The White Horse King: The Life of Alfred the Great

by Benjamin R. Merkle

  Sensing that a renewed Viking attack on his nation was imminent, Alfred ensured that the borders of Wessex were carefully watched. This meant a vigilant watch over all the possible avenues of approach, including the vulnerable southern coastline. With this in mind, he worked hard at developing a small naval force that might be able to fend off some of the smaller Viking attacks.

  In the year 875, Alfred received word of a Viking fleet approaching the shores of Wessex. To Alfred’s relief, there were only seven ships in this small raiding army. Clearly the goal of this fleet was plunder and not conquest. Nevertheless, Alfred personally led the ships of Wessex to intercept the Viking boats. In this brief engagement, one Viking ship was captured, and the other six were put to flight. The victory was small, but sweet. The following year, a much more formidable attack was launched against Wessex. This time the intention was not merely looting and plundering but all-out conquest.

  In the year 876, the Viking king, Guthrum, leader of the Danish forces occupying East Anglia, led his army out of Cambridge under the cover of darkness and began a hasty march toward Wessex. Combining the secrecy of swift nighttime marches with a route carefully chosen to minimize any encounters with the forces of Wessex, Guthrum was able to lead his Danish army, virtually unnoticed, through the heart of Wessex all the way to the southern coast. Whatever improvements Alfred had made to Wessex’s ability to respond to a raiding army, they were proved utterly futile by this one march. By the time Alfred received word of the Danish intrusion and began to muster his army in response, Guthrum had already seized the strategically located town of Wareham and begun to fortify his position against Saxon attacks.

  Once again, the Vikings had chosen an ideally located position for their base of operations. Wareham was bounded on the north by the river Tarrant and on the south by the river Frome. The two rivers merged just past the city, on the eastern side, and then dumped into Poole Bay. These waterways provided highly effective defenses on three of the city’s four sides and offered passage to Viking longboats, the preferred means of travel for the Danish raiders striking deep into the heart of Wessex and of providing reinforcement from the sea. The western side of the city was defended by one long earthen rampart. Wareham was the site of an ancient Anglo-Saxon convent, which meant it offered the sort of undefended ecclesiastical wealth the Vikings so appreciated, as well as a number of highly productive farms. Between the two rivers and Wareham’s earthen fortifications, the Vikings had access to around one hundred acres of land. Guthrum had chosen his beachhead well.

  Alfred arrived with the army of Wessex shortly after Guthrum’s men had settled into their new fortress. The fact that the Vikings had been able to march straight through the heart of Wessex, reaching all the way to the southern coast, and then capture and fortify a village before the Wessex fyrd was able to form was clear proof of how fatally flawed the fyrd system had become. By the time Alfred’s men arrived, Guthrum had dug in and was more than prepared to resist any assault on the well-defended town of Wareham.

  Remembering the disastrous attack that Æthelred and Alfred had launched against the Viking fortifications at Reading, Alfred was hesitant to begin another assault on the rampart of Wareham. He chose instead to lay siege to Wareham, cutting off the Danes’ ability to send out foraging parties and hoping to starve the Vikings out of their new lair. But it soon became apparent that Guthrum was far too well prepared. The Vikings were amply supplied and, much like the earlier episode at Nottingham, were likely to outlast the Wessex fyrd.

  If Alfred was to make any headway against this force, he would need to choose another approach very soon, for two reasons. First, the Wessex fyrd could only be kept in the field for a short period. Soon their supplies would dwindle, and the need for the men of Wessex to return to their fields and shops would begin to sap away the strength of the Saxon shieldwall. Second, Alfred had a very ominous foreboding about Guthrum’s strategy. The Danish king had clearly chosen a position easily reached from the sea and well connected to the waterways of Wessex. Why would he choose what was clearly a naval base when he had come with land forces? Wareham was the perfect stronghold for a ship army. But where were the ships? Alfred knew that at any moment swarms of Viking longboats were likely to arrive, bringing thousands of Danish warriors, doubling or tripling Guthrum’s army and killing any possibility the men of Wessex had of repelling this attack. Guthrum must be driven from Warehem immediately.

