King Alfred of England by Jacob Abbott (all ebook reader .TXT) 📖

bodies of the fugitives as to change the flight into a retreat, having some semblance of military order. Vast numbers had been left dead upon the field. Others had been taken prisoners. Others still had become hopelessly dispersed, having fled from the field of battle in diverse directions, and wandered so far, in their terror, that they had not been able to rejoin their leader in his retreat. Then, great numbers of those who pressed on under Guthrum's command, exhausted by fatigue, or spent and fainting from their wounds, sank down by the way-side to die, while their comrades, intent only upon their own safety, pressed incessantly on. The retreating army was thus, in a short time, reduced to a small fraction of its original force. This remaining body, with Guthrum at their head, continued their retreat until they reached a castle which promised them protection. They poured in over the drawbridges and through the gates of this fortress in extreme confusion; and feeling suddenly, and for the moment, entirely relieved at their escape from the imminence of the immediate danger, they shut themselves in.

The finding of such a retreat would have been great good fortune for these wretched fugitives if there had been any large force in the country to come soon to their deliverance; but, as they were without provisions and without water, they soon began to perceive that, unless they obtained some speedy help from without, they had only escaped the Saxon lances and swords to die a ten times more bitter death of thirst and famine; and there was no force to relieve them. The army which had been thus defeated was the great central force of the Danes upon the island. The other detachments and independent bands which were scattered about the land were thunderstruck at the news of this terrible defeat. The Saxons, too, were every where aroused to the highest pitch of enthusiasm at the reappearance of their king and the tidings of his victory. The whole country was in arms. Guthrum, however, shut up in his castle, and closely invested with Alfred's forces, had no means of knowing what was passing without. His numbers were so small in comparison with those besieging him that it would have been madness for him to have attempted a sally; and he would not surrender. He waited day after day, hoping against hope that some succor would come. His half-famished sentinels gazed from the watch-towers of the castle all around, looking for some cloud of distant dust, or weapon glancing in the sun, which might denote the approach of friends coming to their rescue. This lasted fourteen days. At the end of that time, the number within this wretched prison who were raving in the delirium of famine and thirst, or dying in agony, became too great for Guthrum to persist any longer. He surrendered. Alfred was once more in possession of his kingdom.

During the fourteen days that elapsed between the victory on the field of battle and the final surrender of Guthrum, Alfred, feeling that the power was now in his hands, had had ample time to reflect on the course which he should pursue with his subjugated enemies; and the result to which he came, and the measure which he adopted, evince, as much as any act of his life, the greatness, and originality, and nobleness of his character. Here were two distinct and independent races on the same island, that had been engaged for many years in a most fierce and sanguinary struggle, each gaining at times a temporary and partial victory, but neither able entirely to subdue or exterminate the other. The Danes, it is true, might be considered as the aggressors in this contest, and, as such, wholly in the wrong; but then, on the other hand, it was to be remembered that the ancestors of the Saxons had been guilty of precisely the same aggressions upon the Britons, who held the island before them; so that the Danes were, after all, only intruding upon intruders. It was, besides, the general maxim of the age, that the territories of the world were prizes open for competition, and that the right to possess and to govern vested naturally and justly in those who could show themselves the strongest. Then, moreover, the Danes had been now for many years in Britain. Vast numbers had quietly settled on agricultural lands. They had become peaceful inhabitants. They had established, in many cases, friendly relations with the Saxons. They had intermarried with them; and the two races, instead of appearing, as at first, simply as two hostile armies of combatants contending on the field, had been, for some years, acquiring the character of a mixed population, established and settled, though heterogeneous, and, in some sense, antagonistic still. To root out all these people, intruders though they were, and send them back again across the German Ocean, to regions where they no longer had friends or home, would have been a desperate--in fact, an impossible undertaking.

Alfred saw all these things. He took, in fact, a general, and comprehensive, and impartial view of the whole subject, instead of regarding it, as most conquerors in his situation would have done, in a _partisan_, that is, an exclusively _Saxon_ point of view. He saw how impossible it was to undo what had been done, and wisely determined to take things as they were, and make the best of the present situation of affairs, leaving the past, and aiming only at accomplishing the best that was now attainable for the future. It would be well if all men who are engaged in quarrels which they vainly endeavor to settle by discussing and disputing about what is past and gone, and can now never be recalled, would follow his example. In all such cases we should say, let the past be forgotten, and, taking things as they now are, let us see what we can do to secure peace and happiness in future.

