So far the Viking conquest of England had gone more or less to timetable. One by one the old Saxon kingdoms had fallen or been neutralized: Kent, Northumbria, East Anglia, Mercia. By the winter of 870–1, it was the turn of Wessex, ruled by the young King Aethelred, elder brother of the future King Alfred. With Alfred we get a rare eye-witness view on the conduct of the wars by the king himself. Commenting on the looting of church treasures in England, he believed that ‘we lost wealth as well as wisdom because we did not wish to set our minds to the track’.1 Rulers in East Anglia and the north had lost everything through a policy of vain hope and appeasement. The only way to deal with the Vikings was to resist them, at any price.
Judging from their actions in 870–1, the Vikings expected Wessex to follow the pattern of East Anglia – half-hearted resistance and one big battle followed by collapse, paving the way for Viking settlement as the new masters. Instead of harnessing the whole might of the Great Army for the effort, Ivar went to settle Northumbria and pursue his ambitions further north. The conquest of Wessex was left to his brother Halfdan, with reduced forces. As ever, the numbers involved in the campaign of 870–1 are unknown, but are likely to be large by Dark Age reckoning. As we have seen, Ivar’s host may have numbered 5,000 armed men. Even assuming that Ivar took half that number north with him, Halfdan could still have disposed of 2,000–3,000 fighting men.
The Viking strategy for the conquest of Wessex followed the precedent set in France and northern Britain. They would build a fortified winter-camp where their ships could be safely beached and which could be supplied by river. From this base they could plunder and raid over a large area. They could terrify the wretched inhabitants into paying them geld and supplying the necessities of life, which in France a few years earlier had included livestock, wine, cider and flour – evidently the Vikings had their own baking ovens. In the summer sailing season, Halfdan’s war-band would be reinforced and, if their earlier successes were any guide, they would then seek out and try to eliminate the king of Wessex, as they had done so summarily to his counterparts in Northumbria and East Anglia.
In the dark days of December 870, Halfdan led ‘this heathen army of hateful memory’2 from East Anglia towards the Thames, almost certainly using the straight, and perhaps still paved, Roman road from Thetford to the river bridge at Wallingford – a strategically important crossing which Alfred later fortified as a burh. Being mounted, Halfdan’s army could have made the journey in less than a week. Meanwhile Halfdan’s ships made their way up the Thames from their fortified base on the Thames estuary near London. It was a repeat of their successful strategy at York – to co-ordinate actions by land and sea, and establish a defensible base that could be supplied by water as well as by land.
Statue of Alfred the Great in the market place at Wantage. Reputedly the figure’s features were based on those of the artist’s patron, Lloyd-Lindsay. It portrays Alfred in the role of warrior and law-giver, axe in one hand, charter in the other.
For their base of operations they chose Reading, then a small settlement on the confluence of the Thames and the Kennet. Why Reading? To begin with, the place could be defended quickly and easily. Halfdan’s defences at Reading were probably on King’s Meadow just east of the present-day railway station. The river and an associated dyke called Plummery Ditch formed a loop around the site leaving a front of only half a mile (730 m) to be strengthened with walls. Establishing what they called a ship-fortress close to a navigable river was a tried-and-tested Viking tactic. They had already done so in France on the Loire and the Seine, and in Ireland on the Shannon. In the course of Alfred’s wars they would do so again in Dorset between the Frome and the Tarrant, and at Buttington in Shropshire inside a meander of the River Severn. Contemporary accounts describe earthen ramparts linking the rivers, probably topped by a wooden palisade with a fortified gate and watch-towers. Alfred’s later system of fortified burhs seems to have been inspired by Viking fortifications, and followed a similar pattern.
Another consideration was that Reading was a royal estate. Again and again in Alfred’s wars, the Vikings tended to target the king’s own property, perhaps in order to draw out the king himself, but also no doubt because that was where the richest pickings were likely to be.
In immediate need of fuel, timber and meat, Viking foraging parties fanned out in the mid-winter countryside around Reading. On New Year’s Eve, only three days after their arrival, the Vikings met an unexpected reverse. Ealdorman Aethelwulf with the men of Berkshire pounced on a large party of mounted raiders led by two jarls at Englefield, a few miles west of Reading. There was a hard-fought battle in the course of which one of the jarls was killed. One source names the dead leader as Sidroc, although another claims that Sidroc the Old, along with his son Sidroc the Young, died at the Battle of Ashdown, a week later. The rest of the party took to their heels and Aethelwulf was left master of the field.
The traditional site of the Battle of Englefield is Englefield Park near Theale, six miles west of the centre of Reading. The battle is remembered locally in Dead Man’s Lane, said to be named after the battle. Aethelwulf’s own household and estate lay at Pangbourne, only three miles away. As the nearest ealdorman to Reading, he would have alerted the king and, keeping watch on the enemy’s movements, no doubt seized the opportunity to attack a detached portion of his army. The victory at Englfield, minor in itself, put heart into the men of Wessex. It was the first reverse the Vikings had suffered since being driven out of York three years earlier. It showed that, with watchfulness and courage, the Vikings could be beaten.
