The Anglo Saxons at War 800-1066

by Paul Hill

  In June 1056, however, Gruffydd ap Llywelyn was back again. This time he would be opposed by the local forces of the brand new Bishop Leofgar of Hereford (formerly Harold’s personal chaplain). The militant Leofgar took with him a contingent led by the shire-reeve Ælfnoth, but they got as far as Glasbury-on-Wye before both being slaughtered by the Welsh in a miserable campaign seemingly designed to recover the lost territory of Archenfield. Earls Harold and Leofric along with Bishop Ealdred came to shore up the situation. They brought with them another huge force, but once again decided to resort to diplomatic agreements with Gruffydd ap Llywelyn. The Welsh king, now recognised by Edward as ruler of all Wales, gained further territorial advances in this agreement, which included the fortification of Rhuddlan, a place where he would soon relocate his court.

  After the death of the Norman Earl Ralph of Herefordshire, Harold took direct control of the region. This would be the springboard for his later operations. Ælfgar had won the earldom of Mercia after the death of his father Leofric, but, yet again, this turbulent earl found himself exiled by the king for reasons not recorded. Once more, he ran to Gruffydd ap Llywelyn who had by now married Ælfgar’s daughter, so strong was their alliance. Between them, Ælfgar and Gruffydd accompanied by a mysterious Norwegian fleet forcibly restored the Mercian earl to his patrimony. Regrettably, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle describes it all as ‘too tedious to tell’. It is a frustrating entry in the sense that we are unable successfully to piece together how the campaigns of 1063 came into being, suffice it to say that this time Harold Godwinson took on a distinctively offensive posture and was aided by his brother Tostig of Northumbria in a joint venture designed to rid Edward of the menace of Gruffydd ap Llywelyn for good. Tostig’s Northumbrian coastline may well have been targeted by this enigmatic Norwegian force, thus driving him into the arms of his brother for vengeance. Also, Ælfgar’s recent death may have had something to do with Gruffydd perceiving his peace with the English to be at an end. It is possible he resorted once again to raiding into English territory, finally compelling King Edward to order his destruction.

  Just after Christmas in 1062 Harold led a force north-west of Gloucester and into the region around Rhuddlan. It almost achieved complete surprise and may well have been entirely mounted. The stronghold at Rhuddlan was sacked and burnt along with Welsh ships and their equipment. Gruffydd, however, just managed to sail away in time. But the destruction was widespread and had a profound effect on Welsh minds, having been directed with such daring against a citadel that many Welshmen may have thought unchallengeable from England.

  Map 3. Places mentioned in Harold Godwinson’s campaigns in Wales.

  With Gruffydd still alive, Harold returned to England to put together a plan with the king’s backing that would involve his brother Tostig providing one arm of a two-pronged and wide-ranging attack on Wales. Harold would sail a fleet from Bristol around the north of Wales, while Tostig would lead an entirely mounted force into Gwynedd, the home kingdom of Gruffydd. The naval force harried the coastline and killed people or took hostages wherever it went. When they went on foot Harold’s troops were especially prepared for the difficulty of the terrain by wearing much lighter body armour than normal, according to the twelfth-century writer John of Salisbury:

  He [Harold] decided . . . to campaign with a light armament shod with boots, their chests protected with straps of very tough hide, carrying small round shields to ward off missiles, and using as offensive weapons javelins and a pointed sword. Thus he was able to cling to their heels as they fled and pressed them so hard that ‘foot repulsed foot and spear repulsed spear’, and the boss of one shield that of another.

  At each point in the campaign the Welsh people were told to withdraw their support for Gruffydd and it seemed ultimately to have an effect. As Gruffydd withdrew into the mountains of Snowdonia, he began to lose the support of his people, who were still at the receiving end of punitive English hostility. In August 1063 Gruffydd was finally betrayed by one of his own. Cynan, son of Iago, killed the legendary Welsh king and brought his head to Harold, who subsequently took it to his own king. With Gruffydd’s half brothers Bleddyn and Rhiwallon now given joint control of North Wales by Edward and hostages and promises of tribute and service extracted, Welsh expansionism at the expense of the English was severely–and some might argue–permanently checked.

