King Alfred of England Makers of History / Abbott, Jacob, 1803-1879

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Title: King Alfred of England
       Makers of History

Author: Jacob Abbott

Release Date: August 18, 2005 [EBook #16545]

Language: English

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[Illustration: ALFRED THE GREAT]


MAKERS of HISTORY


KING ALFRED
OF
ENGLAND

BY
JACOB ABBOTT

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK AND LONDON

HARPER & BROTHERS
PUBLISHERS




Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand
eight hundred and forty-nine, by

HARPER & BROTHERS,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District
of New York.





PREFACE.


It is the object of this series of histories to present a clear,
distinct, and connected narrative of the lives of those great
personages who have in various ages of the world made themselves
celebrated as leaders among mankind, and, by the part they have taken
in the public affairs of great nations, have exerted the widest
influence on the history of the human race. The end which the author
has had in view is twofold: first, to communicate such information
in respect to the subjects of his narratives as is important for the
general reader to possess; and, secondly, to draw such moral lessons
from the events described and the characters delineated as they may
legitimately teach to the people of the present age. Though written in
a direct and simple style, they are intended for, and addressed to,
minds possessed of some considerable degree of maturity, for such
minds only can fully appreciate the character and action which
exhibits itself, as nearly all that is described in these volumes
does, in close combination with the conduct and policy of governments,
and the great events of international history.





CONTENTS


CHAPTER

I. THE BRITONS
II. THE ANGLO-SAXONS
III. THE DANES
IV. ALFRED'S EARLY YEARS
V. THE STATE OF ENGLAND
VI. ALFRED'S ACCESSION TO THE THRONE
VII. REVERSES
VIII. THE SECLUSION
IX. REASSEMBLING OF THE ARMY
X. THE VICTORY OVER THE DANES
XI. THE REIGN
XII. THE CLOSE OF LIFE




ILLUSTRATIONS


WALL OF SEVERUS
SAXON MILITARY CHIEF
THE SEA KINGS
LOTHBROC AND HIS FALCON
ANCIENT CORONATION CHAIR
THE FIRST BRITISH FLEET
ALFRED WATCHING THE CAKES
PORTRAIT OF ALFRED
HASTINGS BESIEGED IN THE CHURCH





ALFRED THE GREAT




CHAPTER I.

THE BRITONS.


Alfred the Great figures in history as the founder, in some sense, of
the British monarchy. Of that long succession of sovereigns who have
held the scepter of that monarchy, and whose government has exerted so
vast an influence on the condition and welfare of mankind, he was not,
indeed, actually the first. There were several lines of insignificant
princes before him, who governed such portions of the kingdom as they
individually possessed, more like semi-savage chieftains than English
kings. Alfred followed these by the principle of hereditary right, and
spent his life in laying broad and deep the foundations on which the
enormous superstructure of the British empire has since been reared.
If the tales respecting his character and deeds which have come down
to us are at all worthy of belief, he was an honest, conscientious,
disinterested, and far-seeing statesman. If the system of hereditary
succession would always furnish such sovereigns for mankind, the
principle of loyalty would have held its place much longer in the
world than it is now likely to do, and great nations, now republican,
would have been saved a vast deal of trouble and toil expended in the
election of their rulers.

Although the period of King Alfred's reign seems a very remote one
as we look back toward it from the present day, it was still eight
hundred years after the Christian era that he ascended his throne.
Tolerable authentic history of the British realm mounts up through
these eight hundred years to the time of Julius Caesar. Beyond this
the ground is covered by a series of romantic and fabulous tales,
pretending to be history, which extend back eight hundred years
further to the days of Solomon; so that a much longer portion of the
story of that extraordinary island comes before than since the days of
Alfred. In respect, however to all that pertains to the interest and
importance of the narrative, the exploits and the arrangements of
Alfred are the beginning.

The histories, in fact, of all nations, ancient and modern, run back
always into misty regions of romance and fable. Before arts and
letters arrived at such a state of progress as that public events
could be recorded in writing, tradition was the only means of
handing down the memory of events from generation to generation; and
tradition, among semi-savages, changes every thing it touches into
romantic and marvelous fiction.

The stories connected with the earliest discovery and settlement of
Great Britain afford very good illustrations of the nature of these
fabulous tales. The following may serve as a specimen:

At the close of the Trojan war,[1] AEneas retired with a company of
Trojans, who escaped from the city with him, and, after a great
variety of adventures, which Virgil has related, he landed and settled
in Italy. Here, in process of time, he had a grandson named Silvius,
who had a son named Brutus, Brutus being thus AEneas's great-grandson.

One day, while Brutus was hunting in the forests, he accidentally
killed his father with an arrow. His father was at that time King of
Alba--a region of Italy near the spot on which Rome was subsequently
built--and the accident brought Brutus under such suspicions, and
exposed him to such dangers, that he fled from the country. After
various wanderings he at last reached Greece, where he collected a
number of Trojan followers, whom he found roaming about the country,
and formed them into an army. With this half-savage force he attacked
a king of the country named Pandrasus. Brutus was successful in the
war, and Pandrasus was taken prisoner. This compelled Pandrasus to sue
for peace, and peace was concluded on the following very extraordinary
terms:

Pandrasus was to give Brutus his daughter Imogena for a wife, and a
fleet of ships as her dowry. Brutus, on the other hand, was to take
his wife and all his followers on board of his fleet, and sail away
and seek a home in some other quarter of the globe. This plan of a
monarch's purchasing his own ransom and peace for his realm from a
band of roaming robbers, by offering the leader of them his daughter
for a wife, however strange to our ideas, was very characteristic of
the times. Imogena must have found it a hard alternative to choose
between such a husband and such a father.

Brutus, with his fleet and his bride, betook themselves to sea, and
within a short time landed on a deserted island, where they found the
ruins of a city. Here there was an ancient temple of Diana, and
an image of the goddess, which image was endued with the power of
uttering oracular responses to those who consulted it with proper
ceremonies and forms. Brutus consulted this oracle on the question in
what land he should find a place of final settlement. His address to
it was in ancient verse, which some chronicler has turned into English
rhyme as follows:

  "Goddess of shades and huntress, who at will
  Walk'st on the rolling sphere, and through the deep,
  On thy _third_ reign, the earth, look now and tell
  What land, what seat of rest thou bidd'st me seek?"

To which the oracle returned the following answer:

  "Far to the west, in the ocean wide,
  Beyond the realm of Gaul a land there lies--
  Sea-girt it lies--where giants dwelt of old.
  Now void, it fits thy people; thither bend
  Thy course; there shalt thou find a lasting home."

It is scarcely necessary to say that this meant Britain. Brutus,
following the directions which the oracle had given him, set sail from
the island, and proceeded to the westward through the Mediterranean
Sea. He arrived at the Pillars of Hercules. This was the name by which
the Rock of Gibraltar and the corresponding promontory on the opposite
coast, across the straits, were called in those days; these cliffs
having been built, according to ancient tales, by Hercules, as
monuments set up to mark the extreme limits of his western wanderings.
Brutus passed through the strait, and then, turning northward, coasted
along the shores of Spain.

At length, after enduring great privations and suffering, and
encountering the extreme dangers to which their frail barks were
necessarily exposed from the surges which roll in perpetually from
the broad Atlantic Ocean upon the coast of Spain and into the Bay of
Biscay, they arrived safely on the shores of Britain. They landed and
explored the interior. They found the island robed in the richest
drapery of fruitfulness and verdure, but it was unoccupied by any
thing human. There were wild beasts roaming in the forests, and the
remains of a race of giants in dens and caves--monsters as diverse
from humanity as the wolves. Brutus and his followers attacked all
these occupants of the land. They drove the wild beasts into the
mountains of Scotland and Wales, and killed the giants. The chief of
them, whose name was Gogmagog, was hurled by one of Brutus's followers
from the summit of one of the chalky cliffs which bound the island
into the sea.

The island of Great Britain is in the latitude of Labrador, which on
our side of the continent is the synonym for almost perpetual ice and
snow; still these wandering Trojans found it a region of inexhaustible
verdure, fruitfulness, and beauty; and as to its extent, though often,
in modern times, called a little island, they found its green fields
and luxuriant forests extending very far and wide over the sea. A
length of nearly six hundred miles would seem almost to merit the
name of continent, and the dimensions of this detached outpost of
the habitable surface of the earth would never have been deemed
inconsiderable, had it not been that the people, by the greatness of
their exploits, of which the whole world has been the theater, have
made the physical dimensions of their territory appear so small and
insignificant in comparison. To Brutus and his companions the land
appeared a world. It was nearly four hundred miles in breadth at the
place where they landed, and, wandering northward, they found it
extending, in almost undiminished beauty and fruitfulness, further
than they had the disposition to explore it. They might have gone
northward until the twilight scarcely disappeared in the summer
nights, and have found the same verdure and beauty continuing to the
end. There were broad and undulating plains in the southern regions of
the island, and in the northern, green mountains and romantic glens;
but all, plains, valleys, and mountains, were fertile and beautiful,
and teeming with abundant sustenance for flocks, for herds, and for
man.

Brutus accordingly established himself upon the island with all his
followers, and founded a kingdom there, over which he reigned as
the founder of a dynasty. Endless tales are told of the lives, and
exploits, and quarrels of his successors down to the time of Caesar.
Conflicting claimants arose continually to dispute with each other for
the possession of power; wars were made by one tribe upon another;
cities, as they were called--though probably, in fact, they were only
rude collections of hovels--were built, fortresses were founded, and
rivers were named from princes or princesses drowned in them, in
accidental journeys, or by the violence of rival claimants to their
thrones. The pretended records contain a vast number of legends, of
very little interest or value, as the reader will readily admit
when we tell him that the famous story of King Lear is the most
entertaining one in the whole collection. It is this:

There was a king in the line named Lear. He founded the city now
called Leicester. He had three daughters, whose names were Gonilla,
Regana, and Cordiella. Cordiella was her father's favorite child. He
was, however, jealous of the affections of them all, and one day he
called them to him, and asked them for some assurance of their love.
The two eldest responded by making the most extravagant protestations.
They loved their father a thousand times better than their own souls.
They could not express, they said, the ardor and strength of their
attachment, and called Heaven and earth to witness that these
protestations were sincere.

Cordiella, all this time, stood meekly and silently by, and when her
father asked her how it was with her, she replied, "Father, my love
toward you is as my duty bids. What can a father ask, or a daughter
promise more? They who pretend beyond this only flatter."

The king, who was old and childish, was much pleased with the
manifestation of love offered by Gonilla and Regana, and thought that
the honest Cordiella was heartless and cold. He treated her with
greater and greater neglect and finally decided to leave her without
any portion whatever, while he divided his kingdom between the other
two, having previously married them to princes of high rank. Cordiella
was, however, at last made choice of for a wife by a French prince,
who, it seems, knew better than the old king how much more to
be relied upon was unpretending and honest truth than empty and
extravagant profession. He married the portionless Cordiella, and took
her with him to the Continent.

The old king now having given up his kingdom to his eldest daughters,
they managed, by artifice and maneuvering, to get every thing else
away from him, so that he became wholly dependent upon them, and had
to live with them by turns. This was not all; for, at the instigation
of their husbands, they put so many indignities and affronts upon him,
that his life at length became an intolerable burden, and finally he
was compelled to leave the realm altogether, and in his destitution
and distress he went for refuge and protection to his rejected
daughter Cordiella. She received her father with the greatest alacrity
and affection. She raised an army to restore him to his rights, and
went in person with him to England to assist him in recovering them.
She was successful. The old king took possession of his throne again,
and reigned in peace for the remainder of his days. The story is of
itself nothing very remarkable, though Shakspeare has immortalized it
by making it the subject of one of his tragedies.

Centuries passed away, and at length the great Julius Caesar, who was
extending the Roman power in every direction, made his way across the
Channel, and landed in England. The particulars of this invasion
are described in our history of Julius Caesar. The Romans retained
possession of the island, in a greater or less degree, for four
hundred years.

