When all was ready, Alfred marched his newly-raised forces into the enemy's neighbourhood; and though not clearly made out, it would almost appear as if he encamped for the night on a hill, which fronted the intrenchments of the Danes. Next morning, both armies drew up on the plains of Ethandune. Behind the forces commanded by Godrun rose Bratton Hill, with its strong encampment, and on this the Danes could fall back if they were defeated; behind Alfred, there lay, miles away, the little island of Athelney, the bridge, the towers, and the cowherd's hut; there was nothing, if he looked back, to tempt him to retreat, only the broad marshes and the wild willow wood for him again to fall upon. The sea-king little thought, as he looked on, a shade paler than when he sat listening to the Saxon gleeman in his tent, that the same minstrel commanded the mighty force which was then arrayed before him. By his richest armlet of gold, and the shoulder-blade of his choicest war-horse, he would have sworn, that had he known of the quality of his harper, he would that night have sent him to have played in the banquet-hall of Odin.
The Saxons commenced the attack; for the Danish leader, as if something foreboded a defeat, seemed with his army to hug the foot of his encampment;—eager, hot, and impetuous, Alfred's soldiers rushed upon the enemy in that reckless order which often ends in defeat, unless it is the impulsive outbreak of determined valour. The Danish ranks were broken for a few moments, then rallied again in the hand-to-hand fight as they met the foremost Saxons, who had been thrown in amongst them. In this mingled mêlée of uplifted swords, battle-axes, and javelins, and while the Danes were slowly regaining the ground they had lost, a shower of arrows was suddenly poured in amongst them, which came full and blinding into their faces, and this was followed by the instant charge of the Saxon spearmen; and to add to the panic which had fallen upon the Danes, a cry was raised amongst the superstitious soldiers under Alfred, that one of the Saxon saints had suddenly appeared amongst them, had seized the banner, and borne it into the very thickest of the enemy's ranks. From that moment, the Danes began to retreat; there was no withstanding an army which fought under the belief that they were led on by a supernatural leader. Alfred himself had risen up so unexpectedly amongst them, that their enthusiasm, which had taken the place of despair, was raised to the highest pitch, they were ready to believe that St. Neot, or any other saint in the Saxon calendar, had taken their king under his special protection, and they cheerfully followed the mysterious standard-bearer into the very heart of the Danish ranks. They scattered the enemy before them like thistle-down before the autumnal blast; wherever the sea-kings rallied for a moment, and made head against the islanders, the Saxon storm tore over them, and they vanished like the foam which the wind tears from the billow, and bears howling along as it rushes over the waves, which roll away affrighted before its wrath. The field was strewn with the dead; never before had the Danes met with so sudden and decisive a defeat.
Godrun retreated with the shattered remnant of his army into the intrenchments. Alfred surrounded him in his stronghold; every day which saw the Danish garrison grow weaker for want of provisions and water, saw the army of Alfred strengthened by the arrival of new forces. The Saxon king had not left his enemies a single passage by which they could escape, without first fighting their way through the besieging army. On the fourteenth day, Godrun capitulated, and humbly sued for peace. Generous as he was brave, Alfred readily acceded to his request, on such mild terms as must have made the invaders ashamed of the cruelties they had formerly inflicted upon their conquerors. Alfred well knew the little value that the Danes placed either upon their oaths or their hostages; the former they had ever broken the moment they escaped; and as to the latter, they left them either to perish or be liberated, just as chance directed. They cared not to come back and redeem their pledges when there was plunder before them. Alfred knew that England was ample enough for them both; and he proposed that if they would abandon their pagan creed, and settle down peaceably, to cultivate the soil, instead of the arts of war, they should for the future be friends, and he would give them East Anglia for an inheritance. Godrun thankfully accepted the noble offer, and was baptized. Alfred became answerable for the "promises and vows" made by the Danish king at the font. The boundaries of the two nations were sworn to in a solemn treaty, and Godrun was installed in his new territory, which he parcelled out amongst his followers. The immense space of ground which Alfred allotted to the Danish king and his soldiers consisted of that which is now occupied by the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, and Essex, together with portions of Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, and even a part of Huntingdonshire. But Alfred did not rest content with merely presenting them with such vast territory; he also protected them with the same equal laws; he made no distinction in the punishment of a crime, whether it was committed by a Dane or a Saxon—each was to be alike tried by a jury of twelve men. He made Ethelred, who afterwards married his daughter Ethelfleda, commander over the kingdom of Mercia, strengthened his army, and thus planted a strong barrier between that kingdom and the Danish settlements of Deiri and Bernicia. Cities, and castles, and fortifications which had fallen into neglect and ruin, he repaired and rebuilt; he separated the country into hundreds and tythings, and established a militia, which were to serve for a given number of weeks, then return home again, and their places to be supplied by others, each changing about in succession. Hitherto, the Saxons had but little to defend; but now the country was so well protected, that the soldier came and went with a cheerful heart, for he no longer found a pile of blackened ashes to mark the spot where his home had once stood. Instead of shuddering lest he should see the mangled remains of his wife and children, or the Danish fires reddening the sky, he now approached the calm comforts of his humble English home, and slept securely in the assurance that the eagle eye of Alfred was ever sweeping over sea and land, and that ten thousand Saxon swords were always ready to be uplifted at his bidding. Saxon carols were chaunted in the harvest-fields at the close of the summer of 878; and merry voices were heard, where only the year before there sounded "the wailing tones of sad lament," for a mighty mind was now engrossed with the welfare of the people.
