Let's talk about arguably the most important ruler in the history of Anglo-Saxon England, Alfred the Great. His name is well deserved, for he saved England from being totally overrun by the Vikings, and touched off an intellectual and religious renaissance in England that has justly been compared with the Carolingian renaissance on the continent. In fact, we could in many ways call him the English Charlemagne. These achievements are so important that I will spend two lectures discussing them.
In this lecture, I will focus on Alfred as a military leader, and in a later lecture, I will focus on Alfred as a scholar in his own right, and as a supporter of other scholars, all of whom were motivated by a deep Christian faith. Alfred's reputation has varied over time. It has never really been anything but positive. But during the century or so after his death, he was somewhat overshadowed by several of his successors, whose military achievements may have seemed on the surface to be more spectacular. From the 19th century on, though, Alfred's reputation has grown.
Historians developed a deep appreciation for how important it was that Alfred held the line against further Viking gains. As we've seen, Though Wessex had suffered its share of Viking attacks, there had been some victories as well as defeats. The kingdom was under threat, but intact.
And another bright spot was the continuing alliance with Mercia. In 853, Alfred's father, Aethelwulf, helped Mercia suppress a revolt in Wales, and Aethelwulf gave his daughter in marriage to Borgred, the king of Mercia. Things seemed fine for now. But the transition from Aethelwulf to a successor was messy.
One of the trickiest aspects of monarchy has always been what to do with the king-in-waiting while he is waiting to be king. We have already seen some clashes between kings and their royal sons in other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, and that dynamic would repeat itself in Wessex now. One way to keep a son and heir busy was to hive off some part of the kingdom for him to rule as a sub-king. Aethelwulf himself had served as the sub-king of Kent under his father before taking the throne. But it turns out that the system of appointing a sub-king had its flaws.
Some royal princes, when given a sub-kingdom, wanted to take the whole thing. It all started out fine. When Athelwulf became king in 839, he appointed his oldest son Athelstan as sub-king of Kent, and everyone just moved up one place in line.
But Athelstan died at some point after 851, and was succeeded as sub-king of Kent by the second brother, Athelbald. In 855, Athelwulf decided to go on a pilgrimage to Rome. This was something of a tradition for Anglo-Saxon kings, especially kings of Wessex, dating all the way back to the 7th century, though none of them had been secure enough to risk the long journey for quite some time.
Yet Athelwulf trusted his son's loyalty enough to leave him in charge of Wessex when he departed on a journey that would keep him out of the kingdom for over a year. The sub-kingdom of Kent was put in the hands of the next brother down the line. Athelbert.
And if you're wondering about these names, Athel in Old English means noble, so it was a common prefix for names of those of royal lineage. Young Alfred, the only one of six siblings not to receive the Athel prefix, accompanied his father on the pilgrimage. One remarkable fact about Alfred to start out with is the very improbability of his ever becoming king.
He had four older brothers. The oldest died while their father was still alive, and the other three served as kings of Wessex in succession, but all of them died prematurely. It is easy in a sense to see how it could have seemed like God's will that Alfred should rule Wessex. And one other thing you can say for Alfred, he never gave up, even in the face of seemingly insurmountable challenges. He was just five at the time of the journey to Rome, but it must have made a strong impression on the young prince.
When they arrived in Rome, Athelwulf distributed royal largesse and helped fund the creation of a hostel for English pilgrims in Rome. He met with the pope and other dignitaries and generally cut a consequential figure. On the way back, the Wessex party stopped off to meet Charles the Bald.
ruler of the western part of the Carolingian Empire. The trip was an enormous diplomatic success, for Athelwulf left with a new bride, Judith, the daughter of Charles the Bald. Now, this is an interesting change from the situation we saw under the reign of Offa of Mercia, when Charles's grandfather Charlemagne would not dream of marrying off one of his daughters to the son of an Anglo-Saxon ruler. But Charles was facing Viking attacks on his coasts, and since Aethelwulf had had some successes against the Vikings, Charles may have thought it would be a good idea to widen the network of Carolingian alliances.
To emphasize the importance of this marriage, Judith was crowned Queen of Wessex and anointed. This was unusual in the traditions of both Wessex and the Frankish Empire. It was a first time ever. that a woman had been anointed. And for reasons that are lost to history, Wessex had the custom of not calling the wife of the king by the title of queen.
A rude surprise was awaiting the royal bridegroom when he finally returned home. For unbeknownst to Aethelwulf, word that a new queen of Wessex had been anointed and crowned had reached the kingdom's shores, and his caretaker son Aethelwold flipped out. This marriage, with its various ceremonial add-ons, was a potential threat to Athelbald's position as heir apparent to the kingdom of Wessex, because all of a sudden you have a queen of Wessex with the blood of Charlemagne flowing in her veins.
