emed too strong to be taken by
assault, nor did Alfred care to immolate his men while a safer and surer
expedient remained. He had made himself fully familiar with its
formation, knew well its weak and strong points and its sparseness of
supplies, and without loss of time spread his forces round it, besieging
it so closely that not a Dane could escape. For fourteen days the siege
went on, Alfred's army, no doubt, daily increasing, that of his foe
wasting away before the ceaseless flight of arrows and javelins.

Guthrum was in despair. Famine threatened him. Escape was impossible.
Hardly a bird could have fled unseen through the English lines. At the
end of the fortnight he yielded, and asked for terms of surrender. The
war was at an end. England was saved.

In his moment of victory Alfred proved generous. He gave the Danes an
abiding-place upon English soil, on condition that they should dwell
there as his vassals. To this they were to bind themselves by oath and
the giving of hostages. Another condition was that Guthrum and his
leading chiefs should give up their pagan faith and embrace
Christianity.

To these terms the Danish leader acceded. A few weeks after the fight
Aubre, near Athelney, was the scene of the baptizing of Guthrum and
thirty of his chiefs. To his heathen title was added the Saxon name of
Athelstan, Alfred standing sponsor to the new convert to the Christian
faith. Eight days afterwards Guthrum laid off the white robe and
chrysmal fillet of his new faith, and in twelve days bade adieu to his
victorious foe, now, to all seeming, his dearest friend. What sum of
Christian faith the baptized heathen took with him to the new lands
assigned him it would be rash to say, but at all events he was removed
from the circle of England's foes.

The treaty of Wedmore freed southern England from the Danes. The shores
of Wessex were teased now and then by after-descents, but these
incursions were swept away like those of stinging hornets. In 894 a
fleet of three hundred ships invaded the realm, but they met a crushing
defeat. The king was given some leisure to pursue those studies to which
his mind so strongly inclined, and to carry forward measures for the
education of his people by the establishment of schools which, like
those of Charlemagne in France, vanished before he was fairly in the
grave. This noble knight died in 901, nearly a thousand years ago, after
having proved himself one of the ablest warriors an