How King Alfred Nearly Lost Everything (But Didn’t)

King Alfred the Great is one of the best-known English kings, recognized for turning the tide against the Viking army that threatened to conquer all of England. He was an unlikely king, the last of four sons to take the throne, and riddled with bad health throughout his life. Yet King Alfred was very much the right person at the right time, allowing Wessex alone to survive the Viking invasions of Britain, and cementing a legacy that would help to unify England.

Following the withdrawal of the Roman Army and bureaucracy in the 5th century CE, the majority of what we now call England was invaded and ruled by people from modern-day northern Germany and southern Denmark: the Anglo-Saxons.

Like the Vikings, the Anglo-Saxons had originally been pagan. They worshiped a pantheon of gods similar to those in Scandinavia: Woden instead of Odin, Thunor instead of Thor, and Tiw instead of Tyr. However, by the end of the 7th century, the last Anglo-Saxon king, Penda of Mercia, converted to Christianity and the religion became central to Anglo-Saxon identity.

By the 8th century, England was loosely organized into many kingdoms. The dominant kingdoms by the time of the Viking invasions were Wessex, covering the south of England; Mercia in the Midlands; Northumbria between Mercia and Scotland; and East Anglia in the fens of eastern England. These separate kingdoms were constantly shifting between war and alliance with their Welsh and Scottish neighbors and each other, and political disunity left England vulnerable and ripe for the taking.

It was at this point that the Vikings from Scandinavia entered the scene and we know about the chronology of the events that followed from one fantastic source, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. This book was actually several chronicles, kept in religious institutions across England, and updated largely simultaneously. Though it is recognized as being particularly pro-Wessex in its bias, it does give us a good account of the notable events of the Anglo-Saxon Period and we can follow the Chronicle as it guides us through these vital years in England.

The very first Viking raid on England was in 793 CE when a band of raiders attacked the monastery on Lindisfarne—Holy Island—and left with plundered gold and silver, and enslaved monks. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, one of the sole historical records, tells us:

“On the sixth day before the ides of January in the same year, the harrowing inroads of heathen men made lamentable havoc in the church of God in Holy-Island, by rapine and slaughter.”
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, entry for 793, translated by James Ingram

These attacks had been limited to pirate raids across the coasts of Britain and Ireland, until 865 CE when everything changed. In this year, the Chronicle says:

“The same year came a large heathen army into England, and fixed their winter-quarters in East- Anglia, where they were soon horsed [provided with horses by the locals]; and the inhabitants made peace with them.”
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, entry for 865, translated by James Ingram

Never before had the Vikings ventured so far in-land, let alone overwintered in England. This was more than a simple raid: this was an invasion. It is hard to determine just how many people were in this “Great Army” (micel here in Old English) and historians have varied estimates between around 1,000 and several tens of thousands. Nonetheless, this was a coalition of many Scandinavian warbands and it presented the first real drive from the Vikings to conquer and settle the English kingdoms.

In 867, the Viking army slayed the Northumbrian king in York, and in 869, King Edmund of East Anglia was killed, and another kingdom fell. By 874, the Mercian king was exiled and only Wessex remained as the last Anglo-Saxon kingdom in England. Meanwhile, in 876 the Viking conquerors became settlers, and “…became afterwards their harrowers and plowers” (The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle). The Vikings had made their intention to stay clear.

Who Was King Alfred?

King Alfred was born in 849 CE and was an unlikely candidate for the throne of Wessex. Alfred had fought in Mercia alongside his brother, King Æthelred of Wessex against the Great Heathen Army in a futile attempt to keep the invaders from advancing any further south. Despite some victories, Mercia fell and Æthelred perished soon after, probably from his injuries.

Æthelred had two sons, but in 886 the throne was passed to his brother, Alfred, as they had agreed. Four sons of King Æthelwulf had each taken the throne: Æthelbald, Æthelberht, Æthelred, and finally Alfred, in a custom which favored capability and ability to rule over pure primogeniture (the throne passing to the first-born son).

Alfred’s foreign policy was directed at defending Wessex militarily from Scandinavian attacks, but his reign was also concentrated on several reforms at home. He established fortified towns, called burghs, which were located roughly 19 miles apart and which could allow armed garrisons to march out and defend against an attack anywhere in the kingdom.

