in the camp of his father and brothers, and doing his
rough work in life with the honest straightforwardness of a simple,
hard-headed, religious, but only half-educated barbaric soldier.

The successful East Anglian wickings, under their chief Guthrum, turned
at once to ravage Wessex. They "harried the West Saxons' land, and
settled there, and drove many of the folk over sea." For awhile it
seemed as if Wessex too was to fall into their hands. AElfred himself,
with a little band, "withdrew to the woods and moor-fastnesses." He took
refuge in the Somerset marshes, and there occupied a little island of
dry land in the midst of the fens, by name Athelney. Here he threw up a
rude earthwork, from which he made raids against the Danes, with a petty
levy of the nearest Somerset men. But the mass of the West Saxons were
not disposed to give in so easily. The long border warfare with Devon
and Cornwall had probably kept up their organisation in a better state
than that of the anarchic North. The men of Somerset and Wilts, with
those Hampshire men who had not fled to the Continent, gathered at a
sacred stone on the borders of Selwood Forest, and there AElfred met them
with his little band. They attacked the host, which they put to flight,
and then besieged it in its fortified camp. To escape the siege, Guthrum
consented to leave Wessex, and to accept Christianity. He was baptised
at once, with thirty of his principal chiefs, after the rough-and-ready
fashion of the fighting king, near Athelney. The treaty entered into
with Guthrum restored to AElfred all Wessex, with the south-western part
of Mercia, from London to Bedford, and thence along the line of Watling
Street to Chester. Thus for a time the Saxons recovered their autonomy,
and the great Scandinavian horde retired to East Anglia. AEthelred,
AElfred's son-in-law, was appointed under-king of recovered Mercia.
Henceforward, Teutonic Britain remains for awhile divided into Wessex
and the Denalagu--that is to say, the district governed by Danish law.

Though peace was thus made with Guthrum, new bodies of wickings came
pouring southward from Scandinavia. One of these sailed up the Thames to
Fulham, but after spending some time there, they went over to the
Frankish coast, where their depredations were long and severe.
Throughout all AElfred's reign, with only two intervals of peace, the
wickings kept up a constant series of attacks on the coast, and
frequently penetrated inland.