This Aethelwulf is one of the unsung heroes of old England. He was a leader of the army that had saved Winchester in 860, and he went down in glory fighting the Vikings at Reading only a few days after his success at Englefield. Technically he was a Mercian, and his body was taken for burial amongst his ancestors in Derby. But since the death of the last Mercian king, Mercia had accepted the overlordship of Alfred who had married a Mercian princess in 868. In addition, Aethelwulf’s Berkshire had been drawn for reasons of self-preservation into the ambit of Wessex. The men of the Thames valley, at a time of great peril, may have begun to regard themselves not so much as Mercians nor of Wessex but as English.
Aethelwulfs bold stroke at Englefield was probably made in the knowledge that the royal brothers Aethelred and Alfred were on their way at the head of ‘a great levy’. Four days after Englefield, and without further ado, Aethelred and Alfred’s army stormed up to the half-built gates of the Viking fortress, ‘hacking and cutting down all the Vikings they found outside’. But the Vikings fought back ‘like wolves’, bursting out of the camp and, after a struggle, beating back the attackers in disorder. Ealdorman Aethelred was among the fallen. The defeat at Reading was a hard lesson for Aethelred and Alfred. It looks as though, taken unawares by Halfdan’s winter offensive, they had hoped to surprise the enemy in turn by the speed and fury of their response. But with ninth-century military technology, which evidently did not include siege engines, armies fortified behind walls with sufficient food and water were virtually impregnable to attack.
Despite this reverse, Aethelred’s army remained intact. Only four days later, on 8 January 871, he was able to take on the Viking host again at the famous Battle of Ashdown. Where was Ashdown? Unfortunately for battlefield seekers, Ashdown, or Aescesdun in Old English, is not a specific place but the old name for the Berkshire Downs, the range of chalk hills that stretches from Reading to Marlborough. The battle clearly took place somewhere along its length, but where? It almost certainly took place on or near the Ridgeway, the ancient track running across the northern part of the downs. Given that Aethelred was given only four days to reform his battered force, the battle must have been near the Reading end (of which more below). This is all the more likely if credence is given to the chronicler Geoffrey Gaimar, writing many years later, that the Saxons were driven eastwards from Reading before doubling back over the River Loddon atTwyford.3
Battle of Ashdown 871 (conjectural)
The Berkshire Downs are a cold bleak place in early January. Surprisingly none of the sources mention the weather that day, but for an army camping out of doors in the dead of winter the chance to bring the campaign to an early conclusion was perhaps something to be leapt at. For the battle itself we are given an unusual amount of detail, an indication of its importance in the career of the young Alfred. The army of Aethelred and Alfred, we are told, aroused by the grief and shame of their defeat, were ‘in a determined frame of mind’. The size of their army is unknowable, but even after the setback at Reading it was clearly large enough to offer a serious threat to Halfdan. Quite why the latter decided to risk battle in the open when he was secure enough inside his ship-camp is unclear. It was contrary to his usual practice of enticing the enemy to attack him from a strongly defended position. Perhaps Ashdown marked the beginning of his intended push westwards into Wiltshire. Or may be Halfdan was over-confident, thought he had the Saxons on the run and came out to finish them off.
Both armies formed into two divisions, ‘shield-walls of equal size’. On the Viking side, one host was led by Halfdan himself and his fellow king Bagsecg. The other host was led by an unspecified number of subsidiary leaders described as ‘jarls’. The division of the army probably reflected different Viking groups. The Saxons, too, naturally formed into two divisions, clustered around the separate households of Aethelred and Alfred. It seems that the brothers had agreed in advance that King Aethelred’s division would fight Halfdan, and Alfred’s the jarls. We are not told on which side of the field the divisions were, but it is usually assumed that Aethelred was on the left and Alfred on the right.
Alfred reached the field first and in better order than his brother. Aethelred, so the story goes, delayed in his tent to hear Mass and offer lengthy and interminable prayers for victory over the heathen foe. We are invited to believe that Aethelred placed more hope in prayer than in his men. Asser, our source for this tale, claims to have heard it from eye-witnesses who were no doubt imploring the pious king to get a move on.4 Even so, it should be taken with a large pinch of salt. Asser’s praise of his hero, King Alfred, tended to be at the expense of Alfred’s older siblings. In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the brothers are given equal credit for the victory at Ashdown; if anything, since the king is mentioned before Alfred, it was Aethelred’s battle. But in Asser’s version of events, Aethelred never does anything except in concert with his younger brother. As Professor Smyth points out in his detailed analysis of the sources, this has the hallmarks of later editing of the facts.5
While Aethelred dallied in his tent, the Vikings arrived on the field with disconcerting speed and formed up into shield-walls on a ridge of higher ground some distance to the east. Alfred, says Asser, was left with the choice of retreating or attacking before his brother’s arrival. He chose to attack, commanding his men to close ranks to form a shield-wall and advance without delay at the army of the jarls. Strengthened by divine counsel, Alfred ‘acted courageously, like a wild boar’.
