Jacob Abbott - King Alfred of England

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[Illustration: ALFRED THE GREAT]

MAKERS of HISTORY

KING ALFRED
OF
ENGLAND

BY
JACOB ABBOTT

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK AND LONDON

HARPER & BROTHERS
PUBLISHERS

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand
eight hundred and forty-nine, by

HARPER & BROTHERS,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District
of New York.

PREFACE.

It is the object of this series of histories to present a clear,
distinct, and connected narrative of the lives of those great
personages who have in various ages of the world made themselves
celebrated as leaders among mankind, and, by the part they have taken
in the public affairs of great nations, have exerted the widest
influence on the history of the human race. The end which the author
has had in view is twofold: first, to communicate such information
in respect to the subjects of his narratives as is important for the
general reader to possess; and, secondly, to draw such moral lessons
from the events described and the characters delineated as they may
legitimately teach to the people of the present age. Though written in
a direct and simple style, they are intended for, and addressed to,
minds possessed of some considerable degree of maturity, for such
minds only can fully appreciate the character and action which
exhibits itself, as nearly all that is described in these volumes
does, in close combination with the conduct and policy of governments,
and the great events of international history.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. THE BRITONS
II. THE ANGLO-SAXONS
III. THE DANES
IV. ALFRED'S EARLY YEARS
V. THE STATE OF ENGLAND
VI. ALFRED'S ACCESSION TO THE THRONE
VII. REVERSES
VIII. THE SECLUSION
IX. REASSEMBLING OF THE ARMY
X. THE VICTORY OVER THE DANES
XI. THE REIGN
XII. THE CLOSE OF LIFE

ILLUSTRATIONS

WALL OF SEVERUS
SAXON MILITARY CHIEF
THE SEA KINGS
LOTHBROC AND HIS FALCON
ANCIENT CORONATION CHAIR
THE FIRST BRITISH FLEET
ALFRED WATCHING THE CAKES
PORTRAIT OF ALFRED
HASTINGS BESIEGED IN THE CHURCH

ALFRED THE GREAT

CHAPTER I.

THE BRITONS.

Alfred the Great figures in history as the founder, in some sense, of
the British monarchy. Of that long succession of sovereigns who have
held the scepter of that monarchy, and whose government has exerted so
vast an influence on the condition and welfare of mankind, he was not,
indeed, actually the first. There were several lines of insignificant
princes before him, who governed such portions of the kingdom as they
individually possessed, more like semi-savage chieftains than English
kings. Alfred followed these by the principle of hereditary right, and
spent his life in laying broad and deep the foundations on which the
enormous superstructure of the British empire has since been reared.
If the tales respecting his character and deeds which have come down
to us are at all worthy of belief, he was an honest, conscientious,
disinterested, and far-seeing statesman. If the system of hereditary
succession would always furnish such sovereigns for mankind, the
principle of loyalty would have held its place much longer in the
world than it is now likely to do, and great nations, now republican,
would have been saved a vast deal of trouble and toil expended in the
election of their rulers.

Although the period of King Alfred's reign seems a very remote one
as we look back toward it from the present day, it was still eight
hundred years after the Christian era that he ascended his throne.
Tolerable authentic history of the British realm mounts up through
these eight hundred years to the time of Julius Caesar. Beyond this
the ground is covered by a series of romantic and fabulous tales,
pretending to be history, which extend back eight hundred years
further to the days of Solomon; so that a much longer portion of the
story of that extraordinary island comes before than since the days of
Alfred. In respect, however to all that pertains to the interest and
importance of the narrative, the exploits and the arrangements of
Alfred are the beginning.

The histories, in fact, of all nations, ancient and modern, run back
always into misty regions of romance and fable. Before arts and
letters arrived at such a state of progress as that public events
could be recorded in writing, tradition was the only means of
handing down the memory of events from generation to generation; and
tradition, among semi-savages, changes every thing it touches into
romantic and marvelous fiction.

The stories connected with the earliest discovery and settlement of
Great Britain afford very good illustrations of the nature of these
fabulous tales. The following may serve as a specimen:

At the close of the Trojan war,[1] AEneas retired with a company of
Trojans, who escaped from the city with him, and, after a great
variety of adventures, which Virgil has related, he landed and settled
in Italy. Here, in process of time, he had a grandson named Silvius,
who had a son named Brutus, Brutus being thus AEneas's great-grandson.

