Alfred’s death left Wessex and western Mercia still faced by a mass of more or less hostile Danish settlers in the Danelaw and Deira, but fairly well knit together by the consciousness of sufferings endured and victories gained in conjunction, and with a growing sense of national unity. At first it is doubtful whether Eadward I. intended to subjugate the Danelaw; but he was quickly made aware that there was hardly any alternative. His cousin Aethelwald, son of Aethelred I., who had been passed over on account of his youth in favour of Alfred, and conceived himself to have a better title to the throne than Eadward, rose in revolt, and was supported by the Danish settlers.

Aethelwald succeeded in establishing himself as King of York, and invaded Mercia with a Danish army. Eadward promptly retaliated by invading East Anglia; this was precisely the plan laid down by ‘Byzantine’ tacticians for checking Saracen raids from Syria. It succeeded admirably—the Danes hurried back from Mercia to save their homes. By accident they came upon the Kentish troops isolated, and after a furious engagement gained a Pyrrhic success. Nearly every man of note on both sides fell, including, on the Danish side, both the English claimant and Eric, King of East Anglia. There was, perhaps, more indecisive fighting, but in 903 a treaty was made with Guthrum II. of East Anglia on the basis of the status quo ante. For six years thereafter there was peace throughout England, except in anarchic Northumbria, which appears to have been a sort of dumping-ground for everything that was restless and unsettled in north-western Europe.

In 910 the Danes, perhaps goaded into action by restless spirits from the Continent, again raided Mercia. Eadward apparently decided to repeat his strategy of 902, and collected a large army and a fleet of 100 ships in Kent, but the distress of the Mercians forced him to hasten to their aid. Having effected a junction with the Mercian forces, he intercepted the Danes as they returned from the Severn Valley, into which they had penetrated, and near Totanhael (Tottenhall), in Staffordshire, inflicted on them a heavy defeat. Three ‘kings,’ two jarls, and seven hÖldrs, or great landowners, fell, and the pillaging propensities of the settlers of the Danelaw received a rude check.

Aethelred, the ‘Lord’ of Mercia, died in the same year; but his widow, AethelflÆd, the sister of Eadward, took up his task with energy. AethelflÆd is one of the most remarkable figures in English history. She was not only an administrator, but a strategist and military organizer—a combination almost without parallel in a woman. How deeply her extraordinary qualities had impressed her contemporaries is shown by the fact that upon her husband’s death she succeeded quietly to the exercise of his power. It is tantalizing that more is not told of AethelflÆd, but even in the dry and scanty notices of the ‘Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’ she stands out as a great ruler, the worthy daughter of her heroic father.

AethelflÆd’s capacity was soon to be displayed. The weakness of Mercia as compared with Wessex during the Danish wars lay in its lack of fortresses. It will have been noted that all HÆsten’s raids were directed against it, obviously because there was little fear of being obstructed, as in Wessex, by thickly placed burhs, and attacked by the warlike and energetic burh-ware. Aethelred had evidently made some steps to remedy the deficiency of fortified places, and in 907 he repaired and occupied Deva, thenceforward to be pre-eminently the ‘Chester’ of England. Probably, however, the comparative poverty of Mercia retarded the systematic fortification of the towns, but now AethelflÆd took up the scheme with energy. In the preceding year she and her husband had built a burh at Bromesberrow, between Hereford and Tewkesbury, and in 911 she fortified Scargate (site doubtful) and Bridgenorth. Meanwhile Eadward fortified Hertford, conquered southern Essex, and fortified Maldon and Witham as advance posts against Colchester. So discouraged were the Danes that they sued for peace, but almost immediately broke it.

After Easter, in 912, the jarls of Northampton and Leicester raided Mercia. They wasted the country about Hocneratun (? Hook Norton), but were repulsed at Lygton (Leighton Buzzard). AethelflÆd guarded against further attacks by fortifying Tamworth and Stafford.