Like a wild boar: the phrase has echoed down the centuries, but what does it mean exactly? Many men of Alfred’s day hunted boars, and knew all about the desperate courage of the cornered beast and the way it would charge directly at its tormentors. It has been suggested that the words the Welsh-born Asser chose to express Alfred’s bravery were influenced by his knowledge of Celtic poetry in which the word twrch (boar) was used to describe a brave warrior.
But another more meaningful explanation is possible. Asser could have been alluding to a battle formation known as a caput porcinum or boar’s head. When a mass of infantry moved forward to the attack a group of picked men formed up into a wedge, rather like a rugger scrum, with a couple of men in the front row, three or four in the second rank, and so on, creating a human spearhead that would, if all went well, smash through the enemy ranks at a fixed point. The human wedge was a battle tactic known to the Romans, and was also employed by the Vikings who believed that the secret had been divulged to them by Odin himself. In large formations there might be more than one boar’s head, so that the line would move forward in a zigzag with wedge-shaped clumps of infantry advanced ahead of the main line. The correct thing to do when faced with bristling boar’s heads advancing rapidly towards you under a hail of missiles was to form up into an arc or V-shape, known by the Romans as the forceps. Then, if the charge went off at half-cock, the defending side had a good chance of enveloping the wedge in a pincer movement.6 Other things being equal, the laurels would go to the side with the greatest courage and discipline. Being at the sharp end of a boar’s-head charge is, battle enactors assure me, an exciting experience. Apparently one is carried along on the cusp of the charge and forcibly propelled into the enemy ranks. The front runners of the wedge would fly over the shield-wall.
Perhaps Alfred, then, took a leaf out of the Vikings’ own military manual and charged straight at the banners of the jarls with his best men out in front in wedge-formation. Since both sides favoured the boar’s-head tactic, in which momentum was all-important, the Vikings probably advanced in their turn. The two armies clashed together, writes Asser, ‘with loud shouting from all, one side acting wrongfully and the other side set to fight for life, loved ones and country’. The fighting went ‘to and fro, resolutely and exceedingly ferociously’ for some time, during which (though Asser doesn’t bother to mention it) Aethelred’s men eventually arrived on the field and launched themselves into the fray.
With armies of the shield-wall, the most dangerous moment comes when you decide to call the whole thing of and retreat. For the Vikings at Ashdown that moment came after an hour or two of bitter fighting on the cold windy down. It might have been after the death of Bagsecg, who was certainly killed in the battle or its subsequent rout. But with the vengeful Saxons pressing on, perhaps calling up their mounted reserves, the Vikings were prevented from withdrawing in good order. It became a matter of sauve qui peut, and the fleeing Vikings were cut down without mercy. According to the Chronicle the dead, scattered over the down for miles, numbered in their thousands. Apart from King Bagsecg, they included no fewer than five of the jarls, whose names were Osbern, Fraena, Harold and the two Sidrocs. No mention is made of Saxon casualties. The slaughter ended only at nightfall – just before five o’clock in early January – but the following day any Vikings still at large were rounded up and slaughtered.
Ashdown was hailed as a great victory for Wessex. Thanks to its importance in the story of Alfred the Great it has become one of the best-known battles of pre-Conquest Britain. But why the Saxons won it isn’t made clear. Ashdown was only the start of Alfred’s ‘year of battles’ with the Vikings. He fought eight other battles and, apart from Ashdown, lost all of them. The significance of this lone victory with its claimed thousands of Viking dead was probably exaggerated, since the Vikings were able to field another army and beat Alfred and Aethelred with it only two weeks later. The implication, given the similarity of arms and military tactics on either side, is that at Ashdown the Vikings were outnumbered. But the reason why Alfred fared so poorly in subsequent encounters with Halfdan’s Vikings may have been that he lost so many of his best men at Ashdown and the fighting at Reading. We could speculate that there was something of a backs-to-the-wall spirit about Ashdown, a knowledge that Englishmen’s wives and children, home and hearth were sheltering behind their locked shields. The merciless slaughter of the defeated Vikings suggests the release of a mighty catharsis of revenge.
Where did the battle take place? Asser tells us he had himself seen the field and the famous leafless thorn-bush (nachededorn, ‘the naked thorn’) around which Alfred’s men traded blows with the jarls.7 However, his description of the field with the Vikings on a ridge of ground higher than that of the West Saxons is too vague to pinpoint. For Ashdown, like most Dark Age battles, one has to rely on the balance of probability. There is no warrant for the assumption some have made that the Saxons had been falling back throughout the four days that separate the assault at Reading from the Battle of Ashdown. On the contrary, the sources imply that it was the Saxons and not the Vikings that had taken the initiative. They were seeking a decisive battle, not evading one. The most likely place, given all the particulars, is on the downs up to a day’s march from Reading.
The Blowing Stone at Kingstone Lisle is said to have been the assembly place for the men of Wessex before the Battle of Ashdown.
