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Alfred was the youngest son of Æthelwulf, king of Wessex, and his wife Osburh. [5] According to his biographer, Asser, writing in 893, "In the year of our Lord's Incarnation 849 Alfred, King of the Anglo-Saxons", was born at the royal estate called Wantage, in the district known as Berkshire [a] ("which is so called from Berroc Wood, where the box tree grows very abundantly").
The king of Mercia requested help from the king of Wessex to help fight the Vikings. A combined army from Wessex and Mercia besieged the city of Nottingham with no clear result, so the Mercians settled on paying the Vikings off. The Vikings returned to Northumbria in autumn 868 and overwintered in York, staying there for most of 869.
A 1722 copy of part of Asser's Life of King Alfred. The primary sources for the location of the battle are Asser's Life of King Alfred, which names the place as "Ethandun" and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which has Eðandun. The chronicle was compiled during the reign of Alfred the Great and is thus a contemporary record. [24]
With the fyrd not assembled Alfred was forced to flee and the Vikings were able to take Chippenham. [4] [6] Guthrum's onslaught occurred when the Saxon soldiers were celebrating Epiphany and completely wrecked Alfred's army, killing many warriors and scattering the rest. Some of the survivors fled across the English Channel to France. [1]
A depiction of Alfred the Great. The Battle of Reading was a victory for a Danish Viking army over a West Saxon force on about 4 January 871 at Reading in Berkshire. The Vikings were led by Bagsecg and Halfdan Ragnarsson and the West Saxons by King Æthelred and his brother, the future King Alfred the Great. It was the second of a series of ...
Æthelred and his son Edmund Ironside attempted to resist the Vikings in 1016, but after their deaths the Danish Cnut the Great and his sons ruled until 1042. The House of Wessex then briefly regained power under Æthelred's son Edward the Confessor , but lost it after the Confessor's reign, with the Norman Conquest in 1066.
The Battle of Rochester [1] [2] was an armed conflict between the Anglo-Saxons, under the command of Alfred the Great, and the Norse Viking invaders. The Vikings entered at Medway and attacked Rochester, but were unable to seize the town due to strong resistance.
The raiding army of the Vikings had captured much loot from Hampshire and Berkshire before starting to return to Essex and their fleet. A Wessex army led by Edward, son of King Alfred, intercepted them at Farnham, defeated them and recaptured the plunder. The battle concluded with the vikings fleeing across the Thames towards Essex. [1] [2] [3 ...