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CHAP. IV.

Ælfred.

878

901.

sailing southward and waging war against their new lord from the Orkneys and Shetlands. From these haunts, however, Harald drove them at last, sweeping the coast as far as Man summer after summer, and setting up an earldom in the Orkneys, which furnished a new base of operations against the kingdom of the Scots, while the seakings steered southward to join Guthrum's host in the Rhine-country, or Hasting in the Channel.3 The impulse which the new-comers gave was sorely needed by the Wikings, for the bolder temper of Western Christendom was giving fresh vigour to the struggle against them. At the close of 891 the pirates were beaten by King Arnulf on the Dyle in a fight so decisive that they never after attempted to settle on German soil; and even Hasting, master as he still was of northern Frankland, saw his host worn out by the resolute attacks of King Odo. It was time to seek new fields, and famine quickened the sea-kings' resolve. In 893 a fleet of two hundred and fifty vessels gathered at Boulogne, and steering for the port of Lymne the pirates established themselves in the neighbouring Andreds weald; while shortly after Hasting himself with eighty ships entered the

1 Harald Fair-hair's Saga, c. v. Laing's "Sea Kings," i. p. 288. 2 Ibid. p. 291.

3 If we follow the Saga, with Skene (" Celtic Scotland," i. 336, note, and 344, note), Hafursfiord may be dated in 883, and the Wikings' expulsion from the Orkneys, with the foundation of the earldom, had taken place before 893.

4 Eng. Chron. a. 893. The "Mickle wood, that we call Andred, was from east to west a hundred and twelve miles long or longer, and thirty miles broad."

Thames, and pushing up the Swale into northern
Kent, formed his winter-camp at Milton.

CHAP. IV.

Elfred.

878. 901.

Danelaw.

In the spring of 894 they pushed their raids into Hampshire and Berkshire; but the success of their Rising of the enterprise hung on the co-operation of the Danelaw. The compact with Alfred however was still fresh, and the English Danes remained quiet,' while the king, who had detached his son Eadward with a small force to watch the pirate-host through the winter, and stationed ealdorman Ethelred within the walls of London to hold the line of the Thames, himself by skilful encampments held the two bodies of his assailants for a year at bay, and prisoned them within the bounds of the Weald. For a while the king had hopes of ending the war by a new treaty such as that of Wedmore. Hasting swore to refrain from further ravages, and confirmed his oath by giving hostages, and suffering his two boys to be baptized; but the negotiations were a mere blind, and the good faith of the English Danes yielded at last to the call of their kinsmen. The forces in the Andreds weald threw themselves by a rapid march across the Thames; and Ælfred had hardly gathered men to strengthen the army which beset them in their camp on the Colne when the secret of this movement was revealed by a rising of the whole Danelaw in their aid.

1 After the landing of Hasting "Northumbrians and EastEngle had given oaths to Elfred, and the East-Engle six hostages" (Eng. Chron. a. 894). This however did not hinder them from joining the Danes, though not as yet in any general fashion.

2 Ethelweard, a. 894, lib. iv. c. 3.

CHAP. IV.

Ælfred.

878901.

The rising, however, only brought out the new strength of Ælfred's realm. Its policy of defence was set aside for a policy of rapid and energetic attack. The fight with The king's son Eadward, who may have ruled in the Danes. the Eastern Kingdom of Kent, Surrey, and Sussex, with the Mercian ealdorman Ethelred, added to their force the men of London, fell suddenly on the pirates' camp in Essex at a moment when it was stripped of defenders, and sank the ships moored within its entrenchment. The danger however was as great in the west as in the east, for the Danes again found allies in the Welsh. They were no doubt summoned to that quarter by the house of Roderic, which was now greatly harassed by the petty princes of the border who owned Elfred's supremacy. While a fleet from East Anglia therefore coasted round to West Wales and moored off' Exeter, the host from the Colne, which had formed a new camp at Shoebury, suddenly struck past London along the line of the Thames, and crossing the Cotswolds into the Severn valley ravaged the lands of Alfred's allies. Ælfred however in person held Exeter against attack from the West-Welsh and Cornwealas, while Eadward and Ethelred nerved themselves for a final blow in the west. Gathering forces "from every township east of Parret, and both east and west of the Selwood, and also north of Thames, and west of the Severn," from almost all Ælfred's England in fact, save the western parts which were supplying the king's own camp on the Exe, and aided by "some part of the North-Welsh people," they caught the pirate host in the Severn valley at Buttington, forced

it after a siege of some weeks to fight, defeated it with a great slaughter, and again drove it to its old quarters in Essex.

Fresh supplies of fighting men, however, from the Danelaw enabled Hasting to repeat his dash upon the west, and marching day and night across Mid-Britain, to find a stronghold within the walls of Chester. The strength of the house of Roderic lay in this quarter of Wales, and the occupation of Chester must have aimed at securing their co-operation. Deserted as the city was, its Roman walls were too strong to force, but by a close investment of the place through the winter Æthelred at last drove the northmen from their hold, though he was unable to follow them as they hurried through North Wales, and by a wide circuit through Northumbria again withdrew to a camp on the Lea.1 Here they were joined by their brethren from the Channel, who, foiled before Exeter, fell back ravaging along the coast to the Thames. A rout of the Londoners, who attacked them in 895, proved the strength of their camp on the Lea some twenty miles from the great city, and through harvest-tide the king who had now come up from the west contented himself with watching it "while the people reaped their crops." But meanwhile he was preparing for a decisive stroke. The whole of the Danish ships had entered the Lea in 896, and lay under shelter of the camp, when the pirates suddenly found the rivercourse blocked by two strong fortresses. The retreat of their boats to the Thames and sea was thus

1 Eng. Chron. a. 895. This seems the meaning of a corrupt passage in Ethelweard.

CHAP. IV.

Ælfred.

878

901.

Defeat of

the Danes.

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1

wholly cut off, and the forced abandonment of their fleet, as the pirates struck again from their camp to the Severn, practically ended the war. After a month in their camp at Bridgenorth the Danish host broke up in 897. East Anglian and West Anglian returned to their home in the Danelaw, while the followers of Hasting retreated to their former quarters across the Channel.2

"No wise man should desire a soft life," Alfred had written some years before this last struggle with the Danes, "if he careth for any worship here from the world, or for eternal life after this life is over." 3 His own life had certainly been no soft one. Though he had hardly reached fifty years of age, incessant labour and care had told on the vigour of his youth, and he must have already felt the first touches of the weakness that was to bring him to the grave. But he was still a mighty hunter, waking the stillness of the "Itene Wood," along the Southampton Water, or the stiller reaches of the Cornish moorlands, with hound and horn; and his life was marked by the same vivid activity as of old. To the scholars he gathered round him he was the very type of a scholar, snatching every hour he could find to read or listen to books read to him."

1 Eng. Chron. a. 896.

4

The singers of his

2 Eng. Chron. a. 897. 8 Transl. of Boethius, in Sharon Turner, "Hist. Ang. Sax." ii. 48.

4 "In omni venatoria arte industrius venator incessabiliter laborat non in vanum, nam incomparabilis omnibus peritia et felicitate in illa arte sicut et in cæteris omnibus Dei donis fuit, sicut et nos sæpissime vidimus."-Asser (ed. Wise), p. 16.

5 "Hæc est propria et usitatissima illius consuetudo die

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