Its distance from Reading is one of the problems of the traditional site for the battle, at Uffington Castle on White Horse Hill. It lies close to the Ridgeway but at some thirty miles west of Reading is at least two days’ march away in mid-winter conditions. The tradition was partly based on the belief, now known to be incorrect, that King Alfred had had the White Horse carved in the chalky turf as a memorial to the battle. Local place-names provide supporting evidence. In Saxon times the land around Uffington was within the Hundred of Nachededorne – an echo of the naked thorn? – while the nearby village of Ashbury was referred to as Aescesbyrig in one of Alfred’s charters.8 Surely these names could not be a coincidence?
On a more fanciful level, folk-tales have used the story of Ashdown to provide an explanation for various monuments and artifacts. Alfred is supposed to have summoned his men by sounding a mighty blast on a perforated sarsen stone, known as the Blowing Stone, which still stands in the corner of a cottage garden near Kingston Lisle, two miles east of Uffington. The army supposedly gathered at Alfred’s Castle, an Iron Age enclosure on Swinley Down three miles south of Uffington, while Aethelred’s men assembled at Hardwell Camp, a similarly sized area a mile away in the parish of Compton Beauchamp. By the same set of traditions, the body of King Bagsecg was taken to Wayland Smithy, the chambered tomb by the Ridgeway, for burial, while the dead jarls were interred at Seven Barrows near Lambourne. The rank and file was buried in the valley below Kingstone Hill, where sarsen stones mark their last resting places. Ashdown House, the seventeenth-century mansion now in the care of the National Trust, took its name from the proximity of Alfred’s Castle. Needless to say there is no foundation in history for any of these tales.
The case for Uffington was effectively blown out of the water by Alfred Burne.9 Burne agreed that winter conditions would have obliged any large force to use the relatively dry Ridgeway, and that the battle must have taken place somewhere on the high downs west of Reading. But, he argued, Uffington was too far to the west, and would have left the royal manors of Wantage and Lambourn at the mercy of the invaders. Moreover, the wording of Asser and the Chronicle does not suggest an army in hot-footed retreat, and implies that the defeated Vikings, stragglers and all, made it back to their Reading fortress on the same day as the battle.
Ashdown: Lowbury Hill, a green whaleback in a sea of rape. In Alfred’s day these were equally bare sheep-grazed downs.
Burne’s favoured site was on the downs just below Lowbury Hill, the tallest of the billows of downland, and commanding a prominent position near the Ridgeway about twelve miles from Reading and three from Goring with fine views on all sides. Moreover, the hill stands above an ancient crossroads, claimed by Burne to be the site of a traditional moot or meeting place for the villages of the Hundred. Perhaps Asser’s ‘naked thorn’ marked the site in a way reminiscent of the ‘hoar apple tree’ at Senlac in 1066. In Burne’s interpretation, the West Saxons were expecting support from their Mercian allies, and so would have chosen such a place, visible for miles around, for a rendez-vous. He also found a place to match Asser’s description in two ridges separated by a shallow valley. The clinching evidence seemed to be the mass of thorn bushes by the crossroads, exactly where he expected Asser’s ‘naked thorn’ to be. In this interpretation, Aethelred and Alfred formed up on either side of the Ridgeway below Lowbury Hill, while the Vikings deployed to face them on Louse Hill near Starveall Farm a few hundred yards further down the track to the southeast. Both armies advanced and clashed in the valley ‘known by the gypsies as “Awful Bottom”’.
Nachededorn: bushes at an ancient crossroads, possibly marking Alfred’s start-point at the Battle of Ashdown.
From my own walk around ‘Burne’s Ashdown’ I would be inclined to move the battlefield a few hundred yards to the east. If the crossroads was indeed the mustering place for the Saxon army it would surely have lain not in the centre but on the western end of the battleield. The Saxons might therefore have formed up on the ridge between the thorn bush and the hollow where Starveall Farm stands today. The Vikings would then have occupied the corresponding ridge where Bower’s Farm now stands, with the heaviest fighting taking place on the slopes and in the hollow in between. Burne found it a fine setting for a battle, ‘the wide sweep of the downs, the wildness and solitude – the natural arena for a conflict’. Since the war almost the whole of this part of the downs has been put to the plough, and it is now far from wild in an ecological sense. The chalky tracks on which the warriors reached their day of destiny at Ashdown run between ribbons of hedges. Burne’s site of the Naked Thorn lies in a waterlogged hollow from which banks of blackthorn and hawthorn scrub radiate like a starfish. The area is popular with cyclists and off-road vehicles using the Ridgeway, but, disappointingly, there is no memorial or information about the battle anywhere. An alternative site of the battle is close to the A417 with Aethelred and Alfred occupying Kingstanding Hill near Moulsford and the Vikings advancing along the Thames valley from Reading. However, this valley would have been boggy and perhaps impassable in January. Wherever possible, the Vikings used higher ground.
The distant ridge now occupied by Bower Farm was probably the Danish line at Ashdown.
The two armies clashed in the valley in between (below) where Starveall Farm now sits.
