Episode 9: Unshakeable Pillar of the Western People

Episode 9: ‘Unshakeable pillar of the western people’

Hello, and welcome to the History of England, Episode 9: Unshakeable . . .

We left Alfred in the midst of a rush of reform across all aspects of Wessex society. By 891, it was clear that Wessex faced a fresh threat from Viking invasion. Alfred was ahead of the game, and made the leaders of the Danish kingdoms in England give oaths that they would not support the new Danish Army, but the strategy clearly didn’t work, and the new invasion was to be supported by men and materials from England.

So, In 891, King Arnulf of the Franks defeated a large Danish Army in Northern Belgium. The Danes fled to Boulogne, and 892 it came across to the South East of England, to Kent in 2 great companies, one of which needed 250 ships and the other 80 ships – so it’s a big army, despite the fact that it had been defeated on the continent and was now looking for easier pickings. The larger force was in southern Kent, the other was further North at Sheppey, in the mouth of the Thames.

Alfred’s immediate objective was to stop the two from meeting, and he brought his army to somewhere between the two. He treated almost immediately with the leader of the smaller, more northern force, who was a man called Haestan. As a result, Haestan made a camp north of the Thames in Essex, and had his two sons baptised as Christians. Alfred stood as Godfather to one of the lads, and Athelred of Mercia Godfather to the other.

Meanwhile the larger force set off in to Wessex, moving west and north into Hampshire and Berkshire, and managed to evade Alfred, until spring 893 when, having gathered a lot of plunder, they turned north and East, looking to meet up with Haestan in Essex.

As normal, BTW, there’s a lot of geography in this, which I rather enjoy, but it’s easy for me because I’m writing it. But I’ve put some maps up on the website, at history of England.typepad.com of course. You have to download the PDF file to get them, but I’m sure you’ll be up to that.

This then is when we get our first glimpse of Edward, the eldest son of Alfred. It is Edward and the fyrd who intercepted the Danes as they turned north, at Farnham – and routed them.

There then followed a helter skelter flight of 20 miles, with Edward snapping at the Danish heels. The flight was so close that when the Danes hit a River, the river colne in this case, they had no chance to look for a ford, and had to simply dive across, and hole up in an island in the middle of the river, where they could defend themselves. For those interested, the Island has been identified as Thornet island, at Iver in Buckinghamshire.

At this crucial juncture, the Danes in Northumbria and East Anglia intervened, and launched a sea borne invasion into Devon, attacking Exeter. Alfred had to split his army and head off down to the sea side, and for the next 6 months was unable to take any part in the main event. Edward now took control. But despite the fact that he was joined by Athelred of Mercia, they did not feel they had enough men to force the river and attack the Danes on their island. In the end, Edward decided that the priority was to get the Danes off his land, so in the end he dealt with them, and allowed then to leave.

Meanwhile, Haestein had established a camp at Benfleet in Essex, and had taken off to go raiding in Mercia. While he was away, the defeated Danish army rolled into his camp, to join Haestein’s women and children.

Edward attacked again, and captured the fort and everything in it, and again sent the Danes packing.

A nice little cameo is of the Wife and Sons of Haestein being brought to Alfred from the captured fort. Rather than use them as hostages, Alfred loads them up with presents and sends them back to Haestein, refusing to use his Godson in such as way. It’s another measure of the man.

Anyway, Haestein arrived back at this point, and the balance of power swung back the other way. Once they’d established a new fort yet further East towards the mouth of the Thames at a place called Shoebury, they felt safe; and once more Danes had joined Haesten from Northumbria and East Anglia, eager for the chance to make some money, Haesten felt strong enough to strike out again.

Duly he struck out on a raid up the river Thames, all the way to the west of England, carrying on north up the river Severn. As they marched, however, they were faced by a very different proposition than Guthrum in 870. All along the Thames the Danes were faced by Alfred’s Burghs, and their freedom of movement was severely restricted – they never, for example, managed to penetrate into Wessex to any significant depth.

Here at last Haesten was stopped. He was stopped by a combination of forces – the Earldormen of Mercia, Wiltshire and Somerset, plus the garrisons of all the Burghs along the way. The fight was self consciously Christian against Pagan, and for that reason the Welsh, perennial enemies of the AS’s, were happy to send a force and face the Danes with them. The Danes were finally trapped, and besieged on an island near the welsh border. The siege went on for several weeks, until finally they were able to cut their way through the English lines, and make it back to their fort in Shoebury. Although the ASC talks about a great slaughter, the Viking army was clearly still a viable unit, so we should take the proverbial pinch of salt to the obviously pro Saxon chronicle. But however biased it is, it is clear that the Danes so far had spent an arid year with little success.

