Offa and the Mercian Wars (19 page)

The ‘heathen raiding army' which, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, stayed in Thanet over the winter of 865 may not necessarily have been much larger than those involved in previous invasions, but it introduced an ominous new development. The Vikings made peace with the people of Kent in exchange for payment – the first record in England of the notorious ‘Danegeld' – then ignored the agreement and plundered eastern Kent regardless. Later in the year, either this or another army then landed in East Anglia, whose rulers had obtained their independence from Mercia but had never recovered their former strength. Again the invaders made peace with the ineffectual King Edmund, and settled down to spend the winter, no longer bothering to find a defensible island off the coast for their base. In fact, far from fighting back, the East Angles seem to have actively colluded with them. In the spring they provided them with horses, and as soon as the harvest was in, what was to become known to history as the ‘Micel Here' or ‘Great Army' rode away northwards. Their target was Northumbria, which had long ago lost its position as the foremost military power in England, and which was currently being further weakened by a civil war over succession. It is likely that Edmund had carefully briefed the Vikings on his neighbour's problems in the hope of encouraging them to move on – a policy which was spectacularly successful, though only in the short term.

An eleventh-century version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle names the leaders of the Great Army as Ingware, Halfdan and Ubbi, who, it is implied, were brothers. If three brothers did indeed share the command it could explain the remarkable flexibility of this army, which on several occasions split into separate divisions and then reformed for major offensives. Scandinavian legend claimed that they were the sons of Ragnar, one of the leaders of the attacks on France in the 840s and 850s, and sometimes identified with the semi-mythical hero Ragnar Lothbrock. Ragnar was said to have gone raiding around York and been captured by King Aelle, who put him to death by having him thrown into a pit filled with poisonous snakes. His sons were now keen to avenge him, although as a motive for the invasion of Northumbria this story hardly seems convincing. It has been pointed out that if Ragnar had done all the deeds attributed to him he must have been well over 100 years old by the time Aelle came to the throne (Jones). And the only British venomous snake, the northern adder, is not particularly dangerous or aggressive. Its bite very occasionally kills a child, but as a method of murdering a full-grown Viking it would not be very reliable.

Ingware, also known as Ivar the Boneless, also seems at first sight to belong more to legend than to history. According to Scandinavian legend he was born without a skeleton, with only gristle instead of bones. Some researchers believe that this bizarre story indicates that Ivar suffered from a known hereditary disease, osteogenesis imperfecta, which would have seriously disabled him physically but left his mental abilities unaffected (Sykes). He may of course have been thought to have supernatural powers, but that someone with such a disability could survive to adulthood and attain command of an army suggests that Viking society was more compassionate than we might expect. However, the evidence for Ivar's condition is far from conclusive, and one remark quoted in its favour – that he was carried aloft on a shield – might refer to a triumphal celebration of victory rather than implying that he was unable to walk.

Late in 866 the Great Army moved north to York, whether in search of revenge or simply for loot. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says that it crossed the estuary of the Humber, which suggests that the Danes were travelling at least part of the way by ship, although any parties going overland must have traversed the Mercian province of Lindsey on the way, apparently without meeting any opposition. The Northumbrian king Osberht had recently been driven from the throne by the usurper Aelle, who, according to Asser, did not belong to the royal family and so was not universally accepted. In the chaos the Vikings were able to occupy York before either of the rival kings became aware of their arrival, and it was not until the following spring that Osberht and Aelle agreed to make a truce and combine their forces to attack them.

On or about Palm Sunday, 23 March, the Northumbrians forced their way into the city. Asser says that this was possible because York lacked proper walls, which is an interesting statement because it had been securely walled in Roman times. Despite York's political and religious importance, and its strategic position on the main route from the south into the Northumbrian heartland, its rulers had not thought it worthwhile to maintain its defences. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle describes a ferocious battle in the streets as the Vikings rallied and counterattacked. Those Northumbrians who had entered the city were trapped and slaughtered, so probably the crumbling Roman walls were still enough of an obstacle to slow them down as they fled. The fight then continued outside York, as the defenders sallied out and attacked the English troops who had remained behind. Both the rival kings and eight of their ealdormen were killed, and the Northumbrians suffered a catastrophic defeat. The survivors, we are told, ‘made peace'. Among them was an obscure thegn called Egbert, whom the Danish brothers appointed as a puppet king before they embarked on a summer of plundering throughout the kingdom as far north as the River Tyne. York seems to have been occupied as a more or less permanent base for the raiders. One of England's oldest and most prestigious kingdoms had been effectively destroyed in a single day's fighting.

