his forces, but Edward was insistent that the army should regroup and return to Mercia in a single body in order to reduce the risk of being overrun by pursuing Danes. The men from Kent failed to rejoin him, though, despite receiving seven messengers ordering them to do so, and paid the price when a Danish army caught up and surrounded them. The site of this battle was at Holme, probably identifiable with the village of that name a few miles south of Peterborough, on the edge of the Fen marshes. Edward turned back and may have surrounded the Danes in their turn, which would explain the extraordinary death toll in this fight, as neither side would have been able to retreat. The Chronicle lists six leading men who were killed on the English side, and says that the Vikings remained in possession of the field, but as Edward was carrying out a planned retirement this need not indicate that he was defeated. Among the Danes and their allies the dead included King Eric, the pretender Aethelwold and ‘very many others’.

  With all their leaders dead, the Danes of East Anglia had no choice but to make peace with Edward, although the Viking attacks were by no means over. In 910 the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle states that the ‘barbarians’ of Northumbria ‘broke the peace’, though it is likely that their action was a reprisal for an attack by Edward and Aethelred on Lindsey in the previous year. During this campaign the Mercians brought the much-travelled body of Saint Oswald from Bardney – where it had rested since Queen Osthryth took it there two centuries earlier – and installed it at Gloucester. It would not be surprising if this action had upset the English Northumbrians as well as the Danes, and Aethelweard’s version of the Chronicle says that the invasion of 910 was specifically aimed at Aethelred as much as at the West Saxon king. The Chronicle is confused at this point, and what is obviously the same battle is listed three times under different years, but Aethelweard’s is the most detailed account and probably, because of its Mercian perspective, the most reliable.

  The raiders cut a swathe of destruction through northern Mercia, crossed the Severn at Bridgnorth and plundered the country to the west, then turned for home, ‘rejoicing in rich spoil’. They were intercepted on 5 August 910 by a combined Mercian and West Saxon army which was apparently under the command of Aethelred, since King Edward was not present. The exact site of the ensuing battle is uncertain: Aethelweard gives it as Woden’s Field, presumably Wednesfield, east of Wolverhampton, but other versions of the Chronicle mention Tettenhall, about four miles further west. It may in fact have been a running fight with clashes at both places, since Aethelweard states that the English attacked while the enemy were still crossing the Severn at Bridgnorth, which is ten miles west of Tettenhall and even further from Wednesfield. It seems likely that the Danes were attacked successively from both directions and harried eastwards from the bridge, until they were stopped by an English division which ‘had got in front of the raiding army’ and blocked its retreat.

  Aethelweard’s ‘great victory on Woden’s Field’ may then have been the culmination of a desperate attempt by the Danes to break out of a developing encirclement. It failed, and the invaders were defeated with heavy loss. Three Viking kings, Halfdan, Eowils and Ivar, as well as numerous ‘jarls’ and other noblemen, were among those who the Chronicle says were sent hastening to hell. This triumph was Aethelred’s last battle, because the following year he died and was buried in his stronghold at Gloucester. It has been suggested, on the basis of a later mention of his ill health in an Irish annal, that he may have died from wounds received at Tettenhall (Walker), but there is no real evidence for this, and in view of the fact that he had been ruling Mercia for around thirty years he may have been of fairly advanced age.

  The Lady of the Mercians

  Aethelred had left no male heir, but his widow Aethelflaed seems to have taken on the role of leader of the Mercians without opposition. This was unusual, because no woman seems ever to have ruled an Anglo-Saxon kingdom before, or even to have been considered for the role. But the circumstances were also unusual. Firstly, although often regarded as ‘the last ruler of an independent Mercia’, she was not a crowned queen, but retained her husband’s rather ambivalent position as a ‘sub king’ or viceroy under the ultimate authority of the king of Wessex. Also, her position as the sister of this king and the daughter of Alfred the Great gave her a personal prestige which few other women could have enjoyed. The Mercians seem always to have allowed women greater influence in public life than was customary in Wessex, perhaps because of the number of different male lines competing for the throne. The support of other powerful families was obtained through marriage alliances, which naturally gave the women concerned more influence than would have been the case if the king owed his position to his own family alone. It has been pointed out that the wives of Offa, Wiglaf, Beorhtwulf and Burhred all routinely witnessed their husbands’ charters, and that Offa even issued coins featuring the image of Queen Cynefrith, a unique phenomenon for the Anglo-Saxon period. It is also of course necessary to acknowledge the importance of personal qualities. In 911 Aethelflaed already had a long history of supporting her husband in the government of Mercia under the most difficult circumstances, and both King Edward and the Mercian nobility must have been aware of her exceptional ability. Leaving aside whatever prejudices some may have had, she was unquestionably the best person for the job. Notwithstanding some romanticised modern reconstructions there is no evidence that she actually fought in person in any of her battles, but she soon proved to be a military commander of considerable skill.