They did not, however, hold it in peace all this time. They became
continually involved in difficulties and contests with the native
Britons, who could ill brook the oppressions of such merciless masters
as Roman generals always proved in the provinces which they pretended
to govern. One of the most formidable rebellions that the Romans had
to encounter during their disturbed and troubled sway in Britain was
led on by a woman. Her name was Boadicea. Boadicea, like almost all
other heroines, was coarse and repulsive in appearance. She was tall
and masculine in form. The tones of her voice were harsh, and she had
the countenance of a savage. Her hair was yellow. It might have been
beautiful if it had been neatly arranged, and had shaded a face which
possessed the gentle expression that belongs properly to woman. It
would then have been called golden. As it was, hanging loosely below
her waist and streaming in the wind, it made the wearer only look the
more frightful. Still, Boadicea was not by any means indifferent to
the appearance she made in the eyes of beholders. She evinced her
desire to make a favorable impression upon others, in her own
peculiar way, it is true, but in one which must have been effective,
considering what sort of beholders they were in whose eyes she
figured. She was dressed in a gaudy coat, wrought of various colors,
with a sort of mantle buttoned over it. She wore a great gold chain
about her neck, and held an ornamented spear in her hand. Thus
equipped, she appeared at the head of an army of a hundred thousand
men, and gathering them around her, she ascended a mound of earth and
harangued them--that is, as many as could stand within reach of her
voice--arousing them to sentiments of revenge against their hated
oppressors, and urging them to the highest pitch of determination and
courage for the approaching struggle. Boadicea had reason to deem the
Romans her implacable foes. They had robbed her of her treasures,
deprived her of her kingdom, imprisoned her, scourged her, and
inflicted the worst possible injuries upon her daughters. These things
had driven the wretched mother to a perfect phrensy of hate, and
aroused her to this desperate struggle for redress and revenge. But
all was in vain. In encountering the spears of Roman soldiery, she was
encountering the very hardest and sharpest steel that a cruel world
could furnish. Her army was conquered, and she killed herself by
taking poison in her despair.

By struggles such as these the contest between the Romans and the
Britons was carried on for many generations; the Romans conquering at
every trial, until, at length, the Britons learned to submit without
further resistance to their sway. In fact, there gradually came upon
the stage, during the progress of these centuries, a new power, acting
as an enemy to both the Picts and Scots; hordes of lawless barbarians,
who inhabited the mountains and morasses of Scotland and Ireland.
These terrible savages made continual irruptions into the southern
country for plunder, burning and destroying, as they retired, whatever
they could not carry away. They lived in impregnable and almost
inaccessible fastnesses, among dark glens and precipitous mountains,
and upon gloomy islands surrounded by iron-bound coasts and stormy
seas. The Roman legions made repeated attempts to hunt them out of
these retreats, but with very little success. At length a line of
fortified posts was established across the island, near where the
boundary line now lies between England and Scotland; and by guarding
this line, the Roman generals who had charge of Britain attempted to
protect the inhabitants of the southern country, who had learned at
length to submit peaceably to their sway.

One of the most memorable events which occurred during the time that
the Romans held possession of the island of Britain was the visit of
one of the emperors to this northern extremity of his dominions. The
name of this emperor was Severus. He was powerful and prosperous at
home, but his life was embittered by one great calamity, the dissolute
character and the perpetual quarrels of his sons. To remove them from
Rome, where they disgraced both themselves and their father by their
vicious lives, and the ferocious rivalry and hatred they bore to each
other, Severus planned an excursion to Britain, taking them with him,
in the hope of turning their minds into new channels of thought, and
awakening in them some new and nobler ambition.

At the time when Severus undertook this expedition, he was advanced in
age and very infirm. He suffered much from the gout, so that he
was unable to travel by any ordinary conveyance, and was borne,
accordingly, almost all the way upon a litter. He crossed the Channel
with his army, and, leaving one of his sons in command in the south
part of the island, he advanced with the other, at the head of an
enormous force, determined to push boldly forward into the heart
of Scotland, and to bring the war with the Picts and Scots to an
effectual end.

He met, however, with very partial success. His soldiers became
entangled in bogs and morasses; they fell into ambuscades; they
suffered every degree of privation and hardship for want of water and
of food, and were continually entrapped by their enemies in situations
where they had to fight in small numbers and at a great disadvantage.
Then, too, the aged and feeble general was kept in a continual fever
of anxiety and trouble by Bassianus, the son whom he had brought with
him to the north. The dissoluteness and violence of his character were
not changed by the change of scene. He formed plots and conspiracies
against his father's authority; he raised mutinies in the army; he
headed riots; and he was finally detected in a plan for actually
assassinating his father. Severus, when he discovered this last
enormity of wickedness, sent for his son to come to his imperial tent.
He laid a naked sword before him, and then, after bitterly reproaching
him with his undutiful and ungrateful conduct, he said, "If you wish
to kill me, do it now. Here I stand, old, infirm, and helpless. You
are young and strong, and can do it easily. I am ready. Strike the
blow."

Of course Bassianus shrunk from his father's reproaches, and went
away without committing the crime to which he was thus reproachfully
invited; but his character remained unchanged; and this constant
trouble, added to all the other difficulties which Severus
encountered, prevented his accomplishing his object of thoroughly
conquering his northern foes. He made a sort of peace with them,
and retiring south to the line of fortified posts which had been
previously established, he determined to make it a fixed and certain
boundary by building upon it a permanent wall. He put the whole force
of his army upon the work, and in one or two years, as is said,
he completed the structure. It is known in history as the Wall of
Severus; and so solid, substantial, and permanent was the work, that
the traces of it have not entirely disappeared to the present day.

The wall extended across the island, from the mouth of the Tyne, on
the German Ocean, to the Solway Frith--nearly seventy miles. It was
twelve feet high, and eight feet wide. It was faced with substantial
masonry on both sides, the intermediate space being likewise filled
in with stone. When it crossed bays or morasses, piles were driven
to serve as a foundation. Of course, such a wall as this, by itself,
would be no defense. It was to be garrisoned by soldiers, being
intended, in fact, only as a means to enable a smaller number of
troops than would otherwise be necessary to guard the line. For these
soldiers there were built great fortresses at intervals along the
wall, wherever a situation was found favorable for such structures.
These were called _stations_. The stations were occupied by garrisons
of troops, and small towns of artificers and laborers soon sprung up
around them. Between the stations, at smaller intervals, were other
smaller fortresses called castles, intended as places of defense, and
rallying points in case of an attack, but not for garrisons of any
considerable number of men. Then, between the castles, at smaller
intervals still, were turrets, used as watch-towers and posts for
sentinels. Thus the whole line of the wall was every where defended
by armed men. The whole number thus employed in the defense of this
extraordinary rampart was said to be ten thousand. There was a broad,
deep, and continuous ditch on the northern side of the wall, to
make the impediment still greater for the enemy, and a spacious and
well-constructed military road on the southern side, on which troops,
stores, wagons, and baggage of every kind could be readily transported
along the line, from one end to the other.


[Illustration: WALL OF SEVERUS]

The wall was a good defense as long as Roman soldiers remained to
guard it. But in process of time--about two centuries after Severus's
day--the Roman empire itself began to decline, even in the very seat
and center of its power; and then, to preserve their own capital from
destruction, the government were obliged to call their distant armies
home. The wall was left to the Britons; but they could not defend it.
The Picts and Scots, finding out the change, renewed their assaults.
They battered down the castles; they made breaches here and there in
the wall; they built vessels, and, passing round by sea across the
mouth of the Solway Frith and of the River Tyne, they renewed their
old incursions for plunder and destruction. The Britons, in extreme
distress, sent again and again to recall the Romans to their aid, and
they did, in fact, receive from them some occasional and temporary
succor. At length, however, all hope of help from this quarter failed,
and the Britons, finding their condition desperate, were compelled to
resort to a desperate remedy, the nature of which will be explained in
the next chapter.

[Footnote 1: For some account of the circumstances connected with this
war see our history of Alexander, chapter vi.]




CHAPTER II.

THE ANGLO-SAXONS


Any one who will look around upon the families of his acquaintance
will observe that family characteristics and resemblances prevail not
only in respect to stature, form, expression of countenance, and other
outward and bodily tokens, but also in regard to the constitutional
temperaments and capacities of the soul. Sometimes we find a group in
which high intellectual powers and great energy of action prevail for
many successive generations, and in all the branches into which the
original stock divides; in other cases, the hereditary tendency is to
gentleness and harmlessness of character, with a full development of
all the feelings and sensibilities of the soul. Others, again, exhibit
congenital tendencies to great physical strength and hardihood, and
to powers of muscular exertion and endurance. These differences,
notwithstanding all the exceptions and irregularities connected with
them, are obviously, where they exist, deeply seated and permanent.
They depend very slightly upon any mere external causes. They have,
on the contrary, their foundation in some hidden principles connected
with the origin of life, and with the mode of its transmission from
parent to offspring, which the researches of philosophers have never
yet been able to explore.

These same constitutional and congenital peculiarities which we see
developing themselves all around us in families, mark, on a greater
scale, the characteristics of the different nations of the earth, and
in a degree much higher still, the several great and distinct races
into which the whole human family seems to be divided. Physiologists
consider that there are five of these great races, whose
characteristics, mental as well as bodily, are distinctly, strongly,
and permanently marked. These characteristics descend by hereditary
succession from father to son, and though education and outward
influences may modify them, they can not essentially change them.
Compare, for example, the Indian and the African races, each of which
has occupied for a thousand years a continent of its own, where they
have been exposed to the same variety of climates, and as far as
possible to the same general outward influences. How entirely diverse
from each other they are, not only in form, color, and other physical
marks, but in all the tendencies and characteristics of the soul! One
can no more be changed into the other, than a wolf, by being tamed and
domesticated, can be made a dog, or a dog, by being driven into the
forests, be transformed into a tiger. The difference is still greater
between either of these races and the Caucasian race. This race might
probably be called the European race, were it not that some Asiatic
and some African nations have sprung from it, as the Persians, the
Ph[oe]nicians, the Egyptians, the Carthaginians, and, in modern times,
the Turks. All the nations of this race, whether European or African,
have been distinguished by the same physical marks in the conformation
of the head and the color of the skin, and still more by those traits
of character--the intellect, the energy, the spirit of determination
and pride--which, far from owing their existence to outward
circumstances, have always, in all ages, made all outward
circumstances bend to them. That there have been some great and noble
specimens of humanity among the African race, for example, no one
can deny; but that there is a marked, and fixed, and permanent
constitutional difference between them and the Caucasian race seems
evident from this fact, that for two thousand years each has held its
own continent, undisturbed, in a great degree, by the rest of mankind;
and while, during all this time, no nation of the one race has risen,
so far as is known, above the very lowest stage of civilization,
there have been more than fifty entirely distinct and independent
civilizations originated and fully developed in the other. For
three thousand years the Caucasian race have continued, under all
circumstances, and in every variety of situation, to exhibit the
same traits and the same indomitable prowess. No calamities, however
great--no desolating wars, no destructive pestilence, no wasting
famine, no night of darkness, however universal and gloomy--has ever
been able to keep them long in degradation or barbarism. There is not
now a barbarous people to be found in the whole race, and there has
not been one for a thousand years.

Nearly all the great exploits, and achievements too, which have
signalized the history of the world, have been performed by this
branch of the human family. They have given celebrity to every age
in which they have lived, and to every country that they have ever
possessed, by some great deed, or discovery, or achievement, which
their intellectual energies have accomplished. As Egyptians, they
built the Pyramids, and reared enormous monoliths, which remain as
perfect now as they were when first completed, thirty centuries ago.
As Ph[oe]nicians, they constructed ships, perfected navigation, and
explored, without compass or chart, every known sea. As Greeks, they
modeled architectural embellishments, and cut sculptures in marble,
and wrote poems and history, which have been ever since the admiration
of the world. As Romans, they carried a complete and perfect military
organization over fifty nations and a hundred millions of people, with
one supreme mistress over all, the ruins of whose splendid palaces and
monuments have not yet passed away. Thus has this race gone on, always
distinguishing itself, by energy, activity, and intellectual power,
wherever it has dwelt, whatever language it has spoken, and in
whatever period of the world it has lived. It has invented printing,
and filled every country that it occupies with permanent records of
the past, accessible to all. It has explored the heavens, and reduced
to precise and exact calculations all the complicated motions there.
It has ransacked the earth, systematized, arranged, and classified the
vast melange of plants, and animals, and mineral products to be found
upon its surface. It makes steam and falling water do more than half
the work necessary for feeding and clothing the human race; and the
howling winds of the ocean, the very emblems of resistless destruction
and terror, it steadily employs in interchanging the products of the
world, and bearing the means of comfort and plenty to every clime.

