The White Horse King: The Life of Alfred the Great

by Benjamin R. Merkle

  Swords and axes were more difficult to wield in such close quarters and tended to be reserved for hand-to-hand combat in the many smaller skirmishes that followed once the shieldwall had broken. It was possible, however, to use the bottom of the axe head to hook an opposing shield and pull it away to leave its owner vulnerable to a spear thrust. Additionally, many soldiers carried a sax, a much shorter sword with a blade of one to two feet. A sax could be much more easily wielded inside the tight confines of the shieldwall. Swords and axes may have also been useful for attacking the unprotected legs of the enemy, but the awkwardness of swinging such bulky weapons within the confines of the shieldwall, however, made the spear the weapon of choice.

  Though the Wessex shieldwall continued to hold, the casualties inflicted by the Viking attack began to mount. The Danish spear-men constantly wormed their deadly spears through the network of shields, searching for the tender flesh of the Wessex front rank. Each time the spear was driven home— sometimes with a deadly precision to the neck or abdomen, but more often catching some Saxon in a less vital area like the thigh or an unprotected shoulder—the wall was weakened by one. These wounds may not have been immediately fatal, but the pain and blood loss removed the soldier from the fight.2

  The Wessex line now required endurance and discipline to hold together throughout this cruel battle of bloody attrition. As each warrior fell, his place had to be filled quickly and willingly by the man standing immediately behind him. A moment’s hesitation, a moment of considering what price might be paid for filling that gap, and a hole was left open for a horde of Vikings to pour through the shieldwall, ending the battle. And once a man took a position in the front rank, there could be no turning back. He was woven into a wall of shields that utterly depended on his constant struggle to hold the line together.

  When a shieldwall did fail, it was almost inevitably not from the power of the attacking army, but from cowardice in the ranks of the shieldwall. If a man ripped himself from the wall and turned to run, it would trigger a chain reaction in all those around him, and the entire wall would dissolve in seconds. One man running from fear was far more damaging to the integrity of the wall than twenty men falling from stab wounds.

  The movements of the shieldwall were not coordinated from afar. Generals could not sit at a safe distance from the conflict sending messengers into the fray with orders for troop movements and changes of tactics. After the command to form the shieldwall had been given, the only leadership the soldiers required was the leadership of example. The commander joined his men, standing shoulder to shoulder with them throughout the gruesome conflict. While he stood and fought, they stood and fought. If he fell, a spirit of hopelessness would smother the spirit in his men, and the battle would immediately turn against them. If he fled, there was absolutely no reason for the men to stay and fight, so the battlefield would empty in moments. Alfred, though completely new to this responsibility, held his place and fought on, the wild boar rampaging across the slopes of Ashdown.

  And then without warning, the inexorable Viking assault suddenly dissolved. In one moment, the fierce and relentless barrage of Danish warriors vanished as if it had been a mirage. All that was left was a view of the backside of a panic-stricken mob fleeing for its life. It took several moments for Alfred and his men to recover from their amazement and to realize what had happened. Suddenly, it became clear.

  King Æthelred had finished his prayers.

  The Viking commanders had not realized that the Wessex troops they had engaged represented only half of the army they would be facing that day. Thus, when they had stood on the summit of Ashdown to 61 watch Alfred lead his meager force onto the slope below and form his men into a shieldwall, they confidently advanced the entirety of their army on that one small troop. Though they may have been surprised by the strength of the Wessex shieldwall during their initial assault, they were confident that their vastly superior numbers would enable them to win.

  With their sudden appearance, King Æthelred and his men not only removed the Viking advantage of outnumbering the men of Wessex but also were perfectly poised to attack the unprotected flank of the Viking shieldwall. The Vikings were utterly defenseless as the second half of the Wessex army charged onto the battlefield and drove straight for the vulnerable flank of the Viking line.

