The invaders grew bolder. In 530 a new body of Saxons, the name of whose leader is not recorded in history, arrived, and established themselves upon the northern border of the kingdoms of Kent and Wessex, founding there the kingdom of Essex (East Sax), the importance of which was due to the Thames and London, since it comprised only the county of Essex, the small territory of Middlesex, and the southern part of the county of Herts.
"Thus," says M. Guillaume Guizot in his History of Alfred the Great, "the Saxons originally rested their power upon the first state founded by the Jutes at the south-eastern extremity of England. They surrounded it by their own settlements, and all established themselves in the southern part of the island." They had scarcely completed their migrations when the Angles, who had then arrived only in small numbers, and were mingled with the Jutes, began on their own account to invade the eastern coast. About the year 527 several bands of Angles arrived under different chiefs, but it was not until some years later that they united to form the kingdom of East Anglia, which comprised the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridge, the isle of Ely, and probably a portion of Bedfordshire. The territories of Norfolk and Suffolk owe even their names to two tribes of Angles, the North folk and the South folk, while the entire race have given their name to England. This new kingdom, still isolated as well as defended by the sea, was fortified by fens and by many rivers. Where natural defences were wanting the Angles raised earthworks, long known as the Giant's Dyke, then as the Devil's Dyke. In spite of the draining of the fen, the line of these works can be traced to this day.
In the year 547, new bands of Angles, led by a chief named Ida, landed upon the north-east coast and founded there the kingdom of Bernicia, which comprised Northumberland and the south of Pentland, between the Tweed and the Firth of Forth. Some years later, in 560, other Angles, no less enterprising than their predecessors, established themselves from the southern limit of Bernicia as far as the Humber, and from one sea to the other, occupying all the territory of the counties of Lancaster, York, Westmoreland, Cumberland, and Durham. This was the kingdom of Deira. These two colonies were united under the same sceptre in 617, and took the name of Northumbria.
The Angles began to advance from the coasts. In the year 586 they occupied all the country bounded on the north by the river Humber and the kingdom of Deira; on the west, by Wales, which alone remained in the hands of the Britons; on the south, by the Saxon kingdoms; and on the south-east, by the Angles of East Anglia. Mercia, as the new kingdom was called, comprised then on the south-east the northern part of the counties of Hertford and Bedford; on the east, all the counties of Northampton, Huntingdon, and Rutland; on the north, the counties of Lincoln, Nottingham, Derby, and Chester; on the west, Staffordshire, Shropshire, Worcestershire, and Herefordshire; in the centre of the island, Warwickshire and Leicestershire; on the south, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, and the county of Buckingham. In this kingdom, the most extensive of all, the British population had not been destroyed or driven back, as they had in the greater portion of other parts; they continued to inhabit their ancient country, mingled with and subject to the Angles.
Such was the division of Britain among the conquerors, and the constitution of the Saxon kingdoms. This is what is known as the Heptarchy, or Octarchy, according to whether we place the denomination before or after the union of the kingdoms of Deira and Bernicia in a single kingdom of Northumbria. Such was the new scene of the wars which were destined to break out again and deluge Britain, now become England, with blood.
A more gentle influence was soon to exercise its effect upon the sanguinary passion of the barbarous races. The British Christians, though vanquished and driven back into the narrow territory of Cambria or Wales, do not seem to have attempted to convert their conquerors. For a moment they had themselves run the risk of falling into the heresies of Pelagius, an Irish monk who denied the doctrine of original sin; but the missionaries from Gaul, Saint Germain and Saint Loup, had succeeded in 429 and 446 in uprooting among them these disastrous tendencies. One day Saint Germain, who had been a soldier before being a bishop, found himself in the presence of a band of Picts and Saxons who were laying waste the coast. Putting himself at the head of his flock, he marched against the enemy amidst loud cries of "Alleluia!" These cries taken up by the neighboring echoes terrified the pirates, who fled; hence this peaceful victory became known by the name of "The Battle of the Alleluias."
The Britons were not heretics, but with the independence which always characterized their race they differed from Rome and from the Eastern Church upon various points of little importance in themselves, though they had often created divisions in Christendom. For no reason that has come down to us the Britons celebrated Easter in accordance with the customs of the Eastern Church—that is to say, at the fourteenth day of the moon, whatever might be the day on which that event fell, in imitation of the Jews who on that day offered up the Paschal lamb. The Western Church, on the contrary, postponed the celebration of Easter till the Sunday following. Nothing more was needed to breed dissensions between the British bishops and the missionaries despatched from Rome by Pope Gregory the Great. For some years previously, Gregory, not yet become a bishop, and being in fact only a simple priest, passing through the slave-market in Rome, had been struck by the handsome appearance of some young persons offered there for sale. Learning that they belonged to the race of Angles, or Saxons, "They would not be Angles but angels," he exclaimed, "if they were Christians;" and he conceived the project of going himself to preach the faith of Jesus Christ to a people so well endowed by nature. His friends were only able to prevail on him to renounce his intention by inducing the Pope to forbid his departure from Rome. When in his turn he was elevated to the episcopal dignity in the most important see of the Western Church, he did not forget the Saxons whose conversion had previously occupied his thoughts. He endeavored first to inflame with his zeal the young slaves whom he had caused to be placed in convents; but the Saxons were apparently not disposed to become Missionaries, for in the year 595 the Pope despatched to Britain a young monk named Augustine, prior of the Convent of St. Andrew at Rome, accompanied by forty friars. They took the road towards Gaul; but they had scarcely arrived at Aix, when they heard such terrible accounts of the ferocity of the Anglo-Saxons that they were alarmed and wrote to the Pope to ask his leave to retrace their footsteps. Gregory, on the contrary, encouraged them to persevere in their enterprise, and furnished with interpreters by the good offices of Brunehaut, who was reigning over Austrasia in the name of her grandsons, they arrived in 597 in the Isle of Thanet. Augustine sent immediately one of his monks to Ethelbert, king of Kent, announcing his intention of coming to preach Christianity to his court.