The Caucasian race has thus, in all ages, and in all the varieties
of condition in which the different branches of it have been placed,
evinced the same great characteristics, marking the existence of
some innate and constant constitutional superiority; and yet, in the
different branches, subordinate differences appear, which are to be
accounted for, perhaps, partly by difference of circumstances, and
partly, perhaps, by similar constitutional diversities--diversities by
which one branch is distinguished from other branches, as the whole
race is from the other races with which we have compared them. Among
these branches, we, Anglo-Saxons ourselves, claim for the Anglo-Saxons
the superiority over all the others.

The Anglo-Saxons commenced their career as pirates and robbers, and as
pirates and robbers of the most desperate and dangerous description.
In fact, the character which the Anglo-Saxons have obtained in modern
times for energy and enterprise, and for desperate daring in their
conflicts with foes, is no recent fame. The progenitors of the present
race were celebrated every where, and every where feared and dreaded,
not only in the days of Alfred, but several centuries before. All the
historians of those days that speak of them at all, describe them as
universally distinguished above their neighbors for their energy and
vehemence of character, their mental and physical superiority, and for
the wild and daring expeditions to which their spirit of enterprise
and activity were continually impelling them. They built vessels, in
which they boldly put forth on the waters of the German Ocean or of
the Baltic Sea on excursions for conquest or plunder. Like their
present posterity on the British isles and on the shores of the
Atlantic, they cared not, in these voyages, whether it was summer or
winter, calm or storm. In fact, they sailed often in tempests
and storms by choice, so as to come upon their enemies the more
unexpectedly.

[Illustration: SAXON MILITARY CHIEF]

They would build small vessels, or rather boats, of osiers, covering
them with skins, and in fleets of these frail floats they would sally
forth among the howling winds and foaming surges of the German Ocean.
On these expeditions, they all embarked as in a common cause, and felt
a common interest. The leaders shared in all the toils and exposures
of the men, and the men took part in the counsels and plans of the
leaders. Their intelligence and activity, and their resistless courage
and ardor, combined with their cool and calculating sagacity, made
them successful in every attempt. If they fought, they conquered; if
they pursued their enemies, they were sure to overtake them; if they
retreated, they were sure to make their escape. They were clothed in
a loose and flowing dress, and wore their hair long and hanging about
their shoulders; and they had the art, as their descendants have now,
of contriving and fabricating arms of such superior construction and
workmanship, as to give them, on this account alone, a great advantage
over all cotemporary nations. There were two other points in which
there was a remarkable similarity between this parent stock in its
rude, early form, and the extended social progeny which represents it
at the present day. One was the extreme strictness of their ideas of
conjugal fidelity, and the stern and rigid severity with which all
violations of female virtue were judged. The woman who violated her
marriage vows was compelled to hang herself. Her body was then burned
in public, and the accomplice of her crime was executed over the
ashes. The other point of resemblance between the ancient Anglo-Saxons
and their modern descendants was their indomitable pride. They could
never endure any thing like _submission_. Though sometimes
overpowered, they were never conquered. Though taken prisoners and
carried captive, the indomitable spirit which animated them could
never be really subdued. The Romans used sometimes to compel their
prisoners to fight as gladiators, to make spectacles for the amusement
of the people of the city. On one occasion, thirty Anglo-Saxons, who
had been taken captive and were reserved for this fate, strangled
themselves rather than submit to this indignity. The whole nation
manifested on all occasions a very unbending and unsubmissive will,
encountering every possible danger and braving every conceivable ill
rather than succumb or submit to any power except such as they had
themselves created for their own ends; and their descendants, whether
in England or America, evince much the same spirit still.

It was the landing of a few boat-loads of these determined and
ferocious barbarians on a small island near the mouth of the Thames,
which constitutes the great event of the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons
in England, which is so celebrated in English history as the epoch
which marks the real and true beginning of British greatness and
power. It is true that the history of England goes back beyond this
period to narrate, as we have done, the events connected with the
contests of the Romans and the aboriginal Britons, and the incursions
and maraudings of the Picts and Scots; but all these aborigines passed
gradually--after the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons--off the stage.
The old stock was wholly displaced. The present monarchy has sprung
entirely from its Anglo-Saxon original; so that all which precedes the
arrival of this new race is introductory and preliminary, like the
history, in this country, of the native American tribes before the
coming of the English Pilgrims. As, therefore, the landing of the
Pilgrims on the Plymouth Rock marks the true commencement of the
history of the American Republic, so that of the Anglo-Saxon
adventurers on the island of Thanet represents and marks the origin
of the British monarchy. The event therefore, stands as a great
and conspicuous landmark, though now dim and distant in the remote
antiquity in which it occurred.

And yet the event, though so wide-reaching and grand in its bearings
and relations, and in the vast consequences which have flowed and
which still continue to flow from it, was apparently a minute and
unimportant circumstance at the time when it occurred. There were only
three vessels at the first arrival. Of their size and character the
accounts vary. Some of these accounts say they contained three hundred
men; others seem to state that the number which arrived at the first
landing was three thousand. This, however, would seem impossible, as
no three vessels built in those days could convey so large a number.
We must suppose, therefore, that that number is meant to include those
who came at several of the earlier expeditions, and which were grouped
by the historian together, or else that several other vessels or
transports accompanied the three, which history has specially
commemorated as the first arriving.

In fact, very little can now be known in respect to the form and
capacity of the vessels in which these half-barbarous navigators
roamed, in those days, over the British seas. Their name, indeed, has
come down to us, and that is nearly all. They were called _cyules_;
though the name is sometimes spelled, in the ancient chronicles,
_ceols_, and in other ways. They were obviously vessels of
considerable capacity and were of such construction and such strength
as to stand the roughest marine exposures. They were accustomed to
brave fearlessly every commotion and to encounter every danger raised
either by winter tempests or summer gales in the restless waters of
the German Ocean.

The names of the commanders who headed the expedition which first
landed have been preserved, and they have acquired, as might have been
expected, a very wide celebrity. They were Hengist and Horsa. Hengist
and Horsa were brothers.

The place where they landed was the island of Thanet. Thanet is a
tract of land at the mouth of the Thames, on the southern side; a sort
of promontory extending into the sea, and forming the cape at the
south side of the estuary made by the mouth of the river. The extreme
point of land is called the North Foreland which, as it is the point
that thousands of vessels, coming out of the Thames, have to round in
proceeding southward on voyages to France, to the Mediterranean, to
the Indies, and to America, is very familiarly known to navigators
throughout the world. The island of Thanet, of which this North
Foreland is the extreme point, ought scarcely to be called an island,
since it forms, in fact, a portion of the main land, being separated
from it only by a narrow creek or stream, which in former ages indeed,
was wide and navigable, but is now nearly choked up and obliterated
by the sands and the sediment, which, after being brought down by the
Thames, are driven into the creek by the surges of the sea.

In the time of Hengist and Horsa the creek was so considerable that
its mouth furnished a sufficient harbor for their vessels. They landed
at a town called Ebbs-fleet, which is now, however, at some distance
inland.

There is some uncertainty in respect to the motive which led Hengist
and Horsa to make their first descent upon the English coast. Whether
they came on one of their customary piratical expeditions, or were
driven on the coast accidentally by stress of weather, or were invited
to come by the British king, can not now be accurately ascertained.
Such parties of Anglo-Saxons had undoubtedly often landed before under
somewhat similar circumstances, and then, after brief incursions into
the interior, had re-embarked on board their ships and sailed away.
In this case, however, there was a certain peculiar and extraordinary
state of things in the political condition of the country in which
they had landed, which resulted in first protracting their stay, and
finally in establishing them so fixedly and permanently in the land,
that they and their followers and descendants soon became the entire
masters of it, and have remained in possession to the present day.
These circumstances were as follows:

The name of the king of Britain at this period was Vortigern. At the
time when the Anglo-Saxons arrived, he and his government were nearly
overwhelmed with the pressure of difficulty and danger arising from
the incursions of the Picts and Scots; and Vortigern, instead of being
aroused to redoubled vigilance and energy by the imminence of the
danger, as Alfred afterward was in similar circumstances, sank
down, as weak minds always do, in despair, and gave himself up to
dissipation and vice--endeavoring, like depraved seamen on a wreck, to
drown his mental distress in animal sensations of pleasure. Such men
are ready to seek relief or rescue from their danger from any quarter
and at any price. Vortigern, instead of looking upon the Anglo-Saxon
intruders as new enemies, conceived the idea of appealing to them for
succor. He offered to convey to them a large tract of territory in the
part of the island where they had landed, on condition of their aiding
him in his contests with his other foes.

Hengist and Horsa acceded to this proposal. They marched their
followers into battle, and defeated Vortigern's enemies. They sent
across the sea to their native land, and invited new adventurers to
join them. Vortigern was greatly pleased with the success of his
expedient. The Picts and Scots were driven back to their fastnesses in
the remote mountains of the north, and the Britons once more possessed
their land in peace, by means of the protection and the aid which
their new confederates afforded them.

In the mean time the Anglo-Saxons were establishing and strengthening
themselves very rapidly in the part of the island which Vortigern had
assigned them--which was, as the reader will understand from what
has already been said in respect to the place of their landing, the
southeastern part--a region which now constitutes the county of Kent.
In addition, too, to the natural increase of their power from the
increase of their numbers and their military force, Hengist contrived,
if the story is true, to swell his own personal influence by means of
a matrimonial alliance which he had the adroitness to effect. He had
a daughter named Rowena. She was very beautiful and accomplished.
Hengist sent for her to come to England. When she had arrived he made
a sumptuous entertainment for King Vortigern, inviting also to it, of
course, many other distinguished guests. In the midst of the feast,
when the king was in the state of high excitement produced on such
temperaments by wine and convivial pleasure, Rowena came in to offer
him more wine. Vortigern was powerfully struck, as Hengist had
anticipated, with her grace and beauty. Learning that she was
Hengist's daughter, he demanded her hand. Hengist at first declined,
but, after sufficiently stimulating the monarch's eagerness by his
pretended opposition, he yielded, and the king became the general's
son-in-law. This is the story which some of the old chroniclers tell.
Modern historians are divided in respect to believing it. Some think
it is fact, others fable.

At all events, the power of Hengist and Horsa gradually increased,
as years passed on, until the Britons began to be alarmed at their
growing strength and multiplying numbers, and to fear lest these new
friends should prove, in the end, more formidable than the terrible
enemies whom they had come to expel. Contentions and then open
quarrels began to occur, and at length both parties prepared for war.
The contest which soon ensued was a terrible struggle, or rather
series of struggles, which continued for two centuries, during which
the Anglo-Saxons were continually gaining ground and the Britons
losing; the mental and physical superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race
giving them with very few exceptions, every where and always the
victory.

There were, occasionally, intervals of peace, and partial and
temporary friendliness. They accuse Hengist of great treachery on one
of these occasions. He invited his son-in-law, King Vortigern, to
a feast, with three hundred of his officers, and then fomenting a
quarrel at the entertainment, the Britons were all killed in the
affray by means of the superior Saxon force which had been provided
for the emergency. Vortigern himself was taken prisoner, and held a
captive until he ransomed himself by ceding three whole provinces
to his captor. Hengist justified this demand by throwing the
responsibility of the feud upon his guests; and it is not, in fact, at
all improbable that they deserved their share of the condemnation.

The famous King Arthur, whose Knights of the Round Table have been so
celebrated in ballads and tales, lived and flourished during these
wars between the Saxons and the Britons. He was a king of the Britons,
and performed wonderful exploits of strength and valor. He was of
prodigious size and muscular power, and of undaunted bravery. He slew
giants, destroyed the most ferocious wild beasts, gained very splendid
victories in the battles that he fought, made long expeditions into
foreign countries, having once gone on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to
obtain the Holy Cross. His wife was a beautiful lady, the daughter of
a chieftain of Cornwall. Her name was Guenever.[1] On his return from
one of his distant expeditions, he found that his nephew, Medrawd,
had won her affections while he was gone, and a combat ensued in
consequence between him and Medrawd. The combat took place on the
coast of Cornwall. Both parties fell. Arthur was mortally wounded.
They took him from the field into a boat, and carried him along the
coast till they came to a river. They ascended the river till they
came to the town of Glastonbury. They committed the still breathing
body to the care of faithful friends there; but the mortal blow had
been given. The great hero died, and they buried his body in the
Glastonbury churchyard, very deep beneath the surface of the ground,
in order to place it as effectually as possible beyond the reach of
Saxon rage and vengeance. Arthur had been a deadly and implacable foe
to the Saxons. He had fought twelve great pitched battles with them,
in every one of which he had gained the victory. In one of these
battles he had slain, according to the traditional tale, four hundred
and seventy men, in one day, with his own hand.

