Early Britain Anglo-Saxon Britain

CHAPTER XIV.

THE SAX­ONS AT BAY IN WES­SEX.

On­ly one En­glish king­dom now held out against the wick­ings, and that was Wes­sex. Its com­par­ative­ly suc­cess­ful re­sis­tance may be set down, in some slight de­gree, to the en­er­gy of a sin­gle man, Æl­fred, though it was doubt­less far more large­ly due to the rel­ative­ly strong or­gan­isa­tion of the West Sax­on state. In judg­ing of Æl­fred, we must lay aside the false no­tions de­rived from the ap­pli­ca­tion of words ex­press­ing late ideas to an ear­ly and un­de­vel­oped stage of civilised so­ci­ety. To call him a great gen­er­al or a great states­man is to use ut­ter­ly mis­lead­ing terms. Gen­er­al­ship and states­man­ship, as we un­der­stand them, did not yet ex­ist, and to speak of them in the ninth cen­tu­ry in Eng­land is to be guilty of a com­mon, but none the more ex­cus­able, anachro­nism. Æl­fred was a stur­dy and hearty fight­er, and a good king of a se­mi-​bar­bar­ic peo­ple. As a lad, he had vis­it­ed Rome; and he re­tained through­out life a strong sense of his own and his peo­ple's bar­barism, and a gen­uine de­sire to civilise him­self and his sub­jects, so far as his lim­it­ed lights could car­ry him. He suc­ceed­ed to a king­dom over­run from end to end by pi­rat­ical hordes: and he did his best to re­store peace and to pro­mote or­der. But his char­ac­ter was mere­ly that of a prac­ti­cal, com­mon-​sense, fight­ing West Sax­on, brought up in the camp of his fa­ther and broth­ers, and do­ing his rough work in life with the hon­est straight­for­ward­ness of a sim­ple, hard-​head­ed, re­li­gious, but on­ly half-​ed­ucat­ed bar­bar­ic sol­dier.

The suc­cess­ful East An­glian wick­ings, un­der their chief Guthrum, turned at once to rav­age Wes­sex. They “har­ried the West Sax­ons' land, and set­tled there, and drove many of the folk over sea.” For awhile it seemed as if Wes­sex too was to fall in­to their hands. Æl­fred him­self, with a lit­tle band, “with­drew to the woods and moor-​fast­ness­es.” He took refuge in the Som­er­set marsh­es, and there oc­cu­pied a lit­tle is­land of dry land in the midst of the fens, by name Athel­ney. Here he threw up a rude earth­work, from which he made raids against the Danes, with a pet­ty levy of the near­est Som­er­set men. But the mass of the West Sax­ons were not dis­posed to give in so eas­ily. The long bor­der war­fare with De­von and Corn­wall had prob­ably kept up their or­gan­isa­tion in a bet­ter state than that of the an­ar­chic North. The men of Som­er­set and Wilts, with those Hamp­shire men who had not fled to the Con­ti­nent, gath­ered at a sa­cred stone on the bor­ders of Sel­wood For­est, and there Æl­fred met them with his lit­tle band. They at­tacked the host, which they put to flight, and then be­sieged it in its for­ti­fied camp. To es­cape the siege, Guthrum con­sent­ed to leave Wes­sex, and to ac­cept Chris­tian­ity. He was bap­tised at once, with thir­ty of his prin­ci­pal chiefs, af­ter the rough-​and-​ready fash­ion of the fight­ing king, near Athel­ney. The treaty en­tered in­to with Guthrum re­stored to Æl­fred all Wes­sex, with the south-​west­ern part of Mer­cia, from Lon­don to Bed­ford, and thence along the line of Watling Street to Chester. Thus for a time the Sax­ons re­cov­ered their au­ton­omy, and the great Scan­di­na­vian horde re­tired to East An­glia. Æthelred, Æl­fred's son-​in-​law, was ap­point­ed un­der-​king of re­cov­ered Mer­cia. Hence­for­ward, Teu­ton­ic Britain re­mains for awhile di­vid­ed in­to Wes­sex and the De­nalagu–that is to say, the dis­trict gov­erned by Dan­ish law.

