in the parish of east knoyle, in the county of wiltshire, and towards the western side of that parish, there is an isolated knoll, gorse covered, abrupt, and somewhat over 700 feet above the sea in height. from the summit of it a man can look westward, northward, and eastward over a great rising roll of countryside.

to the west, upon the sky-line of a level range of hills, not high, runs that long wood called selwood and there makes an horizon. to the north the cultivated uplands merge into high open down: bare turf of the chalk, which closes the view for miles against the sky, and is the watershed between the northern and the southern avon. eastward that chalk land falls into the valley which holds salisbury.

from this high knoll a man perceives the two days' march which alfred made with his levies[pg 136] when he summoned the men of three shires to fight with him against the danes; he overthrew them at ethandune.

the struggle of which these two days were the crisis was of more moment to the history of britain and of europe than any other which has imperilled the survival of either between the roman time and our own.

that generation in which the stuff of society had worn most threadbare, and in which its continued life (individually the living memory of the empire and informed by the faith) was most in peril, was not the generation which saw the raids of the fifth century, nor even that which witnessed the breaking of the mahommedan tide in the eighth, when the christians carried it through near poitiers, between the river vienne and the chain, the upland south of chatellerault. the gravest moment of peril was for that generation whose grandfathers could remember the order of charlemagne, and which fought its way desperately through the perils of the later ninth century.

[pg 137]

then it was, during the great scandinavian harry of the north and west, that europe might have gone down. its monastic establishment was shaken; its relics of central government were perishing of themselves; letters had sunk to nothing and building had already about it something nearly savage, when the swirl of the pirates came up all its rivers. and though legend had taken the place of true history, and though the memories of our race were confused almost to dreaming, we were conscious of our past and of our inheritance, and seemed to feel that now we had come to a narrow bridge which might or might not be crossed: a bridge already nearly ruined.

if that bridge were not crossed there would be no future for christendom.

southern britain and northern gaul received the challenge, met it, were victorious, and so permitted the survival of all the things we know. at ethandune and before paris the double business was decided. of these twin victories the first was accomplished in this[pg 138] island. alfred is its hero, and its site is that chalk upland, above the vale of trowbridge, near which the second of the two white horses is carved: the hills above eddington and bratton upon the westbury road.

the easter of 878 had seen no king in england. alfred was hiding with some small band in the marshes that lie south of mendip against the severn sea. it was one of those eclipses which time and again in the history of christian warfare have just preceded the actions by which christendom has re-arisen. in whitsun week alfred reappeared.

there is a place at the southern terminal of the great wood, selwood, which bears a celtic affix, and is called "penselwood," "the head of the forest," and near it there stood (not to within living memory, but nearly so) a shire-stone called egbert's stone; there wiltshire, somerset, and dorset meet. it is just eastward of the gap by which men come by the south round selwood into the open country. there the levies, that is the lords of somerset[pg 139] and of wiltshire and their followers, come also riding from hampshire, met the king. but many had fled over sea from fear of the pagans.

"and seeing the king, as was meet, come to life again as it were after such tribulations, and receiving him, they were filled with an immense joy, and there the camp was pitched."

next day the host set out eastward to try its last adventure with the barbarians who had ruined half the west.

day was just breaking when the levies set forth and made for the uplands and for the water partings. not by mere and the marshes of the valley, but by the great camp of white sheet and the higher land beyond it, the line of marching and mounted men followed the king across the open turf of the chalk to where three hundreds meet, and where the gathering of the people for justice and the courts of the counts had been held before the disasters of that time had broken up the land.

it was a spot bare of houses, but famous for a tree which marked the junction of the [pg 140]hundreds. no more than three hundred years ago this tree still stood and bore the name of the iley oak. the place of that day's camp stands up above the water of deveril, and is upon the continuation of that roman road from sarum to the mendips and to the sea, which is lost so suddenly and unaccountably upon its issue from the great ridge wood. the army had marched ten miles, and there the second camp was pitched.

with the next dawn the advance upon the danes was made.

the whole of that way (which should be famous in every household in this country) is now deserted and unknown. the host passed over the high rolling land of the downs from summit to summit until—from that central crest which stands above and to the east of westbury—they saw before them, directly northward and a mile away, the ring of earthwork which is called to-day "bratton castle." upon the slope between the great host of the pirates came out to battle. it was there from[pg 141] those naked heights that overlook the great plain of the northern avon, that the fate of england was decided.

the end of that day's march and action was the pressing of the pagans back behind their earthworks, and the men who had saved our great society sat down before the ringed embankment watching all the gates of it, killing all the stragglers that had failed to reach that protection and rounding up the stray horses and the cattle of the pagans.

that siege endured for fourteen days. at the end of it the northmen treatied, conquered "by hunger, by cold, and by fear." alfred took hostages "as many as he willed." guthrum, their king, accepted our baptism, and britain took that upward road which gaul seven years later was to follow when the same anarchy was broken by eudes under the walls of paris.

all this great affair we have doubtfully followed to-day in no more than some three hundred words of latin, come down doubtfully[pg 142] over a thousand years. but the thing happened where and as i have said. it should be as memorable as those great battles in which the victories of the republic established our exalted but perilous modern day.