Five hundred years after his death, King Henry the Second, having
heard from an ancient British bard that Arthur's body lay interred in
the Abbey of Glastonbury, and that the spot was marked by some small
pyramids erected near it, and that the body would be found in a rude
coffin made of a hollowed oak, ordered search to be made. The ballads
and tales which had been then, for several centuries, circulating
throughout England, narrating and praising King Arthur's exploits, had
given him so wide a fame, that great interest was felt in the recovery
and the identification of his remains. The searchers found the
pyramids in the cemetery of the abbey. They dug between them, and came
at length to a stone. Beneath this stone was a leaden cross, with the
inscription in Latin, "HERE LIES BURIED THE BODY OF GREAT KING
ARTHUR." Going down still below this, they came at length, at the
depth of sixteen feet from the surface, to a great coffin, made of the
trunk of an oak tree, and within it was a human skeleton of unusual
size. The skull was very large, and showed marks of ten wounds. Nine
of them were closed by concretions of the bone, indicating that the
wounds by which those contusions or fractures had been made had been
healed while life continued. The tenth fracture remained in a
condition which showed that that had been the mortal wound.

The bones of Arthur's wife were found near those of her husband. The
hair was apparently perfect when found, having all the freshness
and beauty of life; but a monk of the abbey, who was present at the
disinterment, touched it and it crumbled to dust.

Such are the tales which the old chronicles tell of the good King
Arthur, the last and greatest representative of the power of the
ancient British aborigines. It is a curious illustration of the
uncertainty which attends all the early records of national history,
that, notwithstanding all the above particularity respecting the life
and death of Arthur, it is a serious matter of dispute among the
learned in modern times whether any such person ever lived.

[Footnote 1: Spelled sometimes Gwenlyfar and Ginevra.]




CHAPTER III.

THE DANES.


The landing of Hengist and Horsa, the first of the Anglo-Saxons, took
place in the year 449, according to the commonly received chronology.
It was more than two hundred years after this before the Britons were
entirely subdued, and the Saxon authority established throughout the
island, unquestioned and supreme. One or two centuries more passed
away, and then the Anglo-Saxons had, in their turn, to resist a new
horde of invaders, who came, as they themselves had done, across the
German Ocean. These new invaders were the Danes.

The Saxons were not united under one general government when they came
finally to get settled in their civil polity. The English territory
was divided, on the contrary, into seven or eight separate kingdoms.
These kingdoms were ruled by as many separate dynasties, or lines of
kings. They were connected with each other by friendly relations and
alliances, more or less intimate, the whole system being known in
history by the name of the Saxon Heptarchy.

The princes of these various dynasties showed in their dealings with
one another, and in their relations with foreign powers, the same
characteristics of boldness and energy as had always marked the action
of the race. Even the queens and princesses evinced, by their courage
and decision, that Anglo-Saxon blood lost nothing of its inherent
qualities by flowing in female veins.

For example, a very extraordinary story is told of one of these Saxon
princesses. A certain king upon the Continent, whose dominions lay
between the Rhine and the German Ocean, had proposed for her hand in
behalf of his son, whose name was Radiger. The consent of the princess
was given, and the contract closed. The king himself soon afterward
died, but before he died he changed his mind in respect to the
marriage of his son. It seems that he had himself married a second
wife, the daughter of a king of the Franks, a powerful continental
people; and as, in consequence of his own approaching death, his son
would come unexpectedly into possession of the throne, and would need
immediately all the support which a powerful alliance could give him,
he recommended to him to give up the Saxon princess, and connect
himself, instead, with the Franks, as he himself had done. The
prince entered into these views; his father died, and he immediately
afterward married his father's youthful widow--his own step-mother--a
union which, however monstrous it would be regarded in our day, seems
not to have been considered any thing very extraordinary then.

The Anglo-Saxon princess was very indignant at this violation of his
plighted faith on the part of her suitor. She raised an army and
equipped a fleet, and set sail with the force which she had thus
assembled across the German Ocean, to call the faithless Radiger to
account. Her fleet entered the mouth of the Rhine, and her troops
landed, herself at the head of them. She then divided her army into
two portions, keeping one division as a guard for herself at her own
encampment, which she established near the place of her landing, while
she sent the other portion to seek and attack Radiger, who was, in the
mean time, assembling his forces, in a state of great alarm at this
sudden and unexpected danger.

In due time this division returned, reporting that they had met and
encountered Radiger, and had entirely defeated him. They came back
triumphing in their victory, considering evidently, that the faithless
lover had been well punished for his offense. The princess, however,
instead of sharing in their satisfaction, ordered them to make a
new incursion into the interior, and not to return without bringing
Radiger with them as their prisoner. They did so; and after hunting
the defeated and distressed king from place to place, they succeeded,
at last, in seizing him in a wood, and brought him in to the
princess's encampment. He began to plead for his life, and to make
excuses for the violation of his contract by urging the necessities of
his situation and his father's dying commands. The princess said she
was ready to forgive him if he would now dismiss her rival and fulfill
his obligations to her. Radiger yielded to this demand; he repudiated
his Frank wife, and married the Anglo-Saxon lady in her stead.

Though the Anglo-Saxon race continued thus to evince in all their
transactions the same extraordinary spirit and energy, and met
generally with the same success that had characterized them at the
beginning, they seemed at length to find their equals in the Danes.
These Danes, however, though generally designated by that appellation
in history, were not exclusively the natives of Denmark. They came
from all the shores of the Northern and Baltic Seas. In fact, they
inhabited the sea rather than the land. They were a race of bold and
fierce naval adventurers, as the Anglo-Saxons themselves had been
two centuries before. Most extraordinary accounts are given of their
hardihood, and of their fierce and predatory habits. They haunted the
bays along the coasts of Sweden and Norway, and the islands which
encumber the entrance to the Baltic Sea. They were banded together in
great hordes, each ruled by a chieftain, who was called a _sea king_,
because his dominions scarcely extended at all to the land. His
possessions, his power, his subjects pertained all to the sea. It is
true they built or bought their vessels on the shore, and they sought
shelter among the islands and in the bays in tempests and storms; but
they prided themselves in never dwelling in houses, or sharing, in
any way, the comforts or enjoyments of the land. They made excursions
every where for conquest and plunder, and were proud of their
successful deeds of violence and wrong. It was honorable to enter into
their service. Chieftains and nobles who dwelt upon the land sent
their sons to acquire greatness, and wealth, and fame by joining these
piratical gangs, just as high-minded military or naval officers, in
modern times, would enter into the service of an honorable government
abroad.

Besides the great leaders of the most powerful of these bands, there
was an infinite number of petty chieftains, who commanded single ships
or small detached squadrons. These were generally the younger sons of
sovereigns or chieftains who lived upon the land, the elder brothers
remaining at home to inherit the throne or the paternal inheritance.
It was discreditable then, as it is now in Europe, for any branches
of families of the higher class to engage in any pursuit of honorable
industry. They could plunder and kill without dishonor, but they could
not toil. To rob and murder was glory; to do good or to be useful in
any way was disgrace.

These younger sons went to sea at a very early age too. They were
sent often at twelve, that they might become early habituated to the
exposures and dangers of their dreadful combats, and of the wintery
storms, and inured to the athletic exertions which the sea rigorously
exacts of all who venture within her dominion. When they returned
they were received with consideration and honor, or with neglect and
disgrace, according as they were more or less laden with booty and
spoil. In the summer months the land kings themselves would organize
and equip naval armaments for similar expeditions. They would cruise
along the coasts of the sea, to land where they found an unguarded
point, and sack a town or burn a castle, seize treasures, capture men
and make them slaves, kidnap women, and sometimes destroy helpless
children with their spears in a manner too barbarous and horrid to be
described. On returning to their homes, they would perhaps find their
own castles burned and their own dwellings roofless, from the visit of
some similar horde.

Thus the seas of western Europe were covered in those days, as they
are now, with fleets of shipping; though, instead of being engaged as
now, in the quiet and peaceful pursuits of commerce, freighted with
merchandise, manned with harmless seamen, and welcome wherever they
come, they were then loaded only with ammunition and arms, and crowded
with fierce and reckless robbers, the objects of universal detestation
and terror.

One of the first of these sea kings who acquired sufficient individual
distinction to be personally remembered in history has given a sort of
immortality, by his exploits, to the very rude name of Ragnar Lodbrog,
and his character was as rude as his name.

[Illustration: THE SEA KINGS]

Ragnar's father was a prince of Norway. He married, however, a Danish
princess, and thus Ragnar acquired a sort of hereditary right to
a Danish kingdom--the territory including various islands and
promontories at the entrance of the Baltic Sea. There was, however, a
competitor for this power, named Harald. The Franks made common cause
with Harald. Ragnar was defeated and driven away from the land. Though
defeated, however, he was not subdued. He organized a naval force, and
made himself a sea king. His operations on the stormy element of the
seas were conducted with so much decision and energy, and at the same
time with so much system and plan, that his power rapidly extended. He
brought the other sea kings under his control, and established quite
a maritime empire. He made more and more distant excursions, and
at last, in order to avenge himself upon the Franks for their
interposition in behalf of his enemy at home, he passed through the
Straits of Dover, and thence down the English Channel to the mouth
of the Seine. He ascended this river to Rouen, and there landed,
spreading throughout the country the utmost terror and dismay. From
Rouen he marched to Paris, finding no force able to resist him on his
way, or to defend the capital. His troops destroyed the monastery of
St. Germain's, near the city, and then the King of the Franks, finding
himself at their mercy, bought them off by paying a large sum of
money. With this money and the other booty which they had acquired,
Ragnar and his horde now returned to their ships at Rouen, and sailed
away again toward their usual haunts among the bays and islands of the
Baltic Sea.

This exploit, of course, gave Ragnar Lodbrog's barbarous name a very
wide celebrity. It tended, too, greatly to increase and establish his
power. He afterward made similar incursions into Spain, and finally
grew bold enough to brave the Anglo-Saxons themselves on the green
island of Britain, as the Anglo-Saxons had themselves braved the
aboriginal inhabitants two or three centuries before. But Ragnar seems
to have found the Anglo-Saxon swords and spears which he advanced to
encounter on landing in England much more formidable than those which
were raised against him on the southern side of the Channel. He was
destroyed in the contest. The circumstances were as follows:

In making his preparations for a descent upon the English coast, he
prepared for a very determined contest, knowing well the character of
the foes with whom he would have now to deal. He built two enormous
ships, much larger than those of the ordinary size, and armed and
equipped them in the most perfect manner. He filled them with selected
men, and sailing down along the coast of Scotland, he watched for a
place and an opportunity to land. Winds and storms are almost always
raging among the dark and gloomy mountains and islands of Scotland.
Ragnar's ships were caught on one of these gales and driven on shore.
The ships were lost, but the men escaped to the land. Ragnar, nothing
daunted, organized and marshaled them as an army, and marched into
the interior to attack any force which might appear against them. His
course led him to Northumbria, the most northerly Saxon kingdom. Here
he soon encountered a very large and superior force, under the command
of Ella, the king; but, with the reckless desperation which so
strongly marked his character, he advanced to attack them. Three
times, it is said, he pierced the enemy's lines, cutting his way
entirely through them with his little column. He was, however, at
length overpowered. His men were cut to pieces, and he was himself
taken prisoner. We regret to have to add that our cruel ancestors put
their captive to death in a very barbarous manner. They filled a den
with poisonous snakes, and then drove the wretched Ragnar into it. The
horrid reptiles killed him with their stings. It was Ella, the king of
Northumbria, who ordered and directed this punishment.

The expedition of Ragnar thus ended without leading to any permanent
results in Anglo-Saxon history. It is, however, memorable as the first
of a series of invasions from the Danes--or Northmen, as they are
sometimes called, since they came from all the coasts of the Baltic
and German Seas--which, in the end, gave the Anglo-Saxons infinite
trouble. At one time, in fact, the conquests of the Danes threatened
to root out and destroy the Anglo-Saxon power from the island
altogether. They would probably have actually effected this, had the
nation not been saved by the prudence, the courage, the sagacity, and
the consummate skill of the subject of this history, as will fully
appear to the reader in the course of future chapters.