  Gerald of Wales, a famous Medieval Welsh historian, tells of the measure of Harold’s success. He says that ‘erected by entitlement according to ancient tradition’, the Englishman left a trail of inscribed stones across Wales to commemorate his victories. Many he said, simply read ‘HIC FUIT VICTOR HAROLDUS’–‘Harold was the victor here’. Harold was clearly at the top of his game after the Welsh campaigns. Within two short years, however, he would face another great test as the new and controversial king of England in desperately troubling times. Had he won the Battle of Hastings in 1066, history would have spoken very differently of Harold, son of Godwin. His status would have jumped to that of a national legend. It was certainly heading that way after the Welsh campaigns. One man with a vaulting ambition far greater than that of Gruffydd ap Llywelyn would see to it that the Englishman’s reputation would collapse into a stormy sea of desperate but effective propaganda, and that man would become the first Norman king of England.

  Battles

  896: Alfred’s Navy in Action–the New Ships are Tested

  The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle gives us a curious account of a naval battle that took place on the south coast of England in 896. By now, Alfred’s struggles with the Danes were not exactly over, but he had proved himself to be a master of strategy on land.

  The Danes had fled England after a series of brutal campaigns that saw them half starved to death by Alfred and his followers in encounters of speed and sophistication which had never left them alone in the English landscape for long. But, as the last of the enemy ships sailed off to the shores of northern Europe to terrorise the folk of Francia, there remained untested King Alfred’s naval response to the attentions of raiders on his shores.

  The test came in 896 when the south coast of England had been repeatedly harassed by ships’ companies from the Danish-controlled areas of Northumbria and East Anglia. Most of the ships of the Danes, which are describes as ‘askrs’ (a Scandinavian term) in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, were still the very same vessels they had used years ago. We have seen above how the king had organised his ship-building programme, how he had studied Viking ships captured by the Londoners at Hertford and other ships taken years before. But how would the allegedly taller and faster Anglo-Saxon ships of sixty oars (twice as long as the Danes’ vessels) fare when put to the test? The new ship type was built, as we have observed, ‘as it seemed to himself [Alfred] they might be most useful’.

  Six ships came to the Isle of Wight ‘and did great harm there, both in Devon and everywhere along the sea-coast’. We are not told where they had come from but the Northumbrian or East Anglian centres present the most likely source for these Danes. The king then ordered nine of his new ships ‘to go there’ and we are told that Alfred’s ships ‘got in front of them at the river mouth towards the open sea’. The Danes came out to the English with three of their six ships, while the remaining three, stood on dry land at the upper end of the river mouth–and the men were gone off up inland’. But where was this river mouth? Possible candidates for this locale have been put forward. They include the Exe Estuary in Devon (an area clearly recently attacked by the Danes) or Poole harbour in Dorset. The English ships are said to have captured two of the three ships at the entrance to the river mouth ‘and killed the men’. But one of the three ships got away. However, on this remaining ship only five Danes survived to sail their vessel away amid a sea of drowned men.

  This may sound like a victory for the English ships of Alfred’s brave new navy, but more action was to come. The one Danish ship that just about escaped a mauling had managed to do so due to the fact that many of the English ships
had run aground ‘very awkwardly’. Three English ships ran aground on the side of the channel that the three beached Danish ships were on, whereas what we must assume to have been the remaining six English ships ran hopelessly aground on the other side of the channel and were unable to play a part in the ensuing struggle.

  So, three English ships were aground, leaning on their sides near to where the Danish beached ships had been set. The crews of the Danish ships had been inland, but either very soon returned or had left a reasonable force in those three ships, because the chronicler says they set about the crews of the stranded English ships. The difference in disposition between the Danish and English ships is implied by the chronicler. The Danes, who had beached deliberately, almost certainly will have positioned their vessels to aid a quick get-away after the tide had ebbed. The English, however, simply ran aground, hence the reference to them being on their side.

