King Alfred of England Part 5

Among the Danish chieftains with whom Alfred had thus continually to contend in this early part of his reign, there was one very famous hero, whose name was Rollo. He invaded England with a wild horde which attended him for a short time, but he soon retired and went to France, where he afterward greatly distinguished himself by his prowess and his exploits. The Saxon historians say that he retreated from England because Alfred gave him such a reception that he saw that it would be impossible for him to maintain his footing there. His account of it was, that, one day, when he was perplexed with doubt and uncertainty about his plans, he fell asleep and dreamed that he saw a swarm of bees flying southward. This was an omen, as he regarded it, indicating the course which he ought to pursue. He accordingly embarked his men on board his ships again, and crossed the Channel, and sought successfully in Normandy, a province of France the kingdom and the home which, either on account of Alfred or of the bees, he was not to enjoy in England.

The cases, however, in which the Danish chieftains were either entirely conquered or finally expelled from the kingdom were very few. As years pa.s.sed on, Alfred found his army diminishing, and the strength of his kingdom wasting away. His resources were exhausted, his friends had disappeared, his towns and castles were taken, and, at last, about eight years after his coronation at Winchester as monarch of the most powerful of the Saxon kingdoms, he found himself reduced to the very last extreme of dest.i.tution and distress.

[Footnote 1: For an account of Henrietta's adventures and sufferings at Exeter, see the History of Charles II., chap. iii]

CHAPTER VIII.

THE SECLUSION.

Notwithstanding the tide of disaster and calamity which seemed to be gradually overwhelming Alfred's kingdom, he was not reduced to absolute despair, but continued for a long time the almost hopeless struggle. There is a certain desperation to which men are often aroused in the last extremity, which surpa.s.ses courage, and is even sometimes a very effectual subst.i.tute for strength; and Alfred might, perhaps, have succeeded, after all, in saving his affairs from utter ruin, had not a new circ.u.mstance intervened, which seemed at once to extinguish all remaining hope and to seal his doom.

This circ.u.mstance was the arrival of a new band of Danes, who were, it seems, more numerous, more ferocious, and more insatiable than any who had come before them. The other kingdoms of the Saxons had been already pretty effectually plundered. Alfred's kingdom of Wess.e.x was now, therefore, the most inviting field, and, after various excursions of conquest and plunder in other parts of the island, they came like an inundation over Alfred's frontiers, and all hope of resisting them seems to have been immediately abandoned. The Saxon armies were broken up. Alfred had lost, it appears, all influence and control over both leaders and men. The chieftains and n.o.bles fled. Some left the country altogether; others hid themselves in the best retreats and fastnesses that they could find. Alfred himself was obliged to follow the general example. A few attendants, either more faithful than the rest, or else more distrustful of their own resources, and inclined, accordingly, to seek their own personal safety by adhering closely to their sovereign, followed him. These, however, one after another, gradually forsook him, and, finally, the fallen and deserted monarch was left alone.

In fact, it was a relief to him at last to be left alone; for they who remained around him became in the end a burden instead of affording him protection. They were too few to fight, and too many to be easily concealed. Alfred withdrew himself from them, thinking that, under the circ.u.mstances in which he was now placed, he was justified in seeking his own personal safety alone. He had a wife, whom he married when he was about twenty years old; but she was not with him now, though she afterward joined him. She was in some other place of retreat. She could, in fact, be much more easily concealed than her husband; for the Danes, though they would undoubtedly have valued her very highly as a captive, would not search for her with the eager and persevering vigilance with which it was to be expected they would hunt for their most formidable, but now discomfited and fugitive foe.

Alfred, therefore, after disentangling himself from all but one or two trustworthy and faithful friends, wandered on toward the west, through forests, and solitudes, and wilds, to get as far away as possible from the enemies who were upon his track. He arrived at last on the remote western frontiers of his kingdom, at a place whose name has been immortalized by its having been for some time the place of his retreat. It was called Athelney.[1] Athelney was, however, scarcely deserving of a name, for it was nothing but a small spot of dry land in the midst of a mora.s.s, which, as gra.s.s would grow upon it in the openings among the trees, a simple cow-herd had taken possession of, and built his hut there.

The solid land which the cow-herd called his farm was only about two acres in extent. All around it was a black mora.s.s, of great extent, wooded with alders, among which green sedges grew, and sluggish streams meandered, and mossy tracts of verdure spread treacherously over deep bogs and sloughs. In the driest season of the summer the goats and the sheep penetrated into these recesses, but, excepting in the devious and tortuous path by which the cow-herd found his way to his island, it was almost impa.s.sable for man.