  The policy of constructing defensible ‘burghs’ or fortresses may have been inspired originally by the Danish winter camps, but it had been developed by Alfred and Edward into a nationwide strategy. The burghs were intended to provide shelter for people and livestock against Viking raids, as well as channelling their movements, blocking fords and other strategic points, and generally making it more diffic
ult for invading armies to manoeuvre across the country. Aethelflaed took advantage of her husband’s victory at Tettenhall to turn this strategy into an offensive one, occupying one Danish-held town after another, and turning each into an English stronghold. In the summer of 913 she went ‘with all the Mercians’ to Tamworth, and fortified it. Offa’s old capital had been a backwater since the establishment of the Danelaw had turned it into a disputed border town, but there is no record that Aethelflaed met with any opposition. Probably the Danes hurriedly evacuated it, if in fact they had ever had a garrison there. The Mercian army then moved on to Stafford, which they also took without difficulty. The Danes based at Leicester and Northampton were alarmed, but were unable to organise any effective retaliation, contenting themselves with a few raids in the regions of Luton and Hook Norton in the north of what is now Oxfordshire. These turned out to be a fiasco, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells how the local people turned out and attacked the once-dreaded Vikings, routing them and capturing most of their horses and weapons.

  In 914 new Mercian burghs were founded at Warwick, and at Eddisbury near Chester. A raiding army led by Jarls Ohtar and Hroald sailed over from Brittany and ravaged the Lower Severn valley, but failed to distract Aetheflaed from her purpose. Instead the local levies from Hereford and Gloucester defeated them in battle, killed Hroald, and besieged the remainder in their camp until they agreed to provide hostages and leave the country. They then sailed downstream into the Bristol Channel where they tried twice to sneak ashore and pillage in Devon, but Edward had fortified the coast with numerous strongpoints and watchtowers, so they were detected on both occasions and their landing parties massacred. Those who escaped were forced to swim out to their ships and eventually to retreat to Ireland, greatly weakened by starvation.

  Other Danish initiatives were no more successful. In 917 the occupiers of Leicester and Northampton attacked a new burgh which had been built by King Edward at Towcester, about eight miles south-west of Northampton. The garrison held out during a day of fierce fighting until reinforcements arrived, however, and the attackers withdrew. In the same year the East Anglians advanced west from Cambridge and built a fort at Tempsford, on the River Great Ouse downstream from Bedford, believing that from there they could more easily raid into central Mercia. However, the men of Bedford repulsed their attack, and soon afterwards Edward came up with a large army and stormed the Viking stronghold, killing or capturing the entire garrison.

  Aethelflaed, meanwhile, ‘took possession’ of Derby, although on this occasion the Chronicle’s brief notice hints at some serious resistance, since four of her favourite thegns were killed. Henry of Huntingdon says that although the town was held by ‘a numerous garrison’ the Vikings did not dare to come out and face the Mercians in the open, so most of the fighting took place around the main gate in the walls, where the four thegns met their deaths. Early in 918 Aethelflaed’s armies closed in on Leicester, but by this time Viking resistance was crumbling throughout the country. The town surrendered without a fight, and shortly afterwards Aethelflaed received a delegation from the Danes in York, the centre of their power in Northumbria, offering her allegiance. What further conquests she might have achieved we can only speculate, because at this moment of triumph she died at Tamworth, ‘twelve days before midsummer’ in the year 918. She was buried beside her husband Aethelred at Saint Peter’s Church in Gloucester.

  Her death marks the end of the history of the Mercian Wars, because she was the last ruler of even a semi-independent Mercian state. The only candidate to succeed her was her daughter Aelfwynn, but she did not possess the experience and ability which had made her mother acceptable as a leader of warriors. She was quietly deposed by her uncle King Edward, who took her into Wessex where she disappears from history, probably into a nunnery. According to the Chronicle, ‘all the nation of the land of Mercia which was formerly subject to Aethelflaed turned to him,’ and from then on Mercia was to be ruled directly by the kings of Wessex, soon to be universally recognised as kings of England. Pro-Wessex though it is, there is no reason to believe that the Chronicle was wrong to suggest that the transfer of power was peaceful. The idea of nationhood had hardly been formulated at that time, and most men undoubtedly thought of their primary loyalty as being to an individual rather than a ‘country’. With no native Mercian dynasty surviving, Edward was the obvious choice for their allegiance.