The place could not have been better chosen. A powerful prince in his domains, Ethelbert was their Bretwalda, or general chief of all the Heptarchy. This title, which was in no way well defined, but which conferred a certain influence in the counsels of the seven Saxon states, seems to have been accorded to a kind of merit understood by all. Two chiefs had already borne it before Ethelbert— Ella, first king of Sussex, and Ceawlin, king of Wessex. The new Bretwalda was a pagan, but he had married a Christian wife, Bertha, daughter of Charibert, king of Paris: she had reserved to herself the free exercise of her religion; a French bishop had even accompanied her. Ethelbert had no repugnance towards Christianity and he consented to receive the Roman missionaries. "Be careful to grant them an audience in the open air," said the pagan priests, however; "their maledictions will be less powerful there than under a roof." It was therefore in the open field that the Saxon Bretwalda awaited the approach of the Christian priests. They advanced bearing a crucifix and a banner on which was painted the image of the Saviour. They made the air resound with their grave canticles. The imagination of the barbarians was no doubt struck by these ceremonies, and when Augustine by the aid of an interpreter, had explained to the king the leading doctrines of the Christian faith and asked permission to preach to his subjects the religion which they had come to proclaim to him, Ethelbert mildly replied, "I am not disposed to abandon the gods of my fathers for an unknown and uncertain faith; but since your intentions are good and your words full of gentleness, you can speak freely to my people. I will prevent any one interfering with you, and will furnish food to you and your monks." Augustine overjoyed, directed his steps towards the neighboring city of Canterbury, which he entered chanting, "O Eternal Father, we supplicate Thee according to Thy mercy turn Thy anger from this city and from Thy sacred place, for we have sinned. Alleluia!"
The preaching of Augustine and the sanctity of his life exercised a powerful influence over the Saxons. Numerous converts already pressed around him when King Ethelbert decided to embrace the Christian religion. His conversion attracted his subjects in a mass to the new Faith, and Pope Gregory, delighted with the success of the Mission, sent to Augustine the episcopal pallium [Footnote 1] with the title of Archbishop of Canterbury. At the same time Gregory advised the new prelate not to destroy the pagan temples to which the people had been accustomed, but to consecrate them to the worship of Jesus Christ, and to transform the pagan festivals into joyful family meetings at which the Christian Saxons could eat their oxen instead of sacrificing them to false gods.
[Footnote 1: An ornament of woollen texture, sprinkled with black crosses, which the Pope sends to the Archbishops and sometimes to Bishops.]
With these sage counsels Gregory sent a reinforcement of missionaries; but they did not suffice for the zeal or the views of Augustine, who resolved to address himself to the British bishops in Wales asking their assistance in the work of evangelization. The Britons were jealous and anxious. They consulted a hermit of great reputation for sanctity upon the claims of Augustine to their trust and obedience. "If the stranger comes from God, follow him," said the hermit. "But how shall we know if he is from God?" asked the Britons. "By his humility." … The reply still appeared to the envoys to be vague.
Augustine preaching to Ethelbert.
"If he rises at your approach, know that he is the leader sent by God to direct his people," continued the hermit. "If he remains seated reject him because of his pride." Fortified with this precise instruction the British priests, with seven Bishops and the Abbot of Bangor, presented themselves at the conference. Augustine was seated, and did not rise to receive them. The question was already settled in their minds when the Archbishop of Canterbury stated his demands. He desired that the British priests should henceforth celebrate the festival of Easter on the same day as the Western Church; that they should employ the Roman forms in the ceremony of baptism, and that they should join their efforts with his for the conversion of the Saxons. All these proposals were rejected. Then Augustine rose and in a loud voice exclaimed, "You refuse to labor to convert the Saxons! You will perish by the swords of the Saxons." This prediction was remembered some years later when all the monks of Bangor were massacred by the Northumbrians in a Saxon expedition into Cambria.