  Alfred’s desperation showed in the approach he finally chose. Once more, he paid the danegeld. Of course this wasn’t the sort of tactic that could work over any extended period of time, but it was enough to extract Guthrum and his troop from Wareham. It should also be pointed out that, as disastrous as paying the danegeld had been for East Anglia and Mercia, Alfred’s previous payment had been temporarily successful. It had seemed to buy a few years of peace.

  Alfred clearly felt uneasy about this payment and made two extra demands as he negotiated the Viking withdrawal. First, the two armies exchanged hostages. A selection of Wessex men were taken into captivity by Guthrum, and Alfred chose an assortment of the most distinguished Danish noblemen to remain with him. These hostages were to ensure that the two kings honored their pledges to one another. If Guthrum failed to keep his end of the peace bargain, then Alfred would be free to exact his revenge on the Viking hostages, and vice versa.

  Second, Alfred insisted that when Guthrum swore to withdraw his men, he must do so on the pagan relic that he held most dear, the holy ring of Thor. Fully aware that the Danish pagans had no respect whatsoever for the Christian God, Alfred was groping for something that might hold the Danish king to his vow. The ring of Thor, a large gold armband often worn on the chieftain’s arm, was used by the Vikings when they swore oaths to one another. That Alfred would resort to a pagan relic was a clear sign of his deep desperation.

  Alfred soon learned that an oath sworn to Thor meant no more to pagan Guthrum than it did to Christian Alfred. In the middle of one night, Guthrum cut the throats of all the Wessex hostages whom he had taken, mounted his entire army on horseback, and slipped out of Wareham. Completely ignoring his pledge to leave Wessex, 86 Guthrum rode hard and fast, straight to the city of Exeter, another easily fortified city sitting on the bank of the river Exe on the southern coast of Wessex. From Exeter, Guthrum could easily continue a lengthy campaign of conquest.

  Alfred pursued the Danish troops with his own small mounted force, but he was too late. By the time he had reached Exeter, Guthrum had already taken the town, and the Danes were fattening themselves on the fresh provisions of their new fortress. Then, to make matters worse, Alfred received news that an enormous Viking fleet was moving along the southern coast of Wessex. Several thousand more Danish soldiers would soon be sailing up the river Exe to join Guthrum in his conquest of Wessex. With these troops, the Viking conquest of Wessex would be inevitable.

  The fate of Wessex was all but sealed. Once this new navy joined forces with Guthrum, it would be impossible to drive the Danes from their freshly fortified stronghold in Exeter. Though Alfred’s navy had been successful in repelling an earlier Viking fleet, that fleet had consisted of a mere seven ships. This new naval force was more than twenty times that size and far too large for Alfred to engage ship-to-ship. Only a miracle could prevent Wessex from being overrun by this pagan force.

  And that was exactly what Alfred was given—a miracle. As the Viking longboats sailed along the southern coast, a terrible storm struck the fleet just off the shore of Swanage. Much like the great gale that was to deliver England from the invading Spanish Armada some seven centuries later, this tempest smashed the Danish ships to pieces on the perilously rocky coast of Dorset. Some accounts describe a thick mist that swallowed the ships and led them blindly to be dashed on the treacherous shores. In that one calamitous storm, 120 ships of the Viking fleet sank. Assuming that each of these ships was manned by an average of thirty men, this would have cost the Vikings thirty-six hundred men—a catastrophic lo
ss. For Alfred, this storm was clearly nothing other than divine deliverance.

  Once news of this disaster reached Guthrum, it was immediately obvious to the Danish king that his tactics must be altered. No longer intent on the conquest of Wessex, his aim now was to bargain for safe passage out of Alfred’s kingdom, for himself and his men. Alfred, having already been burned by the Viking’s duplicity in making vows for peace, was certainly dubious about how faithful Guthrum would be in keeping his vows. The Danish army’s predicament gave the Wessex king enough reason to believe that Guthrum had no realistic opportunity for waging a campaign against Wessex. The two kings exchanged vows of peace once more. Alfred chose a great number of hostages from the Viking court but seems to have given no hostages of his own. Alfred did make one fairly significant concession to the raiding army, however, allowing them to remain in Exeter throughout the winter, all the way until the beginning of harvest, somewhere around the first week of August 877.

