Their next step was towards Wessex; for they well knew that if they could but once conquer that kingdom, the dominions of Mercia would become an easy prey, as these were the only two Saxon states that seemed able to withstand them. Wessex, as we have shown, was much enlarged since the first formation of the octarchy, and was soon destined to swallow up for ever the kingdom of Mercia; for Burrhed was not competent to stand long at the helm and steer safely through such a storm as surrounded him. Having reached Berkshire, the Northmen took possession of Reading without opposition, when they at once sent out a strong body of cavalry to plunder, while the remainder of the army commenced throwing up an intrenchment to strengthen their position. Scarcely had they time to complete this work before the West Saxons attacked them; and though at the first they seem to have had the best of the battle, they were in the end compelled to retreat, and leave the invaders masters of the field. At the second attack, both Ethelred and Alfred were present; they led up the strongest array that could be mustered;—to every town, thorpe, and grange, war-messengers had been despatched with the naked sword and arrow in their hands, uttering the ancient proclamation, which none had hitherto disobeyed, and which bade "each man to leave his house and land, and come;" the mustering ground was near Æscesdun, or Ash-tree Hill. The Danes divided their army into two bodies, each of which was commanded by two kings and two earls. Ethelred followed the example they had set him, giving the command of one division of his army to Alfred. As the Danes had been the first to form into battle order, so did they commence the attack; and although they had the advantage of the rising ground, Alfred, nothing daunted, led his forces in close order up the ascent to meet them. Near the hoar ash-tree the contending ranks closed, and there many a Dane and Saxon fell, who never more passed that barrier until they were borne away on the bier. Although Ethelred had heard the war-cry, and knew that the battle had commenced, he refused to leave his tent until his priest had finished the prayer which he was offering up, when the Danes first charged down the hill-side. By the time it was ended, Alfred, with his inferior force, though fighting their way foot to foot, were slowly losing ground, and but for the timely appearance of Ethelred, and the division under his command, he must have retreated. As it was, however, the sudden arrival of such a strong force changed the fortune of the day. One of the sea-kings fell; and beside him, Sidroc, who had saved the child from the massacre of Croyland; then the Danish ranks began to waver, for thousands of the invaders had already fallen. But the carnage ended not here: all night long did the Saxons chase their pagan enemies, until, towards the evening of the next day, and from the foot of the hill where the battle was fought—far away over the fields of Ashdown, and over the country that now lies beside Ashbury, up to the very intrenchment at Reading—was the whole line of road strewn with the dying and the dead;—there the massacre of Croyland and Peterborough was revenged, and for days after the bodies of the Danes lay blackening in the sun. But terrible as was the slaughter, and complete the victory, a fortnight saw the Northmen again in the field, strengthened by reinforcements, who had landed upon the coast, and by these were the Saxons, in their turn, defeated. In the next battle that was fought between them, Ethelred received his death wound; and Alfred the Great ascended the throne of Wessex. Over the threshold of this perilous period must we now pass, to the presence of one of England's greatest kings.
[CHAPTER XXI.]
ACCESSION AND ABDICATION OF ALFRED.
"In fortune's love—then the bold and coward,
The wise and fool, the artist and unread,
The hard and soft, seem all affin'd and kin;—
But in the wind and tempest of her frown,
Distinction, with a broad and powerful fan,
Puffing at all, winnows the light away."—Shakspere.
Alfred was scarcely twenty-two years of age when he ascended the throne of Wessex—it was on the eve of a defeat when the sceptre fell into his hands—when the Danes were flushed with victory, and nearly all England lay prostrate at their feet. With such a gloomy prospect before him, we can easily account for the reluctance he showed in accepting the crown, although it was offered to him by all the chiefs and earls who formed the witenagemot, when there were children of his elder brother Ethelbald alive, who, according to the Saxon order of succession, were the next heirs to the crown. But the Wessex nobles were already well acquainted with Alfred's talents, for during the twelve months prior to his accession, he had distinguished himself in eight pitched battles against the Danes, and had fought in many an unrecorded skirmish against parties of the enemy who were sent out to forage. Alfred well knew that the death of Ethelred would hardly leave him breathing-time, before he should again be compelled to take the field; that he also had to fight under the disadvantage which necessarily attends a defeat; while the enemy came swelling in all the triumph of recent victory; that he had to repair his late losses, and rouse afresh his subjects, who were still smarting with the wounds they had received from their conquerors, while the invaders were made more daring by every conquest, and more insolent by every concession. Such was the state of the kingdom into which Alfred was ushered by the death of his brother: nor was this all—he no doubt, with his clear eye, saw that it was no longer a mere struggle between two parties, where the one seeks to plunder, and the other to protect his property, but a contest for the very land on which they fought. The Danes had ceased to trust for safety to their "sea-horses"—they had abandoned "the road of the swans," they but travelled over it to a land in which their countrymen were now kings, where their brethren were in the possession of cities and lands—they came to share in the inheritance of the soil—either to find their future homes, or their graves in England. The prize each party was now contending for, was England itself—it was neither more nor less than to decide whether our island should in future be ruled over by the Danes, or the Saxons. It was but what the Romans had beforetime aspired to, and what, after a hard struggle, the Saxons themselves had accomplished. Well might Alfred despair when he looked at his shattered army, and saw how small a portion of England he possessed.
