The weakness of

OF NEW YORK.

CHAPTER IV.

ÆLFRED.

878-901.

MASTERS as they were of the bulk of Britain, the the Danelaw. pressure of the Danes on the England that resisted them must in the end have proved irresistible had their military force remained undiminished and had their political faculty been as great as their genius for war. As we have seen, however, they showed as few traces of political faculty or of any power of national organization as in their own Scandinavia, while the number of their fighting men was lessening every day. Already the conquest of northern Britain had done much to save the south; for the attack of Guthrum on Wessex might have proved as successful as the attack of Ivar on Northumbria, had Ivar's men remained in the ranks of the Danish host instead of settling down as farmers beside the Ouse or the Trent. Peace too, and the Christianity which Guthrum embraced, yet further thinned the Danish ranks; and at the close of the last campaign against Wessex a large part of the invaders followed Hasting to seek better fortune in Gaul. But even those who remained on English ground clung loosely

to their new settlements. It was not Britain but Iceland that drew to it at this time the hearts of the northern rovers; and the English Danelaw often served as a mere stepping-stone between Norway and its offshoot in the northern seas. Of the names of the original settlers of Iceland which are recorded in the Landnama, its Domesday book, more than a half are those of men who had found an earlier settlement in the British Isles.1

At the moment we have reached, however, however, even Alfred's eye could hardly have discerned the weakness of the Danelaw. It was with little of a conqueror's exultation that the young king turned from his victories in the west. He looked on the peace he had won as a mere break in the struggle, and as a break that might at any moment come suddenly to an end. Even in the years of tranquillity which followed it there never was an hour when he felt safe against an inroad of the Danes over Watling Street, or a landing of pirates in the Severn. "Oh, what a happy man was he," he cries once, "that man that had a naked sword hanging over his head from a single thread-so as to me it always did!" 2

And yet peace was absolutely

1 Dasent, translation of Njal's "Saga," Intr. p. xii. The most trustworthy accounts, such as that of the Landnamabok, of the first settlements in Iceland show how mixed the population of the British Islands then was. Besides the overwhelming numbers of the northmen, there are found men and women of Danish, Swedish, and Flemish descent who joined in the emigration from Britain to Iceland. (A.S.G.)

2 Ælfred's Boethius, in Sharon Turner's "Hist. Anglo-Sax." vol. ii. p. 45.

CHAP. IV.

Ælfred.

878901.

Elfred's work of restoration.

CHAP. IV.

Ælfred. 878901.

needful for the work that lay before him. If the
deliverance of Wessex had shown the exhaustion of
the Danes, Wessex itself was as utterly spent by fifty
years of continuous effort, and above all by the last
five years of deadly struggle. Law, order, the machi-
nery of justice and government, had been weakened
by the pirate storm. Schools and monasteries had
for the most part perished. Many of the towns and
villages lay wrecked or in ruin. There were whole
tracts of country that lay wasted and without in-
habitants after the Danish raids. Material and moral
civilization indeed had alike to be revived. All how-
ever might be set right, as the king touchingly said,
"if we have stillness; " and in these first years of
peace the work of restoration went rapidly on.
Ælfred had to wrestle indeed with the penury of
the royal Hoard; for so utterly had it been drained
by the payments to the pirates and the cost of
the recent struggle that the sons of Ethelwulf had
been driven to the miserable expedient of debasing
the currency, and it was not till Elfred's later
days that the coinage could be raised to a sounder
standard. He had to wrestle too yet harder with
the sluggishness of his subjects. There were scarcely
any who would undertake the slightest voluntary
labour for the common benefit of the realm; persua-
sion had after long endurance to pass into command;
and even commands were slowly and imperfectly
carried out. Great however as were the obstacles,

1 Pref. to Pastoral Book (ed. Sweet).
2 Robertson," Hist. Essays," p. 64.
3 Asser (ed. Wise), p. 59.

the work was done. Forts were built in places specially exposed to attack,' and wasted lands were colonized afresh. Bishop Denewulf of Winchester tells us how his land at Bedhampton "when my lord first let it to me was unprovided with cattle and laid waste by heathen folk; and I myself then provided the cattle, and there people were afterwards." So too new abbeys were founded at Winchester and Shaftesbury; while the king's gratitude for his deliverance raised a religious house among the marshes of Athelney.

2

CHAP. IV.

Ælfred.

878

901.

reforms.

Busy however as Alfred was with the restoration His military of order and good government, his main efforts were directed to the military organization of his people." He had learned during the years of hard fighting with which his life began, how unsuited the military system of the country had become to the needs of war as the Danes practised it. The one national army was the fyrd, a force which had already received in the Karolingian legislation the name of "landwehr"

which the German knows it still. The fyrd was in fact composed of the whole mass of free landowners who formed the folk and to the last it could only be summoned by the voice of the folk-moot. In theory therefore such a host represented the whole available force of the country. But in actual warfare its attendance at the king's war-call was

1 Asser (ed. Wise), p. 58.

2 Thorpe, "Diplomatarium," p. 162.

3 Stubbs ("Const. Hist." i. 220 et seq.) has examined this subject; but we have little real information about it from contemporary documents."

CHAP. IV.

Ælfred. 878

901.

limited by practical difficulties. Arms were costly; and the greater part of the fyrd came equipped with bludgeons and hedge-stakes, which could do little to meet the spear and battleaxe of the invader. The very growth of the kingdom too had broken down the old military system. A levy of every freeman was possible when one folk warred with another folk, when a single march took the warrior to the border, and a single fight settled the matter between the tiny peoples. But now that folk after folk had been absorbed in great kingdoms, now that the short march had lengthened into distant expeditions, the short fight into long campaigns, it was hard to reconcile the needs of labour and of daily bread with the needs of war. Ready as he might be to follow the king to a fight which ended the matter, the farmer who tilled his own farm could serve only as long as his home-needs would suffer him. Custom had fixed his service at a period of two months. But as the industrial condition of the country advanced such a service became more and more difficult to enforce; even in Ine's day it was needful to fix heavy fines by law for men who "neglected the fyrd," and it broke down before the new conditions of warfare brought about by the strife with the Danes. However thoroughly they were beaten, the Danes had only to fall back behind their entrenchments, and wait in patience till the two months of the host's service were over, and the force which besieged them melted away. It was this which had again and again neutralized the successes of the West-Saxon kings.

1 Ine's Law; Thorpe, "Anc. Laws," i. 134-5.