"Alfred the Great strikes back".

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Alfred the Great strikes back”

By: Philip F. Cala III

        Michael Carr’s article “Alfred the Great strikes back” gives a lot of information on the life of Alfred the Great. It gives a good bit of information about his back ground and the way he ruled.

        In 878, he was a king without a kingdom, hunted in the marshes of Somerset. In the year 878, Danish forces had conquered most of England and driven the Saxon king of Wessex, Alfred, westward into the Somerset marshes. The second Danish army landed on the southwestern English coast and besieged a small Saxon force at Countisbury Hill. Then Alfred the Great planned to strike back with fellow Saxons who greeted him as if he had returned from the dead. If defeated, the remaining Saxons would be absorbed into the Danelaw. Alfred, with most of his allies having surrendered or fled to continental Europe, would be hunted down like a fugitive, and the history of the English would end. Alfred gathered his remaining forces and began a brilliant campaign that would enable him to reconquer his lands and resurrect a single English kingdom from the ashes of the old Anglo-Saxon nations.

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        Alfred the Great was a ruler that was not only a good one, but he was a well respected one. Alfred rebuilt towns and forts and gathered an army for the coming war. But a force of Danes secretly crept into Wessex late in 875. Before Alfred could rally his troops, they had settled in Dorsetshire, quickly reinforcing themselves with fresh Danish forces. Alfred came to terms with those settlers, deciding it would be easier to pay them again rather than risk another war. This time, however, he exacted a solemn oath that the Danes would leave Wessex and never return, ...

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