189-9.] on King Alfred. 87 



in action, when the king's new ships grounded with the ebb tide and 

 could not get off with the flood in time to pursue the lighter and 

 nimbler Danes. Two Danish vessels, however, were cast ashore and 

 their crews sent to Alfred. He had them hanged as pirates, which, 

 no doubt, they were. We may assume that all pretence of regular 

 warfare was at an end, even if these rovers had been under any com- 

 mand at all. This is the only act of severity recorded of Alfred in 

 the whole of his reign, and it appears to have been justified both in 

 strict right and in policy. 



The vastly increased efficiency of Alfred's forces in these latter 

 campaigns is our best measure of his military reforms. Our direct 

 accounts of them are not so clear as might be desired. But this 

 much is certain, that he found mere tribal levies, which could be 

 kept together only for a short time, and were useless for distant or 

 prolonged operations, and left a system in which there were distinct 

 provisions for a field army, garrisons and reserve. His personal 

 staff and retinue (in which military and civil functions were, no 

 doubt, combined) were also divided into three sections, which took 

 the duty in turns, month by month.* 



We now return to a memorable deed of Alfred's, which we passed 

 over in its order of time rather than interpolate it among purely 

 military incidents. London, it will be remembered, had been plun- 

 dered and wasted by the Danes in the middle of the century. In 

 886, the year in which Paris was besieged and nearly taken by the 

 Vikings, and they departed at last rather as victors than as van- 

 quished, Alfred, now free for works of peace, turned his thoughts to 

 London. " He restored it with all honour, and caused men to dwell 

 therein, and gave it in charge to his son-in-law, iEthelred, Earl of 

 Mercia ; and to him as their king all the Angles and Saxons who 

 had been scattered abroad, or had been led captive by the heathen, 

 freely betook themselves and put themselves under his lordship " ; | 

 that is, the scattered English of the northern and eastern parts came 

 and settled in London, now sure of Alfred's protection. Alfred could 

 have no conception of what London was to be even in later medieval 

 times. None the less this was a master-stroke of policy. London, 

 the first of Mercian cities, thus restored to her old estate, was a sign 

 for all men of the new power of Wessex, a bulwark of Mercia, and a 

 sure warden of the Thames valley against any future Danish invasions. 

 Next after Winchester, London ought of right to honour Alfred as 

 her second and greatest founder. This must have been very soon 

 after the time when the Treaty of Wedmore, perhaps with %ome 



* Chron. s.a. 894 ; Asser, p. 65, ed. Wise. There is an extremely obscure 

 document, now known to scholars as the ' Tribal Hidage,' which may possibly 

 have to do with a military census of Alfred's time. The suggestion that this is 

 its real significance comes from my friend Prof. F. York Powell. 



t Asser, stib anno. The incongruous Roman dominium — for the language 

 aims at being classical — makes one feel the misfortune of Asser having written 

 in Latin. 



