THE ART OF WAR IN THE MIDDLE AGES 11
The Danish Invasion of England
2.05. The Danish Invasion of England
Beyond the English Channel the course of the history of war is parallel to that which it took in the lands of the Continent, with a single exception in the form of its final development. Like the Franks, the Angles and Saxons were at the time of their conquest of Britain a nation of infantry soldiers, armed with the long ashen javelin, the broadsword, the seax or broad stabbing dagger, and occasionally the battle axe. Their defensive weapon was almost exclusively the shield, the round war-board, with its large iron boss. Ring mail, though known to them at a very early date, was, as all indications unite to show, extremely uncommon. The ‘grey war-sark’ or ‘ring-locked byrnie’ of Beowulf was obtainable by kings and princes alone. The helmet also, with its ‘iron-wrought boar-crest,’ was very restricted in its use. If the monarch and his gesiths wore such arms, the national levy, which formed the main fighting force of a heptarchic kingdom, was entirely without them.
Unmolested for many centuries in their island home, the English kept up the old Teutonic war customs for a longer period than other European nations. When Mercia and Wessex were at strife, the campaign was fought out by the hastily-raised hosts of the various districts, headed by their aldermen and reeves. Hence war bore the spasmodic and inconsequent character which resulted from the temporary nature of such armies. With so weak a military organization, there was no possibility of working out schemes of steady and progressive conquest. The frays of the various kingdoms, bitter and unceasing though they might be, led to no decisive results. If in the ninth century a tendency towards unification began to show itself in England, it was caused, not by the military superiority of Wessex, but by the dying out of royal lines and the unfortunate internal condition of the other states.
While this inclination towards union was developing itself, the whole island was subjected to the stress of the same storm of foreign invasion which was shaking the Frankish empire to its foundations. The Danes came down upon England, and demonstrated, by the fearful success of their raids, that the old Teutonic military system was inadequate to the needs of the day. The Vikings were in fact superior to the forces brought against them, alike in tactics, in armament, in training, and in mobility.
Personally the Dane was the member of an old warband contending with a farmer fresh from the plough, a veteran soldier pitted against a raw militiaman. As a professional warrior he had provided himself with an equipment which only the chiefs among the English army could rival, the mail byrnie being a normal rather than an exceptional defence, and the steel cap almost universal. The fyrd on the other hand, came out against him destitute of armour, and bearing a motley array of weapons, wherein the spear and sword were mixed with the club and the stone axe. If, however, the Danes had been in the habit of waiting for the local levies to come up with them, equal courage and superior numbers might have prevailed over these advantages of equipment.
Plunder, however, rather than fighting, was the Vikings’ object: the host threw itself upon some district of the English coast, ‘was there a-horsed,’ and then rode far and wide through the land, doing all the damage in its power. The possession of the horses they had seized gave them a power of rapid movement which the fyrd could not hope to equal: when the local levies arrived at the spot where the invaders had been last seen, it was only to find smoke and ruins, not an enemy. When driven to bay, as, in spite of their habitual retreats, was sometimes the case, the Danes showed an instinctive tactical ability by their use of entrenchments, with which the English were unaccustomed to deal. Behind a ditch and palisade, in some commanding spot, the invaders would wait for months, till the accumulated force of the fyrd had melted away to its homes.
Of assaults on their positions they knew no fear: the line of axemen could generally contrive to keep down the most impetuous charge of the English levies: Reading was a more typical field than Ethandun. For one successful storm of an intrenched camp there were two bloody repulses.
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