  The appearance, however, of Æthelred and his men did not signal an abrupt end of combat; rather, it meant a major transition in the nature of the fighting as the Vikings grew more and more desperate. The Danish shieldwall crumpled in seconds as astonishment at the sudden appearance of another Saxon army turned to raw fear. The Viking force, which had moved as one only moments before, now dissolved into a thousand bands of individual warriors no longer fighting to drive the Saxons from the battlefield but now merely trying to find a way to free themselves from the clutches of Wessex. Those who were able to hack their way free from the melee sprinted for the safety of the woods, but those who found themselves surrounded by the Saxon forces were forced to fight on in smaller, more chaotic, skirmishes. No longer encumbered by the shieldwall, the hand-to-hand combat turned to a more one-on-one style of fighting where each combatant relied solely on his own quickness of sword or axe and general cunning.

  The gruesome fighting continued for several hours until the entire Viking host had either fallen or fled and the men of Wessex once again dominated Ashdown. Those Vikings who fled were chased throughout that evening and into the next day, when they were finally able to find refuge behind the fortifications of Viking-held Reading. Those who fell in battle, numbering well into the thousands, became plunder for the victorious Anglo-Saxons.

  Possession of the battlefield meant much more than clear military triumph. It also meant the right to plunder the dead. Because the Viking force traveled with much of its wealth on its back, the booty that could be collected from the bodies of the fallen was substantial. As the dead were searched for coins, jewelry, and other portable wealth, the bodies of a number of Viking chieftains were discovered. Among the dead were the Viking king, Bagsecg, as well as five Viking earls—Earl Sidroc the Elder, Earl Sidroc the Younger, Earl Osbern, Earl Fræna, and Earl Harold.

  Once the battle was truly over, Æthelred and Alfred began to accept their victory. The enemy had been routed, leaving the corpses of thousands littering what the Anglo-Saxon tongue would refer to as “the place of slaughter.” The Viking leadership was well represented among the dead, and what was left of the raiding army had limped back to Reading. For that brief moment, it seemed as if the Creator had smiled upon them, and their fortunes could have been no better.

  But fortunes fade quickly. King Æthelred and his brother Alfred soon discovered that, despite the good name they had won on the slopes of Ashdown and the plunder the triumphant men of Wessex had carted off, the victory had cost the Saxon forces a price just as high as the price paid by the raiding army of Vikings. From the initial contact between the Viking foraging party and the small army led by Æthelwulf, the Berkshire ealdorman, to the great victory at Ashdown, the number of the Wessex slain throughout this campaign was equal to the significant casualties suffered by the Viking armies.

  The loss of life affected the Saxons differently than it did the Vikings, however. The Viking raiding army was filled with professional soldiers, men whose absence from home left no significant gap in the local economy. But the men of Wessex who had fallen in battle were not professional soldiers. They were farmers and craftsmen. When they failed to return from battle, crops failed and villages went hungry. Even those who returned from the battles victorious and unscathed still suffered loss. Their fields had been left untended too long. The work had piled up. Men who lived productive lives growing food for others and caring for the various needs of their villages could not afford to spend months of time wandering the countryside of Wessex, searching out the Danish bandits.

  The men of the raiding armies lived off theft and not labor. Their parasitic diet of pillage and plunder made it impossible
to stay behind the walls of Reading for any period of time. Thus the livelihood of Wessex depended on its troops returning home to work, while the livelihood of the raiding army depended on their continued ravaging of the countryside.

  In the days immediately following their tremendous victory, Æthelred and Alfred found it impossible to maintain an army large enough to follow up their hard-fought victory with an assault on the Viking stronghold in Reading. Having driven the Danes back to their makeshift fortress, one last decisive attack on the Viking camp would rid Wessex entirely of the raiding army, but the war-weary and wounded men of Wessex felt they had been absent from their home villages for far too long. During the next few days, an endless parade of men filed out of the Wessex camp, returning to the countless villages of the countryside.