In spite of the coolness of the British Bishops the work of conversion went on. The zeal of Ethelbert had already engaged his nephew Sebert, king of Essex, to receive baptism. A church had been founded in London which possessed a bishop. Another prelate had his seat at Rochester. Ethelbert had also gained over to the Christian faith the chief of East Anglia, Redwald, who became after him Bretwalda of the Heptarchy. But the wife of Redwald was still a pagan and his subjects were attached to the religion of their ancestors. The king set up two altars in the same temple, one dedicated to Odin and the other to the God of the Christians; but the new faith soon prevailed over its rival, and East Anglia took its place among the Christian kingdoms of the Heptarchy.
Christianity had not yet penetrated into Northumbria when the king Edwin married a daughter of Ethelbert, a Christian like her father. The queen came accompanied by a Roman bishop named Paulinus; but the king remained faithful to the worship of his forefathers in spite of the solicitations of his wife, of Paulinus, and even of the Pope. He had, however, consented to the child of Ethelburga being baptized; and the day was at hand when his scruples were destined to be overcome. In his youth, during a long exile and in the midst of serious perils, there had appeared before him, doubtless in a dream, a person of venerable aspect, who asked him, "What wouldst thou give to one who should deliver thee to-day?" "All that I possess," replied the Saxon. "If he asked thee only to follow his counsels, wouldst thou obey?" "Unto death," was the answer. "It is well," said the apparition, at the same time placing his hand softly upon his head; "when one shall return and make thee this sign, follow him." Edwin had escaped from the dangers which threatened him, and his dream had remained deeply engraved upon his memory.
One day when he was alone, the door of his apartment opened, and Paulinus entering softly placed his hand upon his head. "Dost thou remember?" he asked, and the Saxon, falling on his knees, promised to do whatever he should desire. Still thoughtful and prudent, however, while accepting baptism for himself, he reserved the right of his subjects to act as might seem well to them. The Council of Wise Men or Aldermen was called together, and the king having informed them of his change of faith, as the basis of a new doctrine, asked them what they thought of it. The chief of the priests was there, and spoke first. "Our gods are powerless," he said; "I have served them with more zeal and fidelity than all the people, yet I am neither richer nor more honored. I am weary of the gods."
An ancient warrior near the king rose at this speech. "O king," he said, "thou rememberest perhaps in the winter days when thou art seated with thy captain near a good fire, lighted in a warm apartment, while it is raining and snowing out of doors, that a little bird has entered by one door and gone out by another with fluttering wings. He has passed a moment of happiness, sheltered from the rain and the storm; but the bird vanishes with the quickness of a glance, and from winter he returns again to winter. Such it appears to me is the life of man upon this earth. The unknown time is irksome to us. It perplexes us because we know nothing of it. If thy new faith teaches us something, it is worthy of our adherence."
The whole assembly took the side of the two chiefs; but when Paulinus proposed, as a token of renunciation to false gods, that their idols should be cast down, all hesitated except the high priest. He demanded a horse and a javelin in place of the mare and the white rod which pertained to his old office, and galloping towards the temple he struck the image with his weapon. The people trembling awaited some token of the wrath of the gods; but the heavens and the earth remained silent, and the king was baptized with all the most distinguished of his people, who were accompanied by a crowd of warriors. Edwin soon became Bretwalda, and his reign was an epoch of repose and happiness for his subjects.
During the struggles which recommenced after the death of Edwin, three kingdoms fortified themselves, and took the lead over the others. These were Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex. These three divisions of the Heptarchy were predominant in the year 800, when Egbert, prince of Wessex, returned to his country after a long exile. He had passed a considerable portion of the time at the court of Charlemagne, and had thus acquired a development of intellect and of knowledge rare at that time among the Saxon princes. The first part of his reign was peaceful; but from the year 809 forward, the sword of Egbert was drawn from the scabbard, and for many years he pursued his conquests from kingdom to kingdom. He had already extended his dominion over the British people of Cornwall, who had consented to pay him tribute, when he subjugated Mercia and the kingdom of Kent, Essex, and East Anglia. He had carried his victorious arms up to the frontiers of Northumbria. The chiefs, anxious and already beaten in anticipation, came to meet him, recognizing him for their sovereign, and promising him obedience. Egbert accepted their homage, and retired without fighting a battle. Nearly the whole Heptarchy had accepted his laws, and the title of Bretwalda had conferred upon him an authority more considerable than in the case of any of his predecessors. He continued, however, to assume the simple title of king of Wessex. He reigned until the year 836, happy and powerful; but the last years of his reign were troubled by the first invasions of the Danes. Egbert repulsed them with glory; but if he had possessed a spark of the almost prophetic foresight of Charlemagne, he would have wept, like the Frankish hero, over the infinite woes with which these men from the North menaced his country.