Despite their losses at Ashdown, the Vikings were able to launch a new campaign within a fortnight. For the next five months, both armies were in the field and fought a series of encounters south of the Thames in Hampshire and Wiltshire. We can imagine the beacons of Hampshire blazing their warning, from Beacon Hill near Highclere to Farley Mount overlooking Winchester and on to the Solent and the Isle of Wight. At a day’s march from Reading the Vikings occupied Basing (Basingas), by the Loddon three miles west of the modern town of Basingstoke. This placed them within a day’s march of Winchester. Aethelred and Alfred followed with their combined force, but this time things went badly. In what was probably a repeat of the battle at Reading, ‘they clashed violently on all fronts, but after a long struggle the Vikings gained the victory’.
Two months later, the two armies clashed again at a place variously called Meretun or Maeredun. As at Ashdown both sides formed up in two divisions. At first the Saxons were successful and put the Vikings to flight. But later the same day the latter somehow turned the tables on their attackers ‘and there was a great slaughter on either side, but the Vikings had possession of the field’. Among the English losses were Bishop Heahmund of Sherborne ‘and many important men’. Where was Meretun? As usual its location depends on finding such a place in the Domesday Book or a Saxon charter that is also in the right area, which in this case could be in Hampshire, Wiltshire or even Dorset. Merton in Oxfordshire is too far north, Merten in Devon too far west, Merton in south London too far east. Marten, athwart a Roman road at the base of the downs, eight miles south-west of Hungerford is one possibility. Another is Martin on the boundary of Hampshire and Dorset, whose Old English name was Mertone and whose location might explain the presence of the bishop of Sherborne on the battleield. It could be the same Meretun where King Ceolwulf was memorably assassinated in his bower a century before.
Disasters rarely come singly. Shortly after Meretun, and perhaps attracted by news of successes and rich pickings in the southlands of England, the Vikings were reinforced by a ‘great summer host’, apparently from overseas. And after Easter, King Aethelred died after a troublesome reign of only five years. Contemporaries simply reported the fact and the king’s subsequent burial at Wimborne. Later tradition, also recorded on Aethelred’s memorial plate in Wimborne Minster, claims that the king died from wounds received in battle, perhaps at Meretun. But so Nelsonian an end would surely not have gone unrecorded, especially in the epic year 871. Asser simply reports that Aethelred went the way of all flesh. Probably he died of something contracted while on campaign during those bitter winter marches and battles. Alfred’s brothers all died young, and Alfred himself was in poor health for much of his life, if Asser is to be believed. And if the rigours of campaigning claimed the king himself, how many others, one wonders, died of disease or wounds during those desperate days.
Alfred was acclaimed king. The rights of Aethelred’s children were set aside; they were infants and Wessex needed a war-leader. Alfred was on his throne only a month before fighting the Vikings again at Wilton, on the conluence of the Nadder and the Wylye a few miles west of Salisbury. Very probably the Vikings were heading for Wimborne, bent on killing or capturing Alfred. By one account, Alfred was attending his dead brother’s funeral in Wimborne on the day the Vikings struck. Alfred summoned all the men he could and rode out to Wilton to take on the much larger Viking army gathered on a hill south of the river where Wilton Park stands today. Despite his lack of numbers, Alfred drove the Vikings back, but, once again, he advanced too far. Seeing how few their pursuers were, the Vikings rallied and drove Alfred from the field.
In six months Saxon and Viking seem to have fought one another to a standstill. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle pauses at this point to review the campaign. There had been nine general engagements (though only six are named) ‘besides those innumerable forays which Alfred and ealdormen and king’s thanes rode on, which were never counted’. The Viking dead included nine jarls and one king. As for the Saxons, writes Asser, they were virtually annihilated.10 The result was a truce. Despite beating Alfred’s forces time and time again, the Vikings had taken casualties that they could ill afford, whilst Alfred could draw on the homelands of Wessex and, on occasion, Mercia and the south-east too. Even so, Alfred desperately needed to buy time to strengthen the defences of his kingdom and reorganize his armies. And so, continues Asser, with what sounds like pursed lips, ‘the Saxons made peace with the Vikings on condition they would leave them, and this the Vikings did’.
They did, but they took their time about it. Though Asser could not bring himself to say as much, Alfred almost certainly bought the Vikings withdrawal with a large geld cobbled together from the royal treasure, Church wealth and taxes. Halfdan withdrew to London, having stripped the eastern counties of Wessex of corn, salted meat and herds of livestock to feed his vast horde. From Wessex he turned to Mercia, the large but decadent Midland kingdom, which could be looted much more cheaply. Alfred had gained a breathing space, but few could have doubted that the Vikings would soon be back.
And so they were. Halfdan departed north, to Repton in northern Mercia and later to the Tyne where his supporters settled to plough the vacant fields of Northumbria and, as a sideline, raid their new neighbours to the north. Halfdan fought his last battle in 877 at Strangford Lough in Ireland. But not all of the Vikings turned north. A new army, perhaps part of the summer host that joined Halfdan after Meretun in 871, established itself at Cambridge in 875, led by three kings, Oscytel, Anund and Guthrum. It seems that, while Halfdan was taking the lands north of the Humber for his own kingdom, the new boys had ambitions in the south. Guthrum, especially, was staking out his claim to Alfred’s Wessex.
