They had expected Wessex to fall as everywhere else had. There would be no way to sustain this war, and yet there seemed no way to turn it around.īut for the Great Heathen Army, it was much more than they had bargained for. A total of nine battles were fought that year, with the West Saxons losing a little ground each time.
Time after time, the Vikings “held the place of carnage.” By Easter that year, Aethelred – only in his mid-twenties with six years on the throne – was exhausted and succumbed to a fatal illness.Īlfred took his brother’s place as king and continued the fight. The two West Saxon brothers would repeat the strategy a few times, and fought well, but never with the same success as at Ashdown. The slopes of Ashdown were littered with Viking dead, including one of their kings (a Dane named Bagsac) and five jarls.īut the Vikings were back in the field for a rematch almost immediately. It was Alfred’s first real command, and it was a great victory for the Saxons. He led his men into battle " charging in like a wild boar." His brother finally joined him, catching the Vikings in a pincer attack. We are told the pious young king was in prayer, but Prince Alfred realized they could wait no longer. The Saxons split their forces, but then on the fateful morning of the battle, King Aethelred was reluctant to attack.
The Vikings won that attack at a place called Reading (which gave them an all-important winter base for their campaign), but just two weeks later King Aethelred and his little brother, Alfred met them on the slopes of nearby Ashdown.Īt Ashdown, the Vikings had the high ground as well as the edge of a five-year winning streak. The invasion came as a surprise attack in the dead of winter, January 871. It was wealthy and fertile, with the best trading routes to the continent, so of course, the Vikings could never consider their conquest complete until they had dominion over this territory. Wessex was the southernmost portion of Britain. The Viking Invasion of Wessex and Alfred’s Ascendancy to the Throne The kings of these reinforcements, including one named Guthrum, sat across from Alfred now, adding to the malice in the room and the sense that Alfred was a stag surrounded by a pack of wolves.īut Alfred, as we shall see, was never one to show fear. At least Ivar the Boneless had returned to Ireland – but more Vikings had come that summer. Now in 871, when the Viking hosts had only been in the country for 5 years, Aethelred and all of Alfred’s other once-powerful brothers were dead, and Mercia, East Anglia, Northumbria (with Bernicia), and Kent had all fallen. Alfred had met these Viking champions three years before – but in 868 he had only been in the entourage of his older brother, King Aethelred, and they had been bargaining for the peace of neighboring Mercia and not Alfred’s own home of Wessex. Halfdan Ragnarson and his half-brother Ubba (or Hubba) were twice Alfred’s age and had ten times his experience. For young Alfred, it would be impossible not to feel intimidated by the situation.
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It was late in the year 871 when the 23-year-old Alfred, newly-appointed king of the last free Saxon kingdom in Britain, sat down for peace talks with two sons of Ragnar Lothbrok and other leaders of the Great Heathen Army.
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