For nearly four centuries the Saxons had been established in Britain; they had become the sole masters of the country, and had there forgotten the original source of their wealth. But the nation from which they had sprung was still prolific in warriors, vigorous, enterprising, and possessed of nothing in the world but their arms and their ships, for all the property of the family belonged by right to the eldest son: warriors too ardent in conquering and in obtaining wealth at the point of the sword. The peninsula of Jutland and the provinces still further north of Scandinavia sent year by year to the French and English coasts a great number of ships, manned by the "Sea-kings," as they styled themselves: "The tempest is our friend," they would say; "it takes us wherever we wish to go." Repulsed three times from the coast of England by Egbert, these pirates soon reappeared under the reign of his son Ethelwulf; the whole island became surrounded by their light skiffs. The Saxons had been compelled to organize along the shores a continual resistance, and to appoint officers whose duty it was to call out the people in a body to repulse the enemy. Three serious contests took place in 839—at Rochester, at Canterbury, and at London. King Ethelwulf himself was wounded in battle. But shortly after, the internal dissensions which were agitating the whole of France, attracted the pirates as the dead body attracts the vulture. During twelve years the Danish fleets altered their course, and repaired to the French coasts. When they reappeared, in 831, in England, their successes were at first alarming; three hundred and fifty of their vessels ascended the Thames as far as London, and the town was sacked. But the king awaited the enemy at Oakley: they were defeated, and suffered great losses. After having met with severe reverses at several other parts of the Saxon territory, the Danes withdrew from there, and respected the English coasts during the remainder of the reign of Ethelwulf.
It is at this period that there appears in the pages of history the name of the fourth son of Ethelwulf, him whom England was one day to call Alfred the Great, Alfred the Well-beloved. He had first seen the light of day at Wantage, in the heart of the forests of Berkshire, in 849, two years before the departure of the Danes. His mother Osberga, a noble and pious woman, gave herself up entirely to the task of rearing her little son, who soon began to excite the hope and admiration of all who saw him. Doubtless the predilection which his father had for this little child, induced him to give a startling proof of his affection, for Alfred was scarcely four years of age when he was sent to Rome with a numerous suite of nobles and servants, to ask for himself, of Pope Leo IV., the title of king, and the holy unction. The Pope was aware of the piety of the Saxon monarch, and he consecrated with his own hands the little king, and even administered to him the sacrament of confirmation. Alfred returned to England, and it was no doubt the recollection of what he had seen at Rome, which began thenceforward to instil into his soul the desire to gain knowledge, the pursuit of which was probably very rare among the young Saxons. His mother, one day, was holding a pretty manuscript in her hand, a collection of ancient Saxon poems, and was showing it to her four sons, who were playing beside her. "I will give this pretty book," she said, "to whichever of you shall learn it the soonest by heart." Ethelbald, Ethelbert, and Ethelred eyed the book with indifference, and went on with their game; but little Alfred approached his mother: "Really," said he, "will you give this beautiful manuscript to whoever shall learn it by heart the quickest and who shall come and repeat it all to you?" The large, round eyes of the child were fixed upon his mother: she repeated her promise, and even gave up the manuscript into the keeping of the little prince. He quickly hurried away with it to his master, who was able to read aloud to him the verses which it contained, for, alas! Alfred could not read until he was twelve years of age. He soon returned, triumphant, repeated the lines, received the book from his mother, and preserved thenceforth throughout his life a taste for the old Saxon ballads of which he had thus first made the acquaintance.
Alfred was six years old and had lost his mother, when his father, wishing to make the pilgrimage to Rome in his turn, took his youngest son with him: the Saxon king spent a year with the Pope, carrying from church to church his sumptuous devotion. On his return journey, he stopped at the court of Charles the Bold, a court elegant and polite in comparison with the still rude customs of the Saxons; and, attracted by the beauty as well as the arts of Princess Judith, daughter of Charles, Ethelwulf married her, notwithstanding the disparity in their ages, and brought her in triumph into his kingdom. But the two persons whom the old king loved best, his young wife and his youngest son, were distrusted by the rest of his family, as well as by his people; Judith claimed a share of the sovereign power, according to the old custom in Britain and Germany, which had become odious to the Saxons by reason of the crimes of several queens; the elder sons of Ethelwulf feared that their young brother, so dear to their father, might be raised above themselves; the eldest, Ethelbald, revolted, and his father found a general rising against him when he returned to England. The old king did not resist: he ceded to his son the greater portion of his states and died at the end of two years, having shared equally between his sons his kingdom of Wessex, previously enlarged by the addition of Kent and Sussex. The tributary states of Northumbria and Mercia had shaken off the feeble authority of Ethelwulf and had recommenced their internal wars. The Danes profited by these disputes, and had taken up with renewed ardor their terrible incursions upon the English coasts.
In this alarming situation of affairs the sons of Ethelwulf foresaw that the division of Wessex would be their ruin; instead, therefore, of sharing it among themselves they agreed that each should reign over the whole in turn, according to their ages. The reigns of the three eldest were short. Supported successively by their brothers, they fought against the Danes, and all died in the flower of their youth; the last, Ethelred, was still on the throne, when an invasion of the Danes, who penetrated as far as Reading, called all the men of Wessex to arms. The war had a short time before assumed a new aspect; the Danes did not content themselves with descending upon the most fertile portions of the coast with their long ships, or with taking possession of all the horses. Overrunning the country, they ravaged and sacked everything in their passage, and re-embarked in their vessels before the frightened inhabitants had had time to rise up to resist them. From pirates, the Danes had become conquerors, and desired to establish themselves in that England which their predecessors, the Saxons, had formerly snatched from the Britons. Already possessed of East Anglia and a portion of Northumbria, they were threatening Wessex, and had intrenched themselves at Reading. Alfred had recently been married to a princess of Mercia, but his new relations did not give him any support against the Danes, when, having beaten several detached corps of the pirates, Ethelred and Alfred attacked the citadel. The greater number of the Danes sprang outside the walls, "like veritable wolves," says Asser, the historian of Alfred, and the struggle recommenced.
