CITY Chapter II Under the "The earth is full of anger, The seas are dark with wrath, E'en now their vanguard gathers, Rudyard Kipling. ALFRED'S conflicts with the Danes fall into three natural, but not quite exclusive, periods, two of them about equal in length, lasting seven years, and the third equal to the other two. The first begins with success and ends in defeat. The second begins in defeat and ends in victory. The third shows Alfred, having learned the lessons of defeat and victory, holding the enemy in check, and securing the peace of his kingdom both internally and externally. We may call the first series of conflicts the period when Alfred is under the hammer 1 A word is changed here, with apologies to Mr Kipling, to avoid the use of the word "host" for Alfred's army, as it is the invariable word for the Northmen's force in the Chronicle. of Thor. It seems, for a time, as if both king and kingdom must be crushed. But the real Wielder of the hammer proved to be a greater than Thor; and the effect of the hammering is to make a Deliverer for England. It made all the difference to England that the king had entire confidence in the Wielder of events. Failure is failure and nothing more to the man who fights for himself; but failure is discipline for success and nothing more to the man who believes he has a divine commission to execute and a divine Name to vindicate. Alfred saw his own task as an episode in the defence of Christendom against heathendom. His faith forbade him to believe that there could be any end to that struggle except in the victory of Christendom. It may be accepted as evidence of his statesmanlike view of the whole conflict that the records of his reign, written, in all probability, under his own eyes, give the movements of the Danish armies in Europe with the same accuracy and interest as their movements in England. To be able to keep the right perspective was to be saved from attaching too much importance to any single reverse. Every defeat made him better acquainted with the tactics of the Danes, until he knew, almost as well as their own leaders, what they were likely to do. But more striking than his knowledge of Danish warfare is the dogged, persistent, inflexible determination not to be beaten, which the necessity of bearing up under defeat produced in the king. He becomes the first, if not the creator, of that famous type of Englishmen - the men who win impossible struggles because they never know when they are beaten. He is the historic incarnation of Tennyson's strong-willed man : "O well for him whose will is strong, He suffers, but he will not suffer long ; For him nor moves the loud world's random mock, Who seems a promontory of rock That compass'd round with turbulent sound, Alfred's first meeting with the Danes in the field came when he was a young man of twenty, and before he had succeeded to the throne. The year 868 was an eventful one for him. It was a year of famine, the year of his own marriage, and the year of his first experience under arms. He asked and obtained in marriage the daughter of Ethelred Mucil [ie. the big], Earl of the Gainas, the folk whose name survives in that of their town Gainsborough. "The mother of this lady," Asser tells us, "was Eadburg, of the royal line of Mercia, whom we have often seen with our own eyes a few years before her death. She was a venerable lady, and after the decease of her husband, she remained many years a widow, even till her own death." It is said that every mother is in some degree prophetic of what her daughter will be. In the absence of more direct testimony as to the character of the wife chosen by Alfred, we may welcome the reflection of a noble womanhood which comes to us through Asser's memory of her mother. The famine did not prevent a good deal of festivity when the wedding was celebrated. There were "continual feasts both by night and day, in which innumerable multitudes of people of both sexes took part." It was on this occasion that Alfred, only recently freed from the malady which had hitherto troubled him, was seized with the new and mysterious malady which the physicians could neither cure nor explain, except on the hypothesis of demoniac possession. If, as seems probable, this must be identified as epilepsy, it adds a pathetic interest to all his life, if we must think of him as doing all his work with the knowledge that he was liable to be seized with an epileptic fit at any unexpected moment. Alfred had hardly time to bring his young wife home when he was called to leave her and take the field. This was the year in which "the army of pagans leaving Northumberland invaded Mercia, and advanced to Nottingham, which is called," Asser tells us, "in the British tongue 'Tiggocobauc,' but in Latin 'The House of Caves,'1 and they wintered there that same year." The Danes were led by two famous chiefs, Hingwar and Ubba, sons of Lodbroc-" Hingwar, a leader of great ability, and Ubba of extraordinary courage." Immediately on their approach, "Burhred, King of Mercia, and all the nobles of that nation, sent messengers to Ethelred, King of the West Saxons, and his brother Alfred, suppliantly entreating them to come and aid them in fighting the aforesaid army. Their request was easily obtained, for the brothers, as soon as promised, assembled an immense army from all parts of their dominions, and entering Mercia, came to Nottingham, all eager for battle; and when the pagans, defended by the castle (which they had captured), refused to fight, and the Christians were unable to destroy the wall, peace was made between the Mercians and the pagans, and the two brothers, Ethelred and Alfred, returned home with their troops." It is creditable to Æthelred and Alfred that they did respond readily to the call for help from Mercia. Had there been a similar sense of solidarity in the other sectional kingdoms, the Danes would have found it difficult to gain a footing in England and maintain it. But 1 The name has reference, of course, to the cave which is now called Robin Hood's Cave, which still exists in Nottingham, and was even used as a house in this century. 2 Henry of Huntingdon, p. 152. |