CHAP. III. of the Danelaw. 858 878. attacked on their own ground the West Saxons turned The Making fiercely at bay. We have seen how from the first the Gwent had been screened from invasion by the impenetrable barriers that guarded it on every side, and how the hosts of its earlier assailants had fallen back before steeps such as those of Wanborough and Ashdown. A far different fortune however seemed to await the Danes. They had no sooner reached Reading than one of their marauding parties was cut to pieces by a force hastily gathered under the ealdorman of the district; and the check gave Ethelred and his brother time to hurry to the field;1 but though the king at once assailed the camp which the pirates had formed by running an entrenchment from the Kennet to the Thames, a desperate fight ended in his repulse, and the defeat threw open Wessex to the invaders. As the beaten Englishmen fell back along the Thames the pirates pushed rapidly by the ancient track known as the Ridgeway along the edge of the upland which looks over the Vale of White Horse, till on the height of Ashdown they threw up entrenchments and again encamped." The battle of Ashdown. The march of the Danes showed their genius for war. They had in fact thrown themselves on their enemy's rear, and not only cut off his communications with the Gwent but turned its very escarpments against him, for it was Ethelred and not the Danes that had to storm the heights of Ashdown in the coming struggle. From such a post indeed all Wessex lay at the mercy of the invaders. But they had still 1 Eng. Chron. (Winch.) a. 871; Asser (ed. Wise), p. 21. 2 Eng. Chron. (Winch.) a. 871. CHAP. III. of the Danelaw. 858 878. to fight for it; for neither Ethelred nor Ælfred were men to give up hope at a single blow. Four days after The Making the fight at Reading the English army, reinforced probably by the men of Wantage and the neighbourhood, stood again face to face with its foes, and Ælfred, who led the advance, at once attacked them.1 Posted, however, as they were on a hill covered with thick brushwood and sheltered by their usual entrenchments, the Danes held the Etheling's troops stoutly at bay; and though message after message called Æthelred to his aid the king refused to march till the mass he was hearing was done. "God first and man after," Ethelred answered his brother's cry; and Ælfred could only save his men from utter rout by charging again and again "like a wild boar" up the slope. The king however showed a cool judgement in his delay, for his men were well in hand before he moved; and the general advance of his army at last cleared the fatal hill. The fight raged fiercest round a stunted thorn-tree which men in after days noted curiously ("I have seen it with my own eyes,' says Asser), and here with loud shouts Dane and Englishman battled hard. But the shouts were hushed at last. The day went for Ethelred. King Bagsecg fell beneath the sword of the king himself; and five pirate Jarls lay among the corpses which were heaped upon the field.2 But routed as it was, Guthrum's host sought shelter Elfred in the camp at Reading, and its entrenchments again becomes king held the brothers at bay. The West Saxons still 1 Asser (ed. Wise), pp. 22, 23. CHAP. III. of the Danelaw. 858878. indeed kept their mastery in the field, beating back The Making the Danes as they tried a new dash along the line of the Kennet, and holding them in check at Basing when with forces strengthened by the arrival of fresh troops from the Thames they struck southward for Hampshire. But the camp at Reading remained impregnable, and every hour of delay told fatally against Ethelred. Already weakened by these fierce encounters, the West-Saxon leader was hampered above all by the difficulty of holding his levies together. Men called from farm and field and looking for support to the rations they brought with them were eager to fight and go home; while the Danes were constantly reinforced by fresh comers, and spurred to new efforts by the need of procuring supplies from the country they won. A change in the relative weight of the two armies at last showed itself, for a new raid upon Surrey brought the pirates better luck than its predecessors; and after a brave fight at Merton, in which their king was mortally wounded, the West Saxons drew off beaten from the field. When Ethelred's death in April added its gloom to the gloom of defeat, and Elfred took his place on the throne, the young king (he numbered but two and twenty years) stood almost alone in front of the enemy, for at the news of his brother's death the English levies had broken up and gone home. The Danes master Mercia. 2 At this very hour a large fleet of Danes pushed up Thames to join their fellows at Reading, and Ælfred 1 Eng. Chron. (Winch.) a. 871. 2 Flor. of Worc. dates it three weeks after Easter, which, in 871, would make it April 23. 1 CHAP. III. of the Danelaw. 858 878. was forced to hurry from his brother's grave at Wimborne with what men he could muster to meet a fresh The Making advance of the foe. But with such forces little could be done to check their march. They seem already to have entered the Gwent and to have encamped at Wilton, the early "tun" to which our Wiltshire owes its name, before Ælfred could meet them; and a desperate attack which the young king made on them there was roughly beaten off. A succession of petty defeats forced Elfred at last to a shameful truce; and at the counsel of his Witan 'he bought with hard money the withdrawal of the Danes from the land. The shame was hard to bear, for though bargains of this sort had been common enough in Ireland and Gaul, a purchased peace had as yet scarcely been known among Englishmen; and the distress of Alfred may be seen in a vow of alms to the holy places in Rome and even in far-off India for deliverance from his foes, which marked this dark hour of his history." But if the gold won a respite for Wessex, it left the pirates free to complete their work in the centre of the island. Granting peace, no doubt on terms of tribute, to the ruler of Mid-Britain, the host after 1 Eng. Chron. (Winch.) a. 871; Asser (ed. Wise), p. 25. 2 Eng. Chron. (Canterbury), a. 883. "This year Sighelm and Æthelstan carried to Rome the alms which the king vowed to send thither, and also to India, to St. Thomas and St. Bartholomew, when they sat down against the army at London." The Danish "here" retired after the truce to winter at London (Eng. Chron. a. 872); but we have no account of Ælfred's sitting down against them; and as this is a late copy of the Chronicle, its entry may be a mere blunder for Asser's entry, "Paganorum exercitus Lundoniam adiit et ibi hiemavit," or rather Huntingdon's copy of this, "quando hostilis exercitus hiemavit apud Lundoniam.” F NEW YORK. CHAP. III. of the Danelaw. 858. 878. a year spent in Northumbria returned to its camp at The Making Torksey in Lincolnshire to gather fresh forces for a new campaign; then, in the spring of 874, the Danes burst upon Mercia. We hear of no resistance. King Burhred fled over sea without striking a blow to find refuge and a grave at Rome; while his conquerors, setting up a puppet king, Ceolwulf, in his room, took oath of vassalage from him and his subjects, and wintered at Repton, sacking and firing the great abbey which served as the burial-place of the Mercian kings.2 Division of the 3 Their mastery of central Britain however only Danish host, served to give the Danes a firmer base from which to complete their conquest of the island, both in north and south. With the spring of 875 their force broke asunder; one part of it with Halfdene at its head marching northward to the Tyne to complete the reduction of Bernicia. The aim of the pirates still remained mainly that of plunder, and the religious houses which had escaped till now fell in this fiercer storm. Coldingham, the house of Ebbe, was burnt to the ground. Bishop Eardulf was driven from Lindisfarne, carrying with him the body of Cuthbert as his chiefest treasure, to wander with it for years from one hiding-place to another.4 When little 1 Eng. Chron. (Winch.) a. 873. 2 Eng. Chron. (Winch.) a. 874; Asser (ed. Wise), p. 26. Æthelweard a. 872. "Myrcii confirmant cum eis fœderis pactum stipendiaque statuunt." From the Chronicle it seems that the Danes took part of Mercia, leaving part to Ceolwulf. Is this the beginning of the division into Danish and English Mercia? 3 Eng. Chron. a. 875. 4 Sim. Durh. "Gest. Reg." a. 875. |