One day, while Brutus was hunting in the forests, he accidentally
killed his father with an arrow. His father was at that time King of
Alba--a region of Italy near the spot on which Rome was subsequently
built--and the accident brought Brutus under such suspicions, and
exposed him to such dangers, that he fled from the country. After
various wanderings he at last reached Greece, where he collected a
number of Trojan followers, whom he found roaming about the country,
and formed them into an army. With this half-savage force he attacked
a king of the country named Pandrasus. Brutus was successful in the
war, and Pandrasus was taken prisoner. This compelled Pandrasus to sue
for peace, and peace was concluded on the following very extraordinary
terms:

Pandrasus was to give Brutus his daughter Imogena for a wife, and a
fleet of ships as her dowry. Brutus, on the other hand, was to take
his wife and all his followers on board of his fleet, and sail away
and seek a home in some other quarter of the globe. This plan of a
monarch's purchasing his own ransom and peace for his realm from a
band of roaming robbers, by offering the leader of them his daughter
for a wife, however strange to our ideas, was very characteristic of
the times. Imogena must have found it a hard alternative to choose
between such a husband and such a father.

Brutus, with his fleet and his bride, betook themselves to sea, and
within a short time landed on a deserted island, where they found the
ruins of a city. Here there was an ancient temple of Diana, and
an image of the goddess, which image was endued with the power of
uttering oracular responses to those who consulted it with proper
ceremonies and forms. Brutus consulted this oracle on the question in
what land he should find a place of final settlement. His address to
it was in ancient verse, which some chronicler has turned into English
rhyme as follows:

"Goddess of shades and huntress, who at will
Walk'st on the rolling sphere, and through the deep,
On thy _third_ reign, the earth, look now and tell
What land, what seat of rest thou bidd'st me seek?"

To which the oracle returned the following answer:

"Far to the west, in the ocean wide,
Beyond the realm of Gaul a land there lies--
Sea-girt it lies--where giants dwelt of old.
Now void, it fits thy people; thither bend
Thy course; there shalt thou find a lasting home."

It is scarcely necessary to say that this meant Britain. Brutus,
following the directions which the oracle had given him, set sail from
the island, and proceeded to the westward through the Mediterranean
Sea. He arrived at the Pillars of Hercules. This was the name by which
the Rock of Gibraltar and the corresponding promontory on the opposite
coast, across the straits, were called in those days; these cliffs
having been built, according to ancient tales, by Hercules, as
monuments set up to mark the extreme limits of his western wanderings.
Brutus passed through the strait, and then, turning northward, coasted
along the shores of Spain.

At length, after enduring great privations and suffering, and
encountering the extreme dangers to which their frail barks were
necessarily exposed from the surges which roll in perpetually from
the broad Atlantic Ocean upon the coast of Spain and into the Bay of
Biscay, they arrived safely on the shores of Britain. They landed and
explored the interior. They found the island robed in the richest
drapery of fruitfulness and verdure, but it was unoccupied by any
thing human. There were wild beasts roaming in the forests, and the
remains of a race of giants in dens and caves--monsters as diverse
from humanity as the wolves. Brutus and his followers attacked all
these occupants of the land. They drove the wild beasts into the
mountains of Scotland and Wales, and killed the giants. The chief of
them, whose name was Gogmagog, was hurled by one of Brutus's followers
from the summit of one of the chalky cliffs which bound the island
into the sea.

The island of Great Britain is in the latitude of Labrador, which on
our side of the continent is the synonym for almost perpetual ice and
snow; still these wandering Trojans found it a region of inexhaustible
verdure, fruitfulness, and beauty; and as to its extent, though often,
in modern times, called a little island, they found its green fields
and luxuriant forests extending very far and wide over the sea. A
length of nearly six hundred miles would seem almost to merit the
name of continent, and the dimensions of this detached outpost of
the habitable surface of the earth would never have been deemed
inconsiderable, had it not been that the people, by the greatness of
their exploits, of which the whole world has been the theater, have
made the physical dimensions of their territory appear so small and
insignificant in comparison. To Brutus and his companions the land
appeared a world. It was nearly four hundred miles in breadth at the
place where they landed, and, wandering northward, they found it
extending, in almost undiminished beauty and fruitfulness, further
than they had the disposition to explore it. They might have gone
northward until the twilight scarcely disappeared in the summer
nights, and have found the same verdure and beauty continuing to the
end. There were broad and undulating plains in the southern regions of
the island, and in the northern, green mountains and romantic glens;
but all, plains, valleys, and mountains, were fertile and beautiful,
and teeming with abundant sustenance for flocks, for herds, and for
man.

