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== Military reorganisation == [[File:Alfred the great silver offering penny 871 899.jpg|thumb|Alfred the Great silver offering penny, 871β899. Legend: AELFRED REX SAXONUM ('Alfred King of the Saxons')]] The Germanic tribes who invaded Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries relied upon the unarmoured infantry supplied by their [[Conscription|tribal levy]], or [[fyrd]], and it was upon this system that the military power of the several kingdoms of early Anglo-Saxon England depended.{{Sfn|Preston|Wise|Werner|1956|p=70}} The fyrd was a local militia in the Anglo-Saxon shire in which all freemen had to serve; those who refused military service were subject to fines or loss of their land.{{Sfn|Hollister|1962|pp=59β60}} According to the [[Anglo-Saxon law|law code]] of [[Ine of Wessex|King Ine of Wessex]], issued in {{Circa|694}}: {{Blockquote|If a nobleman who holds land neglects military service, he shall pay 120 shillings and forfeit his land; a nobleman who holds no land shall pay 60 shillings; a commoner shall pay a fine of 30 shillings for neglecting military service|source={{Harvnb|Attenborough|1922|pp=52β53}} }} Wessex's history of failures preceding Alfred's success in 878 emphasised to him that the traditional system of battle he had inherited played to the Danes' advantage. While the Anglo-Saxons and the Danes attacked settlements for plunder, they employed different tactics. In their raids the Anglo-Saxons traditionally preferred to attack head-on by assembling their forces in a [[shield wall]], advancing against their target and overcoming the oncoming wall marshalled against them in defence.{{Sfn|Abels|1998|pp=194β195}} The Danes preferred to choose easy targets, mapping cautious forays to avoid risking their plunder with high-stake attacks for more. Alfred determined their tactic was to launch small attacks from a secure base to which they could retreat should their raiders meet strong resistance.{{Sfn|Abels|1998|pp=194β195}} The bases were prepared in advance, often by capturing an estate and augmenting its defences with ditches, [[defensive wall|ramparts]] and [[palisade]]s. Once inside the fortification, Alfred realised, the Danes enjoyed the advantage, better situated to outlast their opponents or crush them with a counter-attack because the provisions and stamina of the besieging forces waned.{{Sfn|Abels|1998|pp=194β195}} The means by which the Anglo-Saxons marshalled forces to defend against marauders also left them vulnerable to the Vikings. It was the responsibility of the shire fyrd to deal with local raids. The king could call up the national militia to defend the kingdom but in the case of the Viking raids, problems with communication and raising supplies meant that the national militia could not be mustered quickly enough. It was only after the raids had begun that a call went out to landowners to gather their men for battle. Large regions could be devastated before the fyrd could assemble and arrive. Although the landowners were obliged to the king to supply these men when called, during the attacks in 878 many of them abandoned their king and collaborated with Guthrum.{{Sfn|Pollard|2006|pp=157-169}}{{Sfn|Abels|1998|pp=139, 152}}{{Sfn|Cannon|1997|p=398}} With these lessons in mind Alfred capitalised on the relatively peaceful years following his victory at Edington with an ambitious restructuring of Saxon defences. On a trip to Rome Alfred had stayed with Charles the Bald, and it is possible that he may have studied how the Carolingian kings had dealt with Viking raiders. Learning from their experiences he was able to establish a system of taxation and defence for Wessex. There had been a system of fortifications in pre-Viking Mercia that may have been an influence. When the Viking raids resumed in 892 Alfred was better prepared to confront them with a standing, mobile field army, a network of garrisons and a small fleet of ships navigating the rivers and estuaries.{{Sfn|Abels|1998|p=194}}{{Sfn|Keynes|Lapidge|1983|p=14}}{{Sfn|Lavelle|2010|p=212}} === Administration and taxation === Tenants in Anglo-Saxon England had a threefold obligation based on their landholding: the so-called "common burdens" of military service, fortress work, and bridge repair. This threefold obligation has traditionally been called ''[[trinoda necessitas]]'' or ''trimoda necessitas''.