About this time, a large fleet of Danes, under the command of the famous sea-king Hastings, arrived in the Thames, and, crossing the country, sought the alliance of Godrun, who with his soldiers was following the peaceful occupations of husbandry, and the more useful arts of civilized life, when their Northern brethren landed. Hastings, finding that he could not win Godrun from his allegiance to Alfred, after wintering at Fulham, crossed over into Flanders, where he remained for some time at Ghent. Meantime, Alfred continued to increase his navy, to build ships of a larger size, and of such forms as were better adapted to ride out the storm, and to grapple with the enemy on their own element. The Saxon and Danish ships were constantly coming in contact on the ocean, and now victory generally declared itself in favour of the former. In 884, another Danish fleet invaded England and besieged Rochester, but the citizens valiantly defended the place until Alfred with his army arrived to relieve them. No sooner did the Saxon king appear, than the Danes abandoned their fortress, leaving behind the horses and captives they had brought over from France; and, hurrying off with their ships, they again set sail for the coast of Gaul. No sooner were they driven out of England, than Alfred had to hasten into East Anglia, where a strong force of Northmen had arrived, and who seemed determined to force the followers of Godrun into rebellion. Many of the Danish settlers preferred their old piratical habits to the more peaceful mode of life which Alfred had compelled them to adopt, and readily took down the battle-axe from the smoke-discoloured beam where it had so peacefully rested,[6] and withdrew the club, bristling with iron spikes, the star of the morning, from its hiding-place, to join the new comers. The first Danish ships the Saxons attacked, they either captured or sunk, and the Northmen are said to have fought so fiercely, that every soul on board perished. Another fleet arrived, and gained some slight advantage over the Saxons; but in the end Alfred conquered, and compelled the Danes who occupied East Anglia again to settle down to their peaceful occupations.
The most celebrated sea-king that tried his strength with Alfred, was Hastings, or Haestan—who again made his appearance—for the weight of his arm had hitherto fallen upon France and Flanders, and the opposite coast. For years this famous Vikinger had lived upon the ocean; the poets of the period extol him as a monarch whose territories were unbounded, whose kingdom no eye could ever take in at a glance; for his home was upon the sea, his throne where the tempest rose, and his sceptre swayed over realms into which the shark, the sea-horse, the monsters of the deep, and the birds of the ocean dare only venture. He called his ships together by the sound of an ivory horn, which was ever suspended around his neck, and the shrill tones of which might be heard for miles inland, and over the sea—the Saxons called it the Danish thunder. Whenever that blast broke out, the herdsman hurried his cattle into the darkest recesses of the forest—the thane barricaded the doors of his habitation, and the earl drew up his drawbridge, looked up his armour and his attendants, and never ventured to parley with either the sea-king or his followers, unless the deep moat was between them. For a quarter of a century had he harassed the neighbouring nations, living upon the plunder he obtained, until, weary of leading such an unsettled life, he resolved to become a king either over the Danes or the Saxons, and, now that Godrun was dead, he doubted not but that, if he could conquer Alfred, his own countrymen would gladly accept him for their monarch.
The mighty mind of Alfred was busy meditating upon the welfare of his people, and devising plans for their future improvement, when his study was interrupted by the arrival of this new horde of Northmen, and he was compelled to throw aside his books and take up the sword. Skilled alike in a knowledge of both arts and arms, he readily transformed himself from the statesman to the soldier, and moved, with but little preparation, from the closet to the camp. A heart less brave than Alfred's would have quailed at beholding two hundred and fifty Danish vessels darkening the Kentish coast, especially when the forces they contained landed safely near the large forest of Andreade, that far-stretching land of gloomy trees, which had proved so fatal to the Britons, when Ella led on his Saxon hosts to battle with the ancient islanders. But Alfred looked on, and remembered the battle of Ethandune, and his large eye-lids quivered not, neither did a motion of fear cloud his firmly-chiselled countenance; for he knew that he reigned in the hearts of his subjects. He saw the fortress carried which had been erected in the marshes of Romney; beheld his enemies ravaging the country along the coast, and as far inland as Berkshire; saw Hastings enter the mouth of the Thames, with eighty ships, and strongly fortify himself near Milton, and then he began to act. Wheeling up his army midway, the Saxon king struck in between the two divisions of the Danish forces; on his right he left them the gloomy forest of Andreade, and the straits of Dover to fall back upon; on his left the deep mouth of the Thames, which opens upon the coast of Essex, yet even there planting a strong force between the shore and their ships.
