136 ANGLO-SAXON BRITAIN.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE SAXONS AT BAY IN WESSEX.

ONLY one English kingdom now held out against the

wickings, and that was . Wessex. Its comparatively
successful resistance may be set down, in some slight
degree, to the energy of a single man, JElfred, though
it was doubtless far more largely due to the rela-
tively strong organisation of the West Saxon state.
In judging of JElfred, we must lay aside the false
notions derived from the application of words ex-
pressing late ideas to an early and undeveloped stage
of civilised society. To call him a great general or a
great statesman is to use utterly misleading terms.
Generalship and statesmanship, as we understand
them, did not yet exist, and to speak of them in the
ninth century ill England is to be guilty of a common,
but none the more excusable, anachronism. JElfred
was a sturdy and hearty fighter, and a good king of a
semi-barbaric people. As a lad, he had visited Rome;
and he retained throughout life a strong sense of his
own and his people's barbarism, and a genuine desire
to civilise himself and his subjects, so far as his limited
lights could carry him. He succeeded to a kingdom
overrun fl'om end to end by piratical hordes: and he
did his best to restore peace and to promote order.
 THE SAXONS AT BAY IN WESSEX. 137
But his character was merely that of a practical,
common-sense, fighting West Saxon, brought up in
the camp of his father and brothers, and doing his
rough work in life with the honest straightforwardness
of a simple, hard-headed, religious, but only half-
educated barbaric soldier.
The successful East Anglian wickings, under their
chief Guthrum, turned at once to ravage Wessex.
They "harried the West Saxons' land, and settled
there, and drove many of the folk ov("r sea." For
awhile it seemed as if Wessex too was to fall into
their hands. ..cElfred himself, with a little band,
"withdrew to the woods and moor-fastnesses." He
took refuge in the Somerset marshes, and there occu-
pied a little island of dry land in the midst of the
fens, by name Athelney. Here he threw up a rude
earthwork, from which he made raids against the
Danes, with a petty levy of the nearest Somerset
men. But the mass of the West Saxons were not dis-
posed to give in so easily. The long border warfare
with Devon and Cornwall had probably kept up their
organisation in a better state than that of the anarchic
North. The men of Somerset and Wilts, with those
Hampshire men who had not fled to the Continent,
gathered at a sacred stone on the borders of Selwood
Forest, and there ..cElfred met them with his little
band. They attacked the host, which they put to
flight, and then besieged it in its fortified camp.
To escape the siege, Guthrum consented to leave
Wessex, and to accept Christianity. He was bap-
tised at once, with thirty of his principal chiefs, after
 ANGLO-SAXON BRITAIN.

the rough-and-ready fashion of the fighting king, near

Athelney. The treaty entered into with Guthrum
restored to LElfred all Wessex, with the south-western
part of Mercia, from London to Bedford, and thence
along the line of Watling Street to Chester. Thus
for a time the Saxons recovered their autonomy, and
the great Scandinavian horde retired to East Anglia.
LEthelred, LElfred's son-in-law, was appointed under ·
king of recovered Mercia. Henceforward, Teutonic
Britain remains for awhile divided into Wessex and
the Denalagu-that is to say, the district governed by
Danish law.
Though peace was thus made with Guthrum, new
bodies of wickings came pouring southward from
Scandinavia. One of these sailed up the Thames to
Fulham, but after spending some time there, they
went over to the Frankish coast, where their depreda-
tions were long and severe. Throughout all LElfred's
reign, with only two intervals of peace, the wickings
kept up a constant series of attacks on the coast, and
lrequently penetrated inland. From time to time,
the great horde under Ha::sten poured across the
country, cutting the corn and driving away the cattle,
and retreating into East Anglia, or N orthumbria, or
the peninSUla of the Wirrall, whenever they were
seriously wo'rsted. "Thanks be to God," says the
Chronicle pathetically "the host had not wholly
broken up all the English kin;" but the misery of
England must have been intense. LElfred, however,
introduced two military changes of great importance.
He set on foot · something like a regula~ army, with a
 THE SAXONS AT BAY IN WESSEX. 139

settled commissariat, dividing his forces into two

bodies, so that one-half was constantly at home tilling
the soil while the other half was in the field j and he
built large ships. on a new plan, which he manned with
Frisians, as well as with English, and which largely
aided in keeping the coast fairly free from Danish
invasion during the two intervals of peace.
Throughout the whole of the ninth century, how-
ever, and the early part of the tenth, the whole history
of England is the history of a perpetual pillage. No
man who sowed could tell whether he mi.sht reap or
not. The Englishman lived in constant fear of life
and goods j he was liable at any moment to be called
out against the enemy. Whatever little civilisation
had ever existed in the country died out almost alto-
gether. The Latin language was forgotten even by
the priests. 'War had turned everybody into fighters j
commerce was impossible when the towns were sacked
year after year by the pirates. But in the rare intervals
of pea~e, .!Elfred did his best to civilise his people.
The amount of work with which he is crcdited is truly
astonishing. He translated into English with his
own hand" The History of the World," by Orosius j
Breda's "Ecclesiastical History j " Boethius's "De
Consolatione," and Gregory's "Regula Pastoralis."
At his court, too, if not under his own direction, the
English Chronicle was first begun, and many of
the sentences quoted from that great document in
this work are probably due to .!Elfred himself. His
devotion to the church was shown by the regular
communic:ltion which he kept up with Rome, and by
 ANGLO-SAXON BRITAIN.

the .gifts which he sent from his impoverished king-

dom, not only to the shrine of St. Peter but even to
that of St. Thomas in India. No doubt his vigorous
personality counted for much in the struggle with the
Danes; but his death in 90 I left the West Saxons as
ready as ever to contend against the northern enemy.
One result of the Danish invasion of Wessex must
not be passed over. The common danger seems to
have firmly welded together Welshman and Saxon
into a single nationality.. The most faithful part of
lElfred's dominions were the West Welsh shires of
Somerset and Devon, with the half Celtic folk of
Dorset and Wilts. The result is seen in the change
which comes over the relations between the two
races. In Ine's laws the distinction between Welsh-
men and Englishmen is strongly marked; the price
of blood for the servile popUlation is far less than
that of their lords: in lElfred's laws the distinction
has died out. Compared to the heathen Dane, West
Saxons and West Welsh were equally Englishmen.
From that day to this, the Celtic peasantry of the
West Country have utterly forgotten their Welsh kin-
ship, save in wholly Cymric Cornwall alone. The
Devon and Somerset men have for centuries been as
English in tongue and feeling as the people of Kent
or Sussex.