Mercia, and their kings were either tortured to death or fled. Finally, in
870 the Danes attacked the only remaining independent Anglo-Saxon kingdom,
Wessex, whose forces were commanded by King Aethelred and his younger
brother Alfred. At the battle of Ashdown in 871, Alfred routed the Viking
army in a fiercely fought uphill assault. However, further defeats followed
for Wessex and Alfred's brother died.
As king of Wessex at the age of 21, Alfred (reigned 871-99) was a
strongminded but highly strung battle veteran at the head of remaining
resistance to the Vikings in southern England. In early 878, the Danes led
by King Guthrum seized Chippenham in Wiltshire in a lightning strike and
used it as a secure base from which to devastate Wessex. Local people
either surrendered or escaped (Hampshire people fled to the Isle of Wight),
and the West Saxons were reduced to hit and run attacks seizing provisions
when they could. With only his royal bodyguard, a small army of thegns (the
king's followers) and Aethelnoth ealdorman of Somerset as his ally, Alfred
withdrew to the Somerset tidal marshes in which he had probably hunted as a
youth. (It was during this time that Alfred, in his preoccupation with the
defence of his kingdom, allegedly burned some cakes which he had been asked
to look after; the incident was a legend dating from early twelfth century
chroniclers.)
A resourceful fighter, Alfred reassessed his strategy and adopted the
Danes' tactics by building a fortified base at Athelney in the Somerset
marshes and summoning a mobile army of men from Wiltshire, Somerset and
part of Hampshire to pursue guerrilla warfare against the Danes. In May
878, Alfred's army defeated the Danes at the battle of Edington. According
to his contemporary biographer Bishop Asser, 'Alfred attacked the whole
pagan army fighting ferociously in dense order, and by divine will
eventually won the victory, made great slaughter among them, and pursued
them to their fortress (Chippenham) ... After fourteen days the pagans were
brought to the extreme depths of despair by hunger, cold and fear, and they
sought peace'. This unexpected victory proved to be the turning point in
Wessex's battle for survival.
Realising that he could not drive the Danes out of the rest of England,
Alfred concluded peace with them in the treaty of Wedmore. King Guthrum was
converted to Christianity with Alfred as godfather and many of the Danes
returned to East Anglia where they settled as farmers. In 886, Alfred
negotiated a partition treaty with the Danes, in which a frontier was
demarcated along the Roman Watling Street and northern and eastern England
came under the jurisdiction of the Danes - an area known as 'Danelaw'.
Alfred therefore gained control of areas of West Mercia and Kent which had
been beyond the boundaries of Wessex. To consolidate alliances against the
Danes, Alfred married one of his daughters, Aethelflaed, to the ealdorman
of Mercia -Alfred himself had married Eahlswith, a Mercian noblewoman - and
another daughter, Aelfthryth, to the count of Flanders, a strong naval
power at a time when the Vikings were settling in eastern England.
The Danish threat remained, and Alfred reorganised the Wessex defences in
recognition that efficient defence and economic prosperity were
interdependent. First, he organised his army (the thegns, and the existing
militia known as the fyrd) on a rota basis, so he could raise a 'rapid
reaction force' to deal with raiders whilst still enabling his thegns and
peasants to tend their farms.
Second, Alfred started a building programme of well-defended settlements
across southern England. These were fortified market places ('borough'
comes from the Old English burh, meaning fortress); by deliberate royal
planning, settlers received plots and in return manned the defences in
times of war. (Such plots in London under Alfred's rule in the 880s shaped
the streetplan which still exists today between Cheapside and the Thames.)
This obligation required careful recording in what became known as 'the
Burghal Hidage', which gave details of the building and manning of Wessex
and Mercian burhs according to their size, the length of their ramparts and
the number of men needed to garrison them. Centred round Alfred's royal
palace in Winchester, this network of burhs with strongpoints on the main
river routes was such that no part of Wessex was more than 20 miles from
the refuge of one of these settlements. Together with a navy of new fast
ships built on Alfred's orders, southern England now had a defence in depth
against Danish raiders.
