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The Battle of Edington (May 878) was a battle which took place near Edington in the county of Wiltshire in the south-west of England.
In the 9th century, the Danes had been steadily invading England, pushing and prodding the Anglo-Saxon residents. They held the northeast area of the country and a defeat at Ashdown had paused but not halted their advance. Alfred the Great had been hiding in a marsh throughout the Winter. When Spring arrived, he summoned his forces and marched to Edington, where he challenged the Northmen to a battle. He then defeated the Vikings (or Danes) under Guthrum the Old, fighting behind a protective wall of shields, reminiscent of tactics used by the Roman legions.
After fighting for much of the day, the Danes fled to what became the Danelaw, surrendering at Chippenham, their own fortress, after a 14 day siege. They then asked for quarter, which was given. The king of the Vikings was afterwards baptized into the Christian church. Alfred stood godfather to him and raised him from the font. Although Alfred could have tortured and killed them, and slaughtered them to a man, he wished instead to make a lasting peace.
The Viking Attacks
Main article: History of the Viking Attacks on England
The history of these attacks stretched back, according to the Laud Chronicle (Garmonsway 57), to the raid on Lindisfarne, in Northumbria, in 793 A.D. There were occasional raids on Wessex starting soon after Lindisfarne, but these were not a serious threat until the battle at Carhampton, in 836 (Yorke 151, Garmonsway 62-63). The West Saxons "were reasonably successful against the Scandinavians, even when the invaders joined up with the Cornish, but after 851 they fared less well," (Yorke 151). By the time of the arrival of the Great Heathen Army in 865, they had been fighting "major campaigns" for fourteen years, and had suffered great losses. (Yorke 151).
By the standards of, say, the Romans, this Great Heathen Army certainly wasn't great-- it probably wouldn't even have qualified as an army: Jones puts gives its number "at a guess" as between 500 and 1000 men, under the leadership of Inar (or Yngvarr) the Boneless, Ubbi, and Halfdan (219). What made this army different from those that had come before it was its intent. Its arrival began "a new stage, that of conquest and residence," (Jones 218). By 870 they had taken over Deira and East Anglia, and in 871 they attacked Wessex. Of the nine battles mentioned by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that year, precisely one was a West Saxon victory; in this year Alfred succeeded his brother Athelred, who died after the Battle of Merton (Garmonsway 70-73).
Mercia had collapsed by 874, and the Army's cohesion went with it. Halfdan went back to Deira and fought various Celts; his army settled there and he is not mentioned after 876, when "'Danes were engaged in ploughing and making a living for themselves,'" (Jones 221). Guthrum, with two other unnamed kings, "departed for Cambridge in East Anglia," (Jones 221). He made several attacks on Wessex, starting in 875, and in the last nearly captured Alfred in his winter fortress at Chippenham (Jones 221, Smyth . But King Alfred of Wessex rebounded from this disaster and repulsed the attack at Edington, the battle that ended that particular Danish threat and kept Wessex English.
Alfred's position before the battle
Guthrum and his men had applied the usual Danish strategy of occupying a fortified town and waiting for a peace “treaty,” involving money in return for a promise to leave the kingdom immediately; Alfred shadowed the army, trying to prevent more damage than had already occurred. This started in 875 when Guthrum's army “eluded the West Saxon levies and got into Wareham,” (Garmonsway 74) They then gave hostages and oaths to leave the country to Alfred, who paid them off (Smyth 70). The Danes promptly slipped off to Exeter, even deeper into Alfred's kingdom, where they concluded in the fall of 877 a "firm peace" with Alfred (Garmonsway 74), a part of which entailed leaving his kingdom and not returning (Smyth 72). This they did, spending the rest of 877 (by the Gregorian calendar) in Gloucester (Smyth 72). Alfred spent Christmas at Chippenham, thirty miles from Gloucester. The Danes attacked Chippenham "in midwinter after Twelfth Night" (Garmonsway 74), probably during the night of January 6-7, 878. The Danes captured Chippenham (barely missing Alfred) and forced Alfred to retreat "with a small force" into the wilderness (Garmonsway 74). It is to this time that the Burning Cakes story belongs.