Alfred also focused on domestic affairs and legal reform. He is known for spurring on a renewed sense of learning and Christian education in his kingdom. He was keenly aware of his and his subjects’ place within the wider Christian world, and with the threat of a foreign, pagan conquest there was the potential for King Alfred to save not just Wessex, but England itself. It is, therefore, important to consider Alfred as a skilled administrator as well as a military talent.

Not long into his reign, disaster struck Alfred. Despite blockading Danish ships in Devon and a peace agreement sworn on a holy ring, the Vikings once more began a dramatic offensive in Wessex. At the start of 878 CE, the Heathen Army attacked Chippenham where Alfred was staying.

Let’s return to the Chronicle:

“This year about mid-winter, after twelfth-night, the Danish army stole out to Chippenham, and rode over the land of the West-Saxons; where they settled, and drove many of the people over sea; and of the rest the greatest part they rode down, and subdued to their will; – ALL BUT ALFRED THE KING. He, with a little band, uneasily sought the woods and fastnesses of the moors.”
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, entry for 878, translated by James Ingram

At this point, King Alfred had been routed from his royal seat and his command over his kingdom lay in doubt. Wessex lay vulnerable to Viking raids and potential conquest. Traveling light with his small band of loyal survivors, King Alfred built a fortification at Athelney, in the marshes of Somerset. The king must have been aware of the precarious state of his kingdom and how much he had to lose.

It was here the legend of Alfred and his cakes was born. Allegedly, Alfred was sheltered by a peasant woman who didn’t recognize his status and asked him to watch her cakes while they cooked. Distracted by the war at hand, Alfred let them burn accidently and was promptly berated by the woman. Though an unlikely piece of folklore, this story does help to emphasize how little Alfred’s kingship mattered in the rural countryside without his armies and palace.

The Battle of Eddington 

Learning from the Vikings’ hit-and-run tactics, Alfred began a guerrilla campaign from his base at Athelney and successfully rallied the local fyrd (peasant militia) from Somerset, Wiltshire, and Hampshire. Four months after the disaster at Chippenham, in May, King Alfred rode to a place the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle refers to as “Egbert’s Stone,” presumably a monument to the historical King Egbert of Wessex; “There came out to meet him all the people of Somersetshire, and Wiltshire, and that part of Hampshire which is on this side of the sea; and they rejoiced to see him.”

This was a carefully planned operation and it demonstrated Alfred’s authority and level of respect among the lower nobility who stayed loyal to their king despite his humble position in his marshland fortification. From this point on, King Alfred began to retake Wessex, culminating in the decisive Battle of Eddington. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says:

“[He] fought with all the army, and put them to flight, riding after them as far as the fortress, where he remained a fortnight. Then the army gave him hostages with many oaths, that they would go out of his kingdom. They told him also, that their king would receive baptism.”
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, entry for 878, translated by James Ingram

Routed at Eddington, the Viking army under their leader Guthrum returned to Chippenham where they surrendered after a brief, two-week siege. As recounted by the Chronicle, one of the terms for peace was Guthrum’s baptism. King Alfred believed that the only way to maintain peace was through his Scandinavian neighbor’s conversion to Christianity, and he ensured that Wessex’s territorial integrity was preserved.

The victory at Eddington proved to the residents of England that the warriors from across the sea could be stopped. However, England after the battle proved to be forever changed. With the defeat of the Viking army, modern-day England had been split in half between those under Christian, West-Saxon governance and those under “the Dane Law.”

Wessex now stretched further north than it ever had before, and Alfred found himself king of large swathes of Mercia in addition to his west Saxon lands. Gone were the ancient kingdoms, and King Alfred wasted little time in stylizing himself as king of all the Angles and Saxons, particularly in his biography written by his priest, Asser. Alfred saw an opportunity to actively craft a universal Anglo-Saxon “English” identity. Where previously someone may have been Mercian, West-Saxon, or East-Anglian, now they were Angelcynn, or “English kin.” 

Though the Great Heathen Army of Vikings had come some close to spelling the end of not only King Alfred’s reign but every kingdom in England, ironically it was this very invasion that allowed him to stake his claim over all English-speaking peoples. It was not King Alfred who became the first king of all England—that was his grandson, Æthelstan—but Alfred’s strength, determination, and blind luck in the marshes of Athelney had cemented his dynasty’s stake over England for years to come.