The record of the first five years of Alfred’s reign is disappointingly meagre. He must have used the time created by the peace of 871 to make preparations for the war which would inevitably be renewed in the near future. He began to fortify coastal and riverside defences and to build up a more effective English fleet. The opening move of the second Viking war seems to have been Alfred’s. In what was perhaps a pre-emptive strike, his ships intercepted seven Viking longboats at sea, captured one and put the others to flight. However, this time the Vikings changed their tactics. Instead of establishing a base on the Thames at the borders of Wessex, Guthrum aimed to strike at the heart of Alfred’s kingdom from a supply base on the south coast. Moreover, he assembled a mounted force, able to move swiftly over large distances and outpace the enemy. The Vikings were comparatively secure within fortified places capable of being supplied by river or sea. Using mobile forces in combination with secure bases, Guthrum could ransack the country for geld and livestock and, when the opportunity arose, strike the killer blow against the king. Alfred could expect the same gory fate as Edmund of East Anglia and Aelle of Northumbria. This would be a fight to the finish.
Guthrum’s land army evaded Alfred’s levies and made its way to the Dorset town of Wareham where supply ships awaited them. Alfred caught up with him there, but Guthrum managed to give him the slip at night and moved on by a series of fast marches to Exeter. Guthrum’s fleet was not so lucky. Caught in a great storm off Swanage, 120 ships were lost. The result was a stalemate: Guthrum’s men secure behind the fortifications of Exeter with Alfred’s army camped outside but unable to break into the town. Negotiations followed, and another dubious ‘firm peace’ was sealed by an exchange of hostages and many solemn oaths, after which the Vikings were allowed to depart. Guthrum retreated to Mercia by way of Gloucestershire. The two forces shadowed one another along the borderlands in the Cotswolds and upper Thames as winter approached.
Guthrum had no intention of keeping his side of the bargain. He evidently had agents in Alfred’s camp, and knew that the king intended to celebrate Christmas at Chippenham. To Chippenham came the Vikings shortly after Twelfth Night 878, when Alfred’s household was doubtless nursing a communal hangover. There they attacked, and drove out or killed the only Saxon army in the field. Alfred escaped with a small company, but now all Wessex stood at Guthrum’s mercy. Over the next four months Guthrum’s men fanned out over Hampshire and Dorset, driving the thegns and ealdormen into the sea and, in the Chronicle’s words, ‘conquered (geridan, literally rode-over) and occupied the land of the West Saxons and drove a great part of the people across the sea’. Alfred himself took refuge with a small force ‘along the woods and in the fen-fastnesses’ of the Somerset Levels. There, with the help of his faithful ealdorman Aethelnoth, he fortified an emergency base on the hill of Athelney, which rose, Ely-like, from the marshes.
This was the time for what Winston Churchill called ‘the toys of history’, a rustic interlude in the grim struggle. One day, while sheltering incognito inside a peasant’s cottage, Alfred burned the cakes and was reproved for it by the outraged housewife. The moral of the tale is of course the turning of the tables: in adversity, the great king had been transformed into a menial, obliged to take a scolding from the wife of a swineherd. In another tale, Alfred, disguised as a minstrel, sang to the Vikings while they supped at some stolen table. This yarn may relect a military reality. Somehow Alfred was kept abreast of events, in touch with the leaders in the counties and informed of Guthrum’s whereabouts. While he abstractedly allowed the cakes to burn, Alfred was planning the counter-attack.
With disconcerting suddenness, the Chronicle informs us that in the seventh week after Easter, that is, between 7 and 11 May 878, Alfred mustered his army at ‘Ecgbert’s Stone’. There he was joined by ‘all the men of Somerset and Wiltshire, and that part of Hampshire which was on this side of the sea’. ‘When they saw the king, they were glad of him.’ Asser added that the king was received ‘as one restored to life after such great tribulations [and] they were filled with immense joy’.11 The analogy with Easter and Christ’s suffering on the cross followed by his joyful resurrection was not lost on Asser, or the men of the west. The march to Ethandun is presented to us as deliverance. From the eighth-century document known as the Burghal Hidage, it is possible that the two-and-a-bit counties could have fielded an army of4,000 men at full strength. In the same year the men of Devon alone slew 840 Vikings in battle, including Halfdan’s brother, Ubba.
The exact location of Ecgbert’s Stone is uncertain. The Chronicle merely says it lay ‘to the east of Selwood’, and within a day’s march of the next camp at Iley. One possibility is that it stood by the River Stour at Bourton where the counties of Somerset, Dorset and Wiltshire converge. A stone standing in a glade (ST 773312) nearby has been identified with Ecgbert’s Stone. Another traditional site is Kingsettle Hill, three miles to the north, where in 1772 the banker Henry Hoare built a brick folly called Alfred’s Tower at the place where, local tradition had it, he had raised his standard. A third possible site lies further east at Kingston Deverill. Local opinion claims that Ecgbert’s Stone could be one of three sarsen stones collected from Court Hill overlooking the village and propped up in an enclosure by the church. Ecgbert is said, though without historical authority, to have held court on the hill. In his still-useful paper on ancient trackways, Dr G B Grundy pointed out that tracks converge here from all directions, making it a natural rendezvous. Moreover, Court Hill is visible from miles around.12 The site stretches the Chronicle’s description ‘east of Selwood’ a long way but, as Burne points out, we don’t know how far Selwood went in Alfred’s day.
