The White Horse King: The Life of Alfred the Great Read Online Free PDF Page A

from the retreating Francian military as they plundered their way to Paris. The Francian forces retreated behind the fortified walls of monasteries, such as the monastery of Saint Denis, and watched in horror as the Vikings tortured and barbarically executed the captured Francian forces to the delight of the pagan raiding army. Ragnar and his men were eventually turned back, though it wasn’t a fear of the Francian army that prompted the Viking’s departure. Charles paid a hefty sum of seven thousand pounds in silver and gold to Ragnar, as danegeld , a bribe to convince the Vikings to leave. Usually the paying of the danegeld only guaranteed a much longer visit from the Danes, but at the same time that the payment was negotiated, the Viking forces were plagued by a severe epidemic of dysentery. The disease was so severe that Ragnar’s forces were more than satisfied with the danegeld and immediately returned to their homes, hoping to recover in peace.
    But they did not find peace at home. When Ragnar returned to Denmark, the king of the Danes, Horik, ordered all of Ragnar’s forces to be executed as a punishment for their lawless raiding. Whether Horik was really bothered by the lawlessness of their raiding or by the competition that Ragnar’s raiding posed to the crown is a question worth asking. Ragnar and his sons, however, managed to slip away from King Horik unharmed and began to focus their 27 raiding away from the continent and onto the islands of Britain and Ireland.
    Many years later, Ragnar’s “little pigs” landed on the shores of East Anglia, on the southeast coast of modern England. The East Anglian king, King Edmund, quickly sought peace for his kingdom from the Vikings and found it could be purchased, though its cost would be far greater than Edmund bargained for. Ragnar’s sons restrained their armies from pillaging the East Anglian kingdom, as long as the East Anglians supplied food and all other necessary provisions to the Viking camps, which began to swell daily with newcomers from other Viking armies hearing of this new life of ease. When the winter months arrived, a time when the Viking armies normally returned across the North Sea and left the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms to recover, the great army gave no hint of leaving.
    Throughout the long winter, the East Anglians served the appetites of the Viking army, supplying them with food, drink, and other gifts. Then, in addition to these provisions, the Vikings demanded horses for the entire army. Though the Vikings never fought on horseback, they had learned that a mounted army had the ability to strike even deeper and more swiftly into the British countryside, where rivers did not always provide an easy path.
    This last demand having been met, the Vikings finally marched on in the autumn of AD 866, leaving the East Anglians wishing they had been so lucky as to have only had their villages plundered and burned. From here, the great army, now more than five thousand strong, not counting the innumerable noncombatant members of their camp, rode north to the kingdom of Northumbria.
    Whether there was truth to the legend of the death of Ragnar 28 and the burden of revenge placed on his sons, or whether the wealth of the Northumbrian kings had caught their attention, the Danes were determined that their conquest of England was to begin with the Northumbrian capital of York.
    The target was well selected. A commercial center that was advantageously connected to the network of roads and rivers of Northumbria, York offered quick wealth and a strategic base for further conquests. But even more strategic was the date chosen for the attack. First, Ivar and Halfdan arrived in Northumbria when the kingdom was divided by a cruel civil war between King Ælle and his rival, King Osberht. Second, the Vikings launched their surprise attack on York on November 1, All Saints’ Day, a feast day the Anglo-Saxon church observed in great earnest. This meant that the attack came