Alfred's concept of kingship extended beyond the administration of the
tribal kingdom of Wessex into a broader context. A religiously devout and
pragmatic man who learnt Latin in his late thirties, he recognised that the
general deterioration in learning and religion caused by the Vikings'
destruction of monasteries (the centres of the rudimentary education
network) had serious implications for rulership. For example, the poor
standards in Latin had led to a decline in the use of the charter as an
instrument of royal government to disseminate the king's instructions and
legislation. In one of his prefaces, Alfred wrote 'so general was its
[Latin] decay in England that there were very few on this side of the
Humber who could understand their rituals in English or translate a letter
from Latin into English ... so few that I cannot remember a single one
south of the Thames when I came to the throne.'
To improve literacy, Alfred arranged, and took part in, the translation
(by scholars from Mercia) from Latin into Anglo-Saxon of a handful of books
he thought it 'most needful for men to know, and to bring it to pass ... if
we have the peace, that all the youth now in England ... may be devoted to
learning'. These books covered history, philosophy and Gregory the Great's
'Pastoral Care' (a handbook for bishops), and copies of these books were
sent to all the bishops of the kingdom. Alfred was patron of the Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle (which was copied and supplemented up to 1154), a patriotic
history of the English from the Wessex viewpoint designed to inspire its
readers and celebrate Alfred and his monarchy.
Like other West Saxon kings, Alfred established a legal code; he
assembled the laws of Offa and other predecessors, and of the kingdoms of
Mercia and Kent, adding his own administrative regulations to form a
definitive body of Anglo-Saxon law. 'I ... collected these together and
ordered to be written many of them which our forefathers observed, those
which I liked; and many of those which I did not like I rejected with the
advice of my councillors ... For I dared not presume to set in writing at
all many of my own, because it was unknown to me what would please those
who should come after us ... Then I ... showed those to all my councillors,
and they then said that they were all pleased to observe them' (Laws of
Alfred, c.885-99).
By the 890s, Alfred's charters and coinage (which he had also reformed,
extending its minting to the burhs he had founded) referred to him as 'king
of the English', and Welsh kings sought alliances with him. Alfred died in
899, aged 50, and was buried in Winchester, the burial place of the West
Saxon royal family.
By stopping the Viking advance and consolidating his territorial gains,
Alfred had started the process by which his successors eventually extended
their power over the other Anglo-Saxon kings; the ultimate unification of
Anglo-Saxon England was to be led by Wessex. It is for his valiant defence
of his kingdom against a stronger enemy, for securing peace with the
Vikings and for his farsighted reforms in the reconstruction of Wessex and
beyond, that Alfred - alone of all the English kings and queens - is known
as 'the Great'.
EDWARD «THE ELDER» (899-924)
Well-trained by Alfred, his son Edward 'the Elder' (reigned 899-924) was
a bold soldier who defeated the Danes in Northumbria at Tettenhall in 910
and was acknowledged by the Viking kingdom of York. The kings of
Strathclyde and the Scots submitted to Edward in 921. By military success
and patient planning, Edward spread English influence and control. Much of
this was due to his alliance with his formidable sister Aethelflaed, who
was married to the ruler of Mercia and seems to have governed that kingdom
after her husband's death.
Edward was able to establish an administration for the kingdom of
England, whilst obtaining the allegiance of Danes, Scots and Britons.
Edward died in 924, and he was buried in the New Minster which he had had
completed at Winchester. Edward was twice married, but it is possible that
his eldest son Athelstan was the son of a mistress.
ATHELSTAN (924-939)
Edward's heir Athelstan (reigned 925-39) was also a distinguished and
audacious soldier who pushed the boundaries of the kingdom to their
furthest extent yet. In 927-8, Athelstan took York from the Danes; he
forced the submission of king Constantine of Scotland and of the northern
kings; all five Welsh kings agreed to pay a huge annual tribute (reportedly
including 25,000 oxen), and Athelstan eliminated opposition in Cornwall.
The battle of Brunanburh in 937, in which Athelstan led a force drawn
from Britain and defeated an invasion by the king of Scotland in alliance
with the Welsh and Danes from Dublin, earned him recognition by lesser
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