She was young enough to produce more sons for the king, and Athelbald probably feared, with some justification, that she would attempt to displace him from the succession. in favor of any sons she might have. So when Athelwulf arrived home, Athelbald refused to give the reins of power in Wessex back to his father.
In the end, father and son agreed to divide the rule between them, with Athelbald retaining the western part of the domain and Athelwulf the eastern part. The situation was hardly stable, but it was resolved in 858 when the old king died. What do we know about the young Alfred returning to this divided kingdom? Our picture of Alfred is very much colored by the biography written by the Welsh monk Asser in the early 890s, when Alfred had been on the throne for two decades. There has been some debate among scholars in the past about whether Asser really wrote the biography, but nowadays it is generally accepted that he did write it, and that he had access not just to Alfred himself.
but to people at court who told him stories about Alfred as a child and young man. That does not mean, of course, that everything in the biography is true. It has clearly been shaped to make the point that Alfred was destined for greatness from an early age. Asser makes a very big deal out of a journey that Alfred made to Rome even before he accompanied his father on pilgrimage.
While Alfred was in Rome, The pope seems to have performed some sort of ceremony involving the young Alfred that was interpreted by much later historians as an anointing. This was probably a case of after-the-fact analysis, once Alfred became king. But still, the fact that the pope had marked the young boy out for special attention certainly left a deep impression both on Alfred himself and on his contemporaries.
Alfred was still a young child when he returned to Wessex with his father from his second trip to Rome, and thus he played no part in the machinations between his father, Athelwulf, and his brother, Athelbald. And Alfred is not mentioned in the sources during the brief reigns of Athelbald, who died in 860, and the next brother in line, Athelbert, who died in 865. By this point, only two of the original five sons of Athelwulf were still living. The next brother, Æthelred, took the throne, and Alfred, by now aged 16, became his indispensable right-hand man. In Asser's biography, Alfred is called secundarius, which probably designated some kind of official status as the next in line to the throne. And Wessex certainly benefited from the harmonious relationship between the brothers, which marked a contrast with the strife of the last years of his father's reign.
It's a good thing that King Athelred had his little brother Alfred to help him, because, as we saw in an earlier lecture, the 860s were a perilous time for all the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, as the great heathen army roamed pretty much at will, bringing Mercia, Northumbria, and East Anglia to their knees. In 868, Alfred fought on behalf of his brother to support Mercia's effort to repel the army, but Mercia capitulated. At around the same time, Alfred strengthened the Mercian alliance by marrying Eyjafjallajökull, daughter of the Mercian nobleman Æthelred Mughal, whose mother belonged to the Mercian royal family, and they eventually had five children together. But the army then set its sights on Wessex, arriving there in late 870. Much of the year 871 was spent in battles with the Vikings, some of which were victories.
while others were defeats. An important victory came when Alfred and his brother defeated the Viking commanders Bagsek and Halfdan at the Battle of Ashdown around January 8, 871. The modern location of this battle is unknown, but it's thought to be in Berkshire. The Vikings had the advantage in this battle because they took the field first and commanded the high ground.
This is almost always the best position to be in. especially when you are deploying a shield wall. The Vikings divided their forces into two contingents, and so the men of Wessex did the same, with one force led by the king and one by Alfred.
The king decided to stay in his tent praying before coming out to fight, but Alfred led his contingent in a charge up the hill at one of the Viking forces, where the two shield walls clashed and the men of Wessex prevailed. The king then joined in the fray, completing the route, and the Vikings fled the field. Now, we get the account of the battle from Asser's biography, and modern historians think it's possible that Alfred's role has been exaggerated, and that his brother's arrival at the battle was more decisive than Asser makes it out to be. In any case, though, the royal brothers had worked very well together, and Alfred had certainly proved his courage on the battlefield.
Charging up a hill at a shield wall of Vikings was no joke. But Alfred was soon leading the armies on his own, because shortly after Easter in 871, King Athelred died. Very improbably, Alfred, the fifth son of his father, was now king. Now, he did have living nephews, the sons of his recently deceased brother. But in the face of an ongoing Viking threat, a minor on the throne seemed like a bad idea.
And in fact, Alfred and Æthelred had agreed on this plan before the latter's death, with the understanding that Alfred's nephews would succeed Alfred in place of Alfred's own sons. This would cause trouble later on when Alfred repudiated that stipulation. But for now, Alfred was on the throne of Wessex, and he had all he could do to keep the throne, since the Vikings were relentless.