But 893 was not yet finished for Haesten. He realized that Shoebury was not the best place for him. Although it was on the coast, and therefore within easy access of his ships, being stuck away in the south eastern corner of Essex didn’t give easy access to other parts of the country. And he needed access to a fresh supply of men, from the Danish kingsdoms of England, or even from the Norweigan kingdoms of Ireland.

So Haesten broke camp again and the Danes moved with the blistering speed for which they were famous. Their objective was Chester in the north West. Chester was and old Roman town. In common with London, the Angles had never settled within the walls, and so it had been deserted since the time of the Romans. It would make a perfect base for operations.

One of the striking things about the campaign in 893 had been the ability of the Anglo Saxon forces to keep pace with the Vikings. The Alfred’s re-organisation of the fyrd, and the availability of men at anytime from the Burghs had all helped. But in a straight race, they couldn’t keep up, and Haesten was soon safe within the old Roman walls.

But the English leaders were determined not to let the Danes settle. They besieged Chester and cut the Danes off from their food supply, by devastating the surrounding area and destroying everything the Vikings might be able to use for food.

Haesten again knew that unless he could give his followers the plunder they were looking for, he would lose his army. The last year must have been a dispiriting experience for the Danes. So in the Autumn of 893 he managed to break out of Chester and head instead for Wales. For the rest of 893 and into 894, Haesten ravaged all the way down the Eastern side of Wales, down to the Bristol Channel and back up to the North.

Later 894, the English knew Haesten had returned into Northumbria, laden with Welsh treasure, and that he was moving back to Essex by way of East Anglia. But they were unable to do anything about it, since they were reluctant to enter the Danish kingdoms, giving Guthrum and Guthfrith an official excuse to join him.

At about the same time, the Danish army in Exeter – remember them? – finally gave up, got onto their ships and headed for home. On the way, they thought they would carry out a good old traditional raid, and help themselves to some plunder. They selected Sussex on the south coast, and landed near Chichester and started to ravage the surrounding countryside.

Chichester was the largest town in Sussex, it had been a Roman town, and had been taken over by Aella in 477, and renamed after his son Cissa. It was also one of Alfred’s new Burgh’s, and one of the largest at that. So here was a good example of the Burghs in operation. The garrison of the Burgh were quickly formed up and attacked the Danes. They were entirely successful, so much so that not only did they kill many of their number, but also managed to capture a number of the Danish ships as the scrambled to escape. The age of easy pickings really was over.

The departure of the Danish army from Exeter also released Alfred, and he was able to rejoin Edward and Earldorman Athelred.

Hasten by this time had gone to ground. He had arrived back in Essex, and this time had established a camp at Mersea, further north from Shoebury on the Essex coast. They then moved both themselves and their ships onto the river Lea. This is a river that runs from the North of London into the Thames. The Danes were therefore based about 20 miles north of London, possibly at Hertford.

And there the Danes remained, apparently without great incident, until the summer of 895. The AS knew they needed to be dislodged, since they were in easy striking distance of London or central Wessex. But the first attempt by the garrison of London was a failure; the Vikings camp was too strong for the AS army, and they were repulsed with the death of 4 of the King’s thegns – plus an unspecified number of your average kind, whose lives sadly don’t warrant a mention in great historical records.

Alfred’s idea was to have more impact. He built two forts on the river south of the Danish camp, so that they would not be able to move south down the river Lea to attack London; and nor would they be able to escape easily by sea. He moved his army close to the camp, so that they would not be able to ravage the nearby countryside, and especially not to be able to steal the harvest.

Hasten moved again, and took his men west, again with lightening sped to Bridgnorth on the River Severn. But his time was running out. His Danes had not joined him to wander all round England – they’d come looking for gold and glory.

East Anglia and Northumbria again tried to help by distracting Alfred and his army, just as they had done with the attack on Exeter in 894, and they ravaged all along the South Coast of England.

Alfred had used ships before to try to tackle the Danes before they reached land. By 896 we see how far this process has come. Some have seen in Alfred’s work the establishment of the English Navy; but it is really should be seen much more in the light of a response to the specific challenge they faced. Now Alfred realised a new effort was needed, and commissioned ships on a larger plan that those available to the Vikings – the ships appear to have been modelled on 60 rowing seats, rather than the more normal 20 of the Vikings. The ASC records one raid on the Isle of Wight in particular detail. That’s one of the things I love about the ASC; it is completely capricious. Sometimes you get absolutely nothing about a year, or just the recording of a comet or some such; other times you get reams of information about the most specific thing. But anyway, the other thing this entry shows is that Alfred also looked for expertise from outside England to make sure his Navy was effective – so we see Frisians talked about as part of the ships crews. Frisia is on the north East coast of the continent, where the Low countries are now, at it was the home of experienced and skilled seamen. All told, the ASC claims that the Danes lost some 20 ships as they tried to raid the coast that year, whether from naval fights or where their raiding parties were captured by the burghal garrisons.

