remained to glean from the wasted land Halfdene led CHAP. III. of the Danelaw. 858878. his men through Cumbria, where Carlisle was entirely The Making destroyed, and on through Strath-Clyde' to the north, where the Scot king Constantine was battling for life against Thorstein, a son of Olaf the Fair, and the Norwegian Jarl Sigurd who had now established himself in the Orkneys. Thorstein and Sigurd overran the northern parts of the realm while Halfdene advanced from the south, till the Scots, pressed between the two pirate hosts, bought peace for the moment by the cession of Caithness. But while one portion of the host was thus busy beyond the Humber, Guthrum was leading the other half from their winter-quarters at Repton to Cambridge to prepare for a final onset upon Wessex. The greatness of the contest had now drawn to Britain the whole strength of the northmen. Ireland won a long rest as its Ostmen flocked to join their brethren over the sea; and the force of the pirates in Gaul was so weakened that Charles was able to drive them from their stronghold at Angers. But the weakness of the pirates to east and west only pointed to a general concentration of their force upon Britain, and it was with a host swollen by reinforcements from every quarter that Guthrum in 876 set sail for the south.2 Alfred had equipped a few ships which served to 1 "Pictos atque Stretduccenses depopulati sunt," Sim. Durh. "He made raids on the Picts and the Strath-Clyde Wealhs," Eng. Chron. (Winch.) a. 875. "Inducunt Pihtis bellum Cumbrisque," Ethelweard, a. 875, lib. iv. c. 3. Skene notes this as "the first appearance of the term of Cumbri or Cumbrians, as applied to the Britons of Strath-Clyde." 2 Eng. Chron. (Winch.) a. 875; Asser. (ed. Wise), p. 27. CHAP. III. beat off some smaller parties that attacked the coast, The Making but the little squadron was helpless to meet such a of the Danelaw. 858878. fleet as now put out from the harbours of East-Anglia. Coasting by Dover, Guthrum made like the earlier Guthrum's marauders for the Dorset coast, and seized a neck of second attack land near Wareham between the Piddle and the Frome on Wessex. for his camp. Ælfred at once marched on these lines; but they were too strong to storm; and gold, we can hardly doubt, again bought a treaty in which the pirates swore on every relic that could be gathered as well as on their own Odin's ring, a sacred bracelet smeared with the blood of beasts offered at the god's altar, to quit the king's land. Ælfred's hold was no sooner loosened however than half of the northern host took horse and, striking across country, seized Exeter to winter in. The seizure of the city may have been looked on by the Danes as no breach of faith, for Exeter was still in part a British town; but it was just this that made their presence there so serious a danger, and through the winter Ælfred girded himself for a resolute effort to drive them out before their success could cause a Welsh rising. At break of spring in 877 the WestSaxon army closed round the town, while a hired fleet cruised off the coast to guard against rescue. A storm which drove their boats on the rocks of Swanage foiled the efforts of the freebooters who remained at Wareham to rescue their brethren, and 1 Eng. Chron. (Winch.) a. 877. 1 24 'Impositisque piratis in illis vias maris custodiendas commisit."-Asser (ed. Wise), p. 29. Exeter was at last starved into surrender, while The Danish host withdrew in fact into the Severn CHAP. III. The Making of the Danelaw. 858 878. valley to winter at Gloucester. But Ælfred had hardly disbanded the army which had taken Exeter when The surprise Hubba, Ivar's brother, with a fleet which had of Wessex. been ravaging in the Bristol Channel, struck up the Severn to Guthrum's aid. All thought of the oath they had sworn at at once passed from the minds of the invaders; and at the opening of 878 Hubba with a squadron of twenty-three ships made his way to the coast of Devonshire, while the main body of the northern host again crossed the Avon and pushed by a swift and secret march as far as Chippenham. The surprise of Wessex was complete. The Danes were in the heart of the Gwent before tidings of their advance could call either king or people to arms, and the whole district east of the Selwood lay at their mercy. To gather the fyrd of Hampshire or Wilts or Berkshire in face of the pirates was impossible. Their activity made them masters of the land; "many of the folk they drove beyond sea" over the Bristol Channel, "and the greater part of the rest they forced to obey them." 4 Ælfred alone remained untouched by the terror about him. Falling back through the Selwood on the westernmost fragment of Wessex, the land of the Somer-sætas and Defn-sætas, he seems even there to 1 Eng. Chron. (Winch.) a. 877. 2 Æthelweard, a. 877, lib.. iv. c. 3. 3 Eng. Chron. (Winch.) a. 878; Asser (ed. Wise), p. 30. Eng. Chron. (Winch.) a. 878. CHAP. III. The Making of the Danelaw. 858. 878. Defeat of the Danes. have found his efforts to gather a force baffled for a while by civil strife; and the band which still followed the king made its way with difficulty to the marshes that occupied the heart of Somersetshire.2 From Langport to the site of the later Bridgewater, the country between Polden Hill and the Quantocks was little more than a vast morass drained by the deep channel of the Parret. The local names of the district, Sedgemoor, on whose half-reclaimed flats Monmouth was to meet his doom, the "zoys' or rises crowned now-a-days with marsh-villages, such as Chedzoy and Middlezoy, preserve a record of the flood-drowned fen in which Ælfred sought shelter. In the midst of it, at a point where the Tone flowing northwards from Taunton strikes the Parret, lies Athelney, a low lift of ground some two acres in extent, girded in by almost impassable fen-lands. It was at Athelney that the king threw up a fort and waited for brighter days.3 4 A jewel of blue enamel inclosed in a setting of gold with the words round it "Elfred had me wrought" was found here in the seventeenth century, and still recalls the memories of this gallant stand. It was only later legend that changed it into a solitary flight, as it turned the three months of Ælfred's stay in this fastness into three years of hiding. The three months were in fact months of 1 "Elfredo," says Ethelweard, a. 886, "quem ingenio, quem occursu, non superaverat civilis discordia sæva. 2 Asser (ed. Wise), p. 30. 3 Eng. Chron. (Winch.) a. 878; Asser (ed. Wise), p. 33. The legend of St. Neot, written at the end of the tenth century, of which fragments break our actual text of Asser. CHAP. III. of the Danelaw. 858 878. active preparation for a new struggle. Athelney was a position from which Elfred could watch closely the The Making movements of his foes, and with the first burst of spring he found himself ready to attack them. Whatever disunion may have thwarted him before must now have been hushed, for the fyrd of Devonshire gathered round its Ealdorman Odda, and falling suddenly on Hubba, whose squadron was harrying its coast, cut his men to pieces; while the men of Somerset rallied round their Ealdorman, Ethelnoth. In the second week of May, 878, the whole host of the West Saxons mustered under their young king's standard at Ecgberht's stone on the east of Selwood. Till now their gathering had been hidden from the Danes by this great screen of woodland, and when they burst through it into the older Wessex the surprise may have been as complete as when the Danes burst in from Chippenham. Whatever was the cause of his success, Elfred no sooner found their host at Ethandun or Edington, near Westbury, than he defeated it in a great battle, and drove the beaten warriors to seek shelter in their camp. But the camp at Edington, unlike the camps which had hitherto repulsed the English, had no outlet by river to the sea; it was possible to cut off its supplies, and a siege of fourteen days forced the Danes to surrender.2 The Peace The struggle had been a short one, but the completeness of Ælfred's victory was seen in its results. of Wedmore. The spirit of the assailants was utterly broken; and while the bulk of the pirate host withdrew under a 1 Eng. Chron. (Winch.) a. 878; Asser (ed. Wise), p. 33. |