During all this time Alfred was passing from his eighth to his twelfth year. He was a very intelligent and observing boy, and had acquired much knowledge of the world and a great deal of general information in the journeys which he had taken with his father, both about England and also on the Continent, in France and Italy. Judith had taken a great interest in his progress. She talked with him, she encouraged his inquiries, she explained to him what he did not understand, and endeavored in every way to develop and strengthen his mental powers. Alfred was a favorite, and, as such, was always very much indulged; but there was a certain conscientiousness and gentleness of spirit which marked his character even in these early years, and seemed to defend him from the injurious influences which indulgence and extreme attention and care often produce. Alfred was considerate, quiet, and reflective; he improved the privileges which he enjoyed, and did not abuse the kindness and the favors which every one by whom he was known lavished upon him.

Alfred was very fond of the Anglo-Saxon poetry which abounded in those days. The poems were legends, ballads, and tales, which described the exploits of heroes, and the adventures of pilgrims and wanderers of all kinds. These poems were to Alfred what Homer's poems were to Alexander. He loved to listen to them, to hear them recited, and to commit them to memory. In committing them to memory, he was obliged to depend upon hearing the poems repeated by others, for he himself could not read.

And yet he was now twelve years old. It may surprise the reader, perhaps, to be thus told, after all that has been said of the attention paid to Alfred's education, and of the progress which he had made, that he could not even read. But reading, far from being then considered, as it is now, an essential attainment for all, and one which we are sure of finding possessed by all who have received any instruction whatever, was regarded in those days a sort of technical art, learned only by those who were to make some professional use of the acquisition. Monks and clerks could always read, but generals, gentlemen, and kings very seldom. And as they could not read, neither could they write. They made a rude cross at the end of the writings which they wished to authenticate instead of signing their names—a mode which remains to the present day, though it has descended to the very lowest and humblest classes of society.

In fact, even the upper classes of society could not generally learn to read in those days, for there were no books. Every thing recorded was in manuscripts, the characters being written with great labor and care, usually on parchment, the captions and leading letters being often splendidly illuminated and adorned by gilded miniatures of heads, or figures, or landscapes, which enveloped or surrounded them. Judith had such a manuscript of some Saxon poems. She had learned the language while in France. One day Alfred was looking at the book, and admiring the character in which it was written, particularly the ornamented letters at the headings. Some of his brothers were in the room, they, of course, being much older than he. Judith said that either of them might have the book who would first learn to read it. The older brothers paid little attention to this proposal, but Alfred's interest was strongly awakened. He immediately sought and found some one to teach him, and before long he read the volume to Judith, and claimed it as his own. She rejoiced at his success, and fulfilled her promise with the greatest pleasure.

Alfred soon acquired, by his Anglo-Saxon studies, a great taste for books, and had next a strong desire to study the Latin language. The scholars of the various nations of Europe formed at that time, as, in fact, they do now, one community, linked together by many ties. They wrote and spoke the Latin language, that being the only language which could be understood by them all. In fact, the works which were most highly valued then by the educated men of all nations, were the poems and the histories, and other writings produced by the classic authors of the Roman commonwealth. There were also many works on theology, on ecclesiastical polity, and on law, of great authority and in high repute, all written in the Latin tongue. Copies of these works were made by the monks, in their retreats in abbeys and monasteries, and learned men spent their lives in perusing them. To explore this field was not properly a duty incumbent upon a young prince destined to take a seat upon a throne, but Alfred felt a great desire to undertake the work. He did not do it, however, for the reason, as he afterward stated, that there was no one at court at the time who was qualified to teach him.

Alfred, though he had thus the thoughtful and reflective habits of a student, was also active, and graceful, and strong in his bodily development. He excelled in all the athletic recreations of the time, and was especially famous for his skill, and courage, and power as a hunter. He gave every indication, in a word, at this early age, of possessing that uncommon combination of mental and personal qualities which fits those who possess it to secure and maintain a great ascendency among mankind.

The unnatural union which had been formed on the death of Ethelwolf between his youthful widow and her aged husband's son did not long continue. The people of England were very much shocked at such a marriage, and a great prelate, the Bishop of Winchester, remonstrated against it with such sternness and authority, that Ethelbald not only soon put his wife away, but submitted to a severe penance which the bishop imposed upon him in retribution for his sin. Judith, thus forsaken, soon afterward sold the lands and estates which her two husbands had severally granted her, and, taking a final leave of Alfred, whom she tenderly loved, she returned to her native land. Not long after this, she was married a third time, to a continental prince, whose dominions lay between the Baltic and the Rhine, and from this period she disappears entirely from the stage of Alfred's history.



CHAPTER V.

STATE OF ENGLAND.

Having thus brought down the narrative of Alfred's early life as far and as fully as the records that remain enable us to do so, we resume the general history of the national affairs by returning to the subject of the depredations and conquests of the Danes, and the circumstances connected with Alfred's accession to the throne.

To give the reader some definite and clear ideas of the nature of this warfare, it will be well to describe in detail some few of the incidents and scenes which ancient historians have recorded. The following was one case which occurred:

The Danes, it must be premised, were particularly hostile to the monasteries and religious establishments of the Anglo-Saxons. In the first place, they were themselves pagans, and they hated Christianity. In the second place, they knew that these places of sacred seclusion were often the depositories selected for the custody or concealment of treasure; and, besides the treasures which kings and potentates often placed in them for safety, these establishments possessed utensils of gold and silver for the service of the chapels, and a great variety of valuable gifts, such as pious saints or penitent sinners were continually bequeathing to them. The Danes were, consequently, never better pleased than when sacking an abbey or a monastery. In such exploits they gratified their terrible animal propensities, both of hatred and love, by the cruelties which they perpetrated personally upon the monks and the nuns, and at the same time enriched their coffers with the most valuable spoils. A dreadful tale is told of one company of nuns, who, in the consternation and terror which they endured at the approach of a band of Danes, mutilated their faces in a manner too horrid to be described, as the only means left to them for protection against the brutality of their foes. They followed, in adopting this measure, the advice and the example of the lady superior. It was effectual.

There was a certain abbey, called Crowland, which was in those days one of the most celebrated in the island. It was situated near the southern border of Lincolnshire, which lies on the eastern side of England. There is a great shallow bay, called The Wash, on this eastern shore, and it is surrounded by a broad tract of low and marshy land, which is drained by long canals, and traversed by roads built upon embankments. Dikes skirt the margins of the streams, and wind-mills are engaged in perpetual toil to raise the water from the fields into the channels by which it is conveyed away.

Crowland is at the confluence of two rivers, which flow sluggishly through this flat but beautiful and verdant region. The remains of the old abbey still stand, built on piles driven into the marshy ground, and they form at the present time a very interesting mass of ruins. The year before Alfred acceded to the throne, the abbey was in all its glory; and on one occasion it furnished two hundred men, who went out under the command of one of the monks, named Friar Joly, to join the English armies and fight the Danes.

The English army was too small notwithstanding this desperate effort to strengthen it. They stood, however, all day in a compact band, protecting themselves with their shields from the arrows of the foot soldiers of the enemy, and with their pikes from the onset of the cavalry. At night the Danes retired, as if giving up the contest; but as soon as the Saxons, now released from their positions of confinement and restraint, had separated a little, and began to feel somewhat more secure, their implacable foes returned again and attacked them in separate masses, and with more fury than before. The Saxons endeavored in vain either to defend themselves or escape. As fast as their comrades were killed, the survivors stood upon the heaps of the slain, to gain what little advantage they could from so slight an elevation. Nearly all at length were killed. A few escaped into a neighboring wood, where they lay concealed during the day following, and then, when the darkness of the succeeding night came to enable them to conceal their journey, they made their way to the abbey, to make known to the anxious inmates of it the destruction of the army, and to warn them of the imminence of the impending danger to which they were now exposed.

