King Alfred’s Victory Over the Great Heathen Army at Ethandun, 878
King Alfred’s Victory Over the Great Heathen Army at Ethandun, c. May 6, 878
ne of the most pivotal battles in the history of Christendom occurred in the southernmost English kingdom of Wessex with nothing short of the future of Christianity at stake. Like so many deliverances of God’s people before and since, it came at the lowest ebb in their fortunes, after years of loss and torment, invasion and subjugation, with the hero of the hour being afflicted in body with various ailments and burdened with the duty of kingship at his kingdom’s darkest hour. Such is the stuff of legend. Such is the tale of Alfred the Great’s defeat of the heathen host at Ethandun (or Edington).
Battle of Ethandun Memorial Stone
It is fitting that King Alfred—a man credited with first envisioning a united, Christian England—should have enjoyed so long a fascination in English literature, with ballads and novels and histories having been ceaselessly dedicated to his legacy, as he himself made an incalculable contribution to the same in his own age. His legacy is one that must not be forgotten, one that unequivocally stands for a Christian England, with Christian laws and Christian erudition, against those who would supplant the Gospel with warped creeds of their own. King Alfred’s own example was one of generous willingness to make peace when possible, to convert rather than destroy, but in the end, to go down fighting rather than relinquish a country claimed by Christ to those who love death and death’s dark works.
King Alfred (849-899)
Viking Ships besieging Paris, 845
For generations before Alfred’s own reign, the island we now know as England—then a composite of various Briton and Anglo-Saxon kingdoms—had suffered from raiders coming in from the sea in their longboats to pillage and destroy its rich lands. These raiders had dragons carved into the prows of their ships and Thor’s hammer hung about their necks; they worshiped angry gods who called them to angry deeds, and their favored places of attack were monasteries. Even their very name, that of “Viking”, is more a descriptor associated with their bloody vocation than any particular ethnic link. They were the outcasts of their own peaceful, trade-oriented societies in the modern day countries of Denmark, Sweden and Norway.
Viking Ships with their dragon insignia
Reenactment of Vikings attacking and burning a village
Alfred’s grandfather had won a great victory against these raiders in his own day, cementing the kingdom of Wessex as independent, and raising hopes in the surety of his dynasty. Now in the mid 800’s, under the kingship of his elder brother, Prince Alfred continued to fight these ruthless incursions. The two brothers fought four battles, and suffered defeat at three of them. They gained one solitary victory against the heathen at Ashdown. The courage and fervor he displayed that day earned the young Prince Alfred his first sobriquet, “the Wild Boar of Ashdown”.
A detailed map of England from 865-872, showing the routes of and battles with the Viking Great Heathen Army
Such success was fleeting, the heathen army was far from fully vanquished at Ashdown, and soon were reinforced by a great summer army arriving from their homelands. To make matters worse, Alfred’s older brother, King Æthelred I, was gravely wounded in battle and succumbed to his wounds in April of 871.
By such tragic circumstances, and caught in a most unenviable position, Alfred’s own kingship began. The attacks he had once faced with his brother continued unrelenting in the wake of his brother’s death. At a constant martial disadvantage and with the threat of butchery lingering constantly over his citizenry, Alfred first offered to buy peace from the Vikings. Such a choice did not endear him to most of his own folk, though it was becoming a common tactic by Saxon kings to buy time and harmony. It was a flimsy bribe at best, one they knew would not last. So did Alfred, yet by careful statecraft he managed to enact multiple treaties with the heathen Vikings, often suffering betrayal after betrayal from them in turn.
Viking invaders conquered by strength as well as intimidation
Arrival of the Viking Raiders
In the next few years, the Viking hordes gobbled up each independent kingdom lying north of Wessex; no amount of tribute or offer of alliance was accepted by them for long. Ravenous and ever dissatisfied, various Viking leaders drained each king dry, and when one could no longer deliver his payments, they would supplant him. Viking law was established throughout the conquered lands in each case, and Christian practices with Christian ethics were entirely erased. Those who would not submit were put to death, or fled to Alfred’s Wessex for sanctuary. This teetering refuge of Christian independence would be hailed as “the last kingdom”, and Alfred was looked to as her sole instrument of preservation.