The Danes of England now summoned to their help some of the Vikings on the Continent, and a fleet under two jarls, Ohthere and Hroald, came ‘over hither south from the Lidwiccians’ (i.e., Brittany), and sailed up the Bristol Channel. They, as usual, shunned Wessex, where the watchful Eadward was guarding the coast with an army; but wasted South Wales, and captured Cimelauc, Bishop of Llandaff, whom Eadward ransomed for forty pounds of silver. They then pushed on to raid Mercia, but were quickly attacked by the levies of Hereford and Gloucester, and defeated, Jarl Hroald being slain. ‘And they drove them into a park, and beset them there without until they gave them hostages that they would depart from the realm of King Eadward.’ The fleet made two ineffectual raids at Watchet and Porlock, both of which were repulsed with slaughter; and after lying at Bradanrelice (Flat Holm) until its crews were wasting away with famine, retreated first to the Welsh coast and then to Ireland. The energetic King at once hastened eastward and besieged Bedford, which surrendered after a month’s blockade; while the Lady of Mercia kept watch on Northumbria, and fortified Eddisburh and Warwick.

The not very effective intervention of the fleet of Ohthere and Hroald was the last attack on Wessex by Vikings from the Continent. Thenceforward Eadward and AethelflÆd were able to push forward the conquest of the Danelaw with little interference. During the next three years they steadily fortified, and practically shut up the Danelaw in a line of burhs. In 916 they made a great combined advance. Guthrum II., King of East Anglia, attempted to stem the attack by establishing a base on English soil at Tempsford, at the junction of the Great Ouse and the Ivel, while the jarls of Leicester and Northampton made a raid on the neighbourhood of Aylesbury. The counter-attack was a hopeless failure. AethelflÆd stormed Derby after a furious resistance, while Guthrum in vain attacked Bedford and Wiggingamere, and had to retreat on Tempsford, only to be assailed there by an English army of burh-ware from all the eastern fortresses. ‘They beset the burh and fought against it until they broke into it, and slew the King and Earl Toglos, and Earl Manna his son, and his brother, and all them that were therein, and would defend themselves, and they took the others and all that was therein.’ Eadward followed up the victory with energy. Though it was ‘in harvest,’ every available man in Kent and Surrey crossed the Thames, joined the men of Essex and the stormers of Tempsford, and marched upon Colchester. ‘They took it, and slew all the garrison, and seized all that was therein, except those men who fled away therefrom over the wall.’

The last hope for the independence of the Danes of England lay in a Viking fleet which had just appeared on the East Anglian coast. Its crews landed, rallied the broken levies of their kinsmen, and, in conjunction with them, besieged Maldon. Before they could complete their cordon, a strong body of English troops, probably part of the victors of Tempsford and Colchester, entered the burh, and the combined force made a sortie, repulsed the besiegers, and, by a vigorous pursuit, completely broke them. It was the beginning of the end. No time was given for the broken foe to recover. Late as was the season, Eadward kept the field; from every county the land-fyrd and burh-ware marched in hot haste to reinforce or relieve the army in Essex. Northampton, Huntingdon, and Cambridge surrendered, and with them all East Anglia.

This was practically the end of the independence of the Danelaw. Next year, 917, brother and sister made their last advance together, and captured Leicester and Stamford, and on June 12 AethelflÆd died. She had been her brother’s right hand, and so well had she performed her part that little now remained to be done. By 919 Eadward had consolidated his rule as far as the Humber, had occupied and secured southern Lancashire, and had received homage from Regnald, the Danish ruler of Deira; Ealdred, the English chief of Bernicia; Constantine III., King of Scotland; and Donald, King of Strathclyde. Ealdred’s submission was natural; the more shadowy allegiance of Constantine and Donald was obviously prompted by fear of the Vikings, whose settlements in Scotland included all the northern and western islands, and much of the adjacent mainland. When Eadward ‘the Elder’ died in 824 his supremacy over Britain was such as no monarch had yet enjoyed, and his power passed undiminished to his son Aethelstan.