Brutus accordingly established himself upon the island with all his
followers, and founded a kingdom there, over which he reigned as
the founder of a dynasty. Endless tales are told of the lives, and
exploits, and quarrels of his successors down to the time of Caesar.
Conflicting claimants arose continually to dispute with each other for
the possession of power; wars were made by one tribe upon another;
cities, as they were called--though probably, in fact, they were only
rude collections of hovels--were built, fortresses were founded, and
rivers were named from princes or princesses drowned in them, in
accidental journeys, or by the violence of rival claimants to their
thrones. The pretended records contain a vast number of legends, of
very little interest or value, as the reader will readily admit
when we tell him that the famous story of King Lear is the most
entertaining one in the whole collection. It is this:

There was a king in the line named Lear. He founded the city now
called Leicester. He had three daughters, whose names were Gonilla,
Regana, and Cordiella. Cordiella was her father's favorite child. He
was, however, jealous of the affections of them all, and one day he
called them to him, and asked them for some assurance of their love.
The two eldest responded by making the most extravagant protestations.
They loved their father a thousand times better than their own souls.
They could not express, they said, the ardor and strength of their
attachment, and called Heaven and earth to witness that these
protestations were sincere.

Cordiella, all this time, stood meekly and silently by, and when her
father asked her how it was with her, she replied, "Father, my love
toward you is as my duty bids. What can a father ask, or a daughter
promise more? They who pretend beyond this only flatter."

The king, who was old and childish, was much pleased with the
manifestation of love offered by Gonilla and Regana, and thought that
the honest Cordiella was heartless and cold. He treated her with
greater and greater neglect and finally decided to leave her without
any portion whatever, while he divided his kingdom between the other
two, having previously married them to princes of high rank. Cordiella
was, however, at last made choice of for a wife by a French prince,
who, it seems, knew better than the old king how much more to
be relied upon was unpretending and honest truth than empty and
extravagant profession. He married the portionless Cordiella, and took
her with him to the Continent.

The old king now having given up his kingdom to his eldest daughters,
they managed, by artifice and maneuvering, to get every thing else
away from him, so that he became wholly dependent upon them, and had
to live with them by turns. This was not all; for, at the instigation
of their husbands, they put so many indignities and affronts upon him,
that his life at length became an intolerable burden, and finally he
was compelled to leave the realm altogether, and in his destitution
and distress he went for refuge and protection to his rejected
daughter Cordiella. She received her father with the greatest alacrity
and affection. She raised an army to restore him to his rights, and
went in person with him to England to assist him in recovering them.
She was successful. The old king took possession of his throne again,
and reigned in peace for the remainder of his days. The story is of
itself nothing very remarkable, though Shakspeare has immortalized it
by making it the subject of one of his tragedies.

Centuries passed away, and at length the great Julius Caesar, who was
extending the Roman power in every direction, made his way across the
Channel, and landed in England. The particulars of this invasion
are described in our history of Julius Caesar. The Romans retained
possession of the island, in a greater or less degree, for four
hundred years.