  It was not a happy experience for Alfred’s sailors. Not all of them were English, either. It seems from the list of those killed in action, that Alfred had employed a good number of Frisians in his new navy. Famous for their sea-faring capabilities, the Frisians had been masters of the trade routes of the North Sea and English Channel for centuries. But here, on a bleak English shore the lives of some very high-ranking and beloved men to the king of the Anglo-Saxons perished at the hands of the Danes. Wulfheard the Frisian, Æbbe the Frisian and Æthelhere the Frisian accompanied many Englishmen in the list of the fallen to the number of sixty-two dead. But it was recorded that 120 Danes had perished as well. Two of the first three ships’ companies at the river mouth had been completely annihilated in what must have been a bloody encounter of close-quarter fighting on the decks.

  Back on the beach, at the scene of what will have looked like a pyrrhic Danish victory, efforts were being made to float the Danish vessels to effect an escape. Indeed, the chronicler recounts that the tide reached the Danish ships first, implying that they were able to float away earlier than the English. It is not known how many men were left on the Danish ships, but they managed to row out to sea and headed east again from where they had come. But the effects of the raging battle around their beached vessels must have been great indeed. ‘They were so damaged that they could not row past the land of Sussex’ is the dry assertion of the quill. Two of the ships foundered on the shores of the ancient Saxon kingdom, now comfortably absorbed into the kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons. The local Sussex men found the wretched Viking shipmen on their shore and took them to their king–a long and agonising march to Winchester. Here, the king of the Anglo-Saxons heard the story of the Danish audacity–of their destruction of some of the finest men in the king’s household and ordered every one of them to be hanged.

  But there was one wretched survivor of the swords and arrows of the great naval encounter. The one remaining ship of the Danes had limped back to its home in East Anglia. The Danes returned from their Wessex coastal expedition ‘very much wounded’. But had it been a success for Alfred’s new navy? Yes it had, but the cost was dear. The new ships of the English had foundered on the beach and their crews had not been able to get away as quickly as their enemy. The deeper draft of the English ships had let them down in this regard. Several of the English ships had run aground without hope of taking part in the battle. In this sense, it can be argued that the new naval arrangements in terms of ship design were a failure. But the purpose for which they were built–to out-man and out-manoeuvre the enemy–seems to have been proved a success by the emphatic victory of those first ships which intercepted the three fleeing Danish ships at the mouth of the channel. This was progress made in the truest of Anglo-Saxon styles: expensively, and at the edge of sword.

  991: The Battle of Maldon–an Invitation to Disaster?

  The poem The Battle of Maldon is of course extensively quoted in any work on Anglo-Saxon warfare. Without it, the record would simply show another defeat at the beginning of a series of English disasters at the dawn of the second age of Viking incursions. But with it, we are given a glimpse of the heroism of the age and find ourselves asking such searching cultural questions as to whether it really was possible in 991 for thegns to give their own lives in vengeance for the death of their lord, a seemingly idealistic and archaic concept. Another question that is often raised in respect of Maldon is why Byrhtnoth, the East Saxon ealdorman, allowed an advantageous situation to be forfeited for a level playing field. Some observations on a mixture of military necessities and political culture, as well as some obvious landscape issues, should provide the answer.

  But first, who actually fought at Maldon in 991? On the English side it is certain that the army was led by Byrhtnoth, ealdorman of the East Saxons (956–91), a man of long-standing service to the region. But on the Viking side the picture is not so clear. It is probable that Swein Forkbeard of Denmark and Olaf Tryggvason led the force opposing the English. There are even dark hints that a certain Æthelric of Bocking was treacherously planning to receive Swein on his arrival on the East Saxon shore. From the king’s confirmation of Æthelric’s will comes the grave accusation in a passage that hints at how the famous king may have got his long-remembered nickname of the ‘Unready’: ‘It was many years before Æthelric died that the king was told that he [Æthelric] was in the bad plan [‘unræd’] that Swein should be received in Essex when first he came thither with a fleet.’