A dreadful scene of consternation and terror ensued. The affrighted messengers told their tale, breathless and wayworn, at the door of the chapel, where the monks were engaged at their devotions. The aisles were filled with exclamations of alarm and despairing lamentations. The abbot, whose name was Theodore, immediately began to take measures suited to the emergency. He resolved to retain at the monastery only some aged monks and a few children, whose utter defenselessness, he thought, would disarm the ferocity and vengeance of the Danes. The rest, only about thirty, however, in number—nearly all the brethren having gone out under the Friar Joly into the great battle—were put on board a boat to be sent down the river. It seems at first view a strange idea to send away the vigorous and strong, and keep the infirm and helpless at the scene of danger; but the monks knew very well that all resistance was vain, and that, consequently, their greatest safety would lie in the absence of all appearance of the possibility of resistance.

The treasures were sent away, too, with all the men. They hastily collected all the valuables together, the relics, the jewels, and all of the gold and silver plate which could be easily removed, and placed them in a boat—packing them as securely as their haste and trepidation allowed. The boats glided down the river till they came to a lonely spot, where an anchorite or sort of hermit lived in solitude. The men and the treasures were to be intrusted to his charge. He concealed the men in the thickets and other hiding-places in the woods, and buried the treasures.

In the mean time, as soon as the boats and the party of monks which accompanied them had left the abbey, the Abbot Theodore and the old monks that remained with him urged on the work of concealing that part of the treasures which had not been taken away. All of the plate which could not be easily transported, and a certain very rich and costly table employed for the service of the altar, and many sacred and expensive garments used by the higher priests in their ceremonies, had been left behind, as they could not be easily removed. These the abbot and the monks concealed in the most secure places that they could find, and then, clothing themselves in their priestly robes, they assembled in the chapel, and resumed their exercises of devotion. To be found in so sacred a place and engaged in so holy an avocation would have been a great protection from any Christian soldiery; but the monks entirely misconceived the nature of the impulses by which human nature is governed, in supposing that it would have any restraining influence upon the pagan Danes. The first thing the ferocious marauders did, on breaking into the sacred precincts of the chapel, was to cut down the venerable abbot at the altar, in his sacerdotal robes, and then to push forward the work of slaying every other inmate of the abbey, feeble and helpless as they were. Only one was saved.

This one was a boy, about ten years old. His name was Turgar. He was a handsome boy, and one of the Danish chieftains was struck with his countenance and air, in the midst of the slaughter, and took pity on him. The chieftain's name was Count Sidroc. Sidroc drew Turgar out of the immediate scene of danger, and gave him a Danish garment, directing him, at the same time, to throw aside his own, and then to follow him wherever he went, and keep close to his side, as if he were a Dane. The boy, relieved from his terrors by this hope of protection, obeyed implicitly. He followed Sidroc every where, and his life was saved. The Danes, after killing all the others, ransacked and plundered the monastery, broke open the tombs in their search for concealed treasures, and, after taking all that they could discover, they set the edifices on fire wherever they could find wood-work that would burn, and went away, leaving the bodies slowly burning in the grand and terrible funeral pile.

From Crowland the marauders proceeded, taking Turgar with them, to another large and wealthy abbey in the neighborhood, which they plundered and destroyed, as they had the abbey at Crowland. Sidroc made Turgar his own attendant, keeping him always near him. When the expedition had completed their second conquest, they packed the valuables which they had obtained from both abbeys in wagons, and moved toward the south. It happened that some of these wagons were under Count Sidroc's charge, and were in the rear of the line of march. In passing a ford, the wheels of one of these rear wagons sank in the muddy bottom, and the horses, in attempting to draw the wagon out, became entangled and restive. While Sidroc's whole attention was engrossed by this difficulty, Turgar contrived to steal away unobserved. He hid himself in a neighboring wood, and, with a degree of sagacity and discretion remarkable in a boy of his years, he contrived to find his way back to the smoking ruins of his home at the Abbey of Crowland.

The monks who had gone away to seek concealment at the cell of the anchorite had returned, and were at work among the smoking ruins, saving what they could from the fire, and gathering together the blackened remains of their brethren for interment. They chose one of the monks that had escaped to succeed the abbot who had been murdered, repaired, so far as they could, their ruined edifices, and mournfully resumed their functions as a religious community.

Many of the tales which the ancient chroniclers tell of those times are romantic and incredible; they may have arisen, perhaps, in the first instance, in exaggerations of incidents and events which really occurred, and were then handed down from generation to generation by oral tradition, till they found historians to record them. The story of the martyrdom of King Edmund is of this character. Edmund was a sort of king over one of the nations of Anglo-Saxons called East Angles, who, as their name imports, occupied a part of the eastern portion of the island. Their particular hostility to Edmund was awakened, according to the story, in the following manner:

There was a certain bold and adventurous Dane named Lothbroc, who one day took his falcon on his arm and went out alone in a boat on the Baltic Sea, or in the straits connecting it with the German Ocean, intending to go to a certain island and hunt. The falcon is a species of hawk which they were accustomed to train in those days, to attack and bring down birds from the air, and falconry was, as might have been expected, a very picturesque and exciting species of hunting. The game which Lothbroc was going to seek consisted of the wild fowl which frequents sometimes, in vast numbers, the cliffs and shores of the islands in those seas. Before he reached his hunting ground, however, he was overtaken by a storm, and his boat was driven by it out to sea. Accustomed to all sorts of adventures and dangers by sea and by land, and skilled in every operation required in all possible emergencies, Lothbroc contrived to keep his boat before the wind, and to bail out the water as fast as it came in, until at length, after being driven entirely across the German Ocean, he was thrown upon the English shore, where, with his hawk still upon his arm, he safely landed.



He knew that he was in the country of the most deadly foes of his nation and race, and accordingly sought to conceal rather than to make known his arrival. He was, however, found, after a few days, wandering up and down in a solitary wood, and was conducted, together with his hawk, to King Edmund.

Edmund was so much pleased with his air and bearing, and so astonished at the remarkable manner in which he had been brought to the English shore, that he gave him his life; and soon discovering his great knowledge and skill as a huntsman, he received him into his own service, and treated him with great distinction and honor. In addition to his hawk, Lothbroc had a greyhound, so that he could hunt with the king in the fields as well as through the air. The greyhound was very strongly attached to his master.

The king's chief huntsman at this time was Beorn, and Beorn soon became very envious and jealous of Lothbroc, on account of his superior power and skill, and of the honorable distinction which they procured for him. One day, when they two were hunting alone in the woods with their dogs, Beorn killed his rival, and hid his body in a thicket. Beorn went home, his own dogs following him, while the greyhound remained to watch mournfully over the body of his master. They asked Beorn what was become of Lothbroc, and he replied that he had gone off into the wood the day before, and he did not know what had become of him.

In the mean time, the greyhound remained faithfully watching at the side of the body of his master until hunger compelled him to leave his post in search of food. He went home, and, as soon as his wants were supplied, he returned immediately to the wood again. This he did several days; and at length his singular conduct attracting attention, he was followed by some of the king's household, and the body of his murdered master was found.

The guilt of the murder was with little difficulty brought home to Beorn; and, as an appropriate punishment for his cruelty to an unfortunate and homeless stranger, the king condemned him to be put on board the same boat in which the ill-fated Lothbroc had made his perilous voyage, and pushed out to sea.

The winds and storms—entering, it seems, into the plan, and influenced by the same principles of poetical justice as had governed the king—drove the boat, with its terrified mariner, back again across to the mouth of the Baltic, as they had brought Lothbroc to England. The boat was thrown upon the beach, on Lothbroc's family domain.

Now Lothbroc had been, in his own country, a man of high rank and influence. He was of royal descent, and had many friends. He had two sons, men of enterprise and energy; and it so happened that the landing of Beorn took place so near to them, that the tidings soon came to their ears that their father's boat, in the hands of a Saxon stranger, had arrived on the coast. They immediately sought out the stranger, and demanded what had become of their father. Beorn, in order to hide his own guilt, fabricated a tale of Lothbroc's having been killed by Edmund, the king of the East Angles. The sons of the murdered Lothbroc were incensed at this news. They aroused their countrymen by calling upon them every where to aid them in revenging their father's death. A large naval force was accordingly collected, and a formidable descent made upon the English coast.