Shortly after becoming king, Alfred suffered a major defeat and had to make peace with the Vikings. Under the terms of the agreement, which are not recorded, the Vikings withdrew from Wessex and occupied London. We can surely infer that they were paid to go away, as per usual. And we get at least a bit of material support for this theory from the presence of Viking hordes in London that contained coins from Wessex dating to this period.
For the next five years, Wessex had a bit of a respite while the Vikings were occupied elsewhere. But in 876, they went on the offensive again. Then, in January of 878, came a pivotal moment in Alfred's reign. when the Vikings made a surprise attack on the Wessex royal court at Chippenham, while Christmas festivities were still in progress.
Many were killed, while Alfred escaped, but he was forced to go into hiding in the marshes of Athelni, with only a few trusted retainers for support. With its leadership now scattered, Wessex was on the verge of falling to the Vikings. This is the period when the most famous legend about Alfred is set. And I stress it is a legend. It does not appear in writing until a hundred years later.
We should take it with a pinch of salt. But the story does capture an essential truth about Alfred's reign. According to the legend, Alfred was sheltering in the hut of a local peasant family, and he had concealed his identity to prevent being betrayed to the enemy. The woman of the house asked him, one presumes with some degree of forcefulness, to keep an eye on the cakes she was baking while she attended to other chores.
But while she was out, He fell to ruminating about his situation and how best to restore the fortunes of his people. Alas, the cakes started burning, and just then the peasant woman returned, noticed the burning cakes, and rebuked Alfred for his neglect. Instead of responding in anger, don't you realize who you're talking to? He accepted the justice of the rebuke and apologized. The story thus gives us a humble king.
But it also catches him in the act of planning what the reader knows to have been his successful comeback, because Alfred certainly did not give up. He rallied whatever forces he could from the surrounding area, trained his men, and led them in a guerrilla war against the Vikings until he could increase his strength. In early May of 878, he summoned the men of Wessex to the so-called Egbert Stone, named for his royal grandfather, where the fyrd, or militia, of three shires, or counties, assembled. They went up against the Vikings and their commander, Guthrum, at the Battle of Eddington, somewhere in Wiltshire. Alfred defeated them and then pursued them to their camp.
He couldn't destroy them, so they were going to be a factor going forward, meaning he had to come to some sort of arrangement with them. So Alfred did what Christian rulers often did in this period when confronted with pagan enemies. He forced the leader of the Vikings to convert to Christianity. So what were the terms of the agreement between Alfred and Guthrum? They are preserved in a text of the treaty written in Old English.
The most basic part of the agreement was that Guthrum had to leave Wessex and return to his base in East Anglia. But one of the most interesting provisions concerned the basis on which the two sides were supposed to regulate disputes between them. You will recall from an earlier lecture that the foundation of the legal system among the various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms was the wereguild, the compensation price that was paid to the relatives of the victim of a crime. And as you may recall, in Wessex, the price of a person of British ethnicity was half that of a man of Wessex.
Well, when Alfred made the agreement with Guthrum, the terms stipulated that each side was to pay the same wergild to the other. That is, they were to be considered to be on an equal footing. There were also provisions to try to prevent the slaves of each side from running away to the other side, and to make sure that transactions were handled in an above-board way.
The treaty thus endeavored to set up a system of peaceful coexistence between the men of Alfred and Guthrum. Arguably, the most important aspect of the peace between the two leaders was the fact that Guthrum accepted Christian baptism, with Alfred standing as godfather. It's hard to know how much Alfred really believed that such a conversion would be sincere, as there's plenty of evidence that pagans who were forced into these sorts of battlefield conversions tended to relapse into their former beliefs.
There are other cases in which the pagans did not seem to have grasped the meaning of the conversion ceremony, or at least not to have taken it as seriously as it was intended. On the continent, there was a famous episode in which the same pagans kept presenting themselves for baptism over and over, because baptism brought with it the receipt of a white garment. And they thought this was a great way to score extra clothes.
Alfred was a very sincere Christian, of course, so he may have hoped that God would change Guthrum's heart. And in Guthrum's case, the conversion seems to have stuck, at least outwardly. Guthrum did settle down to rule the territory allotted to him under the agreement, with Alfred more or less peacefully thereafter. But we should keep in mind that an agreement with one Viking was not an agreement with all Vikings. There would be more trouble to come.
later in Alfred's reign. And Alfred knew this was a possibility. So he spent much of the decade and a half following the Battle of Eddington preparing Wessex to withstand further Viking attacks.