How Burhred regarded the destruction of Mercia's most ancient rival from a political point of view we do not know, but he seems not to have grasped the strategic lesson of the York campaign. Sixty miles south of York was the town of Nottingham, which guarded the Mercian end of the same north – south route which had been the site of so many battles in the past. Nottingham was a smaller town, but it was a naturally defensible site on high ground overlooking the River Trent. Nevertheless it appears to have been left ungarrisoned, and in 867 the Great Army advanced south and occupied it unopposed. We are not told whether they came by ship via the Rivers Humber and Trent, as seems likely, or whether the horses obtained from the East Angles were pressed into service for an overland march, but in either case the move could have been completed in three or four days, far too quickly for Burhred to react in time to intercept them. Instead the Vikings were allowed to settle into winter quarters while the Mercian king appealed to Wessex for help. In the spring a West Saxon army entered Mercia and marched north in company with Burhred's own forces. It was led by King Aethelred of Wessex and his brother Alfred, who was soon to achieve fame as king in his own right.

According to the Chronicle the allies besieged the Danes in their ‘fortification', but there was no serious fighting and ‘the Mercians made peace with the raiding army.' Asser adds that the ‘pagans' refused to come out and fight, and the English ‘could not break the wall.' Ian Walker has suggested that it was the West Saxons who abandoned the campaign first, giving rise to resentment in Mercia and weakening their alliance, but our admittedly pro-West Saxon sources do not say this. Probably the Vikings were hoping that the besiegers would weaken themselves by a rash assault on the defences and lay themselves open to a counterattack as the Northumbrians had done, but the English refused to oblige them.

In fact, despite the humiliating implications which were becoming attached to ‘making peace' with the invaders, it seems that this confrontation was a Mercian victory of sorts. The Vikings returned to York, and did not launch another major attack on Mercia for four years. They could not, of course, remain idle for long, because they still constituted a predatory army which had to live off the land and so were obliged to find new sources of supplies and loot when their neighbourhood was exhausted. After a quiet year on the defensive they returned to East Anglia in 870 under the joint command of Ivar and Ubbi. Again crossing Mercian territory apparently without trouble, they wintered near Thetford.

This move is of interest because it could not have made use of any major waterways and so must have been carried out on horseback. The choice of Thetford suggests that the Danes had by now become virtually independent of their fleet. King Edmund this time refused to negotiate, but instead mustered an army and attacked them. Abbo of Fleury, writing in the late tenth century, says that the encounter took place at a site called Haegelisdun, which is unidentified, but based on the similarity of the place names may have been at Hellesdon near Norwich. Possibly Edmund played into the enemy's hands by assaulting a fortified camp. The Chronicle simply reports that he was killed, and in the aftermath his whole country was conquered by the Danes. The king was buried at Beadoriceswyrthe, later to become known as Bury Saint Edmunds, and before the end of the century his remains had become the focus of a Christian cult (Stenton). This suggests that there may be some truth in the legend that he was taken alive by the Vikings and later murdered by being shot with arrows. At about the same time the monastery at Peterborough was destroyed, and all the abbots and monks allegedly slaughtered.