Now Edmund, according to the story, was a humane and gentle-minded man, much more interested in deeds of benevolence and of piety than in warlike undertakings and exploits, and he was very far from being well prepared to meet this formidable foe. In fact, he sought refuge in a retired residence called Heglesdune. The Danes, having taken some Saxons captive in a city which they had sacked and destroyed, compelled them to make known the place of the king's retreat. Hinquar, the captain of the Danes, sent him a summons to come and surrender both himself and all the treasures of his kingdom. Edmund refused. Hinquar then laid siege to the palace, and surrounded it; and, finally, his soldiers, breaking in, put Edmund's attendants to death, and brought Edmund himself, bound, into Hinquar's presence.

Hinquar decided that the unfortunate captive should die. He was, accordingly, first taken to a tree and scourged. Then he was shot at with arrows, until, as the account states, his body was so full of the arrows that remained in the flesh that there seemed to be no room for more. During all this time Edmund continued to call upon the name of Christ, as if finding spiritual refuge and strength in the Redeemer in this his hour of extremity; and although these ejaculations afforded, doubtless, great support and comfort to him, they only served to irritate to a perfect phrensy of exasperation his implacable pagan foes. They continued to shoot arrows into him until he was dead, and then they cut off his head and went away, carrying the dissevered head with them. Their object was to prevent his friends from having the satisfaction of interring it with the body. They carried it to what they supposed a sufficient distance, and then threw it off into a wood by the way-side, where they supposed it could not easily be found.

As soon, however, as the Danes had left the place, the affrighted friends and followers of Edmund came out, by degrees, from their retreats and hiding places. They readily found the dead body of their sovereign, as it lay, of course, where the cruel deed of his murder had been performed. They sought with mournful and anxious steps, here and there, all around, for the head, until at length, when they came into the wood where it was lying, they heard, as the historian who records these events gravely testifies, a voice issuing from it, calling them, and directing their steps by the sound. They followed the voice, and, having recovered the head by means of this miraculous guidance, they buried it with the body.[1]

It seems surprising to us that reasonable men should so readily believe such tales as these; but there are, in all ages of the world, certain habits of belief, in conformity to which the whole community go together. We all believe whatever is in harmony with, or analogous to, the general type of faith prevailing in our own generation. Nobody could be persuaded now that a dead head could speak, or a wolf change his nature to protect it; but thousands will credit a fortune-teller, or believe that a mesmerized patient can have a mental perception of scenes and occurrences a thousand miles away.

There was a great deal of superstition in the days when Alfred was called to the throne, and there was also, with it, a great deal of genuine honest piety. The piety and the superstition, too, were inextricably intermingled and combined together. They were all Catholics then, yielding an implicit obedience to the Church of Rome, making regular contributions in money to sustain the papal authority, and looking to Rome as the great and central point of Christian influence and power, and the object of supreme veneration. We have already seen that the Saxons had established a seminary at Rome, which King Ethelwolf, Alfred's father, rebuilt and re-endowed. One of the former Anglo-Saxon kings, too, had given a grant of one penny from every house in the kingdom to the successors of St. Peter at Rome, which tax, though nominally small, produced a very considerable sum in the aggregate, exceeding for many years the royal revenues of the kings of England. It continued to be paid down to the time of Henry VIII., when the reformation swept away that, and all the other national obligations of England to the Catholic Church together.

In the age of Alfred, however, there were not only these public acts of acknowledgment recognizing the papal supremacy, but there was a strong tide of personal and private feeling of veneration and attachment to the mother Church, of which it is hard for us, in the present divided state of Christendom, to conceive. The religious thoughts and affections of every pious heart throughout the realm centered in Rome. Rome, too, was the scene of many miracles, by which the imaginations of the superstitious and of the truly devout were excited, which impressed them with an idea of power in which they felt a sort of confiding sense of protection. This power was continually interposing, now in one way and now in another, to protect virtue, to punish crime, and to testify to the impious and to the devout, to each in an appropriate way, that their respective deeds were the objects, according to their character, of the displeasure or of the approbation of Heaven.

On one occasion, the following incident is said to have occurred. The narration of it will illustrate the ideas of the time. A child of about seven years old, named Kenelm, succeeded to the throne in the Anglo-Saxon line. Being too young to act for himself, he was put under the charge of a sister, who was to act as regent until the boy became of age. The sister, ambitious of making the power thus delegated to her entirely her own, decided on destroying her brother. She commissioned a hired murderer to perpetrate the deed. The murderer took the child into a wood, killed him, and hid his body in a thicket, in a certain cow-pasture at a place called Clent. The sister then assumed the scepter in her own name, and suppressed all inquiries in respect to the fate of her brother; and his murder might have remained forever undiscovered, had it not been miraculously revealed at Rome.

A white dove flew into a church there one day, and let fall upon the altar of St. Peter a paper, on which was written, in Anglo-Saxon characters,

In Clent Cow-batch, Kenelme king bearne, lieth under Thorne, head bereaved.

For a time nobody could read the writing. At length an Anglo-Saxon saw it, and translated it into Latin, so that the pope and all others could understand it. The pope then sent a letter to the authorities in England, who made search and found the body.

But we must end these digressions, which we have indulged thus far in order to give the reader some distinct conception of the ideas and habits of the times, and proceed, in the next chapter, to relate the events immediately connected with Alfred's accession to the throne.

[Footnote 1: A great many other tales are told of the miraculous phenomena exhibited by the body of St. Edmund, which well illustrate the superstitious credulity of those times. One writer says seriously that, when the head was found, a wolf had it, holding it carefully in his paws, with all the gentleness and care that the most faithful dog would manifest in guarding a trust committed to him by his master. This wolf followed the funeral procession to the tomb where the body was deposited, and then disappeared. The head joined itself to the body again where it had been severed, leaving only a purple line to mark the place of separation.]



CHAPTER VI.

ALFRED'S ACCESSION TO THE THRONE

At the battle in which Alfred's brother, Ethelred, whom Alfred succeeded on the throne, was killed, as is briefly mentioned at the close of chapter fourth, Alfred himself, then a brave and energetic young man, fought by his side. The party of Danes whom they were contending against in this fatal fight was the same one that came out in the expedition organized by the sons of Lothbroc, and whose exploits in destroying monasteries and convents were described in the last chapter. Soon after the events there narrated, this formidable body of marauders moved westward, toward that part of the kingdom where the dominions more particularly pertaining to the family of Alfred lay.

There was in those days a certain stronghold or castle on the River Thames, about forty miles west from London, which was not far from the confines of Ethelred's dominions. The large and populous town of Reading now stands upon the spot. It is at the confluence of the River Thames with the Kennet, a small branch of the Thames, which here flows into it from the south. The spot, having the waters of the rivers for a defense upon two sides of it, was easily fortified. A castle had been built there, and, as usual in such cases, a town had sprung up about the walls.

The Danes advanced to this stronghold and took possession of it, and they made it for some time their head-quarters. It was at once the center from which they carried on their enterprises in all directions about the island, and the refuge to which they could always retreat when defeated and pursued. In the possession of such a fastness, they, of course, became more formidable than ever. King Ethelred determined to dislodge them. He raised, accordingly, as large a force as his kingdom would furnish, and, taking his brother Alfred as his second in command, he advanced toward Reading in a very resolute and determined manner.

He first encountered a large body of the Danes who were out on a marauding excursion. This party consisted only of a small detachment, the main body of the army of the Danes having been left at Reading to strengthen and complete the fortifications. They were digging a trench from river to river, so as completely to insulate the castle, and make it entirely inaccessible on either side except by boats or a bridge. With the earth thrown out of the trench they were making an embankment on the inner side, so that an enemy, after crossing the ditch, would have a steep ascent to climb, defended too, as of course it would be in such an emergency, by long lines of desperate men upon the top, hurling at the assailants showers of javelins and arrows.