Ragnar was not the only one of these Northmen who made attempts to
land in England and to plunder the Anglo-Saxons, even in his own day.
Although there were no very regular historical records kept in those
early times, still a great number of legends, and ballads, and ancient
chronicles have come down to us, narrating the various transactions
which occurred, and it appears by these that the sea kings generally
were beginning, at this time, to harass the English coasts, as well as
all the other shores to which they could gain access. Some of these
invasions would seem to have been of a very formidable character.

At first these excursions were made in the summer season only, and,
after collecting their plunder, the marauders would return in the
autumn to their own shores, and winter in the bays and among the
islands there. At length, however, they grew more bold. A large band
of them landed, in the autumn of 851, on the island of Thanet where
the Saxons themselves had landed four centuries before, and began very
coolly to establish their winter quarters on English ground. They
succeeded in maintaining their stay during the winter, and in the
spring were prepared for bolder undertakings still.

They formed a grand confederation, and collected a fleet of three
hundred and fifty ships, galleys, and boats, and advanced boldly
up the Thames. They plundered London, and then marched south to
Canterbury, which they plundered too. They went thence into one of the
Anglo-Saxon kingdoms called Mercia, the inhabitants of the country not
being able to oppose any effectual obstacle to their marauding march.
Finally, a great Anglo-Saxon force was organized and brought out to
meet them. The battle was fought in a forest of oaks, and the Danes
were defeated. The victory, however, afforded the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms
only a temporary relief. New hordes were continually arriving and
landing, growing more and more bold if they met with success, and but
little daunted or discouraged by temporary failures.

The most formidable of all these expeditions was one organized and
commanded by the sons and relatives of Ragnar, whom, it will be
recollected, the Saxons had cruelly killed by poisonous serpents in
a dungeon or den. The relatives of the unhappy chieftain thus
barbarously executed were animated in their enterprise by the double
stimulus of love of plunder and a ferocious thirst for revenge. A
considerable time was spent in collecting a large fleet, and in
combining, for this purpose, as many chieftains as could be induced to
share in the enterprise. The story of their fellow-countryman expiring
under the stings of adders and scorpions, while his tormentors were
exulting around him over the cruel agonies which their ingenuity
had devised, aroused them to a phrensy of hatred and revenge. They
proceeded, however, very deliberately in their plans. They did nothing
hastily. They allowed ample time for the assembling and organizing
of the confederation. When all was ready, they found that there were
eight kings and twenty earls in the alliance, generally the relatives
and comrades of Ragnar. The two most prominent of these commanders
were Guthrum and Hubba. Hubba was one of Ragnar's sons. At length,
toward the close of the summer, the formidable expedition set sail.
They approached the English coast, and landed without meeting with any
resistance. The Saxons seemed appalled and paralyzed at the greatness
of the danger. The several kingdoms of the Heptarchy, though they had
been imperfectly united, some years before, under Egbert, were still
more or less distinct, and each hoped that the one first invaded would
be the only one which would suffer; and as these kingdoms were rivals,
and often hostile to each other, no general league was formed against
what soon proved to be the common enemy. The Danes, accordingly,
quietly encamped, and made calm and deliberate arrangements for
spending the winter in their new quarters, as if they were at home.

During all this time, notwithstanding the coolness and deliberation
with which these avengers of their murdered countryman acted, the
fires of their resentment and revenge were slowly but steadily
burning, and as soon as the spring opened, they put themselves in
battle array, and marched into the dominions of Ella. Ella did all
that it was possible to do to meet and oppose them, but the spirit of
retaliation and rage which his cruelties had evoked was too strong to
be resisted. His country was ravaged, his army was defeated, he was
taken prisoner, and the dying terrors and agonies of Ragnar among the
serpents were expiated by tenfold worse tortures which they inflicted
upon Ella's mutilated body, by a process too horrible to be described.

After thus successfully accomplishing the great object of their
expedition, it was to have been hoped that they would leave the island
and return to their Danish homes. But they evinced no disposition
to do this. On the contrary, they commenced a course of ravage and
conquest in all parts of England, which continued for several years.
The parts of the country which attempted to oppose them they destroyed
by fire and sword. They seized cities, garrisoned and occupied them,
and settled in them as if to make them their permanent homes. One
kingdom after another was subdued. The kingdom of Wessex seemed alone
to remain, and that was the subject of contest. Ethelred was the king.
The Danes advanced into his dominions to attack him. In the battle
that ensued, Ethelred was killed. The successor to his throne was his
brother Alfred, the subject of this history, who thus found himself
suddenly and unexpectedly called upon to assume the responsibilities
and powers of supreme command, in as dark and trying a crisis of
national calamity and danger as can well be conceived. The manner in
which Alfred acted in the emergency, rescuing his country from her
perils, and laying the foundations, as he did, of all the greatness
and glory which has since accrued to her, has caused his memory to be
held in the highest estimation among all nations, and has immortalized
his name.




CHAPTER IV

ALFRED'S EARLY YEARS.


Before commencing the narrative of Alfred's administration of the
public affairs of his realm, it is necessary to go back a little, in
order to give some account of the more private occurrences of his
early life. Alfred, like Washington, was distinguished for a very
extraordinary combination of qualities which exhibited itself in his
character, viz., the combination of great military energy and skill
on the one hand, with a very high degree, on the other, of moral and
religious principle, and conscientious devotion to the obligations
of duty. This combination, so rarely found in the distinguished
personages which have figured among mankind, is, in a great measure,
explained and accounted for, in Alfred's case, by the peculiar
circumstances of his early history.

It was his brother Ethelred, as has already been stated, whom Alfred
immediately succeeded. His father's name was Ethelwolf; and it seems
highly probable that the peculiar turn which Alfred's mind seemed to
take in after years, was the consequence, in some considerable degree,
of this parent's situation and character. Ethelwolf was a younger son,
and was brought up in a monastery at Winchester. The monasteries of
those days were the seats both of learning and piety, that is, of such
learning and piety as then prevailed. The ideas of religious faith and
duty which were entertained a thousand years ago were certainly very
different from those which are received now; still, there was
then, mingled with much superstition, a great deal of honest and
conscientious devotion to the principles of Christian duty, and of
sincere and earnest desire to live for the honor of God and
religion, and for the highest and best welfare of mankind. Monastic
establishments existed every where, defended by the sacredness which
invested them from the storms of violence and war which swept over
every thing which the cross did not protect. To these the thoughtful,
the serious, and the intellectual retired, leaving the restless, the
rude, and the turbulent to distract and terrify the earth with their
endless quarrels. Here they studied, they wrote, they read; they
transcribed books, they kept records, they arranged exercises of
devotion, they educated youth, and, in a word, performed, in the
inclosed and secluded retreats in which they sought shelter, those
intellectual functions of civil life which now can all be performed in
open exposure, but which in those days, if there had been no monastic
retreats to shelter them, could not have been performed at all.
For the learning and piety of the present age, whether Catholic or
Protestant, to malign the monasteries of Anglo-Saxon times is for the
oak to traduce the acorn from which it sprung.

Ethelwolf was a younger son, and, consequently, did not expect to
reign. He went to the monastery at Winchester, and took the vows. His
father had no objection to this plan, satisfied with having his oldest
son expect and prepare for the throne. As, however, he advanced toward
manhood, the thought of the probability that he might be called to the
throne in the event of his brother's death led all parties to desire
that he might be released from his monastic vows. They applied,
accordingly, to the pope for a dispensation. The dispensation was
granted, and Ethelwolf became a general in the army. In the end his
brother died, and he became king.

He continued, however, during his reign, to manifest the peaceful,
quiet, and serious character which had led him to enter the monastery,
and which had probably been strengthened and confirmed by the
influences and habits to which he had been accustomed there. He had,
however, a very able, energetic, and warlike minister, who managed his
affairs with great ability and success for a long course of years.
Ethelwolf, in the mean time, leaving public affairs to his minister,
continued to devote himself to the pursuits to which his predilections
inclined him. He visited monasteries; he cultivated learning; he
endowed the Church; he made journeys to Rome. All this time, his
kingdom, which had before almost swallowed up the other kingdoms of
the Heptarchy, became more and more firmly established, until, at
length, the Danes came in, as is described in the last chapter, and
brought the whole land into the most extreme and imminent danger.
The case did not, however, become absolutely desperate until after
Ethelwolf's death, as will be hereafter explained.

Ethelwolf married a lady whose gentle, quiet, and serious character
corresponded with his own. Alfred was the youngest, and, as is often
the case with the youngest, the favorite child. He was kept near to
his father and mother, and closely under their influence, until his
mother died, which event, however, took place when he was quite young.
After this, Ethelwolf sent Alfred to Rome. Rome was still more the
great center then than it is now of religion and learning. There
were schools there, maintained by the various nations of Europe
respectively, for the education of the sons of the nobility. Alfred,
however, did not go for this purpose. It was only to make the journey,
to see the city, to be introduced to the pope, and to be presented, by
means of the fame of the expedition, to the notice of Europe, as the
future sovereign of England; for it was Ethelwolf's intention, at
this time, to pass over his older sons, and make this Benjamin his
successor on the throne.

The journey was made with great pomp and parade. A large train of
nobles and ecclesiastics accompanied the young prince, and a splendid
reception was given to him in the various towns in France which he
passed through on his way. He was but five years old; but his position
and his prospects made him, though so young, a personage of great
distinction. After spending a short time at Rome, he returned again to
England.

Two years after this, Ethelwolf, Alfred's father, determined to go to
Rome himself. His wife had died, his older sons had grown up, and his
own natural aversion to the cares and toils of government seems
to have been increased by the alarms and dangers produced by the
incursions of the Danes, and by his own advancing years. Having
accordingly arranged the affairs of the kingdom by placing his oldest
sons in command, he took the youngest, Alfred, who was now seven years
old, with him, and, crossing the Channel, landed on the Continent, on
his way to Rome.

All the arrangements for this journey were conducted on a scale of
great magnificence and splendor. It is true that it was a rude and
semi-barbarous age, and very little progress had been made in respect
to the peaceful and industrial arts of life; but, in respect to the
arts connected with war, to every thing that related to the march of
armies, the pomp and parade of royal progresses, the caparison of
horses, the armor and military dresses of men, and the parade and
pageantry of military spectacles, a very considerable degree of
advancement had been attained.

King Ethelwolf availed himself of all the resources that he could
command to give eclat to his journey. He had a numerous train of
attendants and followers, and he carried with him a number of rich and
valuable presents for the pope. He was received with great distinction
by King Charles of France, through whose dominions he had to pass on
his way to Italy. Charles had a daughter, Judith, a young girl with
whom Ethelwolf, though now himself quite advanced in life, fell deeply
in love.

Ethelwolf, after a short stay in France, went on to Rome. His arrival
and his visit here attracted great attention. As King of England he
was a personage of very considerable consequence, and then he
came with a large retinue and in magnificent state. His religious
predilections, too, inspired him with a very strong interest in the
ecclesiastical authorities and institutions of Rome, and awakened,
reciprocally, in these authorities, a strong interest in him. He made
costly presents to the pope, some of which were peculiarly splendid.
One was a crown of pure gold, which weighed, it is said, four pounds.
Another was a sword, richly mounted in gold. There were also several
utensils and vessels of Saxon form and construction, some of gold and
others of silver gilt, and also a considerable number of dresses, all
very richly adorned. King Ethelwolf also made a distribution in money
to all the inhabitants of Rome: gold to the nobles and to the clergy,
and silver to the people. How far his munificence on this occasion may
have been exaggerated by the Saxon chroniclers, who, of course, like
other early historians, were fond of magnifying all the exploits, and
swelling, in every way, the fame of the heroes of their stories,
we can not now know. There is no doubt, however, that all the
circumstances of Ethelwolf's visit to the great capital were such as
to attract universal attention to the event, and to make the little
Alfred, on whose account the journey was in a great measure performed,
an object of very general interest and attention.

In fact, there is every reason to believe that the Saxon nations had,
at that time, made such progress in wealth, population, and power as
to afford to such a prince as Ethelwolf the means of making a great
display, if he chose to do so, on such an occasion as that of a royal
progress through France and a visit to the great city of Rome. The
Saxons had been in possession of England, at this time, many hundred
years; and though, during all this period, they had been involved in
various wars, both with one another and with the neighboring nations,
they had been all the time steadily increasing in wealth, and making
constant improvements in all the arts and refinements of life.
Ethelwolf reigned, therefore, over a people of considerable wealth
and power, and he moved across the Continent on his way to Rome, and
figured while there, as a personage of no ordinary distinction.