After that the Great Army moved into Wessex and occupied Reading. This was part of the formerly Mercian territory of Berkshire taken over around 849, and its ealdorman Aethelwulf was still in control after more than twenty years. The Chronicle records that he met the invaders at a place which was to become known as Englefield, some six miles west of Reading between the Rivers Bourne and Kennet. Asser confirms that the name means ‘Field of the Angles', commemorating the Mercian ealdorman and his followers who defeated the Danes and drove them back into the town of Reading. Four days later, however, the victorious Angles joined their West Saxon allies under King Aethelred and Alfred and assaulted the town, with predictable results. Although they could sometimes beat the Vikings in the open field, the English had yet to devise a method of capturing their defended strongholds. The Wessex army was defeated in ‘a great slaughter', and among the dead was the Mercian veteran Aethelwulf. Four days after that was fought the most famous battle of the war, at Ashdown, where Alfred led an uphill charge against the Danes while the king was still hearing mass, and the invaders were put to flight with ‘thousands' killed. The bloody struggle continued along the Berkshire and Wiltshire Downs throughout the spring of 871, with both sides claiming victories but neither able to strike a decisive blow.

Aethelred died after Easter 871, whether by violence or not is not known, and Alfred succeeded to the throne of Wessex. After the death of Aethelwulf the Mercians seem to have taken no part in the campaign, but in May the West Saxons were beaten at Wilton and an exhausted Alfred made peace, probably by offering tribute. During this campaign the Danes had been reinforced by the arrival of what the Chronicle calls a ‘summer fleet', consisting of men who intended to stay only for the summer raiding season and then return to their homelands. This is one of several such reinforcements mentioned in the sources, and it is likely that the core of the Great Army which went into winter quarters in England was greatly strengthened every summer by adventurers who retained their farms in Scandinavia and had no intention of settling permanently.

Probably eastern Wessex was too badly ravaged to support the Great Army any longer even if its leaders had not agreed to a cessation of hostilities. At the end of 871 they moved back into Mercian territory and occupied London, once again apparently unopposed. The Mercians also, in the words of the Chronicle, ‘made peace.' This time there seems no doubt that Burhred had bought them off. A document survives from the following year recording the sale of a lease of some land at Nuthurst in Warwickshire by Bishop Waerferth of the Hwicce. In it the bishop remarks that he is only agreeing to the sale because of ‘the immense tribute of the barbarians, in that same year when the pagans stayed in London' – in other words he needed the gold to pay his share of the Danegeld.

Two aspects of this situation are especially puzzling. One is Burhred's apparent cowardice, twice making peace without putting up serious resistance, in contrast to the ferocious resistance conducted in Wessex by Aethelred and Alfred. The other is the contrasting fates of the four English kingdoms which had still been independent in 865. Two of them, Northumbria and East Anglia, had been effectively destroyed, each as a result of a single battle. Wessex, on the other hand, had taken terrible punishment in years of fighting, but was still able to raise new armies and continue the struggle. Mercia, meanwhile, had hardly been touched. Apart from the obvious prize of London, and the half-hearted sortie to Nottingham, the Vikings had consistently skirted round the kingdom, making no attempt to strike at its heart. Was Burhred actually a more formidable opponent than the Wessex-based Chronicle makes him appear? If their past history was not enough, the victory at Englefield, acknowledged even by the West Saxons, shows that the Angles still knew how to fight.

According to Roger of Wendover, in 872 a group of Northumbrians rebelled against the puppet king Egbert and took refuge in Mercia, where Burhred gave them asylum. The next year saw the Great Army move its headquarters from London to Torksey, on the lower Trent in Lincolnshire. This was a classic Viking base, on a navigable river, protected by marshes and situated in the midst of rich and so far unravaged agricultural land. It was at least nominally still part of Burhred's kingdom, but no clashes with the Mercians are recorded. Then in the following spring, 874, the Vikings made a swift and obviously unexpected move. Sailing and rowing up the Trent, they descended suddenly on Repton, at the very core of ancient Mercia and the traditional resting place of its kings. Once again Burhred seemed incapable of organising resistance, but this symbolic blow to the heart of the kingdom appears to have broken his will and discredited him in the eyes of his supporters. The king, who had reigned for twenty-two years, hastily fled the country and went to live in Rome, where he subsequently died. A certain Ceolwulf, whom the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle famously dismisses as ‘a foolish king's thegn', took over the throne as a vassal of the Danes, being forced to swear humiliatingly that the country ‘should be ready for them whichever day they might want it.' It seemed that after all Mercia was another hollow shell of a kingdom which could be shattered by a single blow like East Anglia and Northumbria, and this time without even a lost battle to salvage its honour.