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

eastern subkingdoms of Kent, Surrey, Sussex, and Essex. But as was his older brother’s, Æthelberht’s reign was brief. By AD 865, Æthelberht was dead as well, leaving the fourth son, Æthelred, as king and Alfred as the next in line.

    With the conquest of the Northumbrian capital of York, Danish rule had been thoroughly established in the north, and it was time for the Viking forces to begin expanding their empire. In AD 867 Ivar and Ubbe led the army south to Nottingham—the capital of the kingdom of Mercia, the northern neighbors of Wessex. 2 The city was quickly captured by the Viking army, who refortified it against any attempts to retake the city. The Mercian king, Burgred, appealed to Wessex for aid in ending the Danish occupation of Nottingham. The Mercian kingdom was closely allied to Wessex after King Æthelwulf ’s daughter, Æthelswith, married the king of Mercia in the spring of 853 in an attempt to forge a military alliance between these two kingdoms. Thus Burgred and the new king of Wessex, Æthelred, were brothers-in-law.
    Æthelred quickly consented and set about raising the army of Wessex to go and battle the Danish invaders. When Æthelred and his younger brother Alfred finally arrived at Nottingham leading the battle-ready men of Wessex, however, they were frustrated to find that the Danes had withdrawn behind the city walls of Nottingham and refused to come out and fight. Many years of raiding and running had taught the Viking forces the advantage of avoiding all combat except when they were sure to be the victors. And now, even though the goal of the Vikings was no longer simply plundering but all-out conquest, they continued to use many of these old tactics.
    The forces of Wessex were not prepared to break through Nottingham’s old Roman ramparts and its city walls. They had no choice but to settle in for a lengthy siege of the city. Unfortunately, unlike Ivar and Ubbe’s army, the men of Wessex were not professional soldiers. This meant that though they could be counted on for fierce fighting during short and intense battles, they could not be counted on for long, protracted campaigns. These men were farmers who had to return home to tend to their crops and livestock and could not spare months of waiting for the Viking troops to be starved into submission by a dwindling food supply. After a very short time, the Wessex forces began to steal out of the camp secretly in order to return home. Burgred, realizing he would not be able to wait the Vikings out, reluctantly won peace for his city by bribing the raiding army to leave.
    This was Alfred’s disappointing introduction to the bitter frustration of doing battle with the Viking raiders. Though the reputation of the Danes for ferocity in battle was well deserved, the true skill of the Viking forces was the ability to maximize their raping, pillaging, and plundering, while minimizing the chances of facing another 33 army on the open field of battle. Ivar and Ubbe led their troops past Æthelred, Alfred, and Burgred, completely unscathed, with the plundered wealth of the city on their backs. The Mercian king, Burgred, though he had won back the city, had ultimately lost his authority to rule. During the following years, the kingdom of Mercia became a thoroughfare for Viking armies, with the Mercians incapable of putting up any resistance.

    Alfred did find one rather significant consolation in the failed siege of Nottingham. At some point during, or shortly after, the siege, Alfred was betrothed to and then married a Mercian woman, Ealswith. His new bride’s father was an ealdorman of one of the older tribes of Mercia, and her mother was from the royal line of the Mercian kingdom. She remained married to Alfred for the rest of his life, dying several years after her husband.
    Though Alfred said little about his relationship with his wife in his writings, his silence is in keeping with the general Anglo-Saxon austerity and does not indicate any