At some point in the Summer of 896, as the raids fail to distract Alfred from their camp, the Danes realised that England had changed for good. They’d now spent 4 years in England, with little to show for it and little prospect of more. So it was time to call a halt, and the Viking army dispersed. Some who were satisfied with the treasure they had won returned to Northumbria or East Anglia and set up homes there.

Others were still looking for their fortune, somehow found some ships and headed off again for the River Seine in France. We know of one particular group, led by a man called Hundeus, which arrive with 5 ships, and after a deal of ravaging in the Viking idiom are again converted and settled by Charles the Simple.

And so we come to the end of the second great Danish war of 892-896. There are many points of similarity between this period and the Great heathen Army. The Viking threat was now from the land, not the sea. The Vikings had demonstrated their speed, mobility and rapacity. The Danes had also at all points retained the initiative, and the AS had been forced to follow and try to react.

But the most significant things were the differences. The Danes had a massive advantage they’d not had in 866 – namely well established Danish kingdoms, happy and willing to support the invading army. But this time, the Danes had much less freedom of action, and were never able to penetrate deeply into Wessex. The AS army though one step behind, had far greater mobility than in previous campaigns. This partly due to Alfred’s splitting of the fyrd, which allowed them to move from shire to shire, partly to the availability of ready made groups of armed men in the form of Burgh garrisons, and partly due to the King’s Thegns, who kept mounted retinues available with the King at all times. In addition, all the resources of the English were targeted towards one end – the removal of the Vikings, with Mercia and Wessex working seamlessly together, even being supported at one point by the Welsh. Although the AS were unable to defeat the Vikings decisively, the Vikings were also unable to defeat the AS. The AS managed to turn the conflict into a war of attrition, and the Viking army was not well suited to such a war.

Alfred by this time had only another 3 years to live, and the 892-896 war had a sense of the end of an era in other ways. The ASC lists the death of 8 of Alfred’s most important earldormen, thegns and officers for example, and hold this up as a greater problem than the Danes. We know almost nothing of the last 3 years of Alfred’s reign, and we should strongly suspect that no news is good news, and that at least in the last 3 years of his life Alfred was able to devote himself to the learning he loved most.

Alfred probably died on the eve of the new century in October 899 at the age of 50, after a reign of 28 years. He was originally buried in the Old Minster at Winchester, which had been founded by his predecessor Cenwalh in 648. But 2 years later, Edward completed the building of a new minster in line with Alred’s wishes, right next door. It is quite possible that the new minster was built specifically to receive his body. His grave was lost in the dissolution of the monasteries in 1538, and although the graves were rediscovered in 1788 during the building of a prison, all the bones were scattered, so we do not know where Alfred’s remains are.

How do we sum up Alfred? It seems certain to me that when I’m done with the monarchy and have arrived wherever I end up, Victoria or later, I will look back and put Alfred certainly in the top 5 monarchs if not at the very top of the list. Of course, it is difficult to be as rigorous in our judgements of Alfred, when there are so limited a number of sources, and all of them from his side – Elizabeth 1st , for example, faces a much tougher challenge. But we can only go on what we have, and he seems to me the most complete leader.

The very strong impression you get is that learning and Christianity were his greatest loves, and that he was at best reluctant warrior, and is most definitely not a warrior leader in the mould of Penda, or many of his West Saxon predecessors. But he was most certainly not a bloodless man; he loved hunting, and in his younger days Asser tells us that he begged God to visit a punishment on him for being unable to control his passion for sex. And as a war leader he was superbly successful, with maybe the greatest of all qualities, the ability to learn form his mistakes, and we must remember just how close his kingdom came to being wiped out. He was a leader with a wider vision. This meant he was capable of devising an effective war strategy, rather than simply reacting to events as did all his contemporaries. But in the middle of all this chaos, fear and destruction he was also able to think much more long term about how to ensure that his kingdom survived and flourished. And he recognised that there was more to life than war and survival, and had a genuine desire to help his people reflect on their existence and part in life. And finally, we should compare his style with that of the many well known and successful names that have been or will follow him in this story – Offa, William of Normandy, Richard the Lionheart, Henry 8th – all egotistical and brutal men. Compare this with Alfred’s actions, such as returning the wife and sons of Hasten to their father, while he in turn was doing his best to destroy his kingdom. Before I break down and weep, maybe I should leave the final words to his contemporaries.