The Danes were nearly all tall men; their wandering and adventurous life favored the development of their muscular powers; they did not fear death, for the Walhalla or Paradise of their god Odin, promised to the brave warriors who fell in battle all the pleasure which they esteemed most on earth. The figure of the raven, the confidant of their god, floated on the red flags of the Danes; if its dark wings fluttered on the long folds of silk, victory was certain; if they remained motionless, the Northmen feared defeat. The wings of the raven were fluttering triumphantly before Reading, for the Saxons were defeated and were obliged to retreat.
They had not lost courage, however, and four days later they returned to give battle once more to their enemies; the Danes had already issued forth from their intrenchments, but Ethelred was still in his tent, attending holy mass, and would not hurry to the scene of battle, in spite of urgent messages from Alfred. The latter, therefore, attacked their opponents single-handed, opposite a little tree which the Danes had chosen as a rallying-spot. The Saxons fought with the fury of despair; Ethelred soon came to support his brother, and the Danes, beaten upon the great plain of Assendon, took to flight; but only to return a fortnight afterwards, their number swelled by the reinforcements which were continually arriving by sea. Wessex alone had sustained eight battles in one year; her resources were becoming exhausted in such an unequal struggle; Ethelred, wounded, had just died, and Alfred found himself alone at the age of twenty-two years (871), subject to a peculiar illness which had succeeded to a slow fever of his boyhood, and of which the attacks would frequently bring him to the very verge of the grave. His men and his resources exhausted, a ninth and unfortunate battle completely disabled him; he was compelled to sue for peace. The Danes willingly consented to his proposal; there were other princes to vanquish, other territories to conquer, less valiantly defended than Wessex, on which they proposed to revenge themselves when it should stand alone in its resistance to them. In 875 they had finished their conquest; Wessex alone still preserved its independence, and three Danish kings who had passed the winter at Cambridge embarked secretly, by night, to attack the coast of Dorset. Vainly did Alfred strive to resist his enemies by sea; his ships were beaten, and soon the long line of incendiarism and murder which always marked the progress of the Danes extended as far as Wareham. This was past endurance, and Alfred, stricken down on a sick-bed, asked for and obtained peace at the price of gold. The Danes retired after having sworn friendship upon some relics brought by the Christian king and on their sacred bracelets steeped in the blood of their victims, exchanging hostages, whose fate they troubled themselves very little about. The very night after peace was concluded, the Saxon horsemen were destroyed and cut up piecemeal by the Danes, who took possession of their horses in order to make a raid into the interior of the country. The remonstrances of Alfred were powerless to stop these disastrous expeditions, so easy for an enemy who threatened the country from all sides.
Alfred took to arms once more; and for awhile the issue of the war seemed to incline in his favor; he had been the first to see the necessity for attacking the Danes on the ocean, which was incessantly bringing them inexhaustible reinforcements, and his vessels having met the pirates during a storm had defeated and dispersed them, thus cutting off all hope of succor to the Danes whom Alfred was besieging in Exeter. This glimmering of success did not last however; in 878 the enemy was once more invading Wessex in two formidable troops; one of them was stopped and even defeated by some faithful retainers of Alfred's, but the second army, which had entered the kingdom by land, was advancing without opposition from town to town. The subjects of Alfred were weary and discouraged. The king, on whom they had founded such great hopes, had lost in their eyes his prestige; brave but uncertain, he had not profited by the advantages which his military genius had sometimes given him, and his people complained of his inflexibility, of his pride, of the severity which he manifested towards offenders; of the indifference which he displayed towards the unfortunate. They did not enter with any spirit into the struggle against the invaders, and the Saxon kings held no power but by the free will of their subjects. The clergy, who were especially hated by the pagan enemy, fled to France, carrying with them from their country its relics and the treasures from the churches. The agricultural population submitted to cultivate the land for the Danes. The latter were seeking Alfred; but the king had suddenly abandoned his post, and left by the struggle sick and wounded to the heart by the defection of his subjects, he had disappeared, his place of concealment being unknown and not even suspected.
The fugitive king did not know where to go. Wandering from forest to forest, from cave to cave, he went his way, trying to conceal his deep disgrace, learning in his cruel wanderings, as his historian and friend Asser says, "that there is one Lord alone, Master of all things and all men, before whom every knee bends, who holds in His hand the hearts of kings, and who sometimes makes His happy servants feel the lash of adversity, to teach them, when they suffer, not to despair of the Divine mercy, and to be without pride when they prosper."
Alfred wanted confidence in God, when he arrived in the island of the Nobles (Ethelingaia), now called Athelney, in order to hide himself there in the hovel of a cowherd. He received him at first as a traveller who had lost his way, and ended by learning in confidence from his guest that he was a Saxon noble of the court of King Alfred, flying from the vengeance of the Danes. The worthy Ulfoath was perfectly satisfied with the explanation, and allowed the fugitive to remain at his house.