Aethelstan’s reign passed by largely in peace chequered by rebellions which were quickly suppressed. Aethelstan rather prematurely annexed Deira, deposing its Danish vassal king; but he was strong enough to keep down the turbulent Danes of Northumbria. He had more difficulty with Constantine of Scotland, who soon began to regret the engagement into which he had entered with the English ‘Basileus’ of all Britain. In 933 he threw off his allegiance; but Aethelstan proceeded northward with an army and fleet, marched through eastern Scotland to Dunnottar, and brought him to temporary submission. He was not cowed, however, and proceeded to organize underhand a great confederacy, which had as its object the destruction of the power of the overshadowing Dispensator regni totius BritanniÆ. His chief motive for this action was probably that he was hindered in his designs of absorbing Strathclyde and Northern Bernicia; but common fear of the now mighty English power had more than anything to do with the formation of the heterogeneous alliance, which included not only Scotland and Strathclyde, and probably the Galloway Picts, no less than those of the North, but Anlaf Guthfrithson, King of Dublin, Anlaf Quaran, claimant to the Danish crown of York, and three more Viking sea-kings, with a great host of warriors.

The allied host gathered at Brunanburh, or Brunanwerc, a place the site of which is absolutely unknown. It must have been on the west or north-west of England, and, since a great part of the allied host consisted of Irish Vikings, probably on or near the coast. Professor Hodgkin, with whom Professor Oman agrees, is inclined to place it at Birrens, near Carlisle. But there is also a Bromborough near the mouth of the Mersey, which might be the Brunanburh of the Chronicle. Professor Oman’s objection is that it is too far from the base of the Scots. On the other hand, it is as good a place of concentration for the Irish Vikings as Birrens, and, if the Northumbrians had revolted, as seems probable from the significant omission of any mention of them in the ‘Song of Brunanburh,’ the Scots and Britons may have penetrated so far south. In this case the Scots and Picts would have come through Lothian, joined the Strathclydians and Galwegians somewhere on the march, and, passing through Bernicia and Deira, gathered up the Danes of York, and moved westward to join the Irish Vikings in the Mersey. Still, it must be admitted that this implies a higher degree of efficiency than can be supposed to have existed in the inchoate Picto-Scottish horde. Also, Constantine seems to have escaped by land, which would have been difficult had the battle been fought at Bromborough-in-Wirral. There is not a single topographical indication in the ‘Song’ to help the inquirer. Brunanburh may be Birrens and may be Bromborough—the probabilities are, perhaps, in favour of Birrens—but it is not certain that it is either.

However warily the cunning Constantine—‘the hoary warrior,’ ‘the old deceiver’—had gone to work, Aethelstan had good intelligence of the coming storm, and marched northward to meet the allies with all the forces of Wessex and Mercia, accompanied by his brother Eadmund. The battle that followed was the greatest that had been fought since the English Conquest. Details we have none, except that the struggle lasted from dawn to sunset, and that it ended in the destruction of the host that had gathered to undo the work of Alfred and his children. If the loss among the leaders be any criterion, the slaughter was fearful. Constantine himself escaped, but his son fell, and with him lay dead Eugenius, King of Strathclyde, three Viking sea-kings, seven jarls, and numberless crowds of lesser folk.

The battle of Brunanburh set the seal on the great task that Alfred had begun and that Eadward I. and Aethelstan had so well continued. So long as the House of Ecgberht continued to bring forth strong rulers, the English Empire held together. The Danelaw was sometimes troublesome; the Northumbrians were always turbulent vassals; but Eadmund I. and his successor, Eadred, coped successfully with all disturbances, and with the fifteen years’ peaceful reign of Eadgar the ideal of English unity appeared to have been nearly accomplished. Yet it was not to be. A long minority, factious magnates, and a worthless king, were to accomplish between them what the mighty sea-kings of the ninth century had failed to achieve. The result of Brunanburh was to establish the ‘Empire of the English,’ and to awe foreign enemies for forty years and no more. Yet few battles of that age were so decisive, and it made a tremendous impression in Europe. Henry the Fowler of Germany requested the hand of the English king’s sister for his son Otto, soon to add fresh lustre to the name of Roman Emperor of the West; and Aethelstan eventually became the brother-in-law of nearly all the monarchs of Western Europe. He also seems to have been in alliance with the famous Harald Harfaagr of Norway, who was working hard at the Sisyphean task of reducing his wild realm to some kind of peace and order. And yet it must regretfully be owned that we know hardly anything of one of the greatest and most successful of English kings—