While, therefore, a considerable portion of the Danes were at work within and around their castle, to make it as nearly as possible impregnable as a place of defense, the detachment above referred to had gone forth for plunder, under the command of some of the bolder and more adventurous spirits in the horde. This party Ethelred overtook. A furious battle was fought. The Danes were defeated, and driven off the ground. They fled toward Reading. Ethelred and Alfred pursued them. The various parties of Danes that were outside of the fortifications, employed in completing the outworks, or encamped in the neighborhood, were surprised and slaughtered; or, at least, vast numbers of them were killed, and the rest retreated within the works—all maddened at their defeat, and burning with desire for revenge.

The Saxons were not strong enough to dispossess them of their fastness. On the contrary, in a few days, the Danes, having matured their plans, made a desperate sally against the Saxons, and, after a very determined and obstinate conflict, they gained the victory, and drove the Saxons off the ground. Some of the leading Saxon chieftains were killed, and the whole country was thrown into great alarm at the danger which was impending, that the Danes would soon gain the complete and undisputed possession of the whole land.

The Saxons, however, were not yet prepared to give up the struggle. They rallied their forces, gathered new recruits, reorganized their ranks, and made preparations for another struggle. The Danes, too, feeling fresh strength and energy in consequence of their successes, formed themselves in battle array, and, leaving their strong-hold, they marched out into the open country in pursuit of their foe. The two armies gradually approached each other and prepared for battle. Every thing portended a terrible conflict, which was to be, in fact, the great final struggle.

The place where the armies met was called in those times AEscesdune, which means Ashdown. It was, in fact, a hill-side covered with ash trees. The name has become shortened and softened in the course of the ten centuries which have intervened since this celebrated battle, into Aston; if, indeed, as is generally supposed, the Aston of the present day is the locality of the ancient battle.

The armies came into the vicinity of each other toward the close of the day. They were both eager for the contest, or, at least, they pretended to be so, but they waited until the morning. The Danes divided their forces into two bodies. Two kings commanded one division, and certain chieftains, called earls, directed the other. King Ethelred undertook to meet this order of battle by a corresponding distribution of his own troops, and he gave, accordingly, to Alfred the command of one division, while he himself was to lead the other. All things being thus arranged, the hum and bustle of the two great encampments subsided at last, at a late hour, as the men sought repose under their rude tents, in preparation for the fatigues and exposures of the coming day. Some slept; others watched restlessly, and talked together, sleepless under the influence of that strange excitement, half exhilaration and half fear, which prevails in a camp on the eve of a battle. The camp fires burned brightly all the night, and the sentinels kept vigilant watch, expecting every moment some sudden alarm.

The night passed quietly away. Ethelred and Alfred both arose early. Alfred went out to arouse and muster the men in his division of the encampment, and to prepare for battle. Ethelred, on the other hand, sent for his priest, and, assembling the officers in immediate attendance upon him, commenced divine service in his tent—the service of the mass, according to the forms and usages which, even in that early day, were prescribed by the Catholic Church. Alfred was thus bent on immediate and energetic action, while Ethelred thought that the hour for putting forth the exertion of human strength did not come until time had been allowed for completing, in the most deliberate and solemn manner, the work of imploring the protection of Heaven.

Ethelred seems by his conduct on this occasion to have inherited from his father, even more than Alfred, the spirit of religious devotion at least so far as the strict and faithful observance of religious forms was concerned. There was, it is true, a particular reason in this case why the forms of divine service should be faithfully observed, and that is, that the war was considered in a great measure a religious war. The Danes were pagans. The Saxons were Christians. In making their attacks upon the dominions of Ethelred, the ruthless invaders were animated by a special hatred of the name of Christ, and they evinced a special hostility toward every edifice, or institution, or observance which bore the Christian name. The Saxons, therefore, in resisting them, felt that they were not only fighting for their own possessions and for their own lives, but that they were defending the kingdom of God, and that he, looking down from his throne in the heavens, regarded them as the champions of his cause; and, consequently, that he would either protect them in the struggle, or, if they fell, that he would receive them to mansions of special glory and happiness in heaven, as martyrs who had shed their blood in his service and for his glory.

Taking this view of the subject, Ethelred, instead of going out to battle at the early dawn, collected his officers into his tent, and formed them into a religious congregation. Alfred, on the other hand, full of impetuosity and ardor, was arousing his men, animating them by his words of encouragement and by the influence of his example, and making, as energetically as possible, all the preparations necessary for the approaching conflict.

In fact, Alfred, though his brother was king, and he himself only a lieutenant general under him, had been accustomed to take the lead in all the military operations of the army, on account of the superior energy, resolution, and tact which he evinced, even in this early period of his life. His brothers, though they retained the scepter, as it fell successively into their hands, relied mainly on his wisdom and courage in all their efforts to defend it, and Ethelred may have been somewhat more at his ease, in listening to the priest's prayers in his tent, from knowing that the arrangements for marshaling and directing a large part of the force were in such good hands.

The two encampments of Alfred and Ethelred seem to have been at some little distance from each other. Alfred was impatient at Ethelred's delay. He asked the reason for it. They told him that Ethelred was attending mass, and that he had said he should on no account leave his tent until the service was concluded. Alfred, in the mean time, took possession of a gentle elevation of land, which now would give him an advantage in the conflict. A single thorn-tree, growing there alone, marked the spot. The Danes advanced to attack him, expecting that, as he was not sustained by Ethelred's division of the army, he would be easily overpowered and driven from his post.

Alfred himself felt an extreme and feverish anxiety at Ethelred's delay. He fought, however, with the greatest determination and bravery. The thorn-tree continued to be the center of the conflict for a long time, and, as the morning advanced, it became more and more doubtful how it would end. At last, Ethelred, having finished his devotional services, came forth from his camp at the head of his division, and advanced vigorously to his faltering brother's aid. This soon decided the contest. The Danes were overpowered and put to flight. They fled at first in all directions, wherever each separate band saw the readiest prospect of escape from the immediate vengeance of their pursuers. They soon, however, all began with one accord to seek the roads which would conduct them to their stronghold at Reading. They were madly pursued, and massacred as they fled, by Alfred's and Ethelred's army. Vast numbers fell. The remnant secured their retreat, shut themselves up within their walls, and began to devote their eager and earnest attention to the work of repairing and making good their defenses.

This victory changed for the time being the whole face of affairs, and led, in various ways, to very important consequences, the most important of which was, as we shall presently see, that it was the means indirectly of bringing Alfred soon to the throne. As to the cause of the victory, or, rather, the manner in which it was accomplished, the writers of the times give very different accounts, according as their respective characters incline them to commend, in man, a feeling of quiet trust and confidence in God when placed in circumstances of difficulty or danger, or a vigorous and resolute exertion of his own powers. Alfred looked for deliverance to the determined assaults and heavy blows which he could bring to bear upon his pagan enemies with weapons of steel around the thorn-tree in the field. Ethelred trusted to his hope of obtaining, by his prayers in his tent, the effectual protection of Heaven; and they who have written the story differ, as they who read it will on the question to whose instrumentality the victory is to be ascribed. One says that Alfred gained it by his sword. Another, that Alfred exerted his strength and his valor in vain, and was saved from defeat and destruction only by the intervention of Ethelred, bringing with him the blessing of Heaven.

In fact, the various narratives of these ancient events, which are found at the present day in the old chronicles that record them, differ always very essentially, not only in respect to matters of opinion, and to the point of view in which they are to be regarded, but also in respect to questions of fact. Even the place where this battle was fought, notwithstanding what we have said about the derivation of Aston from AEscesdune, is not absolutely certain. There is in the same vicinity another town, called Ashbury, which claims the honor. One reason for supposing that this last is the true locality is that there are the ruins of an ancient monument here, which, tradition says, was a monument built to commemorate the death of a Danish chieftain slain here by Alfred. There is also in the neighborhood another very singular monument, called The White Horse, which also has the reputation of having been fashioned to commemorate Alfred's victories. The White Horse is a rude representation of a horse, formed by cutting away the turf from the steep slope of a hill, so as to expose a portion of the white surface of the chalky rock below of such a form that the figure is called a horse, though they who see it seem to think it might as well have been called a dog. The name, however, of The White Horse has come down with it from ancient times, and the hill on which it is cut is known as The White Horse Hill. Some ingenious antiquarians think they find evidence that this gigantic profile was made to commemorate the victory obtained by Alfred and Ethelred over the Danes at the ancient AEscesdune.