  Soon Æthelred and Alfred were left with only a skeleton of an army, hardly the mighty force they had led to victory at Ashdown. Still, they moved their camp close to the Viking fortress at Reading and looked for opportunities to harass the Danes as they recovered from their wounds. For months, this meant primarily looking to intercept the smaller Viking scavenging parties as they scoured the countryside in search of supplies. Alfred spent the bulk of his time during these months leading smaller bands of Wessex soldiers on horseback, hunting for Danish plunderers in the environs surrounding Reading.

  Although the few brief hours of combat at the battle of Ashdown had taught him much about war, the following months offered him his first prolonged study of the people who were to become his lifelong nemeses. Day after day, he learned to transfer the skill of tracking and hunting the wild beasts of England’s woods, which he had honed throughout his youth, to the skill of tracking and hunting his enemy. He studied their customs and habits, what tactics were effective, and how to predict their movements. And he also studied the men whom Æthelred had entrusted to him—what motivated them, how to use their strengths most effectively, and what their greatest weaknesses were.

  Two things became clear during the course of Alfred’s studies. First, there was nothing superhuman about the Viking warrior. Alfred had seen clearly that an Anglo-Saxon warrior was more than capable of holding his own against a Viking combatant in an equal fight. Alfred had drawn Viking blood, and he knew he could kill them. But the second thing that became more and more apparent as the frigid winter months dragged on was that the inability of Wessex to keep a sizable force armed and prepared to fight was crippling their chances of overcoming the Viking invaders.

  This second lesson was driven home only two weeks after the battle of Ashdown. The Viking army ventured out once more in full force and began marching directly toward Winchester, the capital of Wessex. It is unlikely the Viking army really intended to strike at Winchester at this point, but the boldness of this move demanded that the severely weakened army of Wessex respond. Æthelred and Alfred led their men to intercept the advancing Vikings at Basing, nineteen miles south of Reading. Once more the two shieldwalls clashed. But this time the thinness of the Wessex wall would receive no miraculous reinforcements halfway through the battle. Despite a valiant effort to hold off the Viking advance, the shieldwall soon gave way, and the Saxons were forced to retreat in humiliation, conceding the place of slaughter to the raiding army.

  The defeat at Basing was a bitter disappointment and an ill portent of things to come. However, it was not an entirely devastating loss. The Viking troops were not able to pursue the Saxon troops and inflict the same kind of punishment on the Wessex soldiers as the Northmen had received at Ashdown. The Viking approach toward Winchester was halted at Basing, so the battle at Basing was not an 66 all-out loss. But Basing became just the first in a series of defeats that slowly pushed the Saxon forces backward as the Viking grip on the throat of Wessex tightened each week.

  Alfred continued to lead a small host of men to harass and harry the occasional Viking foraging parties, but he found it impossible to muster a force large enough to assault the fortifications at Reading and drive the Vikings completely off Wessex soil. Even worse, as the winter months came to an end and the spring sun climbed higher in the sky, the possibility grew that any day another wave of Danish troops might cross the channel to join the raiding army and try their luck at plundering Wessex.

  At this point, the perilous position of the nation of Wessex became more and more evident to Æthelred and Alfred. The fall of Northumbria and Essex, and the complete capitulation of Mercia, left Wessex standing defiantly alone against the Viking invaders. The precariousness of their position impressed upon the two brothers the constant need for an experienced and respected leader, whom all of Wessex could follow with complete loyalty. There was a real need to formalize on paper what might have already been assumed between the two brothers about the succession of the crown. Uncertainty on this point threatened to bring calamitous civil unrest if the king of Wessex should have an untimely death.

  With this concern in mind, a witan, a meeting of the wise men of Wessex, was summoned to Swinbeorg to discuss the succession of the crown. The witan provided the opportunity to receive the wisdom of the elders of the nation, without which no successful king of Wessex could rule. Here it was decided that, between Æthelred and Alfred, the brother to survive the longest would claim the throne for himself and his sons. Great care was taken to ensure provision for the sons of the brother who perished first. When their father, Æthelwulf, had died, he had divided a collection of private estates among each of his five sons.