  At first Guthrum proved true to his vows. At the beginning of harvest, he withdrew his troops from Exeter and marched north to Mercia, where the puppet king Ceolwulf still ruled. Settling down in Mercian Gloucester, Guthrum then demanded of Ceolwulf that he divide up the Mercian kingdom, portioning out many of the Mercian shires to his own Viking noblemen for settlement. In doing so, Guthrum was following the example of Halfdan, who had similarly divided up Northumbria the previous year and had even begun tilling and harvesting the newly seized farmland.

  In Gloucester, the Danes ravaged the countryside and drove out the Mercians, who were unprotected by their Viking-appointed king. Western Mercia was divided up into five boroughs and given to Guthrum’s noblemen to settle and rule. Eastern Mercia, with the exception of Gloucester, remained under the authority of Ceolwulf, provided he continue to take his orders from Guthrum.

  From Wessex, it was difficult for Alfred to interpret Guthrum’s settlement in Mercia. On one hand, this new trend among the Viking kings of settling in permanent dwellings and beginning to farm the land might signal a dwindling interest in plundering and raiding, which might result in a welcome rest from the regular Viking raids. On the other hand, a Viking army settled in Mercia left a potential raiding army permanently poised on Wessex’s northern border, capable of being reinforced and resupplied easily from the rear. This move might actually be a greater cause for alarm for Wessex. Alfred opted for this second interpretation. Clearly, the continuing existence of Wessex, the one Saxon kingdom left standing against the Danish invaders, constituted a significant threat to the Viking occupation of England.

  Alfred was now familiar enough with Guthrum’s tactics to know that another invasion could be expected at any moment, which meant that Guthrum must be be closely watched. Though the fyrds of Wessex could not be kept permanently mobilized to wait for a Viking attack, Alfred was able to move a small troop of professional soldiers, a sort of advanced guard, to the royal estate at Chippenham on the banks of the river Avon in Wiltshire. With its close proximity to the border of Mercia, Chippenham was well situated for keeping an eye on Guthrum’s troops and offered Alfred the ability to respond quickly to any suspicious Viking movements. If Guthrum began moving south again, Alfred would be ready to summon the fyrds of Wessex immediately and cut him off at the borders of Wessex.

  Even though Alfred had learned much about his Viking opponent, Guthrum had learned more. First, Guthrum was now well practiced at striking in unexpected and undefended places by moving swiftly and silently through the territories of Wessex. This had been demonstrated with vicious clarity when he had crossed Wessex from north to south without raising any alarm and attacked the unsuspecting town of Wareham on the southern coast. Second, Guthrum had learned something of the Christian calendar and how it could be used by the Vikings to predict moments of weakness in the Saxon defenses. For instance, in AD 866, Ivar and Haldan had launched their attack on unsuspecting York on All Saints’ Day, a day when the city, distracted by the celebration of the holiday, was least prepared to resist the attack.

  While Guthrum seemed to be orchestrating the settlement of Mercia, he was also industriously bringing his army back up to full strength for another attack on Wessex. Bringing in new recruits from the continent and men from the Northumbrian campaign, the Danish king was soon able to make up for the thousands of men lost off the shores of Dorset when the one hundred twenty Viking ships were lost in the storm.

  Within a few short months of leaving Exeter, Guthrum had his army fully reinforced and, despite the wintery season, drove south bent on conquest. Moving swiftly and completely unnoticed, Guthrum crossed the border of Wessex, breaking his vows of peace to Alfred at Exeter, and marched straight to Chippenham and straight toward Alfred. This time, Guthrum was not searching for a quick and easy raiding target, nor was he looking for a chance to draw the Wessex army out into open battle. This time, Guthrum aimed straight for Alfred, planning to decapitate the king in the hopes that without the powerful and unifying figure of Alfred, the kingdom would much more easily capitulate to Guthrum’s rule.

