2013 is the 1000th anniversary of Swein Forkbeard’s invasion of England and 2016 will commemorate the millennial anniversary of his son Cnut’s victory at Assandun, the decisive event in a fraught year of battles which propelled the young Danish prince to kingship.
These stirring events took place at the end of a protracted period of Viking attacks on Aethelred II’s England; the culmination of aggressive incursions stretching back to the days of Alfred the Great, when much of England fell under Danish control. Whereas the incomers of the 9th century sought land to settle and to consolidate territorial gains, Viking raiding armies of Aethelred’s time were intent on exacting payment from the English to finance their military ambitions - that is, until 1013, when outright conquest and regime change became their goal.
Swein Forkbeard’s ferocious onslaught on England would have tested the mettle of any medieval king. That Aethelred struggled in the face of such a determined assault is, in retrospect, hardly surprising. English resistance had been worn down after a decade of almost continuous fighting. Scandinavian warbands - sometimes led by Swein in person, at other times by surrogates like the rapacious warlord Tostig – wrought devastation across southern England and East Anglia. As a result, and at odds with the usual ‘unready’ paradigm of his reign, Aethelred and his council presided over an ambitious and far reaching militarisation programme. The English were for a time better armed and protected than ever before, but dissension within the nobility and a mutinous fleet led to military collapse.
Churchmen viewed these events as God’s judgement on the king and his people. That Aethelred had blood on his hands there is no doubt - but no more so than any other medieval ruler. His ambitious and enigmatic son Edmund, known by the ‘sobriquet’ Ironside, gave ‘hard knocks’ to both Dane and Englishman alike – yet despite suffering defeat at Assandun in 1016, his energetic campaign against Cnut cast him in a heroic mould.
Other than Edmund, few English commanders emerge from the annals of the time with credit. Those that do include the bravely stubborn ealdorman Byrhtnoth, killed at Maldon in 991, and the ‘valiant’ East Anglian Ulfcytel who fell at Assandun. Other Englishmen, like the much maligned Eadric of Mercia, and the ill-fated Uhtred of Northumbria sometimes sided with the raiders; treachery is a recurring theme throughout the period – the concept of nationhood can have barely existed.
'An Onslaught of Spears' by Jeffery James is out now. Linking the Danish invasion to the Norman conquest that took place just fifty years laterlater and challenging the myth of of Aethelred 'the unready,' Jeffrey James's military history of this turbulent period reveals the true nature of England's armies and her kings.