Viking invaders swept all opposition before them
Invasion into Wessex came again in the year 878, from land and sea, and a Viking king, Guthrum by name, even managed to seize Alfred’s capitol at Winchester, forcing Alfred and those faithful to him to flee and take refuge in the marshy wilderness outside. While Alfred was thus brought low and every day met with the suggestion of abandoning his cause permanently, the heathen King Guthrum was enjoying the pleasures of the captured capitol—among them Alfred’s remarkable library of translated Gospels and confessions.
The Boyhood of Alfred the Great by Edmund Blair Leighton, depicting Alfred’s very studious and scholarly bent, even from a young age
Then, in May of the same year came the pivotal battle of Ethandun, when Guthrum went out to hunt Alfred in his marshy hideaway and Alfred’s valiant men of Wessex rallied to him one more time. They clashed in the fields of Wiltshire, near the old landmark of the White Horse, a gigantic chalked equine figure that was ancient even by Alfred’s time. The final battle, the white horse, and Alfred’s last ditch defense of his land has been immortalized time and again, particularly in G.K. Chesterton’s Ballad of the White Horse. In it he imagines in dramatized fashion what the more factual Anglo Saxon Chronicle cryptically informs us was a monumental victory. The ballad begins, as all good hero-tales do, at the lowest ebb of near defeat, only for the tale to soar, as it did in real life, to a victory that would change the trajectory of the West forever.
Aerial view of the Uffington Horse, Oxfordshire, England…
Similar ancient hillside carvings of white horses appear throughout the English countryside
The victory at Ethandun brought an abrupt halt to the Viking rampages of Christian lands and ensured the continuation of that system of justice that would become, in time, English common law. By securing Wessex, the battle at Ethandun laid the groundwork for Alfred’s dream of a united England, securing the peace and prosperity required for his later reforms, ones which strengthened his kingdom militarily, administratively, and culturally. His establishment of burhs (fortified towns) and naval defenses, and his zealous promotion of scholarship helped Wessex become a respected capitol of Christian learning.
King Alfred the scholar
The division of England under “Danelaw” after the treaty between King Alfred and King Guthrum
Alfred’s successors—his son Edward the Elder and grandson Æthelstan—built on this victory to reconquer all those kingdoms previously ruled by the Vikings, eventually amalgamating them into a single kingdom of England, united under the banner of Christ.
Of all outcomes of the battle of Ethandun which we remember today, most surprising was that of the public conversion and baptism of Alfred’s fierce Viking opponent, King Guthrum. Upon this great change, these two former enemies became responsible for the establishment of “Danelaw” in England, which fostered peaceable relations between Saxon and Viking settlements living side by side.
King Alfred and court witnessing the baptism King Guthrum, known afterwards by his Christian name of Æthelstan
By the time of Alfred’s grandson, King Æthelstan in the early 900’s, most Viking warlords had followed Guthrum’s example and converted to Christianity, proving Alfred’s own conviction that while martial defense is often necessary, there is nothing so powerfully absorbing as the work of Christ in the hearts of even the darkest of our enemies.
Image Credits: 1 Ethandun Memorial Stone (wikipedia.org) 2 King Alfred, Winchester (wikipedia.org) 3 Viking Siege of Paris (wikipedia.org) 4 Viking Dragon Ships (wikipedia.org) 5 Village Burning (wikipedia.org) 6 Great Heathen Army (wikipedia.org) 7 Viking Warrior (wikipedia.org) 8 Viking Landing (wikipedia.org) 9 Viking Ship Battle (wikipedia.org) 10 Boyhood of Alfred (wikipedia.org) 11 Uffington Horse, 1 (wikipedia.org) 12 Uffington Horse, 2 (wikipedia.org) 13 King Alfred the Scholar (wikipedia.org) 14 Danelaw Map (wikipedia.org) 15 Baptism of Guthrum (wikipedia.org)