  Under his leadership and that of his even more illustrious successor Athelstan, who reigned from 924 to 939, the rulers of Wessex were to unite the entire English people for the first time under a single king. The Mercians would continue to participate fully in this process. In 937 Athelstan crushed an alliance of Vikings and Scots at the Battle of Brunanburgh, celebrated by a poem inserted in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle which tells how the Mercians, fighting alongside the West Saxons, ‘refused hard hand-play to none’, ending the day as masters of a field on which five kings, seven jarls and countless warriors of lesser rank among the enemy lay dead. Men such as these had not been beaten by the Vikings, nor ‘conquered’ by the West Saxons – despite the claim in an exaggerated eulogy of King Edmund inserted in the Chronicle in 942 – but had bravely defended their land through all its changes of fortune, and brought it as a respected partner into the new English kingdom.

  Conclusion

  It was the misfortune of the ancient royal line of Mercia that it ceased to produce great war leaders just at the time when the English people, gradually coalescing into a single nation under the pressure of the Viking invasions, needed them most. Hence a genealogical accident has led historians ever since to see Wessex as the true precursor of England, and to this day accounts of the English (and later British) monarchy still tend to begin with Alfred the Great. The most eminent of his predecessors – men such as Raedwald, Edwin, Penda, and even Offa himself – remain in relative obscurity. In the popular imagination they appear – if at all – as barbarian warlords, ruling over primitive kingdoms that just happened to have been located on what became English territory, but which had little in common with England as we know it today. And yet things might have turned out very differently.

  If Offa had left behind a long-lived heir and a secure line of succession, or if Aethelflaed had been succeeded by the warlike son that the times seemed to require, the political centre of gravity might have remained in Mercia for much longer. It is even possible that if the Anglo-Saxons had been united sooner under Mercian leadership they might have been better able to resist both the Vikings and the Normans. It is hard to imagine an alternative history in which Tamworth or Lichfield became the capital of a united England – the economic dominance of the port of London would eventually have overshadowed all rival political centres in any case – but the role of the Mercian kings as the first to exercise real authority over the Anglo-Saxons south of the Humber might have been more widely acknowledged.

  Nevertheless, in the towns and villages which once witnessed the glory of this lost dynasty, there remains a tradition of its former eminence, and a quiet pride in its achievements. Of course these communities have fared differently over the years. Tamworth still proclaims itself the ‘ancient capital of Mercia’, and celebrates the fact in everything from street names to advertising posters. More soberly, Lichfield has functioned continuously as an ecclesiastical centre since the days of the conversion. The eighth-century ‘Saint Chad Gospels’, which is still carried in procession through the cathedral at Christmas and Easter just as it may have been when Offa heard mass in an earlier building on the site, is said to be the oldest book in the country still being used for its intended purpose. Brixworth is a growing commuter village just outside Northampton, but is well aware of the remarkable asset represented by its church, where an annual Brixworth Lecture is given by an expert in Anglo-Saxon studies. By contrast Seckington, a tiny hamlet situated in a surprisingly remote stretch of countryside east of Tamworth, preserves no hint that it was once the seat of kings. However, the hill on which All Saints Chu
rch now stands, probably the site of the royal hall where Aethelbald met his death, commands a spectacular view to the south very reminiscent of that from the height at Brixworth. Clearly these highly visible locations were favoured for the display of kingly power, as well as for their security against surprise. Though not a single battlefield of the Mercian Wars has been preserved or even precisely located, the landscape of Central England still has tales to tell of the men who first made it into a kingdom.

  Bibliography

  Main Primary Sources

  The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, trans. M. Swanton, London, 1996.

  Asser, Life of King Alfred, trans. S. Keynes and M. Lapidge, London, 1983.

  Bede, A History of the English Church and People, trans. L. Sherley-Price, Harmondsworth, 1955.

  Beowulf, trans. M. Alexander, Harmondsworth, 1973.

  English Historical Documents, Vol. 1, ed. D. Whitelock, London, 1968.

  Nennius, Historia Brittonum and Welsh Annals, trans. J. Morris, London and Chichester, 1980.

  The Chronicle of Henry of Huntingdon, trans. T. Forester, London, 1853.

  William of Malmesbury, Chronicle of the Kings of England, trans. J. Giles, London, 1876.