Alfred’s Tower. This famous folly crowns a hilltop in Stourhead Gardens. It was built by Henry Flitcroft for the wealthy banker Henry Hoare and completed in 1772. It is said to stand on the site where King Alfred raised his standard against the Danes in 877.
A day’s march from Ecgbert’s Stone, Alfred camped at a place called Iglea which can be identified as Iley Oak. This place marked the meeting place of the Hundreds of Warminster and Heytesbury, at what is now Eastleigh Wood, two miles south of Warminster on the edge of Salisbury Plain. Iley Oak is nearly twenty miles from Penselwood, suggesting that Alfred’s army was mounted. Their line of march suggests that Alfred’s objective was Chippenham, Guthrum’s presumed base of operations since the rout of Twelfth Night five months before. At the Iley Oak camp, if not earlier, Alfred received news from his scouts that a large force of Vikings was blocking his march at Ethandun, a day’s march away. Like Reading and Wilton, Ethandun was a royal estate, identifiable with the village of Edington (see below). Alfred probably knew it well, for it was one of the places he listed in his will. He marched. He might even have marched through the night, for Asser claims he attacked the Vikings at dawn.
Egbert’s Stone? These sarsen stones at Kingston Deverill, Somerset, are known locally as ‘Egbert’s Stones’ or ‘King’s Stones’. They were brought down from the nearby Court Hill in the nineteenth century and propped up in an enclosure near the church.
Ethandun is one of the decisive battles of English history, marking the turning-point in the wars against the Vikings and paving the way for the later glories of Alfred’s house. In its account of the campaign, with its unusually precise information about where Alfred camped and who was in his army, the Chronicle prepares us for a truly epic encounter, along the lines of its account of the Battle of Ashdown. Yet when it comes, all we get is a single sentence: one of the shaggy-dog stories of history. Here it is:
And one day later he went from those camps to Iley Oak, and one day later to Ethandun; and there he fought against the entire host, and put it to flight.. .13
Asser adds only a little:
When the next day dawned Alfred moved his forces and came to a place called Ethandun, and fighting fiercely in close order against the entire Viking army, he persevered resolutely for a long time; at length he gained the victory by God’s will. He destroyed the Vikings with great slaughter...14
For the defining battle of the hero-king, Alfred’s chroniclers have been oddly reticent. Evidently, as Professor Smyth discusses in his biography of Alfred, they told us what they wanted us to know, neither more nor less.15 One possibility is that Ethandun was not a battle on the grand scale like Ashdown but a lucky encounter from which the Saxons were able to seize the initiative and bring Guthrum to his knees. In support of this theory is the interesting fact that no casualties are named on either side. Or maybe the chronicler wanted to draw attention to Alfred’s vision and magnanimity after winning the war, and so regarded the actual battle as a distraction.
The accounts imply that this time Alfred’s men fought in a single unit, as a compact shield-wall. Given his conduct at Ashdown, charging ‘like a wild boar’ at the enemy, and his pursuit of the enemy at Meretun and Wilton, it seems likely that Alfred was the attacker and that he attacked at once. The battlefield would provide a valuable clue to what happened – if only we knew where it was. The match of Ethandun with Edington, near Westbury, is generally accepted. There are other Edingtons, but they are either in the wrong place or wrong on etymological grounds. Our Edington was the Norman Edendone which is consistent with the Saxon Ethandun (the Saxon ‘th’ was commonly ‘Normanized’ as a’d’) and was, we know, a ninth-century royal estate. The problem is to pin down where, in all the expanse of escarpment, valley and chalk plateau near Edington, the battle was fought.
The favourite site is Bratton Camp, on the top of the downland scarp between Edington and Westbury, where the White Horse carved in the nearby scarp since at least the eighteenth century is traditionally associated with Alfred’s victory. Bratton Camp is an Iron Age hill-fort with a double wall and ditch which was probably even more formidable in Alfred’s day. Guthrum’s men may have lined in front of the camp’s south wall with a secure position to fall back to. Wherever possible, the Vikings liked to fight close to a fortified base. Another possible site, which has the merit of being closer to Edington and in direct line to a course towards Chippenham, is Edington Hill, on the tumulus-studded downs above the village. At its southward end the hill forms a neck of land with a steep slope guarding its western flank and making a strong defensible position.
The battle stone of Ethandun by Bratton Camp. The exact site of the battle is unknown.
Burne plumps for a third alternative on the plain three miles to the south where an ancient ditch crosses the down along Alfred’s probable approach route from Warminster. In his interpretation, the battle was fought at this point, after which the Vikings retreated along the ridge road towards Bratton Camp, and possibly also on another track towards the defile between Edington Hill and Tinhead Hill. Burne’s site is close to the suggestively named Battlebury Hill which lies between Warminster and the ditch. On the other hand it is a long way from Edington and unlikely to have been part of that estate. Even Burne, normally so confident in his judgements, admits that in this case ‘the whole battle is a matter of pure conjecture’.16
The Westbury White Horse carved in the chalk below Bratton Camp. Though associated by tradition with Alfred’s victory, its placing is probably a coincidence.