His wife was not in the secret, and was annoyed, no doubt, to see her work increased by the presence of this unknown guest. She would ask him at times to perform little services, and would leave him in charge of some household duties. One Sunday, while the husband was gone to lead the beasts to the field and the wife was busy with several little matters, she had left some loaves or thin cakes by the fire, which were baking slowly on the red stone of the hearth. Alfred had been commissioned to watch them, but, absorbed in his sad meditations, he had forgotten that the bread was burning; the smell warned the housewife; she sprang at a bound to the fireplace, and quickly turning her cakes, she called out angrily to the king, "Whoever you may be, are you too proud to turn the loaves? You will not take the slightest heed of them, but you will be very glad to eat some of them presently." Alfred did not lose his temper; he laughed, and helped the woman to finish her task. A few days later the cowherd's wife learnt with dismay the name of the guest whom she had thus scolded.
Alfred in the Herdsman's Hut.
Some of the faithful subjects of Alfred, pursued by the Danes, took refuge also in the island of Nobles, where they discovered to their great astonishment their king. Secretly and by degrees the rumor that Alfred was living spread through his family, who came in search of him. The little band became greater day by day, and the king was beginning to gain courage. In his solitude and humiliation, God had taken charge of this great soul which had hitherto forgotten Him, and which regained through religious faith the necessary energy to struggle against the enemies of his country.
The Danes had not profited by their victory. They had established themselves in the conquered country as plunderers, and not as owners. The inhabitants of Wessex were writhing under their cruel and capricious rule. They had now forgotten the rigorous acts with which they had reproached Alfred, and regretted that the Christian king was no longer at their head. Exasperated by their sufferings, the Saxons were ripe for revolt.
Such were Alfred's prospects when he began with his companions the work of re-establishing himself in his country. A solid bridge, defended by two towers, enabled the king to issue out easily from his retreat in his fortress. He gathered around him all the malcontents before making anybody aware of his identity, and without announcing his great projects; each day he saw his little army swell in numbers, and he defeated the Danes in every skirmish which he chanced to have with them. He then went back to the island of Nobles. It is even said that he went by day, disguised as a minstrel, into the very camp of the Danes, in order to ascertain their numerical strength. In the month of May, 878, he finally decided to attack them openly. Secret messengers were despatched through the neighborhood, who said to the Saxons; "King Alfred is alive. Assemble in the forest of Selwood, at Egbert's field; he will be there, and you shall all march together against the Danes." The Saxons, desperate, were rushing there in crowds, and soon Alfred's standard, bearing the golden dragon, was boldly unfurled before the Danish raven.
The secret had been well kept. The Danish king, Godrun, was vaguely aware that a number of Saxons were assembled in the neighborhood, but he knew neither how many they mustered, nor the name of their chief, when he found himself suddenly attacked on the plain of Ethandune. The Saxons were in high spirits: "It is for your own sakes that you are about to fight," Alfred had said to them. "Show that you are men, and deliver your country from the hands of these strangers." The Danes had not had time to recover from their surprise before Alfred was upon them, his whole army following him. The standard-bearer was pushing to the front, accomplishing prodigies of valor: "It is St. Neots himself," Alfred cried, designating a saint held in great reverence by the Saxons, and an ancestor of his own. His soldiers gained fresh courage at these words; the Danes were beaten, and pursued, and they perished in great numbers. King Godrun, shut up with his court at the fortress of Chippenham, was compelled to surrender after a siege which lasted three weeks. He gave hostages without taking any in exchange, a proceeding very humiliating to the Danes, and Alfred wisely imposed upon him an agreement useful in securing the definitive tranquillity of England, if not consistent with the spiritual welfare of the Danes; the conqueror exacted that the defeated enemy should embrace the Christian religion. Godrun and his son were baptized and settled in the portion of land which Alfred conceded to them. Finding the impossibility of driving from the country the whole of the Danes, who were already masters of the land in Northumbria, in Mercia, and in East Anglia, Alfred hoped to accomplish, by the aid of Christianity and his right over part of the land, a fusion of the Danish and Saxon races, and to secure by that union a kind of rampart against any new Scandinavian invasions.
He was not mistaken. In the year following, a Danish fleet entered the Thames; but in vain did the warriors call for help to Godrun, who was established in the country He remained deaf to their voices, and they, discouraged by his refusal, went away again and pursued their ravages on the coast of Flanders.