However this may be, and whatever view we may take of the comparative influence of Alfred's energetic action and Ethelred's religious faith in the defeat of the Danes at this great battle, it is certain that the results of it were very momentous to all concerned. Ethelred received a wound, either in this battle or in some of the smaller contests and collisions which followed it, under the effects of which he pined and lingered for some months, and then died. Alfred, by his decision and courage on the day of the battle, and by the ardor and resolution with which he pressed all the subsequent operations during the period of Ethelred's decline, made himself still more conspicuous in the eyes of his countrymen than he had ever been before. In looking forward to Ethelred's approaching death, the people, accordingly, began to turn their eyes to Alfred as his successor. There were children of some of his older brothers living at that time, and they, according to all received principles of hereditary right, would naturally succeed to the throne; but the nation seems to have thought that the crisis was too serious, and the dangers which threatened their country were too imminent, to justify putting any child upon the throne. The accession of one of those children would have been the signal for a terrible and protracted struggle among powerful relatives and friends for the regency during the minority of the youthful sovereign, and this, while the Danes remained in their strong-hold at Reading, in daily expectation of new re-enforcements from beyond the sea, would have plunged the country in hopeless ruin. They turned their eyes toward Alfred, therefore, as the sovereign to whom they were to bow so soon as Ethelred should cease to breathe.

In the mean time, the Danes, far from being subdued by the adverse turn of fortune which had befallen them, strengthened themselves in their fortress, made desperate sallies from their intrenchments, attacked their foes on every possible occasion, and kept the country in continual alarm. They at length so far recruited their strength, and intimidated and discouraged their foes, whose king and nominal leader, Ethelred, was now less able than ever to resist them, as to take the field again. They fought more pitched battles; and, though the Saxon chroniclers who narrate these events are very reluctant to admit that the Saxons were really vanquished in these struggles, they allow that the Danes kept the ground which they successively took post upon, and the discouraged and disheartened inhabitants of the country were forced to retire.

In the mean time, too, new parties of Danes were continually arriving on the coast, and spreading themselves in marauding and plundering excursions over the country. The Danes at Reading were re-enforced by these bands, which made the conflict between them and Ethelred's forces more unequal still. Alfred did his utmost to resist the tide of ill fortune, with the limited and doubtful authority which he held; but all was in vain. Ethelred, worn down, probably, with the anxiety and depression which the situation of his kingdom brought upon him, lingered for a time, and then died, and Alfred was by general consent called to the throne. This was in the year 871.

It was a matter of moment to find a safe and secure place of deposit for the body of Ethelred, who, as a Christian slain in contending with pagans, was to be considered a martyr. His memory was honored as that of one who had sacrificed his life in defense of the Christian faith. They knew very well that even his lifeless remains would not be safe from the vengeance of his foes unless they were placed effectually beyond the reach of these desperate marauders. There was, far to the south, in Dorsetshire, on the southern coast of England, a monastery, at Wimborne, a very sacred spot, worthy to be selected as a place of royal sepulture. The spot has continued sacred to the present day; and it has now upon the site, as is supposed, of the ancient monastery, a grand cathedral church or minster, full of monuments of former days, and impressing all beholders with its solemn architectural grandeur. Here they conveyed the body of Ethelred and interred it. It was a place of sacred seclusion, where there reigned a solemn stillness and awe, which no Christian hostility would ever have dared to disturb. The sacrilegious paganism of the Danes, however, would have respected it but little, if they had ever found access to it; but they did not. The body of Ethelred remained undisturbed; and, many centuries afterward, some travelers who visited the spot recorded the fact that there was a monument there with this inscription:

"IN HOC LOCO QUIESC'T CORPUS ETHELREDI REGIS WEST SAXONUM, MARTYRIS, QUI ANNO DOMINI DCCCLXXI., XXIII. APRILIS, PER MANUS DANORUM PAGANORUM, OCCUBUIT."[1]

Such is the commonly received opinion of the death of Ethelred. And yet some of the critical historians of modern times, who find cause to doubt or disbelieve a very large portion of what is stated in ancient records, attempt to prove that Ethelred was not killed by the Danes at all, but that he died of the plague, which terrible disease was at that time prevailing in that part of England. At all events, he died, and Alfred, his brother, was called to reign in his stead.

[Footnote 1: "Here rests the body of Ethelred, king of West Saxony, the Martyr, who died by the hands of the pagan Danes, in the year of our Lord 871."]



CHAPTER VII.

REVERSES.

The historians say that Alfred was very unwilling to assume the crown when the death of Ethelred presented it to him. If it had been an object of ambition or desire, there would probably have been a rival claimant, whose right would perhaps have proved superior to his own, since it appears that one or more of the brothers who reigned before him left a son, whose claim to the inheritance, if the inheritance had been worth claiming, would have been stronger than that of their uncle. The son of the oldest son takes precedence always of the brother, for hereditary rights, like water, never move laterally so long as they can continue to descend.

The nobles, however, and chieftains, and all the leading powers of the kingdom of Wessex, which was the particular kingdom which descended from Alfred's ancestors, united to urge Alfred to take the throne. His father had, indeed, designated him as the successor of his brothers by his will, though how far a monarch may properly control by his will the disposal of his realm, is a matter of great uncertainty. Alfred yielded at length to these solicitations, and determined on assuming the sovereign power. He first went to Wimborne to attend to the funeral solemnities which were to be observed at his royal brother's burial. He then went to Winchester, which, as well as Wimborne, is in the south of England, to be crowned and anointed king. Winchester was, even in those early days, a great ecclesiastical center. It was for some time the capital of the West Saxon realm. It was a very sacred place, and the crown was there placed upon Alfred's head, with the most imposing and solemn ceremonies. It is a curious and remarkable fact, that the spots which were consecrated in those early days by the religious establishments of the times, have preserved in almost every case their sacredness to the present day. Winchester is now famed all over England for its great Cathedral church, and the vast religious establishment which has its seat there—the annual revenues and expenditures of which far exceed those of many of the states of this Union. The income of the bishop alone was for many years double that of the salary of the President of the United States. The Bishop of Winchester is widely celebrated, therefore, all over England, for his wealth, his ecclesiastical power, the architectural grandeur of the Cathedral church, and the wealth and importance of the college of ecclesiastics over which he presides.



It was in Winchester that Alfred was crowned. As soon as the ceremony was performed, he took the field, collected his forces, and went to meet the Danes again. He found the country in a most deplorable condition. The Danes had extended and strengthened their positions. They had got possession of many of the towns, and, not content with plundering castles and abbeys, they had seized lands, and were beginning to settle upon them, as if they intended to make Alfred's new kingdom their permanent abode. The forces of the Saxons, on the other hand, were scattered and discouraged. There seemed no hope left to them of making head against their pestiferous invaders. If they were defeated, their cruel conquerors showed no moderation and no mercy in their victory; and if they conquered, it was only to suppress for a moment one horde, with a certainty of being attacked immediately by another, more recently arrived, and more determined and relentless than those before them.

