Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Scandinavian Britain - II. The Danelaw - 1. The Age of Ælfred
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In the spring of 867 the Great Army rode across
the Humber, and on November 1 had taken York.
On March 21, 868, all Northumbria joined in an
attack on their position, and utterly failed. If it had
been Ivar’s object to ravage, he would have overrun
Bernicia ; if he had wished to destroy, he would not
have left the great churches at York and Ripon
standing. Shrines were plundered, but the land was
left under a native king, one Ecgberht, who—either as
a downright renegade or in the hope of restoring some
order from the wreck—consented to hold it as the
Danes’ tributary. Thus he founded a lasting dynasty.
Ivar’s plan was to clear the board of Mercia, and
to put Wessex in check. He seized Nottingham :
Burhred slowly called out his forces, and called in
help from Æthelred and Ælfred ; but the only result
was a treaty under which Ivar returned leisurely to
York, and fortified the city anew in the winter of
869, 870. Their almost Roman habit of entrenching
a position was a fresh feature in English warfare,
learnt perhaps from the Carlovingian empire, and
imitated by Ælfred ; for, as Asser says, the old walls
of York were poor defences.
In 870 Ivar’s army, avoiding central Mercia, and
so far respecting the treaty of Nottingham, marched
through Lincolnshire to intrench itself at Thetford.
King Eadmund of East Anglia attacked it in vain, and
fell ; some accounts tell us that he was slain in
battle ; the later legend of his martyrdom is well
known. But if the tale of cruelty is true, the only
explanation, at this period, would be that he was
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