Alfred, however, attracted now by the impediments and obstacles which would have repelled a wanderer under any other circ.u.mstances, went on with the greater alacrity the more intricate and entangled the thickets of the mora.s.s were found, since these difficulties promised to impede or deter pursuit. He found his way in to the cow-herd's hut. He asked for shelter. People who live in solitudes are always hospitable. The cow-herd took the wayworn fugitive in, and gave him food and shelter. Alfred remained his guest for a considerable time.

The story is, that after a few days the cow-herd asked him who he was, and how he came to be wandering about in that distressed and dest.i.tute condition. Alfred told him that he was one of the king's _thanes_. A thane was a sort of chieftain in the Saxon state. He accounted for his condition by saying that Alfred's army had been beaten by the Danes, and that he, with the other generals, had been forced to fly. He begged the cow-herd to conceal him, and to keep the secret of his character until times should change, so that he could take the field again.

The story of Alfred's seclusion on the _island_, as it might almost be called, of Ethelney, is told very differently by the different narrators of it. Some of these narrations are inconsistent and contradictory. They all combine, however, though they differ in respect to many other incidents and details, in relating the far-famed story of Alfred's leaving the cakes to burn. It seems that, though the cow-herd himself was allowed to regard Alfred as a man of rank in disguise--though even _he_ did not know that it was the king--his wife was not admitted, even in this partial way, into the secret. She was made to consider the stranger as some common strolling countryman, and the better to sustain this idea, he was taken into the cow-herd's service, and employed in various ways, from time to time, in labors about the house and farm. Alfred's thoughts, however, were little interested in these occupations. His mind dwelt incessantly upon his misfortunes and the calamities which had befallen his kingdom. He was hara.s.sed by continual suspense and anxiety, not being able to gain any clear or certain intelligence about the condition and movements of either his friends or foes. He was revolving continually vague and half-formed plans for resuming the command of his army and attempting to regain his kingdom, and wearying himself with fruitless attempts to devise means to accomplish these ends. Whenever he engaged voluntarily in any occupation, it would always be something in harmony with these trains of thought and these plans. He would repair and put in order implements of hunting, or any thing else which might be deemed to have some relation to war. He would make bows and arrows in the chimney corner--lost, all the time, in melancholy reveries, or in wild and visionary schemes of future exploits.

One evening, while he was thus at work, the cow-herd's wife left, for a few moments, some cakes under his charge, which she was baking upon the great stone hearth, in preparation for their common supper.

Alfred, as might have been expected, let the cakes burn. The woman, when she came back and found them smoking, was very angry. She told him that he could eat the cakes fast enough when they were baked, though it seemed he was too lazy and good for nothing to do the least thing in helping to bake them. What wide-spread and lasting effects result sometimes from the most trifling and inadequate causes! The singularity of such an adventure befalling a monarch in disguise, and the terse ant.i.thesis of the reproaches with which the woman rebuked him, invest this incident with an interest which carries it every where spontaneously among mankind. Millions, within the last thousand years, have heard the name of Alfred, who have known no more of him than this story; and millions more, who never would have heard of him but for this story, have been led by it to study the whole history of his life; so that the unconscious cow-herd's wife, in scolding the disguised monarch for forgetting her cakes, was perhaps doing more than he ever did himself for the wide extension of his future fame.[2]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ALFRED WATCHING THE CAKES.]

Alfred was, for a time, extremely depressed and disheartened by the sense of his misfortunes and calamities; but the monkish writers who described his character and his life say that the influence of his sufferings was extremely salutary in softening his disposition and improving his character. He had been proud, and haughty, and domineering before. He became humble, docile, and considerate now.

Faults of character that are superficial, resulting from the force of circ.u.mstances and peculiarities of temptation, rather than from innate depravity of heart, are easily and readily burned off in the fire of affliction, while the same severe ordeal seems only to indurate the more hopelessly those propensities which lie deeply seated in an inherent and radical perversity.