Alfred succeeded, however, by means of the influence of his personal character, and by the very active and efficient exertions that he made, in concentrating what forces remained, and in preparing for a renewal of the contest. The first great battle that was fought was at Wilton. This was within a month of his accession to the throne. The battle was very obstinately fought; at the first onset Alfred's troops carried all before them, and there was every prospect that he would win the day. In the end, however, the tide of victory turned in favor of the Danes, and Alfred and his troops were driven from the field. There was an immense loss on both sides. In fact, both armies were, for the time, pretty effectually disabled, and each seems to have shrunk from a renewal of the contest. Instead, therefore, of fighting again, the two commanders entered into negotiations. Hubba was the name of the Danish chieftain. In the end, he made a treaty with Alfred, by which he agreed to retire from Alfred's dominions, and leave him in peace, provided that Alfred would not interfere with him in his wars in any other part of England. Alfred's kingdom was Wessex. Besides Wessex, there was Essex, Mercia, and Northumberland. Hubba and his Danes, finding that Alfred was likely to prove too formidable an antagonist for them easily to subdue, thought it would be most prudent to give up one kingdom out of the four, on condition of not having Alfred to contend against in their depredations upon the other three. They accordingly made the treaty, and the Danes withdrew. They evacuated their posts and strong-holds in Wessex, and went down the Thames to London, which was in Mercia, and there commenced a new course of conquest and plunder, where they had no such powerful foe to oppose them.

Buthred was the king of Mercia. He could not resist Hubba and his Danes alone, and he could not now have Alfred's assistance. Alfred was censured very much at the time, and has been condemned often since, for having thus made a separate peace for himself and his own immediate dominions, and abandoned his natural allies and friends, the people of the other Saxon kingdoms. To make a peace with savage and relentless pagans, on the express condition of leaving his fellow-Christian neighbors at their mercy, has been considered ungenerous, at least, if it was not unjust. On the other hand, those who vindicate his conduct maintain that it was his duty to secure the peace and welfare of his own realm, leaving other sovereigns to take care of theirs; and that he would have done very wrong to sacrifice the property and lives of his own immediate subjects to a mere point of honor, when it was utterly out of his power to protect them and his neighbors too.

However this may be, Buthred, finding that he could not have Alfred's aid, and that he could not protect his kingdom by any force which he could himself bring into the field, tried negotiations too, and he succeeded in buying off the Danes with money. He paid them a large sum, on condition of their leaving his dominions finally and forever, and not coming to molest him any more. Such a measure as this is always a very desperate and hopeless one. Buying off robbers, or beggars, or false accusers, or oppressors of any kind, is only to encourage them to come again, after a brief interval, under some frivolous pretext, with fresh demands or new oppressions, that they may be bought off again with higher pay. At least Buthred found it so in this case. Hubba went northward for a time, into the kingdom of Northumberland, and, after various conquests and plunderings there, he came back again into Mercia, on the plea that there was a scarcity of provisions in the northern kingdom, and he was obliged to come back. Buthred bought him off again with a larger sum of money. Hubba scarcely left the kingdom this time, but spent the money with his army, in carousings and excesses, and then went to robbing and plundering as before. Buthred, at last, reduced to despair, and seeing no hope of escape from the terrible pest with which his kingdom was infested, abandoned the country and escaped to Rome. They received him as an exiled monarch, in the Saxon school, where he soon after died a prey to grief and despair.

The Danes overturned what remained of Buthred's government. They destroyed a famous mausoleum, the ancient burial place of the Mercian kings. This devastation of the abodes of the dead was a sort of recreation—a savage amusement, to vary the more serious and dangerous excitements attending their contests with the living. They found an officer of Buthred's government named Ceolwulf, who, though a Saxon, was willing, through his love of place and power, to accept of the office of king in subordination to the Danes, and hold it at their disposal, paying an annual tribute to them. Ceolwulf was execrated by his countrymen, who considered him a traitor. He, in his turn, oppressed and tyrannized over them.

In the mean time, a new leader, with a fresh horde of Danes, had landed in England. His name was Halfden. Halfden came with a considerable fleet of ships, and, after landing his men, and performing various exploits and encountering various adventures in other parts of England, he began to turn his thoughts toward Alfred's dominions. Alfred did not pay particular attention to Halfden's movements at first, as he supposed that his treaty with Hubba had bound the whole nation of the Danes not to encroach upon his realm, whatever they might do in respect to the other Saxon kingdoms. Alfred had a famous castle at Wareham, on the southern coast of the island. It was situated on a bay which lies in what is now Dorsetshire. This castle was the strongest place in his dominions. It was garrisoned and guarded, but not with any special vigilance, as no one expected an attack upon it. Halfden brought his fleet to the southern shore of the island, and, organizing an expedition there, he put to sea, and before any one suspected his design, he entered the bay, surprised and attacked Wareham Castle, and took it. Alfred and the people of his realm were not only astonished and alarmed at the loss of the castle, but they were filled with indignation at the treachery of the Danes in violating their treaty by attacking it. Halfden said, however, that he was an independent chieftain, acting in his own name, and was not bound at all by any obligations entered into by Hubba!

There followed after this a series of contests and truces, during which treacherous wars alternated with still more treacherous and illusive periods of peace, neither party, on the whole, gaining any decided victory. The Danes, at one time, after agreeing upon a cessation of hostilities, suddenly fell upon a large squadron of Alfred's horse, who, relying on the truce, were moving across the country too much off their guard. The Danes dismounted and drove off the men, and seized the horses, and thus provided themselves with cavalry, a species of force which it is obvious they could not easily bring, in any ships which they could then construct, across the German Ocean. Without waiting for Alfred to recover from the surprise and consternation which this unexpected treachery occasioned, the newly-mounted troop of Danes rode rapidly along the southern coast of England till they came to the town of Exeter. Its name was in those days Exancester. It was then, as it is now, a very important town. It has since acquired a mournful celebrity as the place of refuge, and the scene of suffering of Queen Henrietta Maria, the mother of Charles the Second.[1] The loss of this place was a new and heavy cloud over Alfred's prospects. It placed the whole southern coast of his realm in the hands of his enemies, and seemed to portend for the whole interior of the country a period of hopeless and irremediable calamity.

It seems, too, from various unequivocal statements and allusions contained in the narratives of the times, that Alfred did not possess, during this period of his reign, the respect and affection of his subjects. He is accused, or, rather, not directly accused, but spoken of as generally known to be guilty of many faults which alienated the hearts of his countrymen from him, and prepared them to consider his calamities as the judgments of Heaven. He was young and ardent, full of youthful impetuosity and fire, and was elated at his elevation to the throne; and, during the period while the Danes left him in peace, under the treaties he had made with Hubba, he gave himself up to pleasure, and not always to innocent pleasure. They charged him, too, with being tyrannical and oppressive in his government, being so devoted to gratifying his own ambition and love of personal indulgence that he neglected his government, sacrificed the interests and the welfare of his subjects, and exercised his regal powers in a very despotic and arbitrary manner.

It is very difficult to decide, at this late day how far this disposition to find fault with Alfred's early administration of his government arose from, or was aggravated by, the misfortunes and calamities which befell him. On the one hand, it would not be surprising if, young, and arduous, and impetuous as he was at this period of his life, he should have fallen into the errors and faults which youthful monarchs are very prone to commit on being suddenly raised to power. But then, on the other hand, men are prone, in all ages of the world, and most especially in such rude and uncultivated times as these were, to judge military and governmental action by the sole criterion of success. Thus, when they found that Alfred's measures, one after another, failed in protecting his country, that the impending calamities burst successively upon them, notwithstanding all Alfred's efforts to avert them, it was natural that they should look at and exaggerate his faults, and charge all their national misfortunes to the influence of them.

There was a certain Saint Neot, a kinsman and religious counselor of Alfred, the history of whose life was afterward written by the Abbot of Crowland, the monastery whose destruction by the Danes was described in a former chapter. In this narrative it is said that Neot often rebuked Alfred in the severest terms for his sinful course of life, predicting the most fatal consequences if he did not reform, and using language which only a very culpable degree of remissness and irregularity could justify. "You glory," said he, one day, when addressing the king, "in your pride and power, and are determined and obdurate in your iniquity. But there is a terrible retribution in store for you. I entreat you to listen to my counsels, amend your life, and govern your people with moderation and justice, instead of tyranny and oppression, and thus avert if you can, before it is too late, the impending judgments of Heaven."