{{Sfn|Lavelle|2010|pp=70β73}} The Old English name for the fine due for neglecting military service was {{Lang|ang|fierdwite}}.{{Sfn|Attenborough|1922|pp=52β53}} To maintain the [[burh]]s, and to reorganise the fyrd as a standing army, Alfred expanded the tax and conscription system based on the productivity of a tenant's landholding. The hide was the basic unit of the system on which the tenant's public obligations were assessed. A hide is thought to represent the amount of land required to support one family. The hide differed in size according to the value and resources of the land and the landowner would have to provide service based on how many hides he owned.{{Sfn|Lavelle|2010|pp=70β73}}{{Sfn|Lapidge|2001}} === Burghal system === {{See also|Burghal Hidage}} [[File:Anglo-Saxon burhs.svg|thumb|A map of [[burh]]s named in the [[Burghal Hidage]]]] [[File:winchesterwalls.jpg|thumb|The walled defence round a [[burh]]. The [[Winchester city walls|City Walls]] of Alfred's capital, [[Winchester]]. Saxon and medieval work on Roman foundations.]] The foundation of Alfred's new military defence system was a network of burhs, distributed at tactical points throughout the kingdom.{{Sfn|Pratt|2007|p=95}} There were thirty-three burhs, about {{Convert|30|km|mi|abbr=off}} apart, enabling the military to confront attacks anywhere in the kingdom within a day.{{Sfn|Hull|2006|p=xx}}{{Sfn|Abels|1998|p=203}} Alfred's burhs (of which 22 developed into [[borough]]s) ranged from former [[Roman Britain|Roman towns]], such as Winchester, where the stone walls were repaired and ditches added, to massive earthen walls surrounded by wide ditches, probably reinforced with wooden [[revetment]]s and palisades, such as at [[Burpham]] in West Sussex.{{Sfn|Tait|1999|p=18}}{{Sfn|Welch|1992|p=127}}{{Sfn|Abels|1998|p=304}}{{Efn|The Alfredian burh represented a stage in the evolution of English medieval towns and boroughs. Of the twenty two burhs that became boroughs three did not attain full town status.{{Sfn|Tait|1999|p=18}}{{Sfn|Loyn|1991|p=138}}}} The size of the burhs ranged from tiny outposts such as [[Pilton, Devon|Pilton]] in Devon, to large fortifications in established towns, the largest being at Winchester.<ref>{{Harvnb|Bradshaw|1999}}, which is referenced in {{Harvnb|Hull|2006|p=xx}}</ref> A document now known as the ''[[Burghal Hidage]]'' provides an insight into how the system worked. It lists the hidage for each of the fortified towns contained in the document. [[Wallingford, Oxfordshire|Wallingford]] had a hidage of 2,400, which meant that the landowners there were responsible for supplying and feeding 2,400 men, the number sufficient for maintaining {{Convert|9900|ft|mi+km|abbr=off}} of wall.{{Sfn|Hill|Rumble|1996|p=5}} A total of 27,071 soldiers were needed, approximately one in four of all the free men in Wessex.{{Sfn|Abels|1998|pp=204β207}} Many of the burhs were twin towns that straddled a river and were connected by a fortified bridge, like those built by Charles the Bald a generation before.{{Sfn|Keynes|Lapidge|1983|p=14}} The double-burh blocked passage on the river, forcing Viking ships to navigate under a garrisoned bridge lined with men armed with stones, spears or arrows. Other burhs were sited near fortified royal villas, allowing the king better control over his strongholds.{{Sfn|Abels|1998|pp=198β202}} The burhs were connected by a road system maintained for army use (known as [[herepath]]s). The roads allowed an army quickly to be assembled, sometimes from more than one burh, to confront the Viking invader.{{Sfn|Lavelle|2003|p=26}} The road network posed significant obstacles to Viking invaders, especially those laden with booty. The system threatened Viking routes and communications making it far more dangerous for them. The Vikings lacked the equipment for a siege against a burh and a developed doctrine of [[siegecraft]], having tailored their methods of fighting to rapid strikes and unimpeded retreats to well-defended fortifications. The only means left to them was to starve the burh into submission but this gave the king time to send his field army or garrisons from neighbouring burhs along the army roads. In such cases, the Vikings were extremely vulnerable to pursuit by the king's joint military forces.