Rome was at this time, as we have said, the great center of education,
as well as of religious and ecclesiastical influence. In fact,
education and religion went hand in hand in those days, there being
scarcely any instruction in books excepting for the purposes of the
Church. Separate schools had been established at Rome by the leading
nations of Europe, where their youth could be taught, each at an
institution in which his own language was spoken. Ethelwolf remained a
year at Rome, to give Alfred the benefit of the advantages which the
city afforded. The boy was of a reflective and thoughtful turn of
mind, and applied himself diligently to the performance of his duties.
His mind was rapidly expanded, his powers were developed, and stores
of such knowledge as was adapted to the circumstances and wants of the
times were laid up. The religious and intellectual influences thus
brought to bear upon the young Alfred's mind produced strong and
decided effects in the formation of his character--effects which were
very strikingly visible in his subsequent career.

Ethelwolf found, when he arrived at Rome, that the Saxon seminary had
been burned the preceding year. It had been founded by a former Saxon
king. Ethelwolf rebuilt it, and placed the institution on a new and
firmer foundation than before. He also obtained some edicts from the
papal government to secure and confirm certain rights of his Saxon
subjects residing in the city, which rights had, it seems, been in
some degree infringed upon, and he thus saved his subjects from
oppressions to which they had been exposed. In a word, Ethelwolf's
visit not only afforded an imposing spectacle to those who witnessed
the pageantry and the ceremonies which marked it, but it was attended
with permanent and substantial benefits to many classes, who became,
in consequence of it, the objects of the pious monarch's benevolent
regard.

At length, when the year had expired, Ethelwolf set out on his return.
He went back through France, as he came, and during his stay in
that country on the way home, an event occurred which was of no
inconsiderable consequence to Alfred himself, and which changed or
modified Ethelwolf's whole destiny. The event was that, having, as
before stated, become enamored with the young Princess Judith, the
daughter of the King of France, Ethelwolf demanded her in marriage.
We have no means of knowing how the proposal affected the princess
herself; marriages in that rank and station in life were then, as they
are now in fact, wholly determined and controlled by great political
considerations, or by the personal predilections of powerful _men_,
with very little regard for the opinions or desires of the party
whose happiness was most to be affected by the result. At all events,
whatever may have been Judith's opinion, the marriage was decided upon
and consummated, and the venerable king returned to England with his
youthful bride. The historians of the day say, what would seem almost
incredible, that she was but about twelve years old.

Judith's Saxon name was Leotheta. She made an excellent mother to the
young Alfred, though she innocently and indirectly caused her husband
much trouble in his realm. Alfred's older brothers were wild and
turbulent men, and one of them, Ethelbald, was disposed to retain
a portion of the power with which he had been invested during his
father's absence, instead of giving it up peaceably on his return. He
organized a rebellion against his father, making the king's course of
conduct in respect to his youthful bride the pretext. Ethelwolf was
very fond of his young wife, and seemed disposed to elevate her to
a position of great political consideration and honor. Ethelbald
complained of this. The father, loving peace rather than war,
compromised the question with him, and relinquished to him a part
of his kingdom. Two years after this he died, leaving Ethelbald the
entire possession of the throne. Ethelbald, as if to complete and
consummate his unnatural conduct toward his father, persuaded the
beautiful Judith, his father's widow, to become his wife, in violation
not only of all laws human and divine, but also of those universal
instincts of propriety which no lapse of time and no changes of
condition can eradicate from the human soul. This second union throws
some light on the question of Judith's action. Since she was willing
to marry her husband's son to _preserve_ the position of a queen, we
may well suppose that she did not object to uniting herself to the
father in order to attain it. Perhaps, however, we ought to consider
that no responsibility whatever, in transactions of this character,
should attach to such a mere child.

During all this time Alfred was passing from his eighth to his twelfth
year. He was a very intelligent and observing boy, and had acquired
much knowledge of the world and a great deal of general information in
the journeys which he had taken with his father, both about England
and also on the Continent, in France and Italy. Judith had taken a
great interest in his progress. She talked with him, she encouraged
his inquiries, she explained to him what he did not understand, and
endeavored in every way to develop and strengthen his mental powers.
Alfred was a favorite, and, as such, was always very much indulged;
but there was a certain conscientiousness and gentleness of spirit
which marked his character even in these early years, and seemed to
defend him from the injurious influences which indulgence and extreme
attention and care often produce. Alfred was considerate, quiet, and
reflective; he improved the privileges which he enjoyed, and did not
abuse the kindness and the favors which every one by whom he was known
lavished upon him.

Alfred was very fond of the Anglo-Saxon poetry which abounded in those
days. The poems were legends, ballads, and tales, which described the
exploits of heroes, and the adventures of pilgrims and wanderers of
all kinds. These poems were to Alfred what Homer's poems were to
Alexander. He loved to listen to them, to hear them recited, and to
commit them to memory. In committing them to memory, he was obliged to
depend upon hearing the poems repeated by others, for he himself could
not read.

And yet he was now twelve years old. It may surprise the reader,
perhaps, to be thus told, after all that has been said of the
attention paid to Alfred's education, and of the progress which he had
made, that he could not even read. But reading, far from being then
considered, as it is now, an essential attainment for all, and one
which we are sure of finding possessed by all who have received any
instruction whatever, was regarded in those days a sort of technical
art, learned only by those who were to make some professional use of
the acquisition. Monks and clerks could always read, but generals,
gentlemen, and kings very seldom. And as they could not read, neither
could they write. They made a rude cross at the end of the writings
which they wished to authenticate instead of signing their names--a
mode which remains to the present day, though it has descended to the
very lowest and humblest classes of society.

In fact, even the upper classes of society could not generally learn
to read in those days, for there were no books. Every thing recorded
was in manuscripts, the characters being written with great labor and
care, usually on parchment, the captions and leading letters being
often splendidly illuminated and adorned by gilded miniatures of
heads, or figures, or landscapes, which enveloped or surrounded them.
Judith had such a manuscript of some Saxon poems. She had learned the
language while in France. One day Alfred was looking at the book,
and admiring the character in which it was written, particularly the
ornamented letters at the headings. Some of his brothers were in the
room, they, of course, being much older than he. Judith said that
either of them might have the book who would first learn to read
it. The older brothers paid little attention to this proposal, but
Alfred's interest was strongly awakened. He immediately sought and
found some one to teach him, and before long he read the volume to
Judith, and claimed it as his own. She rejoiced at his success, and
fulfilled her promise with the greatest pleasure.

Alfred soon acquired, by his Anglo-Saxon studies, a great taste for
books, and had next a strong desire to study the Latin language. The
scholars of the various nations of Europe formed at that time, as, in
fact, they do now, one community, linked together by many ties. They
wrote and spoke the Latin language, that being the only language which
could be understood by them all. In fact, the works which were most
highly valued then by the educated men of all nations, were the poems
and the histories, and other writings produced by the classic authors
of the Roman commonwealth. There were also many works on theology,
on ecclesiastical polity, and on law, of great authority and in high
repute, all written in the Latin tongue. Copies of these works were
made by the monks, in their retreats in abbeys and monasteries, and
learned men spent their lives in perusing them. To explore this field
was not properly a duty incumbent upon a young prince destined to take
a seat upon a throne, but Alfred felt a great desire to undertake
the work. He did not do it, however, for the reason, as he afterward
stated, that there was no one at court at the time who was qualified
to teach him.

Alfred, though he had thus the thoughtful and reflective habits of
a student, was also active, and graceful, and strong in his bodily
development. He excelled in all the athletic recreations of the time,
and was especially famous for his skill, and courage, and power as a
hunter. He gave every indication, in a word, at this early age, of
possessing that uncommon combination of mental and personal qualities
which fits those who possess it to secure and maintain a great
ascendency among mankind.

The unnatural union which had been formed on the death of Ethelwolf
between his youthful widow and her aged husband's son did not long
continue. The people of England were very much shocked at such a
marriage, and a great prelate, the Bishop of Winchester, remonstrated
against it with such sternness and authority, that Ethelbald not only
soon put his wife away, but submitted to a severe penance which the
bishop imposed upon him in retribution for his sin. Judith, thus
forsaken, soon afterward sold the lands and estates which her two
husbands had severally granted her, and, taking a final leave of
Alfred, whom she tenderly loved, she returned to her native land.
Not long after this, she was married a third time, to a continental
prince, whose dominions lay between the Baltic and the Rhine, and
from this period she disappears entirely from the stage of Alfred's
history.




CHAPTER V.

STATE OF ENGLAND.


Having thus brought down the narrative of Alfred's early life as far
and as fully as the records that remain enable us to do so, we resume
the general history of the national affairs by returning to the
subject of the depredations and conquests of the Danes, and the
circumstances connected with Alfred's accession to the throne.

To give the reader some definite and clear ideas of the nature of
this warfare, it will be well to describe in detail some few of the
incidents and scenes which ancient historians have recorded. The
following was one case which occurred:

The Danes, it must be premised, were particularly hostile to the
monasteries and religious establishments of the Anglo-Saxons. In the
first place, they were themselves pagans, and they hated Christianity.
In the second place, they knew that these places of sacred seclusion
were often the depositories selected for the custody or concealment of
treasure; and, besides the treasures which kings and potentates often
placed in them for safety, these establishments possessed utensils of
gold and silver for the service of the chapels, and a great variety
of valuable gifts, such as pious saints or penitent sinners were
continually bequeathing to them. The Danes were, consequently, never
better pleased than when sacking an abbey or a monastery. In such
exploits they gratified their terrible animal propensities, both of
hatred and love, by the cruelties which they perpetrated personally
upon the monks and the nuns, and at the same time enriched their
coffers with the most valuable spoils. A dreadful tale is told of
one company of nuns, who, in the consternation and terror which they
endured at the approach of a band of Danes, mutilated their faces in a
manner too horrid to be described, as the only means left to them for
protection against the brutality of their foes. They followed,
in adopting this measure, the advice and the example of the lady
superior. It was effectual.

There was a certain abbey, called Crowland, which was in those days
one of the most celebrated in the island. It was situated near the
southern border of Lincolnshire, which lies on the eastern side of
England. There is a great shallow bay, called The Wash, on this
eastern shore, and it is surrounded by a broad tract of low and marshy
land, which is drained by long canals, and traversed by roads built
upon embankments. Dikes skirt the margins of the streams, and
wind-mills are engaged in perpetual toil to raise the water from the
fields into the channels by which it is conveyed away.

Crowland is at the confluence of two rivers, which flow sluggishly
through this flat but beautiful and verdant region. The remains of the
old abbey still stand, built on piles driven into the marshy ground,
and they form at the present time a very interesting mass of ruins.
The year before Alfred acceded to the throne, the abbey was in all its
glory; and on one occasion it furnished _two hundred_ men, who went
out under the command of one of the monks, named Friar Joly, to join
the English armies and fight the Danes.

The English army was too small notwithstanding this desperate effort
to strengthen it. They stood, however, all day in a compact band,
protecting themselves with their shields from the arrows of the foot
soldiers of the enemy, and with their pikes from the onset of the
cavalry. At night the Danes retired, as if giving up the contest;
but as soon as the Saxons, now released from their positions of
confinement and restraint, had separated a little, and began to
feel somewhat more secure, their implacable foes returned again and
attacked them in separate masses, and with more fury than before. The
Saxons endeavored in vain either to defend themselves or escape. As
fast as their comrades were killed, the survivors stood upon the heaps
of the slain, to gain what little advantage they could from so slight
an elevation. Nearly all at length were killed. A few escaped into a
neighboring wood, where they lay concealed during the day following,
and then, when the darkness of the succeeding night came to enable
them to conceal their journey, they made their way to the abbey, to
make known to the anxious inmates of it the destruction of the army,
and to warn them of the imminence of the impending danger to which
they were now exposed.

A dreadful scene of consternation and terror ensued. The affrighted
messengers told their tale, breathless and wayworn, at the door of the
chapel, where the monks were engaged at their devotions. The aisles
were filled with exclamations of alarm and despairing lamentations.
The abbot, whose name was Theodore, immediately began to take measures
suited to the emergency. He resolved to retain at the monastery only
some aged monks and a few children, whose utter defenselessness, he
thought, would disarm the ferocity and vengeance of the Danes. The
rest, only about thirty, however, in number--nearly all the brethren
having gone out under the Friar Joly into the great battle--were put
on board a boat to be sent down the river. It seems at first view a
strange idea to send away the vigorous and strong, and keep the infirm
and helpless at the scene of danger; but the monks knew very well that
all resistance was vain, and that, consequently, their greatest safety
would lie in the absence of all appearance of the possibility of
resistance.