Alternatively, the battle may not have been fought on the downs at all but in and around the village itself, perhaps in the neighbourhood of the present-day church. In this scenario, perhaps Alfred caught the Vikings by surprise in a reversal of his own experience at Chippenham. Given the lack of topographic details in the sources only archaeology can provide an answer.
Why did Alfred win at Ethandun? In battles of the shield-wall, courage and determination were the main qualities needed. Military training was less important. In his Channel 4 series on medieval weaponry, Mike Loades showed that a band of untrained volunteers could be taught to master the basics of fighting with shield and spear in a day.17 The vital thing was to stand tight and together, and perform simple manoeuvres as a unit. Alfred’s men needed to know how to turn about face, and how to advance in a line. Alfred’s men were tough and it enough to endure long marches and the English climate. The necessary brutality probably came naturally too. Many of these men had family and friends to avenge. The fighting of Alfred’s wars was close, upfront and personal.
What made the Battle of Ethandun so decisive was that Alfred was able to crown his victory by pursuing the Vikings back to their stronghold and then laying siege to it. The Viking stragglers were cut down without mercy. Alfred then ‘boldly made camp in front of the gates of the Viking stronghold’. He had already captured the Viking cattle herds and horses. Now, after a fortnight, ‘the Vikings, thoroughly terrified by hunger, cold and fear and in the end by despair, sought peace’. It was victory against all odds for Alfred and the men of Wessex and checkmate for Guthrum. But where did this siege take place? The Chronicle mentions only ‘the fort’ but in a context that suggests it has been named before. The implication is that the fort was none other than the Vikings’ base at Chippenham. This seems to be confirmed in a later passage in which ‘the [Viking] host went to Cirencester from Chippenham and remained there one year’. Bratton Camp and other waterless hill-forts in the area would not have been able to withstand a fortnight’s siege.
The outcome is in all the history books. Alfred took hostages from the Vikings but gave none – ‘never before had they made peace with anyone on such terms’, comments Asser. The Vikings swore ‘great oaths’ to leave Alfred’s kingdom immediately. And Guthrum promised to become a Christian and accept baptism at Alfred’s own hands. The ceremony took place at Aller, near Athelney, three weeks later, when Guthrum became Alfred’s spiritual son and acquired a Christian name, Athelstan. The peace treaty was solemnized at Wedmore, where ‘Alfred freely bestowed many excellent treasures (aedificia) on him and his men’.
The baptism of Guthrum and his chief men was an act of enormous significance. It made Guthrum’s surrender complete. The Viking leader could not have taken such a step without consulting his men. And becoming Christians themselves meant that in future they were obliged to refrain from attacking Christian society and its holy places. At a deeper level, it marked a renunciation of the failed old gods with their sacrifices of blood and an acceptance of a new way of looking at the world. Not only had Alfred won but his God had also triumphed over theirs. Surprisingly, perhaps, the treaty held. Guthrum did refrain from attacking Wessex again and henceforth issued coins under his Christian name. In the end, Alfred’s achievement and his claim to greatness rest on that spiritual and diplomatic victory at least as much as his military success: ‘Whether a great battle or just a fortunate skirmish, Edington was indeed Alfred’s great victory’.18
Edington is proud of its association with Alfred, as can be seen from its road signs which share the modern name of the village with the West Saxon Ethandun. Unfortunately nothing of Alfred’s vill survives above ground. The large and splendid priory church was founded in 1361, with a now vanished Augustinian monastery close by. Possibly it stood on or near the site of Alfred’s hall, which would certainly have had a chapel. The best-known reminder of the battle is the Westbury White Horse, cut into the scarp just west of Bratton, and most easily admired from the viewpoint near Bratton Camp. Unfortunately, it was not carved in Alfred’s day but nearer our own time, probably in the eighteenth century during a vogue for chalk carving. A rather stiff-looking beast whose legs are too long, its green eye faces towards Edington. Whoever cut the turf might have been thinking of Alfred and the ancient White Horse at Uffington, then thought to commemorate Alfred’s victory at Ashdown. If Ashdown had one, so should they.
Alfred in triumph on the road signs at Edington.
Edington church, built in the fourteenth century, on or near the site of Alfred’s manor below a great rampart of down and close to the old road from Salisbury to Bath.
A monument to the battle was raised on 5 November 2000 close to the car-park at Bratton Camp and to Burne’s ‘Site B’. It is a sarsen stone from near Kingston Deverill where, according to tradition, Alfred rallied his levies before the Battle of Ashdown. A plaque inset at the base of the stone claims that Alfred’s victory at Ethandun ‘gave birth to English nationhood’. Although the route of Alfred’s march from Iley Oak to Edington, including the ditch at Burne’s site ‘A’ is a MoD range normally closed to the public, there is open access to Bratton Camp, and the Edington area is well-served with paths; a leaflet available in the church describes some thirty of them.19