Such language as this it is obvious that only a very serious dereliction of duty on Alfred's part could call for or justify; but, whatever he may have done to deserve it, his offenses were so fully expiated by his subsequent sufferings, and he atoned for them so nobly, too, by the wisdom, the prudence, the faithful and devoted patriotism of his later career, that mankind have been disposed to pass by the faults of his early years without attempting to scrutinize them too closely. The noblest human spirits are always, in some periods of their existence, or in some aspects of their characters, strangely weakened by infirmities and frailties, and deformed by sin. This is human nature. We like to imagine that we find exceptions, and to see specimens of moral perfection in our friends or in the historical characters whose general course of action we admire; but there are no exceptions. To err and to sin, at some times and in some ways, is the common, universal, and inevitable lot of humanity.

At the time when Halfden and his followers seized Wareham Castle and Exeter, Alfred had been several years upon the throne, during which time these derelictions from duty took place, so far as they existed at all. But now, alarmed at the imminence of the impending danger, which threatened not only the welfare of his people, but his own kingdom and even his life—for one Saxon monarch had been driven from his dominions, as we have seen, and had died a miserable exile at Rome—Alfred aroused himself in earnest to the work of regaining his lost influence among his people, and recovering their alienated affections.

He accordingly, as his first step, convened a great assembly of the leading chieftains and noblemen of the realm, and made addresses to them, in which he urged upon them the imminence of the danger which threatened their common country, and pressed them to unite vigorously and energetically with him to contend against their common foe. They must make great sacrifices, he said, both of their comfort and ease, as well as of their wealth, to resist successfully so imminent a danger. He summoned them to arms, and urged them to contribute the means necessary to pay the expense of a vigorous prosecution of the war. These harangues, and the ardor and determination which Alfred manifested himself at the time of making them, were successful. The nation aroused itself to new exertions, and for a time there was a prospect that the country would be saved.



Among the other measures to which Alfred resorted in this emergency was the attempt to encounter the Danes upon their own element by building and equipping a fleet of ships, with which to proceed to sea, in order to meet and attack upon the water certain new bodies of invaders, who were on the way to join the Danes already on the island—coming, as rumor said, along the southern shore. In attempting to build up a naval power, the greatest difficulty, always, is to provide seamen. It is much easier to build ships than to train sailors. To man his little fleet, Alfred had to enlist such half-savage foreigners as could be found in the ports, and even pirates, as was said, whom he induced to enter his service, promising them pay, and such plunder as they could take from the enemy. These attempts of Alfred to build and man a fleet are considered the first rude beginnings from which the present vast edifice of British naval power took its origin. When the fleet was ready to put to sea, the people thronged the shores, watching its movements with the utmost curiosity and interest, earnestly hoping that it might be successful in its contests with the more tried and experienced armaments with which it would have to contend.

Alfred was, in fact, successful in the first enterprises which he undertook with his ships. He encountered a fleet of the Danish ships in the Channel, and defeated them. His fleet captured, moreover, one of the largest of the vessels of the enemy; and, with what would be thought in our day unpardonable cruelty, they threw the sailors and soldiers whom they found on board into the sea, and kept the vessel.

After all, however, Alfred gained no conclusive and decisive victory over his foes. They were too numerous, too scattered, and too firmly seated in the various districts of the island, of some of which they had been in possession for many years. Time passed on, battles were fought, treaties of peace were made, oaths were taken, hostages were exchanged, and then, after a very brief interval of repose, hostilities would break out again, each party bitterly accusing the other of treachery. Then the poor hostages would be slain, first by one party, and afterward, in retaliation, by the other.

In one of these temporary and illusive pacifications, Alfred attempted to bind the Danes by Christian oaths. Their customary mode of binding themselves, in cases where they wished to impose a solemn religious obligation, was to swear by a certain ornament which they wore upon their arms, which is called in the chronicles of those times a bracelet. What its form and fashion was we can not now precisely know; but it is plain that they attached some superstitious, and perhaps idolatrous associations of sacredness to it. To swear by this bracelet was to place themselves under the most solemn obligation that they could assume. Alfred, however, not satisfied with this pagan sanction, made them, in confirming one treaty, swear by the Christian relics, which were certain supposed memorials of our Saviour's crucifixion, or portions of the bodies of dead saints miraculously preserved, and to which the credulous Christians of that day attached an idea of sacredness and awe, scarcely less superstitious than that which their pagan enemies felt for the bracelets on their arms. Alfred could not have supposed that these treacherous covenanters, since they would readily violate the faith plighted in the name of what they revered, could be held by what they hated and despised. Perhaps he thought that, though they would be no more likely to keep the new oath than the old, still, that their violation of it, when it occurred, would be in itself a great crime—that his cause would be subsequently strengthened by their thus incurring the special and unmitigated displeasure of Heaven.

Among the Danish chieftains with whom Alfred had thus continually to contend in this early part of his reign, there was one very famous hero, whose name was Rollo. He invaded England with a wild horde which attended him for a short time, but he soon retired and went to France, where he afterward greatly distinguished himself by his prowess and his exploits. The Saxon historians say that he retreated from England because Alfred gave him such a reception that he saw that it would be impossible for him to maintain his footing there. His account of it was, that, one day, when he was perplexed with doubt and uncertainty about his plans, he fell asleep and dreamed that he saw a swarm of bees flying southward. This was an omen, as he regarded it, indicating the course which he ought to pursue. He accordingly embarked his men on board his ships again, and crossed the Channel, and sought successfully in Normandy, a province of France the kingdom and the home which, either on account of Alfred or of the bees, he was not to enjoy in England.

The cases, however, in which the Danish chieftains were either entirely conquered or finally expelled from the kingdom were very few. As years passed on, Alfred found his army diminishing, and the strength of his kingdom wasting away. His resources were exhausted, his friends had disappeared, his towns and castles were taken, and, at last, about eight years after his coronation at Winchester as monarch of the most powerful of the Saxon kingdoms, he found himself reduced to the very last extreme of destitution and distress.

[Footnote 1: For an account of Henrietta's adventures and sufferings at Exeter, see the History of Charles II., chap. iii]



CHAPTER VIII.

THE SECLUSION.

Notwithstanding the tide of disaster and calamity which seemed to be gradually overwhelming Alfred's kingdom, he was not reduced to absolute despair, but continued for a long time the almost hopeless struggle. There is a certain desperation to which men are often aroused in the last extremity, which surpasses courage, and is even sometimes a very effectual substitute for strength; and Alfred might, perhaps, have succeeded, after all, in saving his affairs from utter ruin, had not a new circumstance intervened, which seemed at once to extinguish all remaining hope and to seal his doom.

This circumstance was the arrival of a new band of Danes, who were, it seems, more numerous, more ferocious, and more insatiable than any who had come before them. The other kingdoms of the Saxons had been already pretty effectually plundered. Alfred's kingdom of Wessex was now, therefore, the most inviting field, and, after various excursions of conquest and plunder in other parts of the island, they came like an inundation over Alfred's frontiers, and all hope of resisting them seems to have been immediately abandoned. The Saxon armies were broken up. Alfred had lost, it appears, all influence and control over both leaders and men. The chieftains and nobles fled. Some left the country altogether; others hid themselves in the best retreats and fastnesses that they could find. Alfred himself was obliged to follow the general example. A few attendants, either more faithful than the rest, or else more distrustful of their own resources, and inclined, accordingly, to seek their own personal safety by adhering closely to their sovereign, followed him. These, however, one after another, gradually forsook him, and, finally, the fallen and deserted monarch was left alone.

In fact, it was a relief to him at last to be left alone; for they who remained around him became in the end a burden instead of affording him protection. They were too few to fight, and too many to be easily concealed. Alfred withdrew himself from them, thinking that, under the circumstances in which he was now placed, he was justified in seeking his own personal safety alone. He had a wife, whom he married when he was about twenty years old; but she was not with him now, though she afterward joined him. She was in some other place of retreat. She could, in fact, be much more easily concealed than her husband; for the Danes, though they would undoubtedly have valued her very highly as a captive, would not search for her with the eager and persevering vigilance with which it was to be expected they would hunt for their most formidable, but now discomfited and fugitive foe.

