Alfred the Great Saves England
Alfred the Great: birth 849/crowned, 871 at age 22 /death 899 at age 50/consort, Ealhswith
House: Wessex/Father, Æthelwulf, King of Wessex/Mother, Osburh
Children: Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians; Edward the Elder, King of the Anglo-Saxons; Æthelgifu, Abbess of Shaftesbury; Ælfthryth, Countess of Flanders; Æthelweard
Reign: King of the West Saxons, 871-886/King of the Anglo-Saxons, 886-899
Alfred of Wessex was born to royal parents and as the youngest of five boys was not considered a king-in-training. Nevertheless, he received an education focused primarily on military skills. Alfred was seen as an intelligent child who loved to learn and memorize poems. While still quite young, he travelled to Rome, where he met the pope, and began to learn about Christianity. When Alfred’s father died in 858, his eldest brother Æthelbald became king.
At the time of his father’s death, Viking raids in England were on the rise. Since the 790s, the Vikings had been using fast mobile armies numbering thousands of men in shallow-draught longships to raid the coasts and inland waters of England. Over the decades Viking forces began not only wintering in England but also building their military for the purpose of conquest. The Danes and Swedes, along with the Norse from the Northern Isles, Frisians, and those from Francia (modern-day France) formed alliances driven by various factors, including trade, military cooperation, and cultural exchange. These allied conquerors are referred to by some historians as ‘The Great Heathen Army.’
Alfred began his military service in 868 fighting by the side of his brother, King Æthelred I attempting to keep the ‘The Great Heathen Army’, led by Ivar the Boneless, out of the Kingdom of Mercia. They failed and by 870, both Mercia and East Anglia had fallen to Viking forces. Wessex was next. At this time Ivar the Viking warrior headed north and began campaigning against the Picts. He left leadership of the part of the Great Heathen Army that remained in the south to warlords named Bagsecg and Halfdan. Although Alfred and his brother Æthelred were successful at the Battle of Ashdown against these two in 871, they lost battles shortly thereafter.
The Battle of Ashdown January 8, 871, War History
After the Battle of Ashdown, The Great Heathen Army split in two with Halfdan heading north to Northumbria and a Danish warrior named Guthrum staying in the south.
Æthelred and Alfred fought their last battle together at Maeredun or Merton. Although no one knows for sure, it is surmised that Æthelred was mortally wounded in Merton and died soon after. He was buried with all honors at Wimborne. Over a twelve-year period, each of Alfred’s brothers reigned and then died until Alfred assumed the throne in 871 at the age of twenty-two.
Few written reports exist today describing the battles between the militia of Alfred, King of Wessex at that time, and Danish leaders. What we do know is that Alfred was victorious in defending and maintaining control over Wessex. This has been gleaned from two sources. One is Life of King Alfred, a biography of King Alfred written in 893 by a scholar named Asser, a Welsh monk whom Alfred recruited for his court. This is our main source of information about Alfred’s life and provides more information about Alfred than is known about any other early English ruler. The other, Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum, describes the resolution of the power struggle between Alfred and surrendering Danish King Guthrum at the Battle at Edington in 878. King Guthrum surrendered entirely on King Alfred’s terms. The Vikings gave hostages and promised to evacuate Wessex immediately.
The Anglo-Saxon shield wall was critical in the victory at the Battle of Edington. Modern Illustration (via X/Twitter)
A Victorian depiction of Guthrum, the Viking chief’s baptism, attended by King Alfred, in a stained glass window at Blakeney, Norfolk.
© Holmes Garden Photos/Alamy Stock Photo.
After the Battle of Edington, Guthrum surrendered entirely on King Alfred’s terms. The Vikings gave hostages and promised to evacuate Wessex immediately. Guthrum and King Alfred met three weeks later when Guthrum and his leaders agreed to be baptized as Christians. Asser tells us that never before had the Vikings made such a capitulation.
Two treaties marked agreements between Alfred and Guthrum. The first treaty is the Treaty of Wedmore, which established peace between the two leaders. This treaty also included Guthrum’s conversion to Christianity and his agreement to leave Wessex. The second treaty, the Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum, followed soon after and defined territorial boundaries and trade agreements between Alfred and Guthrum. According to the Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum, Guthrum, the Viking leader, would serve as Christian king of East Anglia, along with territories north and east of an imaginary line running from East London to Chester, which later became known as the Danelaw. This area included regions of Mercia, Northumbria, and some parts of the east coast of England. The south and west of England, including Alfred’s kingdom of Wessex, were under King Alfred’s control. The treaty established the principles of the Danelaw, allowing for self-governance of the Danes in exchange for loyalty to England. Western Mercia was now ruled by a pro-Wessex Mercian nobleman called Aethelred (not Aethelred I of Wessex or Aethelred II the Unready), who married Alfred’s determined and capable daughter Aethelflaed.
Source. Medieval Manuscripts Blog
The Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum is still in existence, held at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Although fighting continued between the Vikings and the Anglo-Saxons, this treaty marked the end to a war that seemed lost until Alfred ascended the throne.
Map of Britain in 878, showing territory held by the Danes in pink.
When Alfred was not meeting heavy military responsibilities (e.g., reorganizing the army, establishing a navy, developing a network of buhrs and roads to use against attackers), he spent his time not only improving his own knowledge but promoting educational reform throughout his kingdom. He improved the justice system, reformed coinage, and reestablished the Roman city of London which had a crucial location on the river Thames and therefore had been ruined by years of Viking attack. He began to foster the idea of English nationalism, provided an early example of an accessible Christian education, and provided legal protection for slaves who had, until his reign, “been sold, beaten or even killed” at their master’s whim. He offers many lessons for our own generation, not the least of which is what he learned by descending from prosperity to poverty and then ascending back to prosperity. In Alfred’s own words,
“In the midst of prosperity, the mind is elated, and in prosperity a man forgets himself; in hardship he is forced to reflect on himself, even though he be unwilling. In prosperity a man often destroys the good he has done; amidst the difficulties he often repairs what he long since did in the way of wickedness.” Source: Alfred the Great quotations
King Alfred of Wessex began constructing a network of burhs–fortified towns that could respond quickly to Viking incursions.
Modern Illustration (The Dockyards)
Statue of King Alfred at Wantage
The dedication on the plinth of the mighty Victorian sculpture of Alfred at Winchester reads: ‘to the founder of the kingdom and nation.’
Alfred is regarded by some as the first king of a united England, but that was not quite the real picture in his day.
He certainly called himself King of the Anglo-Saxons (rex Angul-Saxonum) or ‘of the English’ (Angelcynn). However, it was completely out of Alfred’s reach to determine matters in Northumbria even if he had wanted to, and East Anglia was handed over to the followers of the Dane Guthrum, one of the leaders of ‘The Great Heathen Army.’ Alfred did provide a starting point from which his successors could bring much of England together under the rule of the House of Wessex.
For much of his life Alfred suffered with a pain and illness relating to his stomach and digestive system. His biographer Asser noted that although the pain lasted over twenty years and was harsh and relentless, physicians could not diagnose a cause. Researchers now speculate it may have been Crohn’s Disease. It’s considered that this was the cause of his death in 899. He was buried for a short time at the Old Minster in Winchester with his wife and son Edward the Elder. Four years after his death, his body and the bodies of his family were exhumed and later laid to rest in the New Minster. They were there for 211 years until William the Conqueror demolished the New Minster Abbey. Monks exhumed the bodies of Alfred and his family and he was reinterred at Hyde Abbey. Today, you can visit Hyde Abbey Gardens where three stone slabs show where Alfred, his wife and his son were once buried.