Alfred, though restless and wretched in his apparently hopeless seclusion, bore his privations with a great degree of patience and fort.i.tude, planning, all the time, the best means of reorganizing his scattered forces, and of rescuing his country from the ruin into which it had fallen. Some of his former friends, roaming as he himself had done, as fugitives about the country, happened at length to come into the neighborhood of his retreat. He heard of them, and cautiously made himself known. They were rejoiced to find their old commander once more, and, as there was no force of the Danes in that neighborhood at the time, they lingered, timidly and fearlessly at first, in the vicinity, until, at length, growing more bold as they found themselves unmolested in their retreat, they began to make it their gathering place and head-quarters. Alfred threw off his disguise, and a.s.sumed his true character. Tidings of his having been thus discovered spread confidentially among the most tried and faithful of his Saxon followers, who had themselves been seeking safety in other places of refuge. They began, at first cautiously and by stealth, but afterward more openly, to repair to the spot. Alfred's family, too, from which he had now been for many months entirely separated, contrived to rejoin him. The herdsman, who proved to be a man of intelligence and character superior to his station, entered heartily into all these movements. He kept the secret faithfully. He did all in his power to provide for the wants and to promote the comfort of his warlike guests, and, by his fidelity and devotion, laid Alfred under obligations of grat.i.tude to him, which the king, when he was afterward restored to the throne, did not forget to repay.

Notwithstanding, however, all the efforts which the herdsman made to obtain supplies, the company now a.s.sembled at Ethelney were sometimes reduced to great straits. There were not only the wants of Alfred and his immediate family and attendants to be provided for, but many persons were continually coming and going, arriving often at unexpected times, and acting, as roving and disorganized bodies of soldiers are very apt to do at such times, in a very inconsiderate manner. The herdsman's farm produced very little food, and the inaccessibleness of its situation made it difficult to bring in supplies from without. In fact, it was necessary, in one part of the approach to it, to use a boat, so that the place is generally called, in history, an island, though it was insulated mainly by swamps and mora.s.ses rather than by navigable waters. There were, however, sluggish streams all around it, where Alfred's men, when their stores were exhausted, went to fish, under the herdsman's guidance, returning sometimes with a moderate fare, and sometimes with none.

The monks who describe this portion of Alfred's life have recorded an incident as having occurred on the occasion of one of these fishing excursions, which, however, is certainly, in part, a fabrication, and may be wholly so. It was in the winter. The waters about the grounds were frozen up. The provisions in the house were nearly exhausted, there being scarcely anything remaining. The men went away with their fishing apparatus, and with their bows and arrows, in hopes of procuring some fish or fowl to replenish their stores. Alfred was left alone, with only a single lady of his family, who is called in the account "Mother," though it could not have been Alfred's own mother, as she had been dead many years. Alfred was sitting in the hut reading. A beggar, who had by some means or other found his way in over the frozen mora.s.ses, came to the door, and asked for food.

Alfred, looking up from his book, asked the mother, whoever she was, to go and see what there was to give him. She went to make examination, and presently returned, saying that there was nothing to give him. There was only a single loaf of bread remaining, and that would not be half enough for their own wants that very night when the hunting party should return, if they should come back unsuccessful from their expedition. Alfred hesitated a moment, and then ordered half the loaf to be given to the beggar. He said, in justification of the act, that his trust was now in G.o.d, and that the power which once, with five loaves and two small fishes, fed abundantly three thousand men, could easily make half a loaf suffice for them.

The loaf was accordingly divided, the beggar was supplied, and, delighted with this unexpected relief, he went away. Alfred turned his attention again to his reading. After a time the book dropped from his hand. He had fallen asleep. He dreamed that a certain saint appeared to him, and made a revelation to him from heaven. G.o.d, he said, had heard his prayers, was satisfied with his penitence, and pitied his sorrows; and that his act of charity in relieving the poor beggar, even at the risk of leaving himself and his friends in utter dest.i.tution, was extremely acceptable in the sight of Heaven. The faith and trust which he thus manifested were about to be rewarded.

The time for a change had come. He was to be restored to his kingdom, and raised to a new and higher state of prosperity and power than before. As a token that this prediction was true, and would be all fulfilled, the hunting party would return that night with an ample and abundant supply.

Alfred awoke from his sleep with his mind filled with new hopes and antic.i.p.ations. The hunting party returned loaded with supplies, and in a state of the greatest exhilaration at their success. They had fish and game enough to have supplied a little army. The incident of relieving the beggar, the dream, and their unwonted success confirming it, inspired them all with confidence and hope. They began to form plans for commencing offensive operations. They would build fortifications to strengthen their position on the island. They would collect a force. They would make sallies to attack the smaller parties of the Danes. They would send agents and emissaries about the kingdom to arouse, and encourage, and a.s.semble such Saxon forces as were yet to be found. In a word, they would commence a series of measures for recovering the country from the possession of its pestilent enemy, and for restoring the rightful sovereign to the throne. The development of these projects and plans, and the measures for carrying them into effect, were very much hastened by an event which suddenly occurred in the neighborhood of Ethelney, the account of which, however, must be postponed to the next chapter.