Alfred, therefore, after disentangling himself from all but one or two trustworthy and faithful friends, wandered on toward the west, through forests, and solitudes, and wilds, to get as far away as possible from the enemies who were upon his track. He arrived at last on the remote western frontiers of his kingdom, at a place whose name has been immortalized by its having been for some time the place of his retreat. It was called Athelney.[1] Athelney was, however, scarcely deserving of a name, for it was nothing but a small spot of dry land in the midst of a morass, which, as grass would grow upon it in the openings among the trees, a simple cow-herd had taken possession of, and built his hut there.

The solid land which the cow-herd called his farm was only about two acres in extent. All around it was a black morass, of great extent, wooded with alders, among which green sedges grew, and sluggish streams meandered, and mossy tracts of verdure spread treacherously over deep bogs and sloughs. In the driest season of the summer the goats and the sheep penetrated into these recesses, but, excepting in the devious and tortuous path by which the cow-herd found his way to his island, it was almost impassable for man.

Alfred, however, attracted now by the impediments and obstacles which would have repelled a wanderer under any other circumstances, went on with the greater alacrity the more intricate and entangled the thickets of the morass were found, since these difficulties promised to impede or deter pursuit. He found his way in to the cow-herd's hut. He asked for shelter. People who live in solitudes are always hospitable. The cow-herd took the wayworn fugitive in, and gave him food and shelter. Alfred remained his guest for a considerable time.

The story is, that after a few days the cow-herd asked him who he was, and how he came to be wandering about in that distressed and destitute condition. Alfred told him that he was one of the king's thanes. A thane was a sort of chieftain in the Saxon state. He accounted for his condition by saying that Alfred's army had been beaten by the Danes, and that he, with the other generals, had been forced to fly. He begged the cow-herd to conceal him, and to keep the secret of his character until times should change, so that he could take the field again.

The story of Alfred's seclusion on the island, as it might almost be called, of Ethelney, is told very differently by the different narrators of it. Some of these narrations are inconsistent and contradictory. They all combine, however, though they differ in respect to many other incidents and details, in relating the far-famed story of Alfred's leaving the cakes to burn. It seems that, though the cow-herd himself was allowed to regard Alfred as a man of rank in disguise—though even he did not know that it was the king—his wife was not admitted, even in this partial way, into the secret. She was made to consider the stranger as some common strolling countryman, and the better to sustain this idea, he was taken into the cow-herd's service, and employed in various ways, from time to time, in labors about the house and farm. Alfred's thoughts, however, were little interested in these occupations. His mind dwelt incessantly upon his misfortunes and the calamities which had befallen his kingdom. He was harassed by continual suspense and anxiety, not being able to gain any clear or certain intelligence about the condition and movements of either his friends or foes. He was revolving continually vague and half-formed plans for resuming the command of his army and attempting to regain his kingdom, and wearying himself with fruitless attempts to devise means to accomplish these ends. Whenever he engaged voluntarily in any occupation, it would always be something in harmony with these trains of thought and these plans. He would repair and put in order implements of hunting, or any thing else which might be deemed to have some relation to war. He would make bows and arrows in the chimney corner—lost, all the time, in melancholy reveries, or in wild and visionary schemes of future exploits.

One evening, while he was thus at work, the cow-herd's wife left, for a few moments, some cakes under his charge, which she was baking upon the great stone hearth, in preparation for their common supper. Alfred, as might have been expected, let the cakes burn. The woman, when she came back and found them smoking, was very angry. She told him that he could eat the cakes fast enough when they were baked, though it seemed he was too lazy and good for nothing to do the least thing in helping to bake them. What wide-spread and lasting effects result sometimes from the most trifling and inadequate causes! The singularity of such an adventure befalling a monarch in disguise, and the terse antithesis of the reproaches with which the woman rebuked him, invest this incident with an interest which carries it every where spontaneously among mankind. Millions, within the last thousand years, have heard the name of Alfred, who have known no more of him than this story; and millions more, who never would have heard of him but for this story, have been led by it to study the whole history of his life; so that the unconscious cow-herd's wife, in scolding the disguised monarch for forgetting her cakes, was perhaps doing more than he ever did himself for the wide extension of his future fame.[2]



Alfred was, for a time, extremely depressed and disheartened by the sense of his misfortunes and calamities; but the monkish writers who described his character and his life say that the influence of his sufferings was extremely salutary in softening his disposition and improving his character. He had been proud, and haughty, and domineering before. He became humble, docile, and considerate now. Faults of character that are superficial, resulting from the force of circumstances and peculiarities of temptation, rather than from innate depravity of heart, are easily and readily burned off in the fire of affliction, while the same severe ordeal seems only to indurate the more hopelessly those propensities which lie deeply seated in an inherent and radical perversity.

Alfred, though restless and wretched in his apparently hopeless seclusion, bore his privations with a great degree of patience and fortitude, planning, all the time, the best means of reorganizing his scattered forces, and of rescuing his country from the ruin into which it had fallen. Some of his former friends, roaming as he himself had done, as fugitives about the country, happened at length to come into the neighborhood of his retreat. He heard of them, and cautiously made himself known. They were rejoiced to find their old commander once more, and, as there was no force of the Danes in that neighborhood at the time, they lingered, timidly and fearlessly at first, in the vicinity, until, at length, growing more bold as they found themselves unmolested in their retreat, they began to make it their gathering place and head-quarters. Alfred threw off his disguise, and assumed his true character. Tidings of his having been thus discovered spread confidentially among the most tried and faithful of his Saxon followers, who had themselves been seeking safety in other places of refuge. They began, at first cautiously and by stealth, but afterward more openly, to repair to the spot. Alfred's family, too, from which he had now been for many months entirely separated, contrived to rejoin him. The herdsman, who proved to be a man of intelligence and character superior to his station, entered heartily into all these movements. He kept the secret faithfully. He did all in his power to provide for the wants and to promote the comfort of his warlike guests, and, by his fidelity and devotion, laid Alfred under obligations of gratitude to him, which the king, when he was afterward restored to the throne, did not forget to repay.

Notwithstanding, however, all the efforts which the herdsman made to obtain supplies, the company now assembled at Ethelney were sometimes reduced to great straits. There were not only the wants of Alfred and his immediate family and attendants to be provided for, but many persons were continually coming and going, arriving often at unexpected times, and acting, as roving and disorganized bodies of soldiers are very apt to do at such times, in a very inconsiderate manner. The herdsman's farm produced very little food, and the inaccessibleness of its situation made it difficult to bring in supplies from without. In fact, it was necessary, in one part of the approach to it, to use a boat, so that the place is generally called, in history, an island, though it was insulated mainly by swamps and morasses rather than by navigable waters. There were, however, sluggish streams all around it, where Alfred's men, when their stores were exhausted, went to fish, under the herdsman's guidance, returning sometimes with a moderate fare, and sometimes with none.

The monks who describe this portion of Alfred's life have recorded an incident as having occurred on the occasion of one of these fishing excursions, which, however, is certainly, in part, a fabrication, and may be wholly so. It was in the winter. The waters about the grounds were frozen up. The provisions in the house were nearly exhausted, there being scarcely anything remaining. The men went away with their fishing apparatus, and with their bows and arrows, in hopes of procuring some fish or fowl to replenish their stores. Alfred was left alone, with only a single lady of his family, who is called in the account "Mother," though it could not have been Alfred's own mother, as she had been dead many years. Alfred was sitting in the hut reading. A beggar, who had by some means or other found his way in over the frozen morasses, came to the door, and asked for food. Alfred, looking up from his book, asked the mother, whoever she was, to go and see what there was to give him. She went to make examination, and presently returned, saying that there was nothing to give him. There was only a single loaf of bread remaining, and that would not be half enough for their own wants that very night when the hunting party should return, if they should come back unsuccessful from their expedition. Alfred hesitated a moment, and then ordered half the loaf to be given to the beggar. He said, in justification of the act, that his trust was now in God, and that the power which once, with five loaves and two small fishes, fed abundantly three thousand men, could easily make half a loaf suffice for them.