Though peace was thus made with Guthrum, new bod­ies of wick­ings came pour­ing south­ward from Scan­di­navia. One of these sailed up the Thames to Ful­ham, but af­ter spend­ing some time there, they went over to the Frank­ish coast, where their depre­da­tions were long and se­vere. Through­out all Æl­fred's reign, with on­ly two in­ter­vals of peace, the wick­ings kept up a con­stant se­ries of at­tacks on the coast, and fre­quent­ly pen­etrat­ed in­land. From time to time, the great horde un­der Hæsten poured across the coun­try, cut­ting the corn and driv­ing away the cat­tle, and re­treat­ing in­to East An­glia, or Northum­bria, or the penin­su­la of the Wirrall, when­ev­er they were se­ri­ous­ly worsted. “Thanks be to God,” says the Chron­icle pa­thet­ical­ly “the host had not whol­ly bro­ken up all the En­glish kin;” but the mis­ery of Eng­land must have been in­tense. Æl­fred, how­ev­er, in­tro­duced two mil­itary changes of great im­por­tance. He set on foot some­thing like a reg­ular army, with a set­tled com­mis­sari­at, di­vid­ing his forces in­to two bod­ies, so that one-​half was con­stant­ly at home till­ing the soil while the oth­er half was in the field; and he built large ships on a new plan, which he manned with Frisians, as well as with En­glish, and which large­ly aid­ed in keep­ing the coast fair­ly free from Dan­ish in­va­sion dur­ing the two in­ter­vals of peace.

Through­out the whole of the ninth cen­tu­ry, how­ev­er, and the ear­ly part of the tenth, the whole his­to­ry of Eng­land is the his­to­ry of a per­pet­ual pil­lage. No man who sowed could tell whether he might reap or not. The En­glish­man lived in con­stant fear of life and goods; he was li­able at any mo­ment to be called out against the en­emy. What­ev­er lit­tle civil­isa­tion had ev­er ex­ist­ed in the coun­try died out al­most al­to­geth­er. The Latin lan­guage was for­got­ten even by the priests. War had turned ev­ery­body in­to fight­ers; com­merce was im­pos­si­ble when the towns were sacked year af­ter year by the pi­rates. But in the rare in­ter­vals of peace, Æl­fred did his best to civilise his peo­ple. The amount of work with which he is cred­it­ed is tru­ly as­ton­ish­ing. He trans­lat­ed in­to En­glish with his own hand “The His­to­ry of the World,” by Oro­sius; Bæ­da's “Ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal His­to­ry;” Boethius's “De Con­so­la­tione,” and Gre­go­ry's “Reg­ula Pas­toralis.” At his court, too, if not un­der his own di­rec­tion, the En­glish Chron­icle was first be­gun, and many of the sen­tences quot­ed from that great doc­ument in this work are prob­ably due to Æl­fred him­self. His de­vo­tion to the church was shown by the reg­ular com­mu­ni­ca­tion which he kept up with Rome, and by the gifts which he sent from his im­pov­er­ished king­dom, not on­ly to the shrine of St. Pe­ter but even to that of St. Thomas in In­dia. No doubt his vig­or­ous per­son­al­ity count­ed for much in the strug­gle with the Danes; but his death in 901 left the West Sax­ons as ready as ev­er to con­tend against the north­ern en­emy.

One re­sult of the Dan­ish in­va­sion of Wes­sex must not be passed over. The com­mon dan­ger seems to have firm­ly weld­ed to­geth­er Welsh­man and Sax­on in­to a sin­gle na­tion­al­ity. The most faith­ful part of Æl­fred's do­min­ions were the West Welsh shires of Som­er­set and De­von, with the half Celtic folk of Dorset and Wilts. The re­sult is seen in the change which comes over the re­la­tions be­tween the two races. In Ine's laws the dis­tinc­tion be­tween Welsh­men and En­glish­men is strong­ly marked; the price of blood for the servile pop­ula­tion is far less than that of their lords: in Æl­fred's laws the dis­tinc­tion has died out. Com­pared to the hea­then Dane, West Sax­ons and West Welsh were equal­ly En­glish­men. From that day to this, the Celtic peas­antry of the West Coun­try have ut­ter­ly for­got­ten their Welsh kin­ship, save in whol­ly Cym­ric Corn­wall alone. The De­von and Som­er­set men have for cen­turies been as En­glish in tongue and feel­ing as the peo­ple of Kent or Sus­sex.