  Guthrum’s attack was timed to coincide with the holiday of Twelfth Night, January 6, taking advantage of the distraction that the festivities of the holiday provided. Twelfth Night was the culmination of the Christmas season, a season that started with solemn reflection and prayer on Christmas Day and then slowly grew in mirth and merriment during the following twelve days, until the Twelfth Night, the eve of Epiphany, when the entire season ended with a great feast and much drinking of wassail.1 It was a night of feasting and gift giving. It was to be celebrated by king and by peasant; no one was to be excluded. It was a night when, as a result of the Wessex merrymaking, the fortifications of Chippenham were left virtually unguarded, a moment well chosen by Guthrum.

  Caught by surprise and possessing a force too small to withstand a full Viking raiding army,the citizens of Chippenham were easily overrun. The astonished Alfred was forced to retreat from Chippenham with his family and bodyguards to the countryside of Wiltshire until he could summon the fyrds and face Guthrum in combat.

  But Guthrum moved too quickly. After seizing Chippenham, the Vikings convinced the ealdorman of Wiltshire, Ealdorman Wulfhere, to break his allegiance to Alfred and pledge his loyalty to Guthrum. Once Wulfhere had gone over to Guthrum, Alfred was cut off from the ordinary means of summoning the Wiltshire fyrd to battle, leaving Alfred defenseless.

  Many other nobles of Wessex immediately sensed the impending annihilation of the last Saxon kingdom, so they followed the opportunistic example of Wulfhere, betraying their king and taking oaths of submission to Guthrum. Others, sensing the impossibility of the situation, took their cue from Burgred, the Mercian king, and fled to the European continent for refuge. It seemed inevitable that Wiltshire, Somerset, and Hampshire would soon be ravaged by the Viking raiders. The leadership of Wessex was in total disarray, leaving Alfred without any of the necessary means of communication to summon the fyrds of Wessex. Guthrum, without even fighting one pitched battle, had become the effective ruler of Wessex. And Alfred was forced to take his small group of faithful followers much deeper into hiding until a plan for striking back could be formed.

  The following days would be the darkest Alfred would face, the true low point of his reign. Descriptions of Alfred during this time always emphasize the desperate solitude suffered by the king during these lonely months. He had been driven from his throne and betrayed by a number of his trusted friends. Those friends who had remained loyal in their friendship had become inaccessible to the wandering outcast king. Cut off from his throne, his court, and his armies, Alfred, betrayed and abandoned, wandered in the moors, wastelands, and fens of Wessex, moving into the marshes and woods of Somerset.

  Refusing to abandon his kingdom, Alfred selected an ideal location from which he could continue to wage a campaign of guerrilla warfare resistance against Guthrum until Alfred had the opportunity to raise an army to face the Viking in all-out battle. Although these were easily the darkest days in Alfre
d’s life, they also were to become the most famous. The stories of his persevering against the Vikings transformed King Alfred into Alfred the Great.

  The story falls into a category that the modern ear can easily recognize and appreciate. From the legends of Robin Hood hiding out with his band of merry men in Sherwood Forest to the tales of men fighting in the underground French resistance during World War II, the modern listener has been well trained to be moved by the courageous nobility of continuing a campaign of resistance long after being driven into hiding. The seeming despair of a life of defiant resistance, while being hunted in one’s homeland, captures the imagination and takes on a romantic hue. But this was not a category of story that the Anglo-Saxon ear was accustomed to hearing. To his contemporaries, Alfred’s plight was an unqualified tragedy, utterly devoid of romanticism.

  Understanding the weight of Alfred’s plight requires a bit of knowledge concerning the ideals of the Anglo-Saxon society: the king sat enthroned, not on a gaudy gold contraption that signaled the distance between his subjects and him, but on the mead bench, pushed up to a long table, surrounded on all sides by his faithful warriors, the men who stood next to him in the shieldwall throughout all of his campaigns, his thegns. This table was piled high with fruits and vegetables from the farms of Wessex and laden with the flesh of roasted boar, venison, and beef. An enormous horn was passed around the table. The horn was gilded, crusted with gems, and overflowing with mead—the sweet, intoxicating honey wine of the Anglo-Saxon warriors. An enormous fire in the center of the spacious room warmed the raucous crowd late into the evening.