{{Sfn|Abels|1988|pp=204, 304}} Alfred's burh system posed such a formidable challenge against Viking attack that when the Vikings returned in 892 and stormed a half-built, poorly garrisoned fortress up the [[Lympne]] estuary in Kent, the Anglo-Saxons were able to limit their penetration to the outer frontiers of Wessex and Mercia.{{Sfn|Abels|1998|pp=287, 304}} Alfred's burghal system was revolutionary in its strategic conception and potentially expensive in its execution. His contemporary biographer Asser wrote that many nobles balked at the demands placed upon them even though they were for "the common needs of the kingdom".<ref>Asser, translated by {{Harvnb|Keynes|Lapidge|1983}}</ref>{{Sfn|Abels|1998|p=206}} === English navy === Alfred also tried his hand at naval design. In 896 he ordered the construction of a small fleet, perhaps a dozen or so longships that, at 60 oars, were twice the size of Viking warships.{{Sfn|Savage|1988|p=111}} This was not, as the Victorians asserted, the birth of the [[English Navy]].{{Sfn|Firth|Sebo|2020|pp=329β331}} Wessex had possessed a royal fleet before this. Alfred's older brother sub-king [[Γthelstan of Kent]] and Ealdorman Ealhhere had defeated a Viking fleet in 851 capturing nine ships and Alfred had conducted naval actions in 882.{{Sfn|Savage|1988|pp=86β88, 97}} The year 897 marked an important development in the naval power of Wessex. The author of the ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'' related that Alfred's ships were larger, swifter, steadier and rode higher in the water than either Danish or [[Frisians|Frisian]] ships. It is probable that, under the classical tutelage of Asser, Alfred used the design of [[Hellenistic-era warships|Greek and Roman warships]], with high sides, designed for fighting rather than for navigation.<ref>{{Harvnb|Abels|1998|pp=305β307}} ''{{Abbr|Cf.|Compare}}'' the much more positive view of the capabilities of these ships in {{Harvnb|Gifford|Gifford|2003|pp=281β289}}</ref> Alfred had seapower in mind; if he could intercept raiding fleets before they landed, he could spare his kingdom from being ravaged. Alfred's ships may have been superior in conception, but in practice they proved to be too large to manoeuvre well in the close waters of estuaries and rivers, the only places in which a naval battle could be fought.{{Sfn|Abels|1998|pp=305β307}}{{Sfn|Firth|Sebo|2020|pp=329β331}} The warships of the time were not designed to be ship killers but rather troop carriers. It has been suggested that, like sea battles in late Viking age Scandinavia, these battles may have entailed a ship coming alongside an opposing vessel, lashing the two ships together and then boarding the craft. The result was a land battle involving hand-to-hand fighting on board the two lashed vessels.{{Sfn|Lavelle|2010|pp=286β297}} In the one recorded naval engagement in 896, Alfred's new fleet of nine ships intercepted six Viking ships at the mouth of an unidentified river in the south of England. The Danes had beached half their ships and gone inland.{{Sfn|Giles|Ingram|1996|loc=Year 896}}{{Sfn|Savage|1988|p=111}} Alfred's ships immediately moved to block their escape. The three Viking ships afloat attempted to break through the English lines. Only one made it; Alfred's ships intercepted the other two.{{Sfn|Savage|1988|p=111}} Lashing the Viking boats to their own, the English crew boarded and proceeded to kill the Vikings. One ship escaped because Alfred's heavy ships became grounded when the tide went out.{{Sfn|Lavelle|2010|pp=286β297}} A land battle ensued between the crews. The Danes were heavily outnumbered, but as the tide rose, they returned to their boats which, with shallower drafts, were freed first. The English watched as the Vikings rowed past them but they suffered so many casualties (120 dead against 62 Frisians and English) that they had difficulty putting out to sea.{{Sfn|Lavelle|2010|pp=286β297}} All were too damaged to row around Sussex, and two were driven against the Sussex coast (possibly at [[Selsey Bill]]).{{Sfn|Savage|1988|p=111}}{{Sfn|Lavelle|2010|pp=286β297}} The shipwrecked crew were brought before Alfred at Winchester and hanged.{{Sfn|Savage|1988|p=111}}
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