The Danes make a dash across England. They are driven northwards, defeated at Buttington, and retire to Shoebury. They winter at Chester, and retire to Essex.
§ 76. The defeated Danes fell back on Shoebury, where they were joined by Hæsten, and threw up another fortification. They then set out to march up the Thames, being joined by large reinforcements from Northumbria and East Anglia. The object of this move was probably to co-operate with their friends in Devonshire against Alfred’s force. If so, it was frustrated. The three great ealdormen, Æthelred of Mercia, Æthelnoth of Somerset, and Æthelhelm of Wilts., ‘with the thanes who were at home at the forts,’ raised a levy, the extent of which, as Professor Earle has remarked[540], seems to astonish the Chronicler himself, ‘from every burg east of Parret, west and east of Selwood, north of Thames, west of Severn, with some of the North Welsh’; the co-operation of these last being especially noteworthy. In view of these gathering forces the Danes were obliged to head off northwards up the Severn valley, being finally overtaken at Buttington, and blockaded on both sides of the river. The locality of this place has been much disputed; some authorities placing it at Buttington Tump, at the junction of the Wye with the Severn, others identifying it with Buttington on the borders of Shropshire and Montgomeryshire. Contrary to my former opinion, I am now inclined to take the latter view; not because of Sir James Ramsay’s objection that the Severn is too wide to be blockaded at Buttington Tump, for on that theory the river on which the Danes were blockaded would be the Wye; but because the phrase of the Chronicler that the Danes marched ‘up along Severn,’ just as they had marched ‘up along Thames,’ seems to imply that they followed the Severn valley northwards; whereas to reach Buttington Tump they would have had to cross the Severn and turn south; and moreover, in that case, their fleets in Devonshire would probably have made some attempt to relieve them. However this may be, the English blockaded them for ‘many weeks,’ until they were starved out, their horses having all died of hunger or been eaten. They then made a desperate attempt to break through the English lines on the eastern side of the river, but were defeated with loss; those who escaped returning to Shoebury; then, leaving their ships, their women, and their booty in East Anglia, and drawing in large reinforcements from East Anglia and Northumbria, they made a sudden dash across England, marching ‘without stopping[541] day or night,’ till they reached the ruined Roman walls of Chester, where they fortified themselves for the winter. The fyrd failed to cut them off before they reached Chester, and the approach of winter and the heavy work already done probably prevented them from attempting another blockade; they therefore contented themselves with destroying everything in the neighbourhood from which the Danes could gather sustenance, and retired. Not since the great year of battles in 871 had there been such a bustling year in England, and what a different result!
They fortify themselves on the Lea, but are out-manœuvred.
§ 77. The measures taken by the English proved effective, for early in the next year, 894 (895), want of provisions forced the Danes to evacuate Chester, and withdraw into Wales, whence they retired to Mersea in Essex; ‘marching through Northumbria and East Anglia, so as the fyrd might not reach them[542]’; words which give eloquent testimony to the changed state of things. At Mersea they were joined by the fleet from Exeter, which had been beaten off with heavy loss in an attempt which they had made on Chichester. At the end of this year and the beginning of the next, 895 (896), the Danes drew their ships up the Thames and Lea to a spot twenty miles above London, and there fortified themselves. An attempt by the garrison of London with other forces to storm the Danish lines failed; and so during harvest Alfred encamped in the neighbourhood to protect the inhabitants of the district, while they were reaping their corn. One day as he was riding up the river, he noticed a spot where it seemed to him possible, by constructing obstacles on either side of the stream, to prevent the Danish ships from getting out[543]. He at once proceeded to put his plan into execution, but he had hardly begun when the Danes realised that they were out-manœuvred, and abandoning their ships once more struck off for the upper waters of the Severn. The fyrd pursued, but here again no attempt was made to blockade them, and the Danes wintered at Bridgenorth.
Break-up of the Danish host.
The next summer, 896 (897), the Danish host broke up, ‘some to East Anglia, some to Northumbria. Those who had no property [in England] got them ships and fared south over sea to the Seine.’ The long campaign was over. ‘And through God’s mercy,’ says the Chronicler once more, ‘the [Danish] host had not wholly ruined the Angle-kin, but they were much more ruined in those three years with murrain of men and cattle, and with the loss of many of the most excellent king’s thanes who passed away in those three years.’
Alfred’s new ships. Not a great success. Alfred’s claim to be the founder of the English navy doubtful. Earlier naval engagement.
§ 78. The only thing that remained to be done was to suppress the predatory raids of Northumbrian and East Anglian ships on the south coasts of Wessex. With this object Alfred turned the constructive ability which he undoubtedly possessed to the building of a new type of ship, just as Caesar did when he invaded Britain[544]. They were much larger in all their measurements than the wiking vessels, built neither on Frisian nor Danish lines, but according to the king’s own ideas. To tell the honest truth, they do not seem to have been a great success. In an engagement between nine of the new ships and six wiking vessels in the neighbourhood of the Isle of Wight all the English ships got aground, ‘very uncomfortably,’ as the Chronicler quaintly says, six on one side of the strait and three on the other. Moreover at the end of the same annal it is recorded: ‘and the same summer perished no less than twenty ships on the South Coast, crews and all’; so that the new ships do not seem to have been very capable of weathering a storm. We have noticed earlier naval operations of Alfred in the years 875, 877, 881 (882), 884 (885). I am, however, inclined to think that both Alfred’s claims to be called the founder of the English navy, and also the previous disuse of the sea by the Saxons have been somewhat exaggerated. The mention of Frisians as fighting on the English side[545] in the naval engagement just referred to, shows indeed that Alfred was glad to avail himself of these skilled mariners, who had probably come over to England in consequence of the wiking settlements in Frisia[546], just as the Danish descent on Wessex, in 878, drove many West Saxons to take refuge on the Continent. And Asser expressly mentions Frisians among those who settled under Alfred’s rule[547]. There was certainly a naval engagement in 851, under Æthelwulf[548], in which the English were victorious, if not yet earlier in 833 and 840[549]. Still it is no doubt true that there was no fleet capable of safeguarding the English coasts. The silence of the Chronicle as to any later attacks may indicate that this was effected in Alfred’s later years. Unhappily, for the last four years of Alfred’s reign the Chronicle is silent as to almost everything. So the argument is at best precarious. The stress laid on the description of Alfred’s new ships shows that he saw in this the necessary completion of his work for the defence of England; but did it really require such an immense amount of genius to discern that, as the invaders came by sea, it was desirable to stop them, if possible, before they got to land?
The problems of peace.
§ 79. We are constantly being told that ‘Peace hath her victories not less renowned than war.’ But the victories of peace are worthy of double renown when they have to be won, as in Alfred’s case, from the ashes left by an exhausting war. For, as Alfred says himself, ‘throughout all England everything was harried and burnt[550].’