For more than thirteen years peace reigned over all England. One or two little isolated invasions served to exercise the energy of Alfred's troops, and each day his forces were augmenting. But Godrun was dead, and a dangerous enemy now threatened the Saxon king: the famous pirate Hastings, already advanced in age, but still passionately fond of the "game of war" was encamped upon the coast of France, at Boulogne, in 892. Wherever he appeared, death and ruin followed in his wake. The black raven always unfurled its wings for him; he was always assured of victory before the fray began. He sailed forth in the spring of 893, and instead of descending upon the lands already held by the Danes, he disembarked in Kent, a country rich and fertile, inhabited entirely by Saxons; and dividing his army into two corps, he lay awaiting Alfred, who was advancing in haste to resist him. The Danish pirate had cleverly organized the attack. Already the Danish population of East Anglia were profiting by his presence to attack the Saxon towns; but Alfred had studied too well the art of war to disperse his army over the country; he led the whole of his available forces against Hastings. There the greater portion of the enemy's army, protected by a forest and a river, were met by the Saxon king, who sent out at the same time several small bodies of men in pursuit of the Danish warriors who were pillaging the country, staying by these means the progress of the invasion, and opposing with exemplary patience the ruses of the barbarians. Hastings appeared to grow weary of this: he asked for peace, and sent his young sons as hostages. Alfred had just returned them to him after having baptized them, when the Danes, caring little for their plighted Word, began to march towards Essex, which they intended to attack, passing by way of the Thames. The king hastened at once in pursuit of them and to the support of his eldest son, Edward, who was defending the frontier. They joined their forces; a great battle was fought near Farnham in the county of Surrey; the Danes were vanquished and driven as far as the isle of Mersey, which they fortified for their defence. The king attacked them at once; but while he had been away recruiting his forces a Danish fleet threatened the coast of Devonshire. Alfred marched against the new invaders, while the forces which he left behind fought against Hastings, and in a sortie got possession of the wife and children of that chief. These were sent to Alfred; but the Christian warrior could not forget that he had presented the young barbarians at the baptismal fount, and sent them back to their father loaded with presents.
The pirate, however, was not overcome by his foe's generosity. He attacked Mercia, sustained by the Danish hordes established in the country. Abandoning all thought of the conquests which he had originally intended, and the kingdom which he had wished to found, he once more took up the irregular invasions by which he had acquired so much wealth, and thought only of plundering the Saxon territory. But the subjects of Alfred had learnt some useful lessons; they rose with one accord against the foreign enemy, and when the king, returning in haste from Devonshire, arrived in the vicinity of the Severn, he found himself at the head of a numerous army which allowed him to completely surround the trenches of Hastings. The Danes had been decimated by hunger: they had even eaten their horses. Making a last desperate effort, they opened up a passage straight through the ranks of their enemies, and took refuge in Chester, where they spent the winter.
In the spring-time, the long vessels, the "water-serpents," as the pirates would affectionately call them, invariably brought reinforcements to them. In 895, Hastings began by attacking Wales, finding the states of King Alfred too well defended. He ended, however, by retreating to the isle of Mersey, from whence he set out in 896 to establish himself on the river Lea, in the north of London. He had raised a fortress and there defended himself valiantly, when King Alfred perceived that he could stop all the enemy's navigation by river. He accordingly constructed a canal, and reduced the Danes to despair: their fleet was on dry ground. They abandoned it, and marched in a northern direction. This time the old pirate was beaten. Wearied by this struggle against a man of energy equal to his own, and in the enjoyment of the youth and vigor which he no longer possessed, he assembled his vessels in the spring of 897, and leaving definitively the English coast, he ascended the Seine and extorted from Charles the Simple a donation of land in the vicinity of Chartres. He established himself there, and Rollo found him there fifteen years later, spending in peace the remainder of his stormy life.
The Danes who remained in England had reacquired a taste for adventurous expeditions. They assembled along the coast of Northumberland to organize an attack on the southern portion of the kingdom; but Alfred had long resolved to fight his enemies with their own weapons. Having ridded himself of Hastings, he had had time to look to his navy, and the Danes found themselves opposed by vessels larger and more rapid than their own. The struggle began on all sides. Wherever the pirates advanced to the attack they found Saxon vessels to check them. The contests were of frequent occurrence; they were not invariably favorable to the Saxons, but the Danes suffered great losses: their ships would often founder on the coast and the cargo would be lost. In 897, the last Danish ships disappeared from England. Alfred had now only to heal his country of the wounds left on it after all its struggles, which had cemented the union of the several kingdoms, in calling them all to the common defence under a single chief placed above them by reason of his conspicuous ability. After the war with the Danes, Alfred, who had merely assumed the title of King of Wessex, had added to his states Mercia, Wales, and Kent.
It was a kingdom composed of incongruous elements; but Alfred understood the management of them by reason of his far-seeing wisdom. In Mercia, originally peopled by the English, he established a viceroy chosen from their royal family, the Ealderman, or duke Ethelred, and gave him his own daughter in marriage. When Ethelred died, after having faithfully served his father-in-law, the Mercians themselves placed in the hands of his widow Ethelfleda the reins of government.
Kent already belonged to Alfred. Its unhappy inhabitants, subject more than any others to the Danish invasions, had displayed the most passionate affection and gratitude towards the prince who had effected their deliverance. The Welsh chiefs swore allegiance to him. Alfred established one of them, Amorant, as viceroy of Wales, leaving him thus all his prerogatives and full command over his subjects.