  The Battle of Maldon came at the beginning of a new era of Scandinavian aggression in Britain. For years the Anglo-Saxon kings had been powerful enough to deter serious raiding activity and incursions. But now, after a series of small-scale opportunistic raids on various coastal settlements, there came to Folkestone in Kent a force of a size comparable with the period of the Great Heathen Army of the ninth century, if not even greater in number.

  The area around Folkestone was ravaged in the summer of 991. The difference this time was that the punishment was meted out by the crews of up to ninety-three ships. From here the force went to Sandwich and from there to Ipswich. On or around 10 August 991 the force sailed to Northey Island in the estuary of the River Blackwater. They had moored opposite the burh at the heart of the East Saxon patrimony, the burh of Maldon. Byrhtnoth had to do something about it. A narrow causeway links Northey Island to the mainland outside the modern town of Maldon. There are only a few hours between high tides when it is usable, just as it was then. Here, on the mainland side, there is flat ground where the battle itself took place. From the text of the poem it seems that Byrhtnoth ordered his men to dismount and go ahead on foot, then sent their horses to the rear. He was able to bring his army up to this area thus closing off any passageway for Viking troops coming across the causeway from Northey Island. Byrhtnoth then began to drill his men in an apparently rare example of Anglo-Saxon military training. When the ealdorman finally dismounted and joined his own personal hearthtroop of warriors a Viking messenger appeared and tried to extract tribute from the Saxons in return for not bringing battle, but Byrhtnoth heroically declined the offer. He ordered his shield wall to line the shore in readiness.

  The tide prevented both sides from coming at each other for some time. There then follows a curious defence of the causeway by the chosen brave Anglo-Saxon warriors Wulfstan, Ælfhere and Maccus, who when the waters had parted, slew the oncoming individual Vikings. Having observed this the Vikings chose a tactic of guile to gain the upper hand. They proposed to the ealdorman that they should be allowed to come across the causeway and form up on the mainland so that they could bring battle. Byrhtnoth is then criticised in the poem for allowing ‘too much land’ to the Vikings–an act of over-confidence it is said. A wonderful vision of Byrhtnoth marshalling his troops under skies swirling with circling ravens and the air thick with the shouts of men then follows. But why did he allow it to happen at all? We must understand where Byrhtnoth stood in the overall politics of his day. He was a regional ruler who had long service and was responsible for the defence of a large stretch of coastline. He may not have known of the s
edition of others, of their desire to betray the king to the Vikings. Furthermore, he may have already had to gather his forces only recently against a similar foe at the end of the very same causeway, if a strange yet seldom quoted entry in the twelfth-century Liber Eliensis is to believed: ‘Accordingly, at one time, when the Danes landed at Maldon, and he [Byrhtnoth] heard the news, he met them with an armed force and destroyed nearly all on the bridge over the water. Only a few of them escaped and sailed to their own country to tell the tale.’ This entry is not thought to be reliable. It is followed by the return (four years later) of the same defeated Viking force to Maldon. These men goad the East Saxon ruler into another fight, which lasts a seemingly impossible fourteen days and finally results in Byrhtnoth losing his head in the final push. It also mentions Byrhtnoth’s campaigns in Northumbria and the presence of a Northumbrian hostage in the ranks of the East Saxon army, which is supported by the text of the poem. But the point is not whether the Liber Eliensis is accurate or not. It is to do with the fact that the Battle of Maldon cannot have been an isolated incident in the long history of Byrhtnoth’s defence of the shore on behalf of his lord. We are missing a whole raft of political intrigue that is barely hinted at in the sources, but which allows us tentatively to conclude that Byrhtnoth allowed the Vikings into a pitched battle because it was vital that he won it, and probably expected to do so. The Life of St Oswald, written just a few years after the battle, mentions that the Viking casualties were so many that they had only a few men to crew their ships afterwards. It all points to a deliberately chosen war of attrition, a policy that cost Byrhtnoth his life, but which may have temporarily saved his lord’s kingdom.