[Footnote 1: The name is spelled variously, Ethelney, aethelney, Ethelingay, &c. It was in Somersetshire, between the rivers Thone and Parrot.]

[Footnote 2: As this incident has been so famous, it may amuse the reader to peruse the different accounts which are given of it in the most ancient records which now remain. They were written in Latin and in Saxon, and, of course, as given here, they are translations. The discrepancies which the reader will observe in the details ill.u.s.trate well the uncertainty which pertains to all historical accounts that go back to so early an age.

"He led an unquiet life there, at his cow-herd's. It happened that, on a certain day, the rustic wife of the man prepared to bake her bread.

The king, sitting then near the hearth, was making ready his bow and arrows, and other warlike implements, when the ill-tempered woman beheld the loaves burning at the fire. She ran hastily and removed them, scolding at the king, and exclaiming, 'You man! you will not turn the bread you see burning, but you will be very glad to eat it when it is done!' This unlucky woman little thought she was addressing the King Alfred."

In a certain Saxon history the story is told thus:

"He took shelter in a swain's house, and also him and his evil wife diligently served. It happened that, on one day, the swain's wife heated her oven, and the king sat by it warming himself by the fire.

She knew not then that he was the king. Then the evil woman was excited, and spoke to the king with an angry mind. 'Turn thou these loaves, that they burn not, for I see daily that thou art a great eater!' He soon obeyed this evil woman because she would scold. He then, the good king, with great anxiety and sighing, called to his Lord, imploring his pity."

The following account is from a Latin life of St. Neot, which still exists in ma.n.u.script, and is of great antiquity:

"Alfred, a fugitive, and exiled from his people, came by chance and entered the house of a poor herdsman, and there remained some days concealed, poor and unknown.

"It happened that, on the Sabbath day, the herdsman, as usual, led his cattle to their accustomed pastures, and the king remained alone in the cottage with the man's wife. She, as necessity required, placed a few loaves, which some call _loudas_, on a pan, with fire underneath, to be baked for her husband's repast and her own, on his return.

"While she was necessarily busied, like peasants, on other offices, she went anxious to the fire, and found the bread burning on the other side. She immediately a.s.sailed the king with reproaches. 'Why, man! do you sit thinking there, and are too proud to turn the bread? Whatever be your family, with your manners and sloth, what trust can be put in you hereafter? If you were even a n.o.bleman, you will be glad to eat the bread which you neglect to attend to.' The king, though stung by her upbraidings, yet heard her with patience and mildness, and, roused by her scolding, took care to bake her bread thereafter as she wished."

There is one remaining account, which is as follows:

"It happened that the herdsman one day, as usual, led his swine to their accustomed pasture, and the king remained at home alone with the wife. She placed her bread under the ashes of the fire to bake, and was employed in other business when she saw the loaves burning, and said to the king in her rage, 'You will not turn the bread you see burning, though you will be very glad to eat it when done!' The king, with a submitting countenance, though vexed at her upbraidings not only turned the bread, but gave them to the woman well baked and unbroken."

It is obvious, from the character of these several accounts that each writer, taking the substantial fact as the groundwork of his story, has added such details and chosen such expressions for the housewife's reproaches as suited his own individual fancy. We find, unfortunately for the truth and trustworthiness of history, that this is almost always the case, when independent and original accounts of past transactions, whether great or small, are compared. The gravest historians, as well as the lightest story tellers, frame their narrations for _effect_, and the tendency in all ages to shape and fashion the narrative with a view to the particular effect designed by the individual narrator to be produced has been found entirely irresistible. It is necessary to compare, with great diligence and careful scrutiny, a great many different accounts, in order to learn how little there is to be exactly and confidently believed.]

CHAPTER IX.

REa.s.sEMBLING OF THE ARMY.

Ethelney, though its precise locality can not now be certainly ascertained, was in the southwestern part of England, in Somersetshire, which county lies on the southern sh.o.r.e of the Bristol Channel. There is a region of marshes in that vicinity, which tradition a.s.signs as the place of Alfred's retreat; and there was, about the middle of this century, a farmhouse there, which bore the name of Ethelney, though this name may have been given to it in modern times by those who imagined it to be the ancient locality. A jewel of gold, engraved as an amulet to be worn about the neck, and inscribed with the Saxon words which mean "Alfred had me made," was found in the vicinity, and is still carefully preserved in a museum in England.