What had he gained by the eight hard-fought battles he shared in the year before his accession to the crown? The places of those whom he had helped to hew down were filled up again by the first favourable wind that blew towards his ill-starred kingdom; as the grave closed over the dead, the sea threw another living shoal upon the coast—none returned—if they retreated, it was but to some neighbouring intrenchment, or some kingdom over which a sea-king reigned. Alfred had not sat upon the throne of Wessex a month, before his army was attacked, at Wilton, during his absence, and defeated by the Northmen. Wearied of a war which only brought victory to-day, to be followed by defeat on the morrow, he made peace with his enemies, and they left the kingdom of Wessex, though on what terms we know not, unless it was that Alfred agreed not to assist the king of Mercia, as his brother Ethelred had frequently done. It would almost appear by their marching at once into Mercia, that such were the conditions on which they quitted Wessex.
Nine battles in one year must have made a sad opening amongst the West Saxons, for, unlike the Danes, they had no ships constantly arriving upon the coast to fill up the places of those that were slain. Oh, how the young king must have yearned for retirement, and his books! when he looked round and saw the miserable and almost defenceless state of his kingdom—his brave warriors dropping off daily, and none to close the gap that was left open in his ranks. Let us leave him for a brief space—his heart heavy, his soul sad, and his head resting upon his hand, with not a ray of hope to cheer him, excepting his trust in God—while we follow the footsteps of the Danes.
That part of the Danish army which abandoned Wessex took up its winter quarters in London, at about the same time that another portion of the invaders marched from Northumbria, and wintered at Repton, in Derbyshire, where they sacked and destroyed the beautiful monastery, which for above two centuries had been the burial-place of the Mercian kings; and, as at Croyland and Peterborough, they broke open the sepulchres and scattered abroad the ashes of the Saxon monarchs. Twice had Burrhed, the king of Mercia, negotiated with these truce-breakers, as the old chroniclers called them, and finding that they paid no regard to their oaths, and wearied with such a repetition of conflicts, Burrhed quitted his throne, went to Rome, where he died, and left his subjects to struggle on, or perish, as they best could. Instead of placing one of their own kings upon the throne of Mercia, the Danes gave the crown to Ceolwulf, under the stipulation that he should pay them tribute, and assist them with his forces whenever he was called upon; and that when he ceased to fulfil these conditions, he should from that moment resign his power. It would almost appear that there was so little left in the kingdom of Mercia worth their taking that they left him to gather up the remainder of the spoil, while they turned their attention to more substantial plunder; but his reign was short, he was hated by those by whom he was employed, as well as by those whom he plundered, for he robbed alike the peasant, the merchant, the clergy, and even on the remnant of the poor monks of Croyland, whose brethren had been slain, and whose abbey had been destroyed, regardless of their losses and their sufferings, he imposed a tax of a thousand pounds. But in spite of this stern severity, he soon grew into disfavour with his new masters, was stripped of everything, and perished miserably. After his death, Mercia never existed again as a kingdom, but was blotted out for ever from the Saxon octarchy as a distinct state; and in an after day, when the power of the invaders began to wane, it was united by Alfred to Wessex, never again to exist as a separate province.
The arena of England was now only occupied by two powers; on the one hand, by Alfred, with his little kingdom and his mere handful of West Saxons: on the other, by the Danes, who were in possession of nearly the whole of the remainder of the island—for, with the exception of the kingdom of Wessex, all the rest of the Saxon states were in the hands of the invaders.
Three of the Danish sea-kings, named Godrun, Oskitul, and Amund, having, with their army, wintered at Cambridge, set out again, early in the spring, to attack Wessex; to give Alfred another proof how useless it was by either treaty or concession to hope to put off the evil day. This time they brought a large force to oppose him, and besides crossing the country, they sailed round by Dorsetshire, where they stormed the castle of Wareham; and though Alfred destroyed their ships, those who passed inland devastated the country for miles around. Alfred seems at this period to have grown weary of war, to have lost all heart and hope, and, for the first time, he purchased peace of them with gold; nor was he long before he had to repent of such timid policy, for although they swore as usual upon their bracelets, and even, at his request, pledged themselves solemnly upon the relics of the Christian saints, yet only a few nights after this useless ceremony, they rushed upon his encampment, slew a great portion of his cavalry, and, carrying off the horses, mounted their own soldiers upon them, and rode off to Exeter, where they passed the following winter. Though weary and dispirited, Alfred did not remain idle, but commenced building larger ships and galleys, so that he might be better able to compete with his enemies upon the ocean. Such a plan, had it been pursued earlier by the Saxon kings, would have caused thousands of the Northmen to have found their graves in the ocean ere their feet touched our coast; but now the whole land behind him was filled with enemies, from the edge of the Channel, which his own kingdom overlooked, deep down, and far inland, to where the green lands of England stretched unto the Frith of Forth. Hopeless as it now was, Alfred boldly sallied forth with his ships, to encounter a fleet of Northmen off the Hampshire coast, where, having suffered much damage in a previous storm, the Danes were defeated, with the loss of one hundred and twenty of their ships. Emboldened by this success, Alfred collected his army and went forth to attack the Danes in their stronghold at Exeter. Here, however, instead of renewing the assault, and turning to advantage the victory which he had obtained at sea, he contented himself with a few hostages, and a renewal of the oaths, which his experience ought to have taught him they would break on the first favourable occasion, and allowed them once more to depart into Mercia. We can only account for this strange conduct on the part of Alfred by believing that the population of Wessex had been greatly thinned by the rapid succession of battles which had been fought at the close of the reign of Ethelred.