The policy which Alfred determined to adopt was, not to attempt the utter extirpation of the Danes from England, but only to expel the _armed forces_ from his own dominions, allowing those peaceably disposed to remain in quiet possession of such lands in other parts of the island as they already occupied. Instead, therefore, of treating Guthrum with harshness and severity as a captive enemy, he told him that he was willing not only to give him his liberty, but to regard him, on certain conditions, as a friend and an ally, and allow him to reign as a king over that part of England which his countrymen possessed, and which was beyond Alfred's own frontiers. These conditions were, that Guthrum was to go away with all his forces and followers out of Alfred's kingdom, under solemn oaths never to return; that he was to confine himself thenceforth to the southeastern part of England, a territory from which the Saxon government had long disappeared; that he was to give hostages for the faithful fulfillment of these stipulations, without, however, receiving on his part any hostages from Alfred. There was one other stipulation, more extraordinary than all the rest, viz., that Guthrum should become a convert to Christianity, and publicly avow his adhesion to the Saxon faith by being baptized in the presence of the leaders of both armies, in the most open and solemn manner. In this proposed baptism, Alfred himself would stand his godfather.

This idea of winning over a pagan soldier to the Christian Church as the price of his ransom from famine and death in the castle to which his direst enemy had driven him--this enemy himself, the instrument thus of so rude a mode of conversion, to be the sponsor of the new communicant's religious profession--was one in keeping, it is true, with the spirit of the times, but still it is one which, under the circumstances of this case, only a mind of great originality and power would have conceived of or attempted to carry into effect. Guthrum might well be astonished at this unexpected turn in his affairs. A few days before, he saw himself on the brink of utter and absolute destruction. Shut up with his famished soldiers in a gloomy castle, with the enemy, bitter and implacable, as he supposed, thundering at the gates, the only alternatives before him seemed to be to die of starvation and phrensy within the walls which covered him, or by a cruel military execution in the event of surrender. He surrendered at last, as it would seem, only because the utmost that human cruelty can inflict is more tolerable than the horrid agonies of thirst and hunger.

We can not but hope that Alfred was led, in some degree, by a generous principle of Christian forgiveness in proposing the terms which he did to his fallen enemy, and also that Guthrum, in accepting them, was influenced, in part at least, by emotions of gratitude and by admiration of the high example of Christian virtue which Alfred thus exhibited. At any rate, he did accept them. The army of the Danes were liberated from their confinement, and commenced their march to the eastward; Guthrum himself, attended by thirty of his chiefs and many other followers, became Alfred's guest for some weeks, until the most pressing measures for the organization of Alfred's government could be attended to, and the necessary preparations for the baptism could be made. At length, some weeks after the surrender, the parties all repaired together, now firm friends and allies, to a place near Ethelney, where the ceremony of baptism was to be performed.

The admission of this pagan chieftain into the Christian Church did not probably mark any real change in his opinions on the question of paganism and Christianity, but it was not the less important in its consequences on that account. The moral effect of it upon the minds of his followers was of great value. It opened the way for their reception of the Christian faith, if any of them should be disposed to receive it. Then it changed wholly the feeling which prevailed among the Saxon soldiery, and also the Saxon chieftains, in respect to these enemies. A great deal of the bitterness of exasperation with which they had regarded them arose from the fact that they were pagans, the haters and despisers of the rites and institutions of religion. Guthrum's approaching baptism was to change all this; and Alfred, in leading him to the baptismal font, was achieving, in the estimation not only of all England, but of France and of Rome, a far greater and nobler victory than when he conquered his armies on the field of Edendune.

The various ceremonies connected with the baptism were protracted through several days. They were commenced at a place called Aulre, near Ethelney, where there was a religious establishment and priests to perform the necessary rites. The new convert was clothed in white garments--the symbol of purity, then customarily worn by candidates for baptism--and was covered with a mystic veil. They gave Guthrum a new name--a Christian, that is, a Saxon name. Converted pagans received always a new name, in those days, when baptized; and our common phrase, _the Christian name_, has arisen from the circumstance. Guthrum's Christian name was Ethelstan. Alfred was his godfather. After the baptism the whole party proceeded to a town a few miles distant, which Alfred had decided to make a royal residence, and there other ceremonies connected with the new convert's admission to the Church were performed, the whole ending with a series of great public festivities and rejoicings.

A very full and formal treaty of peace and amity was now concluded between the two sovereigns; for Guthrum was styled in the treaty a _king_, and was to hold, in the dominions assigned him to the eastward of Alfred's realm, an