797-834: Avoiding the Mistakes of the British

In the last posting we saw the arrival of the 'Heathen Men' (the Vikings) in raids on Lindisfarne, Jarrow and Iona in the mid-790s. We have classed these raiders, like the Saxons of the 360s and later, as a form of hungry organised crime. The Roman Empire had been able to hold the Saxons at bay for a while because it was a unified and relatively efficient structure that could command the necessary resources. Britain only became England because the Romans left and because what remained was a set of petty Kingdoms quarrelling with themselves as much as seeking to resist interlopers. We recall that the English invasion started in earnest when the nearest thing to a British 'bretwalda' [Vortigern] invited one set of invaders [the Saxons] in to deal with another [the Picts]. So, before looking at the progress of the Viking raids and how Wessex managed to avert the fate of Vortigern's Britain, we have to look at just how divided and so potentially vulnerable the Anglo-Saxons were to this new incursion, an incursion that might be regarded as a form of poetic justice from the point of view of the Cymry.

At the opening of the period, the dominant petty state is still Mercia. Perhaps Mercia (as we have suggested) could have become strong enough to be the 'Wessex' of the later period. While the Vikings were threatening the North, Mercian ambitions were largely directed at rival Kingdoms. Kent, for example, was laid waste by Cenwulf of Mercia in 798 when it attempted to recover its independence. The Kentish King Eadbert was taken to Mercia, blinded and had his hands cut off. The Kingdom was not made into a tributary but was effectively destroyed, with Cenwulf's brother, Cuthred, acting as Governor (though titled King of Kent). Anglo-Saxon campaigning (noting the laying waste of Cornwall by Egbert of Wessex in 815) and violent court politics continues but without a final resolution until Egbert of Wessex appears. When Cenwulf of Mercia dies in 821 and is succeeded by Ceolwulf, it seems almost normal for Cenwulf's seven year old son to be murdered. Ceolwulf is deposed two years later and succeeded by Beornwulf and so on and so forth.

The two great players by the mid-820s are the chaotic Mercia and the more disciplined Wessex. They eventually came to blows at the Battle of Ellandun (825) in Wiltshire. Egbert of Wessex defeated the Mercians, gaining overlordship over the minor Kingdoms of Kent, Sussex and Essex. Beornwulf is was killed that year by the East Anglians, the fourth of the small South Eastern Kingdoms, but the main change is that Kent, Sussex and Essex are now to be ruled over directly by the Kings of the West Saxons. This unites all Southern England under one dynastic house capable of undertaking some resistance to the Vikings who have not yet emerged as a major force in Southern Britain.

In 827, the possibility of a unified approach is enhanced by Egbert of Wessex's conquest of Mercia, thoroughly weakened by another round of dynastic blood-letting. Egbert of Wessex is now the eighth King or 'bretwalda' to control all England south of the Humber. The early bretwaldas were simply the dominant minor kings of their day (Aelle of Sussex, Ceawlin of a much smaller Wessex, Aethenbryht of Kent, Redwald of East Anglia) but this is the first serious unification of the majority of the English since the age of the Northumbrian Kings Edwin, Oswald and Oswy. Not even Offa had achieved so much.

An acquisition of power in Early English history is never simple or complete. The Mercians make a brief come-back in 830 but the successes of Egbert of Wessex mean that, when the Danes do arrive in force in 835/836, we have one centre of power that can 'roll with the punches' and command greater resources, backed by the power of a Church with a clear interest in defeating the 'heathens' if they cannot be converted. The more divided (internally and externally) Mercian world would be unlikely to be able to do this so the rise of Wessex does seem to presage the survival of England - a territory that might otherwise now be speaking a version of Danish. A severely weakened Northumbria and the smaller Southern Kingdoms would never have been able to command the necessary resources in themselves. The question is simply whether Wessex was internally stable enough and administratively competent enough not only to do what Ambrosius Aurelianus is said to have done to check the Saxon raids after Vortigern but to have sustained that defence and built on it to expel the raider in a way that Ambrosius Aurelianus's successors could not.