Recognizing that traditional Anglo-Saxon military organization was no match for the Viking threat, Alfred comprehensively reorganized the military capacity of Wessex in three areas. Its armies, its defensive network, and its navy. First, the army. Traditionally, the fird had to be called out when the king needed it, which meant that a message went around to all the shires with a summons to appear at a certain location on a certain day. This was a perfectly fair system if you were heading out on a mission to patrol the boundary with Mercia or some similar task, or when you were preparing ahead for a planned attack or defense.
But it was too cumbersome and slow to respond to the kind of surprise attack that the Vikings typically mounted. So Alfred reorganized the Ferd so that half of the members were assembled at any one time as a kind of permanent mobile field force that was available to spring into action whenever the Vikings showed up. The other half would be tending their crops, and the two halves would rotate, so that the kingdom always had adequate defense and adequate provision for agriculture.
Next, the burrs, which were a series of fortifications throughout the kingdom that were designed to make it easier to withstand the highly unpredictable Vikings. The word burr just means fortress, and we see it today in place names throughout the lands where Germanic languages are spoken. Edinburgh, Bamberg, Hamburg. Pittsburgh, etc.
Many of these cities had their origin in fortifications, although those beginnings are often obscure now. Alfred took some existing sites that had previously been Iron Age hillforts or Roman settlements and then systematically added to them, making sure that each site was about evenly spaced out from the others so that there would be a roughly comparable travel time between them and that all the fortresses were located in easily defensible spots, taking maximum advantage of the local terrain. In particular, he sighted many of the forts along navigable rivers. He also worked out in tremendous detail how each burr should be laid out, what the dimensions of the defensive walls needed to be, and exactly how many soldiers were needed to defend those walls. We get a sense of what a hands-on and detail-oriented ruler Alfred really was.
And critically, he calculated how much was needed in taxation to fund all of these burghs. Indeed, Alfred's reforms of the taxation system were necessary foundations for a new expanded system of forts. We know about his new taxation system from a remarkable document known as the Burgle Hideage.
This document specified the payments needed to support the burghs. In order to pay for the burghs, Alfred levied a tax on each hide of land that was held by each landowner. A hide was notionally the amount of land one family needed to support itself. There are earlier documents that show evidence of financial organization.
The tribal hideage, for example, is a list of tribute payments owed to Offa the Great of Mercia that dates from the 8th century. But the burghal hideage reveals a much more sophisticated and detailed system of administration at work than had been seen previously in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. The point of these burgs was to create a system of defense that responded more flexibly to the reality of Viking attacks, which were often sudden raids that allowed little time for the furred of the entire kingdom to be called out.
If there were many smaller garrisons within easy reach of any particular part of the kingdom, It would be easier to nip a Viking incursion in the bud. But the burrs were not just for defense against Vikings. They also became the nuclei of prosperous economic centers.
Of the more than 30 original Alfredian burrs, eight became quite substantial urban settlements in the Middle Ages. The modern city of Oxford, for example, had its start as an Anglo-Saxon burr. They served as convenient locations for the collection of taxes, and they were the site for royal mints, of which there were several dozen throughout the kingdom of Wessex. We need to keep in mind that economic activity of any kind was risky in a setting where raiders of all kinds were a constant threat.
Not all raiders were Vikings. So a fortified location was particularly attractive for anyone who wanted to conduct business that involved the exchange of valuables, whether that was coins or livestock or any other kind of movable wealth. Probably the least successful of the three major efforts Alfred made to shore up the defenses of Wessex was his attempt to establish a permanent navy. It's not that Wessex had never had ships before, but the efforts had been sporadic.
Now, it obviously took some guts to try to compete with the Vikings on the open seas, but Alfred had guts. In 896, he commissioned the construction of a fleet of perhaps a dozen ships with 60 oars each. He designed his own prototype of a naval vessel, possibly based on classical sources, that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle praised for being larger, swifter, and steadier than the Viking ships.
Modern naval historians are not as complimentary. This prototype was too big and unwieldy to go up against the highly maneuverable Viking longboats in coastal waters. But Alfred did score at least one naval victory. in a hard-fought engagement during which the fighting ranged back and forth from the shore to the ships. At the very least, Alfred grasped the need for a maritime response.
And in the 19th century, when the Anglo-Saxons were greatly admired, Alfred was regarded as the founder of the British Navy. It's a good thing that Alfred carried out all these preparations, because in 892 or 893, A very large group of Vikings landed in Kent with their wives and children, clearly intending to stay. For about three years, Alfred and his son Edward fought a campaign that ranged across all of the territory that Wessex controlled.
But they successfully countered the Viking threat, and by 896, the Vikings had moved north, seeking easier targets. The defenses of Wessex had hell.