While he was thus organizing his Saxon kingdom, Alfred was maintaining firm and friendly relations with the Danish kingdom, which he had allowed to be established near to his own. The propagation of Christianity amongst the pagans was his principal means of effecting the fusion of the races, which he foresaw and which he hoped ardently to see accomplished, but which he could not completely finish during his own lifetime. Some laws were already in force and respected by both races: the crime of murder was punished in the same manner in each state, and Alfred caused the people to rigorously respect the treaties which bound them together; the pirates of East Anglia who came to pursue their ravages along the coasts, being hanged without mercy. The Danes established in England had already become Englishmen in the eyes of Alfred, and were compelled to observe the laws of the English population.
But although thus providing for the future, Alfred felt completely safe for the present. The Saxon kings had never maintained a standing army: at the time of an invasion, when the necessity for defending himself or attacking was felt by the sovereign, he would send into the boroughs and through the country a messenger carrying his sword, unsheathed, who would cry aloud: "Whoever shall not wish to be held a worthless fellow, let him leave his house and come and join in the expedition." But the day after the battle the warriors would disperse, and if the enemy should recommence hostilities, the king and the country found themselves unprepared. Alfred divided into two great divisions all his subjects capable of bearing arms: one was always on a war footing, ready to march against the enemy; the other portion of them would work in the fields and cultivate the soil until the very day when they would be called out to follow the golden dragon, while their companions would disperse and quietly retire to their cottages. The king made use of these soldiers in fortifying towns, in constructing citadels, and in putting the whole country in a position to defend itself. It was thus that he was able to withstand the attacks of Hastings, the most severe which England had as yet encountered.
So much wisdom and foresight on the part of Alfred, naturally increased his regal importance and authority. Until this time, the Saxon kings had been essentially warriors; each "ealderman," or chief proprietor, ruled supreme in his own district, without troubling his sovereign; the clergy were nearly upon an equality with the king, and the offences committed against a bishop were punished with the same penalties as those committed against the king himself. Alfred re-established the royal supremacy by the force of his own intellectual superiority; his ealdermen became his officers, and his profound piety, as well as his respect for the clergy, did not prevent his disengaging himself from any servile submission to the Church. The priests had suffered and trembled more than any other class under the rule of the pagan Danes; they obeyed without a murmur the orders of their liberator.
Justice was but badly administered in England, divided though it had been for a long time into tythings, hundredths and counties, and provided with local assemblies which corresponded to these territorial denominations. During the troubles which the Danish invasion had caused, and in the miseries which had followed, the Saxon proprietors had ceased to attend to their internal affairs; they neglected to select the judges. The assessors, or free men who should be present on the occasion of any trial, to help the judge with their advice, no longer answered when called upon to do so; only small numbers of witnesses would appear. The king undertook to re-establish order; he himself nominated the judges, and punished them severely when they ventured to give any decision in a case without previously consulting the assessors, whom he re-established in their original form—the germ of the institution now known as the jury. He was not even satisfied with all these cares; it often happened that he would revise the sentences of the judges, so zealously did he occupy himself with the administration of justice in his kingdom.
The judges hitherto had been charged with the civil administration as well as that of justice; they were succumbing under the weight of such onerous functions. Alfred relieved them, however, by nominating dukes, earls, and viscounts, who were entrusted with the administration of justice in the counties, the tythings and hundreds. He himself compiled for these magistrates a code of laws borrowed, some from the old mode of legislation in Kent, Wessex, and Mercia, and others from the Bible, from the books of Moses as well as from the New Testament; and they all unmistakeably bore the imprint of, and were modified by, the real Christian spirit which animated the king.
All these laws, the fruits of revealed wisdom or of the ancient experience of the people, Alfred submitted for approval to his subjects: "I have shown these laws to my wise men," said he in the preamble at the beginning of his code, "and the result was that they were unanimous in wishing that they should be observed." These wise men, or "witans," forming an assembly called a "witenagemote" (an assembly of wise men), no longer represented, under Alfred, the entire nation, as in the time when the Saxons still preserved in their simplicity their Germanic institutions. At that period all the free men (cearls), whether proprietors or not, composed part of it. By degrees the free men disappeared from it, and the "thanes," or proprietors, alone remained; but the lower class of "thanes," although invested with the same rights as the royal "thanes," were less wealthy; it was more difficult for them to leave their affairs in order to repair to the Witenagemote. In the time of Alfred, these great proprietors alone made up this assembly of wise men, whose functions were as vaguely defined as the number and the periods of their meetings were uncertain, but who thenceforth maintained in England the principle of a national representative assembly, or the institution whereby the country undertakes its own government, which is the foundation and key of English history.
While Alfred was drawing up laws of an equitable and merciful character, while he was rebuilding the ruined convents and churches, and erecting new ones, he did not forget the poorest and most unhappy of his subjects. Slaves were numerous in England, and suffering under a heavy yoke. The king provided for their protection, granting to them the right of enjoying and transmitting to their heirs whatever goods they might have acquired; he even applied in favor of Christian slaves the Biblical law, granting to them their freedom at the end of six years of servitude. In his will he ordered that all the serfs on his entire domains should be emancipated. His example was followed: the serfs and the emancipated slaves became day by day more numerous, and began thenceforth to form in England the lower middle class, which did not yet exist anywhere upon the Continent.