CHAP. II. of the Danelaw. 858878. leader named Hasting to their old quarters in Gaul, The Making Guthrum, the leader of the rest, bound himself by a solemn Peace at Wedmore, a village on the north of the Polden Hills,' to become a Christian, and to quit Ælfred's realm. The treaty itself is lost,' but its provisions are no doubt marked in the events that followed. Not only did the Danes withdraw from all England south of the Thames, but they left in Ælfred's hands all England westward of the Watling Street, the land of the Hwiccas, the upper part of the valley of the Thames, and the whole valley of the Severn. The rich pastures along the Cherwell, the downs of the Cotswolds, the forest-tract of Arden, the flats which lay about the still deserted ruins of the later Chester, Oxford, Worcester, and Gloucester, were thus rescued from heathen rule. The rescue of this district however was a small matter beside the fact that Wessex itself was saved. In the dark hour when Ælfred lay watching from his fastness of Athelney, men believed that the whole island had passed into the invader's hands. Once settled in the south, as they were already settled in central and northern England, the Danes would have made short work of what resistance lingered on elsewhere, and a few years would have sufficed to make England a Scandinavian country. All danger of this had vanished with the Peace of Wedmore. The whole outlook of the pirates was changed. Dread as Ælfred might the sword that hung over him, the Danes 1 Eng. Chron. (Winch.) a. 878; Asser (ed. Wise), p. 35. 2 The existing "Elfred and Guthrum's Peace," is, as we shall see, of later date. CHAP. III. of the Danelaw. themselves were as yet in no mood to renew their attack upon Wessex; and with the abandonment of The Making this attack not only was all hope of winning Britain as a whole abandoned, but all chance of making it a secure base and starting-point for wider Scandinavian conquests passed away. The tide of invasion in fact had turned; and Europe felt that it had turned. The struggle with the West-Saxons had been marked by a general pause in the operations of the pirates elsewhere, for their number was so small in relation to the area over which they fought that their concentration for any great struggle in one quarter meant their weakening and retreat in another. It is clear from the general aspect of the war in Gaul, that the conquest of the Danelaw and the absorption of a large force in its settlement had already weakened the strength of the northern onset upon the Franks. The courage of the peoples across the Channel rose as the pressure of the northmen became lighter; and we see in every quarter a growing resistance to the invaders. But this resistance took a new vigour when the Danes were thrown back from Wessex. The spell of terror was broken. Nowhere had the attack been so resolute; nowhere had the forces of the pirates been so great; nowhere had their campaigns been conducted on so steady and regular a plan; nowhere had they so nearly reached the verge of success. And nowhere had they so utterly failed. The ease and completeness with which the invaders had won the bulk of Britain only brought out in stronger relief the completeness of their repulse from the south. I 858. 878. Its effect on Europe. CHAP. III. of the Danelaw. 858878. The Danelaw. Great however as were the results of Ælfred's The Making victory, the fact remained that the bulk of Britain lay still in Danish hands. If we look at it in its relation to England as a whole, the treaty of Wedmore was the acknowledgement of a great defeat. Bravely as the house of Ecgberht had fought, the work of Ecgberht was undone. The dominion which he had built up was wrecked like the dominion of the Karolings; and for the moment it seemed yet more completely wrecked. The blows of the northmen had fallen indeed as heavily on the one dominion as on the other; but in the Karolingian Empire their settlements were scattered and few, nor had they any importance save in furthering the tendency of its various peoples to fall apart into their old isolation. In England, on the other hand, the Danes had won the bulk of the land for their own. Beaten as they were from Wessex, all northern, all eastern, and a good half of central Britain remained Scandinavian ground. The settlements of the northmen in Frankland, those in Friesland or on the Loire, even the more permanent Norman settlements at a later time on the Seine, were too small to sway in other than indirect ways the fortunes of the states across the Channel. But in Britain the Danish conquests outdid in extent and population what was left to the English king, and the realm of Ælfred saw across Watling Street a rival whose power was equal to, or even greater than, its own. The Danes in Nor was this conquest a mere work of the sword. Northumbria. With the change of masters went a social revolution, for over the whole space from the Thames to |