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Chapter III

Alfred King

"We travelled in the print of olden wars.
R. L. Stevenson, "Underwoods."

THE accession of Alfred marks no long break in this year of battles. There was little time for mourning, and none for ceremony. Although, in ordinary circumstances, the Witan met and formally elected the king, or ratified the succession, no meeting of the Witan is recorded. Alfred's succession was inevitable. It had been provided for by his father's will, by formal agreement with his brothers, and by the ordinance of the Witan on a previous occasion and the fighting men of Wessex had already crowned him king of their affections and their hopes. But in spite of the good wishes which met him on every side, and what Asser grandiloquently calls "the acclamations of the whole people," the young king must have had anxious thoughts about the dignity and duty which fell to him.

"A doubtful throne is ice on summer seas";

his kingdom seemed to be melting beneath his

touch, and the seas on which he was embarked were as stormy as the skies which held the prospect of the future. We may judge what Alfred's temper and feeling was, in taking up the kingship, by some scraps of evidence which have survived. Asser says he undertook the government of the whole kingdom "almost against his will, for he did not think that he could alone sustain the multitude and ferocity of the pagans." We cannot altogether overlook the evidence of the life of St. Neot-though it may be somewhat discounted by evident desire of the writer to make the saint appear in the role of Nathan rebuking a haughty kingto the effect that Alfred had to face some old unpopularity with the commonalty caused by what they regarded as the arrogance of a young noble. Alfred was conscious of this, it makes his decision to toil and suffer for the safety of Wessex the more heroic. It enables us to estimate at their true value the noble words in Alfred's "Boethius," which Sharon Turner rightly quotes as personal confirmation of Asser's statement: "Covetousness and the possession of this earthly power I did not like well, nor strongly desired at all this earthly kingdom, but felt it to be the work I was commanded to do." That is the true note of sainthood -the surrendered human will identifying itself with the leading of the Divine will at manifest personal

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cost. It may stand beside Cromwell's acceptance of a military career after he had passed forty years without handling a sword, Milton's preference for a "blameless silence" to the career for which he had been prepared in the Church, when he found that it could only be entered by "falseness and forswearing," or Carey's determination to face the great unknown of heathendom in obedience to the command to "preach the gospel to every creature."

Within a month after the death of Ethelred, Alfred took the field again, probably with nothing but the fyrd of Wiltshire and his own immediate followers to help him. "Let no one be surprised that the Christians had but a small number of men, for the Saxons had been worn out by eight battles in one year, . . . besides endless skirmishes both by night and by day, in which the oft-named Alfred and all his chieftains, with their men, and several of his ministers, were engaged without rest or cessation against the pagans." North Wiltshire was now lost. The Danes had received very large reinforcements by way of the Thames, and they were pressing southwards. On the hill above Wilton, south of the Wyly, Alfred, with the remnants of his broken forces, met the Danes again. The attack probably took the Danes by surprise, and for some time they were thrown into a dis

orderly rout. When they discovered the smallness of the attacking force there was a rally. The second stand was effective, and turned the scale. Alfred was compelled to give way and leave the Danes in possession of the "place of slaughter."

Happily for England, by the end of the year of battles, the Danes, who had nowhere had to fight so hard for every point they gained, and had less to show for their losses than on any previous expedition, were as wearied and exhausted as Alfred and the men of Wessex. They had lost one king and nine earls. It is difficult to estimate the losses in the ranks owing to the ease with which the chroniclers drop into vague and extravagant expressions such as "many thousands," but it is probable that they were proportionately heavy. Alfred had at least secured one point by his stubborn resistance the Danes had learned to respect if not actually to fear their enemy. From this time they shrink from meeting him in the open, and either manoeuvre to avoid him or face him only behind entrenchments. They were as anxious now for peace as the men of Wessex; and throughout Wessex there must have been many ready to cry out for peace at any price. What the actual price was is not clear. A treaty was made, and it may be inferred that Alfred had to pay heavily, from the facts that he debased

the coinage to replenish his coffers, and that the tax on landowners was so heavy that some of them preferred to surrender their lands to the king rather than pay it.

The Danes retired from Reading on London, which was then reckoned as belonging to Mercia and not to Wessex. Mercia was incapable of offering resistance, and London remained in the hands of the Danes till Alfred re-conquered it, re-settled it, and gave it the chance of becoming the capital of England.

The withdrawal of the Danes was the beginning of a three years' respite for Wessex. The Danes were busy in Mercia and Northumbria. Mercia had remained throughout the Wessex campaign strangely inert, unable, apparently, to do anything for the young men who had come so generously its help when the Danes first took Nottingham.

The reason for this slackness may have lain partly in dissensions and differences of opinion among the people, for it was for it was the least homogeneous part of England; but it was certainly partly due, also, to the want of effective leadership. Burhred, Alfred's brother-in-law, had been king for twentytwo restless and troubled years, and had no heart for the struggle now. He fled to Rome, as other defeated kings had done before him:

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