Some curious antiquarians profess to find the very hillock, rising out of the low grounds around, where the herdsman that entertained Alfred so long lived; but this, of course is all uncertain. The peculiarities of the spot derived their character from the mora.s.ses and the woods, and the courses of the sluggish streams in the neighborhood, and these are elements of landscape scenery which ten centuries of time and of cultivation would entirely change.

Whatever may have been the precise situation of the spot, instead of being, as at first, a mere hiding-place and retreat, it became, before many months, as was intimated in the last chapter, a military camp, secluded and concealed, it is true, but still possessing, in a considerable degree, the characteristics of a fastness and place of defense. Alfred's company erected something which might be called a wall. They built a bridge across the water where the herdsman's boat had been accustomed to ply. They raised two towers to watch and guard the bridge. All these defenses were indeed of a very rude and simple construction; still, they answered the purpose intended. They afforded a real protection; and, more than all, they produced a certain moral effect upon the minds of those whom they shielded, by enabling them to consider themselves as no longer lurking fugitives, dependent for safety on simple concealment, but as a garrison, weak, it is true, but still gathering strength, and advancing gradually toward a condition which would enable them to make positive aggressions upon the enemy.

The circ.u.mstance which occurred to hasten the development of Alfred's plans, and which was briefly alluded to at the close of the last chapter, was the following: It seems that quite a large party of Danes, under the command of a leader named Hubba, had been making a tour of conquest and plunder in Wales, which country was on the other side of the Bristol Channel, directly north of Ethelney, where Alfred was beginning to concentrate a force. He would be immediately exposed to an attack from this quarter as soon as it should be known that he was at Ethelney, as the distance across the Channel was not great, and the Danes were provided with shipping.

Ethelney was in the county called Somersetshire. To the southwest of Somersetshire, a little below it, on the sh.o.r.es of the Bristol Channel, was a castle, called Castle Kenwith, in Devonshire. The Duke of Devonshire, who held this castle, encouraged by Alfred's preparations for action, had a.s.sembled a considerable force here, to be ready to co-operate with Alfred in the active measures which he was about to adopt. Things being in this state, Hubba brought down his forces to the northern sh.o.r.es of the Channel, collected together all the boats and shipping that he could command, crossed the Channel, and landed on the Devonshire sh.o.r.e. Odun, the duke, not being strong enough to resist, fled, and shut himself up, with all his men, in the castle. Hubba advanced to the castle walls, and, sitting down before them, began to consider what to do.

Hubba was the last surviving son of Ragner Lodbrog, whose deeds and adventures were related in a former chapter. He was, like all other chieftains among the Danes, a man of great determination and energy, and he had made himself very celebrated all over the land by his exploits and conquests. His particular horde of marauders, too, was specially celebrated among all the others, on account of a mysterious and magical banner which they bore. The name of this banner was the _Reafan_, that is, the Raven. There was the figure of a raven woven or embroidered on the banner. Hubba's three sisters had woven it for their brothers, when they went forth across the German Ocean to avenge their father's death. It possessed, as both the Danes and Saxons believed, supernatural and magical powers. The raven on the banner could foresee the result of any battle into which it was borne. It remained lifeless and at rest whenever the result was to be adverse; and, on the other hand, it fluttered its wings with a mysterious and magical vitality when they who bore it were destined to victory. The Danes consequently looked up to this banner with a feeling of profound veneration and awe, and the Saxons feared and dreaded its mysterious power. The explanation of this pretended miracle is easy. The imagination of superst.i.tious men, in such a state of society as that of these half-savage Danes, is capable of much greater triumphs over the reason and the senses than is implied in making them believe that the wings of a bird are either in motion or at rest, whichever it fancies, when the banner on which the image is embroidered is advancing to the field and fluttering in the breeze.

The Castle of Kenwith was situated on a rocky promontory, and was defended by a Saxon wall. Hubba saw that it would be difficult to carry it by a direct a.s.sault. On the other hand, it was not well supplied with water or provisions, and the numerous mult.i.tude which had crowded into it, would, as Hubba thought, be speedily compelled to surrender by thirst and famine, if he were simply to wait a short time, till their scanty stock of food was consumed. Perhaps the raven did not flutter her wings when Hubba approached the castle, but by her apparent lifelessness portended calamity if an attack were to be made.

At all events, Hubba decided not to attack the castle, but to invest it closely on all sides, with his army on the land and with his vessels on the side of the sea, and thus reduce it by famine. He accordingly stationed his troops and his galleys at their posts and established himself in his tent, quietly to await the result.