They did not, however, hold it in peace all this time. They became
continually involved in difficulties and contests with the native
Britons, who could ill brook the oppressions of such merciless masters
as Roman generals always proved in the provinces which they pretended
to govern. One of the most formidable rebellions that the Romans had
to encounter during their disturbed and troubled sway in Britain was
led on by a woman. Her name was Boadicea. Boadicea, like almost all
other heroines, was coarse and repulsive in appearance. She was tall
and masculine in form. The tones of her voice were harsh, and she had
the countenance of a savage. Her hair was yellow. It might have been
beautiful if it had been neatly arranged, and had shaded a face which
possessed the gentle expression that belongs properly to woman. It
would then have been called golden. As it was, hanging loosely below
her waist and streaming in the wind, it made the wearer only look the
more frightful. Still, Boadicea was not by any means indifferent to
the appearance she made in the eyes of beholders. She evinced her
desire to make a favorable impression upon others, in her own
peculiar way, it is true, but in one which must have been effective,
considering what sort of beholders they were in whose eyes she
figured. She was dressed in a gaudy coat, wrought of various colors,
with a sort of mantle buttoned over it. She wore a great gold chain
about her neck, and held an ornamented spear in her hand. Thus
equipped, she appeared at the head of an army of a hundred thousand
men, and gathering them around her, she ascended a mound of earth and
harangued them--that is, as many as could stand within reach of her
voice--arousing them to sentiments of revenge against their hated
oppressors, and urging them to the highest pitch of determination and
courage for the approaching struggle. Boadicea had reason to deem the
Romans her implacable foes. They had robbed her of her treasures,
deprived her of her kingdom, imprisoned her, scourged her, and
inflicted the worst possible injuries upon her daughters. These things
had driven the wretched mother to a perfect phrensy of hate, and
aroused her to this desperate struggle for redress and revenge. But
all was in vain. In encountering the spears of Roman soldiery, she was
encountering the very hardest and sharpest steel that a cruel world
could furnish. Her army was conquered, and she killed herself by
taking poison in her despair.

By struggles such as these the contest between the Romans and the
Britons was carried on for many generations; the Romans conquering at
every trial, until, at length, the Britons learned to submit without
further resistance to their sway. In fact, there gradually came upon
the stage, during the progress of these centuries, a new power, acting
as an enemy to both the Picts and Scots; hordes of lawless barbarians,
who inhabited the mountains and morasses of Scotland and Ireland.
These terrible savages made continual irruptions into the southern
country for plunder, burning and destroying, as they retired, whatever
they could not carry away. They lived in impregnable and almost
inaccessible fastnesses, among dark glens and precipitous mountains,
and upon gloomy islands surrounded by iron-bound coasts and stormy
seas. The Roman legions made repeated attempts to hunt them out of
these retreats, but with very little success. At length a line of
fortified posts was established across the island, near where the
boundary line now lies between England and Scotland; and by guarding
this line, the Roman generals who had charge of Britain attempted to
protect the inhabitants of the southern country, who had learned at
length to submit peaceably to their sway.

One of the most memorable events which occurred during the time that
the Romans held possession of the island of Britain was the visit of
one of the emperors to this northern extremity of his dominions. The
name of this emperor was Severus. He was powerful and prosperous at
home, but his life was embittered by one great calamity, the dissolute
character and the perpetual quarrels of his sons. To remove them from
Rome, where they disgraced both themselves and their father by their
vicious lives, and the ferocious rivalry and hatred they bore to each
other, Severus planned an excursion to Britain, taking them with him,
in the hope of turning their minds into new channels of thought, and
awakening in them some new and nobler ambition.

At the time when Severus undertook this expedition, he was advanced in
age and very infirm. He suffered much from the gout, so that he
was unable to travel by any ordinary conveyance, and was borne,
accordingly, almost all the way upon a litter. He crossed the Channel
with his army, and, leaving one of his sons in command in the south
part of the island, he advanced with the other, at the head of an
enormous force, determined to push boldly forward into the heart
of Scotland, and to bring the war with the Picts and Scots to an
effectual end.

He met, however, with very partial success. His soldiers became
entangled in bogs and morasses; they fell into ambuscades; they
suffered every degree of privation and hardship for want of water and
of food, and were continually entrapped by their enemies in situations
where they had to fight in small numbers and at a great disadvantage.
Then, too, the aged and feeble general was kept in a continual fever
of anxiety and trouble by Bassianus, the son whom he had brought with
him to the north. The dissoluteness and violence of his character were
not changed by the change of scene. He formed plots and conspiracies
against his father's authority; he raised mutinies in the army; he
headed riots; and he was finally detected in a plan for actually
assassinating his father. Severus, when he discovered this last
enormity of wickedness, sent for his son to come to his imperial tent.
He laid a naked sword before him, and then, after bitterly reproaching
him with his undutiful and ungrateful conduct, he said, "If you wish
to kill me, do it now. Here I stand, old, infirm, and helpless. You
are young and strong, and can do it easily. I am ready. Strike the
blow."