The treasures were sent away, too, with all the men. They hastily
collected all the valuables together, the relics, the jewels, and all
of the gold and silver plate which could be easily removed, and
placed them in a boat--packing them as securely as their haste and
trepidation allowed. The boats glided down the river till they came to
a lonely spot, where an anchorite or sort of hermit lived in solitude.
The men and the treasures were to be intrusted to his charge. He
concealed the men in the thickets and other hiding-places in the
woods, and buried the treasures.

In the mean time, as soon as the boats and the party of monks which
accompanied them had left the abbey, the Abbot Theodore and the old
monks that remained with him urged on the work of concealing that part
of the treasures which had not been taken away. All of the plate which
could not be easily transported, and a certain very rich and costly
table employed for the service of the altar, and many sacred and
expensive garments used by the higher priests in their ceremonies, had
been left behind, as they could not be easily removed. These the abbot
and the monks concealed in the most secure places that they could
find, and then, clothing themselves in their priestly robes, they
assembled in the chapel, and resumed their exercises of devotion. To
be found in so sacred a place and engaged in so holy an avocation
would have been a great protection from any Christian soldiery; but
the monks entirely misconceived the nature of the impulses by which
human nature is governed, in supposing that it would have any
restraining influence upon the pagan Danes. The first thing the
ferocious marauders did, on breaking into the sacred precincts of
the chapel, was to cut down the venerable abbot at the altar, in his
sacerdotal robes, and then to push forward the work of slaying every
other inmate of the abbey, feeble and helpless as they were. Only one
was saved.

This one was a boy, about ten years old. His name was Turgar. He was
a handsome boy, and one of the Danish chieftains was struck with his
countenance and air, in the midst of the slaughter, and took pity on
him. The chieftain's name was Count Sidroc. Sidroc drew Turgar out
of the immediate scene of danger, and gave him a Danish garment,
directing him, at the same time, to throw aside his own, and then to
follow him wherever he went, and keep close to his side, as if he were
a Dane. The boy, relieved from his terrors by this hope of protection,
obeyed implicitly. He followed Sidroc every where, and his life
was saved. The Danes, after killing all the others, ransacked and
plundered the monastery, broke open the tombs in their search for
concealed treasures, and, after taking all that they could discover,
they set the edifices on fire wherever they could find wood-work that
would burn, and went away, leaving the bodies slowly burning in the
grand and terrible funeral pile.

From Crowland the marauders proceeded, taking Turgar with them, to
another large and wealthy abbey in the neighborhood, which they
plundered and destroyed, as they had the abbey at Crowland. Sidroc
made Turgar his own attendant, keeping him always near him. When
the expedition had completed their second conquest, they packed the
valuables which they had obtained from both abbeys in wagons, and
moved toward the south. It happened that some of these wagons were
under Count Sidroc's charge, and were in the rear of the line of
march. In passing a ford, the wheels of one of these rear wagons sank
in the muddy bottom, and the horses, in attempting to draw the wagon
out, became entangled and restive. While Sidroc's whole attention
was engrossed by this difficulty, Turgar contrived to steal away
unobserved. He hid himself in a neighboring wood, and, with a degree
of sagacity and discretion remarkable in a boy of his years, he
contrived to find his way back to the smoking ruins of his home at the
Abbey of Crowland.

The monks who had gone away to seek concealment at the cell of the
anchorite had returned, and were at work among the smoking ruins,
saving what they could from the fire, and gathering together the
blackened remains of their brethren for interment. They chose one of
the monks that had escaped to succeed the abbot who had been murdered,
repaired, so far as they could, their ruined edifices, and mournfully
resumed their functions as a religious community.

Many of the tales which the ancient chroniclers tell of those times
are romantic and incredible; they may have arisen, perhaps, in the
first instance, in exaggerations of incidents and events which really
occurred, and were then handed down from generation to generation by
oral tradition, till they found historians to record them. The story
of the martyrdom of King Edmund is of this character. Edmund was a
sort of king over one of the nations of Anglo-Saxons called East
Angles, who, as their name imports, occupied a part of the eastern
portion of the island. Their particular hostility to Edmund was
awakened, according to the story, in the following manner:

There was a certain bold and adventurous Dane named Lothbroc, who one
day took his falcon on his arm and went out alone in a boat on the
Baltic Sea, or in the straits connecting it with the German Ocean,
intending to go to a certain island and hunt. The falcon is a species
of hawk which they were accustomed to train in those days, to attack
and bring down birds from the air, and falconry was, as might have
been expected, a very picturesque and exciting species of hunting. The
game which Lothbroc was going to seek consisted of the wild fowl which
frequents sometimes, in vast numbers, the cliffs and shores of the
islands in those seas. Before he reached his hunting ground, however,
he was overtaken by a storm, and his boat was driven by it out to sea.
Accustomed to all sorts of adventures and dangers by sea and by land,
and skilled in every operation required in all possible emergencies,
Lothbroc contrived to keep his boat before the wind, and to bail out
the water as fast as it came in, until at length, after being driven
entirely across the German Ocean, he was thrown upon the English
shore, where, with his hawk still upon his arm, he safely landed.

[Illustration: LOTHBROC AND HIS FALCON.]

He knew that he was in the country of the most deadly foes of his
nation and race, and accordingly sought to conceal rather than to make
known his arrival. He was, however, found, after a few days, wandering
up and down in a solitary wood, and was conducted, together with his
hawk, to King Edmund.

Edmund was so much pleased with his air and bearing, and so astonished
at the remarkable manner in which he had been brought to the English
shore, that he gave him his life; and soon discovering his great
knowledge and skill as a huntsman, he received him into his own
service, and treated him with great distinction and honor. In addition
to his hawk, Lothbroc had a greyhound, so that he could hunt with the
king in the fields as well as through the air. The greyhound was very
strongly attached to his master.

The king's chief huntsman at this time was Beorn, and Beorn soon
became very envious and jealous of Lothbroc, on account of his
superior power and skill, and of the honorable distinction which they
procured for him. One day, when they two were hunting alone in the
woods with their dogs, Beorn killed his rival, and hid his body in
a thicket. Beorn went home, his own dogs following him, while the
greyhound remained to watch mournfully over the body of his master.
They asked Beorn what was become of Lothbroc, and he replied that he
had gone off into the wood the day before, and he did not know what
had become of him.

In the mean time, the greyhound remained faithfully watching at the
side of the body of his master until hunger compelled him to leave his
post in search of food. He went home, and, as soon as his wants were
supplied, he returned immediately to the wood again. This he did
several days; and at length his singular conduct attracting attention,
he was followed by some of the king's household, and the body of his
murdered master was found.

The guilt of the murder was with little difficulty brought home
to Beorn; and, as an appropriate punishment for his cruelty to an
unfortunate and homeless stranger, the king condemned him to be put
on board the same boat in which the ill-fated Lothbroc had made his
perilous voyage, and pushed out to sea.

The winds and storms--entering, it seems, into the plan, and
influenced by the same principles of poetical justice as had governed
the king--drove the boat, with its terrified mariner, back again
across to the mouth of the Baltic, as they had brought Lothbroc to
England. The boat was thrown upon the beach, on Lothbroc's family
domain.

Now Lothbroc had been, in his own country, a man of high rank and
influence. He was of royal descent, and had many friends. He had
two sons, men of enterprise and energy; and it so happened that the
landing of Beorn took place so near to them, that the tidings soon
came to their ears that their father's boat, in the hands of a Saxon
stranger, had arrived on the coast. They immediately sought out the
stranger, and demanded what had become of their father. Beorn, in
order to hide his own guilt, fabricated a tale of Lothbroc's having
been killed by Edmund, the king of the East Angles. The sons of the
murdered Lothbroc were incensed at this news. They aroused their
countrymen by calling upon them every where to aid them in revenging
their father's death. A large naval force was accordingly collected,
and a formidable descent made upon the English coast.

Now Edmund, according to the story, was a humane and gentle-minded
man, much more interested in deeds of benevolence and of piety than in
warlike undertakings and exploits, and he was very far from being well
prepared to meet this formidable foe. In fact, he sought refuge in
a retired residence called Heglesdune. The Danes, having taken
some Saxons captive in a city which they had sacked and destroyed,
compelled them to make known the place of the king's retreat. Hinquar,
the captain of the Danes, sent him a summons to come and surrender
both himself and all the treasures of his kingdom. Edmund refused.
Hinquar then laid siege to the palace, and surrounded it; and,
finally, his soldiers, breaking in, put Edmund's attendants to death,
and brought Edmund himself, bound, into Hinquar's presence.

Hinquar decided that the unfortunate captive should die. He was,
accordingly, first taken to a tree and scourged. Then he was shot at
with arrows, until, as the account states, his body was so full of the
arrows that remained in the flesh that there seemed to be no room for
more. During all this time Edmund continued to call upon the name of
Christ, as if finding spiritual refuge and strength in the Redeemer in
this his hour of extremity; and although these ejaculations afforded,
doubtless, great support and comfort to him, they only served to
irritate to a perfect phrensy of exasperation his implacable pagan
foes. They continued to shoot arrows into him until he was dead, and
then they cut off his head and went away, carrying the dissevered head
with them. Their object was to prevent his friends from having the
satisfaction of interring it with the body. They carried it to what
they supposed a sufficient distance, and then threw it off into a wood
by the way-side, where they supposed it could not easily be found.

As soon, however, as the Danes had left the place, the affrighted
friends and followers of Edmund came out, by degrees, from their
retreats and hiding places. They readily found the dead body of their
sovereign, as it lay, of course, where the cruel deed of his murder
had been performed. They sought with mournful and anxious steps, here
and there, all around, for the head, until at length, when they came
into the wood where it was lying, they heard, as the historian who
records these events gravely testifies, a voice issuing from it,
calling them, and directing their steps by the sound. They followed
the voice, and, having recovered the head by means of this miraculous
guidance, they buried it with the body.[1]

It seems surprising to us that reasonable men should so readily
believe such tales as these; but there are, in all ages of the world,
certain habits of belief, in conformity to which the whole community
go together. We all believe whatever is in harmony with, or analogous
to, the general type of faith prevailing in our own generation. Nobody
could be persuaded now that a dead head could speak, or a wolf change
his nature to protect it; but thousands will credit a fortune-teller,
or believe that a mesmerized patient can have a mental perception of
scenes and occurrences a thousand miles away.

There was a great deal of superstition in the days when Alfred was
called to the throne, and there was also, with it, a great deal of
genuine honest piety. The piety and the superstition, too, were
inextricably intermingled and combined together. They were all
Catholics then, yielding an implicit obedience to the Church of Rome,
making regular contributions in money to sustain the papal authority,
and looking to Rome as the great and central point of Christian
influence and power, and the object of supreme veneration. We have
already seen that the Saxons had established a seminary at Rome, which
King Ethelwolf, Alfred's father, rebuilt and re-endowed. One of the
former Anglo-Saxon kings, too, had given a grant of one penny from
every house in the kingdom to the successors of St. Peter at Rome,
which tax, though nominally small, produced a very considerable sum
in the aggregate, exceeding for many years the royal revenues of the
kings of England. It continued to be paid down to the time of Henry
VIII., when the reformation swept away that, and all the other
national obligations of England to the Catholic Church together.

In the age of Alfred, however, there were not only these public acts
of acknowledgment recognizing the papal supremacy, but there was
a strong tide of personal and private feeling of veneration and
attachment to the mother Church, of which it is hard for us, in the
present divided state of Christendom, to conceive. The religious
thoughts and affections of every pious heart throughout the realm
centered in Rome. Rome, too, was the scene of many miracles, by which
the imaginations of the superstitious and of the truly devout were
excited, which impressed them with an idea of power in which they felt
a sort of confiding sense of protection. This power was continually
interposing, now in one way and now in another, to protect virtue, to
punish crime, and to testify to the impious and to the devout, to each
in an appropriate way, that their respective deeds were the objects,
according to their character, of the displeasure or of the approbation
of Heaven.

