December 870 – 871
Ashdown and the year of battles, 871
At the end of 870 the Danish army leaves East Anglia for Wessex and on about 28 December occupies Reading, between the Thames and the Kennet, where it digs a rampart from one river to the other. Three days later a foraging party under two earls is beaten at Englefield by the men of Berkshire under Ealdorman Æthelwulf. Four days after that King Æthelred and his brother Alfred attack the camp at Reading, but the Danes burst out of the gates and drive them off, and Æthelwulf is among the dead.
King Æthelred I of Wessex in a genealogical roll of the kings of England, 14th century, British Library Royal MS 14 B VIWikimedia Commons, unknown author, Public domain (Æthelred - MS Royal 14 B VI.jpg)
On about 8 January 871 the armies meet again at Ashdown on the Berkshire Downs, at a place not identified. By Asser’s account the Danes hold the higher ground in two divisions, one under their kings Bagsecg and Halfdan and one under their earls, and the West Saxons divide in the same way. While Æthelred stays in his tent to hear Mass, Alfred leads his men uphill against the Danes, and the fighting centres on a small thorn tree. The Danes break and are cut down until nightfall, and King Bagsecg and five earls are among the dead.
The Battle of Ashdown, drawn by Richard Doyle for Thomas Hughes’s The Scouring of the White Horse, 1859Wikimedia Commons, Richard Doyle, Public domain (Battle of Ashdown.jpg)
Two weeks later the Danes win at Basing, and on 22 March at Meretun, also unidentified, where Bishop Heahmund of Sherborne is killed. After that battle a great summer army arrives at Reading from overseas. Æthelred dies soon after Easter, which falls on 15 April, and is buried at Wimborne, and Alfred becomes king. In May the Danes defeat Alfred at Wilton, and he makes peace with them, probably for a payment of silver.
The Chronicle counts nine battles against the Danes south of the Thames in 871. In the autumn the army leaves Reading and takes winter quarters in London, then a Mercian town, where coins of that winter bear the name of Halfdan.
A silver penny of King Æthelred I of WessexWikimedia Commons, unknown author, Public domain (Coin of Æthelred I, King of Wessex obverse.jpg)
Sources
- Asser, Life of King Alfred, chapters 35 to 42.
- Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, entries for 871 and 872.
- Richard Abels, Alfred the Great: War, Kingship and Culture in Anglo-Saxon England (1998).
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