Of course Bassianus shrunk from his father's reproaches, and went
away without committing the crime to which he was thus reproachfully
invited; but his character remained unchanged; and this constant
trouble, added to all the other difficulties which Severus
encountered, prevented his accomplishing his object of thoroughly
conquering his northern foes. He made a sort of peace with them,
and retiring south to the line of fortified posts which had been
previously established, he determined to make it a fixed and certain
boundary by building upon it a permanent wall. He put the whole force
of his army upon the work, and in one or two years, as is said,
he completed the structure. It is known in history as the Wall of
Severus; and so solid, substantial, and permanent was the work, that
the traces of it have not entirely disappeared to the present day.

The wall extended across the island, from the mouth of the Tyne, on
the German Ocean, to the Solway Frith--nearly seventy miles. It was
twelve feet high, and eight feet wide. It was faced with substantial
masonry on both sides, the intermediate space being likewise filled
in with stone. When it crossed bays or morasses, piles were driven
to serve as a foundation. Of course, such a wall as this, by itself,
would be no defense. It was to be garrisoned by soldiers, being
intended, in fact, only as a means to enable a smaller number of
troops than would otherwise be necessary to guard the line. For these
soldiers there were built great fortresses at intervals along the
wall, wherever a situation was found favorable for such structures.
These were called _stations_. The stations were occupied by garrisons
of troops, and small towns of artificers and laborers soon sprung up
around them. Between the stations, at smaller intervals, were other
smaller fortresses called castles, intended as places of defense, and
rallying points in case of an attack, but not for garrisons of any
considerable number of men. Then, between the castles, at smaller
intervals still, were turrets, used as watch-towers and posts for
sentinels. Thus the whole line of the wall was every where defended
by armed men. The whole number thus employed in the defense of this
extraordinary rampart was said to be ten thousand. There was a broad,
deep, and continuous ditch on the northern side of the wall, to
make the impediment still greater for the enemy, and a spacious and
well-constructed military road on the southern side, on which troops,
stores, wagons, and baggage of every kind could be readily transported
along the line, from one end to the other.

[Illustration: WALL OF SEVERUS]

The wall was a good defense as long as Roman soldiers remained to
guard it. But in process of time--about two centuries after Severus's
day--the Roman empire itself began to decline, even in the very seat
and center of its power; and then, to preserve their own capital from
destruction, the government were obliged to call their distant armies
home. The wall was left to the Britons; but they could not defend it.
The Picts and Scots, finding out the change, renewed their assaults.
They battered down the castles; they made breaches here and there in
the wall; they built vessels, and, passing round by sea across the
mouth of the Solway Frith and of the River Tyne, they renewed their
old incursions for plunder and destruction. The Britons, in extreme
distress, sent again and again to recall the Romans to their aid, and
they did, in fact, receive from them some occasional and temporary
succor. At length, however, all hope of help from this quarter failed,
and the Britons, finding their condition desperate, were compelled to
resort to a desperate remedy, the nature of which will be explained in
the next chapter.

[Footnote 1: For some account of the circumstances connected with this
war see our history of Alexander, chapter vi.]

CHAPTER II.

THE ANGLO-SAXONS

Any one who will look around upon the families of his acquaintance
will observe that family characteristics and resemblances prevail not
only in respect to stature, form, expression of countenance, and other
outward and bodily tokens, but also in regard to the constitutional
temperaments and capacities of the soul. Sometimes we find a group in
which high intellectual powers and great energy of action prevail for
many successive generations, and in all the branches into which the
original stock divides; in other cases, the hereditary tendency is to
gentleness and harmlessness of character, with a full development of
all the feelings and sensibilities of the soul. Others, again, exhibit
congenital tendencies to great physical strength and hardihood, and
to powers of muscular exertion and endurance. These differences,
notwithstanding all the exceptions and irregularities connected with
them, are obviously, where they exist, deeply seated and permanent.
They depend very slightly upon any mere external causes. They have,
on the contrary, their foundation in some hidden principles connected
with the origin of life, and with the mode of its transmission from
parent to offspring, which the researches of philosophers have never
yet been able to explore.

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