On one occasion, the following incident is said to have occurred. The
narration of it will illustrate the ideas of the time. A child of
about seven years old, named Kenelm, succeeded to the throne in the
Anglo-Saxon line. Being too young to act for himself, he was put under
the charge of a sister, who was to act as regent until the boy became
of age. The sister, ambitious of making the power thus delegated
to her entirely her own, decided on destroying her brother. She
commissioned a hired murderer to perpetrate the deed. The murderer
took the child into a wood, killed him, and hid his body in a thicket,
in a certain cow-pasture at a place called Clent. The sister then
assumed the scepter in her own name, and suppressed all inquiries in
respect to the fate of her brother; and his murder might have remained
forever undiscovered, had it not been miraculously revealed at Rome.

A white dove flew into a church there one day, and let fall upon the
altar of St. Peter a paper, on which was written, in Anglo-Saxon
characters,


    In Clent Cow-batch, Kenelme king bearne, lieth under Thorne, head
    bereaved.


For a time nobody could read the writing. At length an Anglo-Saxon
saw it, and translated it into Latin, so that the pope and all others
could understand it. The pope then sent a letter to the authorities in
England, who made search and found the body.

But we must end these digressions, which we have indulged thus far in
order to give the reader some distinct conception of the ideas and
habits of the times, and proceed, in the next chapter, to relate the
events immediately connected with Alfred's accession to the throne.

[Footnote 1: A great many other tales are told of the miraculous
phenomena exhibited by the body of St. Edmund, which well illustrate
the superstitious credulity of those times. One writer says seriously
that, when the head was found, a wolf had it, holding it carefully in
his paws, with all the gentleness and care that the most faithful dog
would manifest in guarding a trust committed to him by his master.
This wolf followed the funeral procession to the tomb where the body
was deposited, and then disappeared. The head joined itself to the
body again where it had been severed, leaving only a purple line to
mark the place of separation.]




CHAPTER VI.

ALFRED'S ACCESSION TO THE THRONE


At the battle in which Alfred's brother, Ethelred, whom Alfred
succeeded on the throne, was killed, as is briefly mentioned at the
close of chapter fourth, Alfred himself, then a brave and energetic
young man, fought by his side. The party of Danes whom they were
contending against in this fatal fight was the same one that came
out in the expedition organized by the sons of Lothbroc, and whose
exploits in destroying monasteries and convents were described in the
last chapter. Soon after the events there narrated, this formidable
body of marauders moved westward, toward that part of the kingdom
where the dominions more particularly pertaining to the family of
Alfred lay.

There was in those days a certain stronghold or castle on the River
Thames, about forty miles west from London, which was not far from
the confines of Ethelred's dominions. The large and populous town of
Reading now stands upon the spot. It is at the confluence of the River
Thames with the Kennet, a small branch of the Thames, which here flows
into it from the south. The spot, having the waters of the rivers for
a defense upon two sides of it, was easily fortified. A castle had
been built there, and, as usual in such cases, a town had sprung up
about the walls.

The Danes advanced to this stronghold and took possession of it, and
they made it for some time their head-quarters. It was at once the
center from which they carried on their enterprises in all directions
about the island, and the refuge to which they could always retreat
when defeated and pursued. In the possession of such a fastness, they,
of course, became more formidable than ever. King Ethelred determined
to dislodge them. He raised, accordingly, as large a force as his
kingdom would furnish, and, taking his brother Alfred as his second in
command, he advanced toward Reading in a very resolute and determined
manner.

He first encountered a large body of the Danes who were out on a
marauding excursion. This party consisted only of a small detachment,
the main body of the army of the Danes having been left at Reading to
strengthen and complete the fortifications. They were digging a trench
from river to river, so as completely to insulate the castle, and make
it entirely inaccessible on either side except by boats or a bridge.
With the earth thrown out of the trench they were making an embankment
on the inner side, so that an enemy, after crossing the ditch, would
have a steep ascent to climb, defended too, as of course it would be
in such an emergency, by long lines of desperate men upon the top,
hurling at the assailants showers of javelins and arrows.

While, therefore, a considerable portion of the Danes were at work
within and around their castle, to make it as nearly as possible
impregnable as a place of defense, the detachment above referred to
had gone forth for plunder, under the command of some of the bolder
and more adventurous spirits in the horde. This party Ethelred
overtook. A furious battle was fought. The Danes were defeated, and
driven off the ground. They fled toward Reading. Ethelred and Alfred
pursued them. The various parties of Danes that were outside of the
fortifications, employed in completing the outworks, or encamped in
the neighborhood, were surprised and slaughtered; or, at least,
vast numbers of them were killed, and the rest retreated within the
works--all maddened at their defeat, and burning with desire for
revenge.

The Saxons were not strong enough to dispossess them of their
fastness. On the contrary, in a few days, the Danes, having matured
their plans, made a desperate sally against the Saxons, and, after a
very determined and obstinate conflict, they gained the victory, and
drove the Saxons off the ground. Some of the leading Saxon chieftains
were killed, and the whole country was thrown into great alarm at
the danger which was impending, that the Danes would soon gain the
complete and undisputed possession of the whole land.

The Saxons, however, were not yet prepared to give up the struggle.
They rallied their forces, gathered new recruits, reorganized their
ranks, and made preparations for another struggle. The Danes, too,
feeling fresh strength and energy in consequence of their successes,
formed themselves in battle array, and, leaving their strong-hold,
they marched out into the open country in pursuit of their foe. The
two armies gradually approached each other and prepared for battle.
Every thing portended a terrible conflict, which was to be, in fact,
the great final struggle.

The place where the armies met was called in those times AEscesdune,
which means Ashdown. It was, in fact, a hill-side covered with ash
trees. The name has become shortened and softened in the course of the
ten centuries which have intervened since this celebrated battle, into
Aston; if, indeed, as is generally supposed, the Aston of the present
day is the locality of the ancient battle.

The armies came into the vicinity of each other toward the close of
the day. They were both eager for the contest, or, at least, they
pretended to be so, but they waited until the morning. The Danes
divided their forces into two bodies. Two kings commanded one
division, and certain chieftains, called _earls_, directed the
other. King Ethelred undertook to meet this order of battle by
a corresponding distribution of his own troops, and he gave,
accordingly, to Alfred the command of one division, while he himself
was to lead the other. All things being thus arranged, the hum and
bustle of the two great encampments subsided at last, at a late hour,
as the men sought repose under their rude tents, in preparation for
the fatigues and exposures of the coming day. Some slept; others
watched restlessly, and talked together, sleepless under the influence
of that strange excitement, half exhilaration and half fear, which
prevails in a camp on the eve of a battle. The camp fires burned
brightly all the night, and the sentinels kept vigilant watch,
expecting every moment some sudden alarm.

The night passed quietly away. Ethelred and Alfred both arose early.
Alfred went out to arouse and muster the men in his division of the
encampment, and to prepare for battle. Ethelred, on the other hand,
sent for his priest, and, assembling the officers in immediate
attendance upon him, commenced divine service in his tent--the service
of the mass, according to the forms and usages which, even in that
early day, were prescribed by the Catholic Church. Alfred was thus
bent on immediate and energetic action, while Ethelred thought that
the hour for putting forth the exertion of human strength did not come
until time had been allowed for completing, in the most deliberate and
solemn manner, the work of imploring the protection of Heaven.

Ethelred seems by his conduct on this occasion to have inherited from
his father, even more than Alfred, the spirit of religious devotion at
least so far as the strict and faithful observance of religious forms
was concerned. There was, it is true, a particular reason in this case
why the forms of divine service should be faithfully observed, and
that is, that the war was considered in a great measure a religious
war. The Danes were pagans. The Saxons were Christians. In making
their attacks upon the dominions of Ethelred, the ruthless invaders
were animated by a special hatred of the name of Christ, and they
evinced a special hostility toward every edifice, or institution, or
observance which bore the Christian name. The Saxons, therefore, in
resisting them, felt that they were not only fighting for their own
possessions and for their own lives, but that they were defending
the kingdom of God, and that he, looking down from his throne in
the heavens, regarded them as the champions of his cause; and,
consequently, that he would either protect them in the struggle, or,
if they fell, that he would receive them to mansions of special glory
and happiness in heaven, as martyrs who had shed their blood in his
service and for his glory.

Taking this view of the subject, Ethelred, instead of going out to
battle at the early dawn, collected his officers into his tent, and
formed them into a religious congregation. Alfred, on the other hand,
full of impetuosity and ardor, was arousing his men, animating them by
his words of encouragement and by the influence of his example, and
making, as energetically as possible, all the preparations necessary
for the approaching conflict.

In fact, Alfred, though his brother was king, and he himself only a
lieutenant general under him, had been accustomed to take the lead in
all the military operations of the army, on account of the superior
energy, resolution, and tact which he evinced, even in this early
period of his life. His brothers, though they retained the scepter, as
it fell successively into their hands, relied mainly on his wisdom and
courage in all their efforts to defend it, and Ethelred may have been
somewhat more at his ease, in listening to the priest's prayers in his
tent, from knowing that the arrangements for marshaling and directing
a large part of the force were in such good hands.

The two encampments of Alfred and Ethelred seem to have been at some
little distance from each other. Alfred was impatient at Ethelred's
delay. He asked the reason for it. They told him that Ethelred was
attending mass, and that he had said he should on no account leave his
tent until the service was concluded. Alfred, in the mean time, took
possession of a gentle elevation of land, which now would give him an
advantage in the conflict. A single thorn-tree, growing there alone,
marked the spot. The Danes advanced to attack him, expecting that, as
he was not sustained by Ethelred's division of the army, he would be
easily overpowered and driven from his post.

Alfred himself felt an extreme and feverish anxiety at Ethelred's
delay. He fought, however, with the greatest determination and
bravery. The thorn-tree continued to be the center of the conflict for
a long time, and, as the morning advanced, it became more and more
doubtful how it would end. At last, Ethelred, having finished his
devotional services, came forth from his camp at the head of his
division, and advanced vigorously to his faltering brother's aid.
This soon decided the contest. The Danes were overpowered and put to
flight. They fled at first in all directions, wherever each separate
band saw the readiest prospect of escape from the immediate vengeance
of their pursuers. They soon, however, all began with one accord
to seek the roads which would conduct them to their stronghold at
Reading. They were madly pursued, and massacred as they fled, by
Alfred's and Ethelred's army. Vast numbers fell. The remnant secured
their retreat, shut themselves up within their walls, and began to
devote their eager and earnest attention to the work of repairing and
making good their defenses.

This victory changed for the time being the whole face of affairs,
and led, in various ways, to very important consequences, the most
important of which was, as we shall presently see, that it was the
means indirectly of bringing Alfred soon to the throne. As to
the cause of the victory, or, rather, the manner in which it was
accomplished, the writers of the times give very different accounts,
according as their respective characters incline them to commend, in
man, a feeling of quiet trust and confidence in God when placed in
circumstances of difficulty or danger, or a vigorous and resolute
exertion of his own powers. Alfred looked for deliverance to the
determined assaults and heavy blows which he could bring to bear upon
his pagan enemies with weapons of steel around the thorn-tree in the
field. Ethelred trusted to his hope of obtaining, by his prayers
in his tent, the effectual protection of Heaven; and they who have
written the story differ, as they who read it will on the question to
whose instrumentality the victory is to be ascribed. One says that
Alfred gained it by his sword. Another, that Alfred exerted his
strength and his valor in vain, and was saved from defeat and
destruction only by the intervention of Ethelred, bringing with him
the blessing of Heaven.

In fact, the various narratives of these ancient events, which are
found at the present day in the old chronicles that record them,
differ always very essentially, not only in respect to matters of
opinion, and to the point of view in which they are to be regarded,
but also in respect to questions of fact. Even the place where this
battle was fought, notwithstanding what we have said about the
derivation of Aston from AEscesdune, is not absolutely certain. There
is in the same vicinity another town, called Ashbury, which claims the
honor. One reason for supposing that this last is the true locality is
that there are the ruins of an ancient monument here, which, tradition
says, was a monument built to commemorate the death of a Danish
chieftain slain here by Alfred. There is also in the neighborhood
another very singular monument, called The White Horse, which also
has the reputation of having been fashioned to commemorate Alfred's
victories. The White Horse is a rude representation of a horse, formed
by cutting away the turf from the steep slope of a hill, so as to
expose a portion of the white surface of the chalky rock below of such
a form that the figure is called a horse, though they who see it seem
to think it might as we