The White Horse King: The Life of Alfred the Great by Benjamin R. Merkle

fast, straight to the city of Exeter, another easily fortified city sitting on the bank of the river Exe on the southern coast of Wessex. From Exeter, Guthrum could easily continue a lengthy campaign of conquest.
    Alfred pursued the Danish troops with his own small mounted force, but he was too late. By the time he had reached Exeter, Guthrum had already taken the town, and the Danes were fattening themselves on the fresh provisions of their new fortress. Then, to make matters worse, Alfred received news that an enormous Viking fleet was moving along the southern coast of Wessex. Several thousand more Danish soldiers would soon be sailing up the river Exe to join Guthrum in his conquest of Wessex. With these troops, the Viking conquest of Wessex would be inevitable.

    The fate of Wessex was all but sealed. Once this new navy joined forces with Guthrum, it would be impossible to drive the Danes from their freshly fortified stronghold in Exeter. Though Alfred’s navy had been successful in repelling an earlier Viking fleet, that fleet had consisted of a mere seven ships. This new naval force was more than twenty times that size and far too large for Alfred to engage ship-to-ship. Only a miracle could prevent Wessex from being overrun by this pagan force.
    And that was exactly what Alfred was given—a miracle. As the Viking longboats sailed along the southern coast, a terrible storm struck the fleet just off the shore of Swanage. Much like the great gale that was to deliver England from the invading Spanish Armada some seven centuries later, this tempest smashed the Danish ships to pieces on the perilously rocky coast of Dorset. Some accounts describe a thick mist that swallowed the ships and led them blindly to be dashed on the treacherous shores. In that one calamitous storm, 120 ships of the Viking fleet sank. Assuming that each of these ships was manned by an average of thirty men, this would have cost the Vikings thirty-six hundred men—a catastrophic loss. For Alfred, this storm was clearly nothing other than divine deliverance.
    Once news of this disaster reached Guthrum, it was immediately obvious to the Danish king that his tactics must be altered. No longer intent on the conquest of Wessex, his aim now was to bargain for safe passage out of Alfred’s kingdom, for himself and his men. Alfred, having already been burned by the Viking’s duplicity in making vows for peace, was certainly dubious about how faithful Guthrum would be in keeping his vows. The Danish army’s predicament gave the Wessex king enough reason to believe that Guthrum had no realistic opportunity for waging a campaign against Wessex. The two kings exchanged vows of peace once more. Alfred chose a great number of hostages from the Viking court but seems to have given no hostages of his own. Alfred did make one fairly significant concession to the raiding army, however, allowing them to remain in Exeter throughout the winter, all the way until the beginning of harvest, somewhere around the first week of August 877.

    At first Guthrum proved true to his vows. At the beginning of harvest, he withdrew his troops from Exeter and marched north to Mercia, where the puppet king Ceolwulf still ruled. Settling down in Mercian Gloucester, Guthrum then demanded of Ceolwulf that he divide up the Mercian kingdom, portioning out many of the Mercian shires to his own Viking noblemen for settlement. In doing so, Guthrum was following the example of Halfdan, who had similarly divided up Northumbria the previous year and had even begun tilling and harvesting the newly seized farmland.
    In Gloucester, the Danes ravaged the countryside and drove out the Mercians, who were unprotected by their Viking-appointed king. Western Mercia was divided up into five boroughs and given to Guthrum’s noblemen to settle and rule. Eastern Mercia, with the exception of Gloucester, remained under the authority of Ceolwulf, provided he continue to take his orders from Guthrum.
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