The picture painted is of Alfred ineffectually chasing around Wessex, while the Danes do exactly as they please. The Chronicle attempts to convey the impression that Alfred held the initiative; it is "a bland chronicle which laconically charts the movements of the Danish victors while at the same time disingenuously striving to convey the impression that Alfred was in control," (Smyth 70) although it fails utterly. And even had Alfred caught up to the Danes, it is highly unlikely that he could have accomplished anything. The fact that his army could not defend the fortified Chippenham, even in "an age...as yet untrained in siege warfare," (Smyth 70) casts the most extreme doubt on its ability to defeat the Danes on an open field, unaided by fortifications. There was really very little (beyond repeatedly paying the invaders off) that Alfred could do about the Danish menace between 875 and the end of 877.
The Battle of Edington
This was even more true after the Twelfth Night attack. With his small warband, a fraction of his army at Chippenham, Alfred could not hope to retake the town from the Danes, who had in previous wars proven themselves adept at defending fortified positions, for example at Reading in 871 (Garmonsway 70). So he retreated southward, preparing himself and his forces for another battle, and then defeated Guthrum and his host. The first we read of him after the disaster at Chippenham is around Easter, when he built a fortress at Athelney (Garmonsway 76, Life 26). In the seventh week after Easter, or between 4 and 7 May (Smyth 74), Alfred called a levy at Ecgbryhtesstan (Egbert's Stone), near Athelney; all the men in that area (Somerset, Wiltshire, and Hampshire) who had not fled rallied to him there (Life 26, Garmonsway 76). The next day Alfred's host moved to Iley Oaks, and then the day after that to Edington (Garmonsway 76, Life 26-27). Here, sometime between 6 and 12 May (Smyth 75), they fought the Danes. According to the Life, "Fighting ferociously, forming a dense shield-wall against the whole army of the Pagans, and striving long and bravely...at last he gained the victory . He overthrew the Pagans with great slaughter, and smiting the fugitives, he pursued them as far as the fortress [i.e., Chippenham." (27)
The West Saxons removed from the area all foodstuffs that the Danes might capture in a sortie, and waited (Life 27). After two weeks, the hungry Danes sued for peace, giving Alfred "preliminary hostages and solemn oaths that they would leave his kingdom immediately", just as usual, but in addition promising that Guthrum would be baptized (Garmonsway 76). The primary difference between this agreement and the treaties at Wareham and Exeter was that Alfred had overwhelmingly defeated the Danes at Edington, demonstrating that he could very easily enforce the terms of the treaty. The primary reason for Alfred's victory was probably the relative size of the two armies. The men of even one shire could be a formidable fighting force, as those of Devon proved in the same year, defeating a large army under one Cynuit, brother of Ivar and Halfdan (Life 26). In addition, Guthrum had lost many men, one way or another, since he split up with Ivar and Ubbi in 875. Some became colonists, in East Anglia before he attacked Wessex, and Mercia between the treaty at Exeter and the attack on Chippenham, and many others were lost in a storm off Swanage in 876-7, with 120 ships (Smyth 74). Because of this size discrepancy, Guthrum would not risk breaking the treaty, which would almost certainly lead to another crushing defeat.
Consequences
After Edington, the Danes were contained in the Danelaw; Wessex, the last free English kingdom, was to remain free. If Alfred had lost at Edington, Guthrum would most likely been able to sweep through the rest of Wessex, and bring it under his rule. In addition, the baptism of Guthrum and his men at Aller with Alfred as his sponsor gave Alfred moral sway over the the warriors of the Danelaw. As Smyth put it,
- The spiritual parenthood established by Alfred over Guthrum at Aller must inevitably have implied some level of cultural and political superiority, and Guthrum, as the spiritual son of Alfred, was in turn acknowledgint the future on-going superiority of a king whose religion he was forced to adopt (83).
Aside from the fact that a kingdom with significant cultural, political, and military (as demonstrated by Edington) superiority was hardly an appetizing target, Guthrum was not extremely likely to attack his father in Christ. Wessex was safe from the Danes of the Danelaw, at least for the time being.
See also
878 | Battles of Denmark | Battles of the Anglo-Saxons | History of Wiltshire
"Battle of Edington"