  With Solomonic insight, it was decided before the witan that the brother to ultimately inherit the crown would ensure that the children of the deceased received the share of these estates that had been passed on to their father, as well as the share of the estates received by the still living, and then ruling, son. Essentially the brothers agreed that in exchange for the crown the surviving brother would forfeit a portion of his own inheritance to his nephews.

  Two months after Basing, a well-rested Viking army moved out once more in full force to challenge whatever troops Æthelred and Alfred were able to assemble. Despite the importance of spring work on the Saxon farms, a significant force gathered to Æthelred when the call to arms was given. Overtaking the Danes at Merton, the Saxons attempted to repeat their earlier tactic of splitting their men into two units, one commanded by Æthelred and the other by Alfred. Once more, the Saxon shieldwall stood stouthearted and ready for the battle rush. Once more, they drove their ashen spears hard into the enemy line with a deafening crack and a roar of righteous wrath.

  Again the two foes stood within a few feet of one another, stabbing and slashing at every piece of flesh or bone left unprotected or uncovered in the shieldwall. With blow after earthshaking blow, the two armies worked at one another like blacksmiths, hammering away defiantly at one another’s iron will. And once more, after hours of deadly diligence, the Viking line began to crumble. Just as before, after the Viking line began to break, the entire Danish horde sprinted from the battlefield, leaving the weary Saxons elated in their exhaustion.

  But unlike before, the Viking retreat was only temporary. The Saxon forces, failing to press the retreat hard and drive the running soldiers into the sort of frenzied panic they had achieved at Ashdown, had thought their victory was sealed and relaxed their pursuit. The flood of Danes streaming from the battlefield began to slow and form again into another shieldwall, and the retreat turned into a regrouping. Soon the jubilation of the temporarily triumphant Saxons dissolved, and they began frantically reforming their shield-wall to hold off another swelling attack. Again the Viking crush rushed over the Saxon shieldwall, and, like the successive waves of an incoming tide, this second breaker came harder and stronger than before. The shield-wall shivered and splintered, and the men of Wessex lost hope in one chaotic instant.

  Æthelred and Alfred lost all control of their men as the entire Wessex army fled madly, leaving the Viking host the proud masters of the place of slaughter. In the panicked retreat, countless Saxons were cut down. By the time the field ha
d cleared, the ground was littered with the dead, both Viking and Saxon. Most tragically for the people of Wessex, the good bishop of Sherborne, Bishop Heahmund, was among the dead on the field of the slain.3 But even more seriously, when Alfred was finally able to find his brother in the panicked retreat, he discovered that Æthelred had been gravely wounded.

  During the next several weeks, Æthelred’s condition grew worse and worse. Weakened from the initial loss of blood, the king’s body now slowly began to succumb to the infections that swelled his gory wounds. The leeching of the court healers, though likely well-intentioned, did little to reverse his gradual decline into a tormented and feverish delirium. As the fallen king’s cuts turned septic, the festering wounds reopened again and again, spilling blood and puss, and giving off a suffocating stench. Though those who cared for him gave themselves to hopeful prayer for his recovery, the certain death of the king loomed over the court of Wessex.

  Under the shadow of this morbid expectation, Alfred greeted the Easter of 871. The grim mood of the Wessex court could have easily made celebrating a festival such as Easter nearly impossible, but there was a certain resonance between Alfred’s personal story and the gospel narrative declared in the Easter liturgy. Easter promised a hope beyond death. In fact, Easter promised a hope that came as a direct result of death. Easter told the story of one man’s fatal sacrifice, a sacrifice that conquered death by first seeming to give in to death. At Easter, Alfred was reminded of a resurrection that undid all the suffering of death.

  Taking this message to heart might have changed how Alfred interpreted the state of Wessex. Perhaps even in this time of terrible darkness, even as all of Wessex was slowly engulfed by an ever-advancing godless foe, even as the king of Wessex writhed in a fatal agony, perhaps God was about to bring about a resurrecting deliverance in their midst.