Wherever the Danes moved, to the right or to the left, landward or seaward, the forces of Alfred were upon them. If they endeavoured to cross over into Essex, they were driven back upon their intrenchments; if they sought to rejoin their brethren beside the sea-coast, the West Saxons drove them back. The sea-shores and the skirts of the forest were guarded with jealous eyes. Wherever a Danish helmet appeared, there was a Saxon sword already uplifted. Hastings was awe-struck; he was a prisoner in his own stronghold; he lay like a giant, manacled with the very fetters his own strength had forged. If he but stirred a foot, Saxon blows fell thick and heavily upon it, and jarred again upon the other limb, which stood useless, and so far apart. Alfred left the Danes who inhabited East Anglia to break loose and ravage at their will, they could but prey upon each other. He kept them aloof from the quarry he was hunting down.
Shut up within his camp, and not able to send out a single forager with safety, Hastings had at last recourse to stratagem, and sent messengers to Alfred, offering to leave the kingdom if he would guarantee him a free passage to his ships. To this proposition Alfred consented; but no sooner had Hastings embarked, as if to fulfil his engagement, than the other division of the army rushed across the country, in the rear of Alfred's forces, and crossing the Thames where it was fordable, landed in Essex, where they met the division assembled under Hastings at Benfleet. Only a portion, however, passed; for, turning his back upon the North Foreland, Alfred pursued the remainder into Surrey, and overtook them at Farnham, where he obtained a complete victory; for Alfred had so manœuvred his forces as to place the remnant of the Danish army between himself and the Thames, and that too at a spot where it was no longer fordable. Thus, those who escaped the Saxon swords plunged into the river, and were drowned. Those who could swim, and a small portion who were fortunate enough to pass the current on horseback, escaped through Middlesex into Essex, where Alfred pursued them across the Coln, and finally blockaded them in the isle of Mersey. Alfred continued the siege long enough to compel the Northmen to sue for peace, which he granted them, on condition that they at once quitted England.
But scarcely had Alfred succeeded in defeating the enemy in one quarter before a new force sprung up, ready armed, and began to make head against him. The Danes of Northumbria and East Anglia, who had for a number of years exchanged their swords and spears for the sickle and the pruning-hook, were no longer able to withstand the temptations which war and plunder offered; but uniting their forces together, resolved to attack Wessex. The Essex fleet, which, combined with that of Hastings, consisted of about a hundred sail, passed without interruption round the North Foreland, and along the southern coast, as far as Devonshire, where they laid siege to Exeter. The other division, consisting of forty vessels that had been fitted out in Northumbria, sailed round the north of Scotland, and along the western coast, until they reached the Bristol channel, where they laid siege to a fortified town on the north of the Severn. No sooner did the tidings of this new invasion reach the ears of Alfred, than he hastened off to the relief of Exeter, where he again conquered the Danes, drove them back to their ships, then, crossing over to the Severn, he compelled the Northumbrian fleet to hasten out of the Bristol channel, and once more left the west of England in a state of security.
The movements of Hastings at this period are not very clearly laid down. He appears to have crossed the Thames again, and once more to have established himself in Essex, at South Benfleet. But whether it was here that the camp of the Danish king was broken up and plundered, and his wife and children taken prisoners, or whether it was when he abandoned his encampment in Kent that these disasters befel him, it is difficult to understand, so rapid were the movements of both the Danes and the Saxons at this period. Alfred, however, baptized both the sons of Hastings, and loading them with presents, sent them back again, together with their mother, in safety to the camp of the Danish king. But delicacy and kindness were alike wasted upon this Danish chief. Having neither home nor country which he could call his own, and a vast family of rapacious robbers to provide for, he had no alternative but either to plunder or starve. He probably would have quitted England, but he knew not where to go; and his Danish brethren, fearful that he should settle down with his numerous followers, and take possession of the land which they had for several years so peacefully cultivated, chose what appeared to them the least evil, and assisted him to win new territories from the Saxons.