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The White Horse King

Updated: Sep 2, 2021

In 937 AD King Aethelstan stepped onto the battlefield of Brunanburh with his Saxon army, to meet the horde of oncoming Danes and Picts. In the ensuing struggle the Saxon’s resolve held, the viking’s defenses broke, and Aethelstan’s men began slaughtering the fleeing rabble of Dane’s and Picts. By sunset of the same day Aethelstan and his bloodied troops had crushed the enemy force, marking both the end of a generations-long war, and Aethelstan's new title as the first king over all England. However Aethelstan’s victory in the battle and the war are not his victory alone. Rather, Aethelstan is the final act of a plan his grandfather Alfred began. Aethelstan’s victory at Brunanburh is the culmination of Alfred’s many actions that earned him the title great, the only British king to be given such a prestigious title. Dr Merkle wrote The White Horse King to defend Alfred’s right to that title. To read most of Dr Merkle’s defenses of Alfred, you should just read the book: but I’ll take us through two of the most important reasons Alfred is great: Alfred’s character, and Alfred’s faithfulness.


Section 1: Alfred and the Critics


Dr Merkle has written a historical biography of King Alfred, but he has done so in a way I have never really seen before. Usually when writing a history the historian takes great pains to be unbiased, meaning simply delivering the facts and nothing else—which is of course both ridiculous and impossible: if a historian wrote nothing except for a series of dates, those dates would be biased according to that historians preferences: why these dates and not those dates? Why is this date first, and that one last? Even with a string of dates it is impossible not to be biased, to consider some heroes and others villains, and we would not read the history if it was any other way. This tendency to attempt unbiased analyses usually stumbles instead into hypercriticism: if something can be doubted than it absolutely should, regardless of how reasonable and likely it is. This occurs a great deal with King Alfred, as scholars rush to strip off his title, disassociate all white horse legends and success from the king, and generally smear his name. Dr Merkle, however, is completely open with his own opinion and the purpose of the book: to celebrate king Alfred. Of course the point is to celebrate the genuine king Alfred, which involves a reasonable skepticism and taking many Alfred legends with a grain of salt. But such openness with his intent makes Dr Merkle more honest than most, and the story he tells that much more trustworthy. Since this is a book of praise, Dr Merkle writes the reader into the moment, describing how it might have felt to be locked in a shield wall against the Danes and therefore relating the heroism of those who stood in that shieldwall: in pursuit of unbiased opinion most historians would never give you the first person experience that Dr Merkle freely dishes out, the experience that helps the reader appreciate the valor of Alfred. Dr Merkle’s sincerity and peculiar method of storytelling, let alone who he is praising with his story, makes the book well worth it’s price.


Section 2: Resistance and Reformation


Under constant attack from viking raiders, many of Britain’s monasteries were desecrated, and all the occupants either torn to pieces or sold into slavery. However while Alfred was young, viking raids changed into all out warfare: massive invading forces marched into the land with a mind to stay, and under their efficient warfare tactics and the simple threat of warfare, all of Britain crumbled to the viking’s armies except one kingdom—Alfred’s. Completely passing over much of what made Alfred Alfred (you really should read the book), completely omitting his time haunting the swamps and forgetting how he burned a peasant woman’s cakes, Alfred eventually returned to his throne and achieved a brief respite from his enemies. In that time he made a series of ambitious and brilliant reforms to his empire that equipped his shamble of a nation to fight off three viking hordes at once, and more importantly build his nation into a thoroughly Christian kingdom. The first reform was his army: the vikings moved their forces with such rapidity that by the time Alfred summoned men from every fyrd [define a fyrd], the vikings had taken over a stronghold, always well supplied and well fortified. To rectify this problem, Alfred divided all the Wessex fighting men in half: half would train in an active army, the other half would remain doing their daily jobs. Since Alfred kept a scheduled rotation, this kept the troops fresh, the economy strained but stable, and peace of mind with the men away at war. Alfred then divided this standing army into two sections: one would be a single standing army waiting for invasion, but the other section Alfred located in garrisons in cities about 20 miles apart from each other across all of Wessex, creating both a large standing army capable of quelling raiding parties, and a network of defense through 30 fortified cities. Now that his subjects learned war, Alfred began the second reform, and decided he and his subjects should learn wisdom: if Christian virtues were to return to Wessex, his people needed Christian learning. However, ignoring the fact that practically all of Christian learning in the west had been handed down in Latin, and ignoring that literacy had previously belonged only to some members of the church, Alfred began teaching himself and all his noblemen fluency in Anglo Saxon. Of course to become wise and fluent they needed the great books to read, so Alfred and his team of scholars brought to Wessex from all over Europe translated the books “most necessary for all men to know:” including the theology and philosophy of Augustine and Boethius, and the poetry of the Psalms. However his people were still ruled by men who favored money and prestige over actual justice. So, Alfred began the third reform of Wessex’s law system. Alfred thought that only those laws founded on the eternal principles of God’s justice, laws that had passed the test of time, and laws that had been passed down from generation to generation should be enacted: thus his law code rested first on the ten commandments for a foundation, as well as the principles gained from the rest of the levitical law. Alfred, like everyone else, saw the manifestations of problems in Wessex: poverty, viking raids, and injustice to name a few. However Alfred understood the true flaw of Wessex and as he saw it, the true reason for the pagan plague: Wessex’s unbelief and falling away from God. The defensive reforms, revival of learning and ministering of justice all testify to Alfred’s tremendous insight in understanding the flaws in the Anglo-Saxon culture, and his apparent thesis that building a Christian kingdom with Christian citizens is the best security and solution to these flaws.


Section Three: Kingly Virtue


Two scenes from Alfred’s life illustrate the character of the king of Wessex. One of his great and earliest enemies was the Danish warlord Gunthrum. Gunthrum's amassed army of Danish pirates invaded the then blundering Wessex, intending to rule the kingdom. Despite Alfred’s several victories, by superior experience and numbers Gunthrum took over Alfred’s central city, and forced the king into exile, roaming the marshes, Grendel-like, bringing traitors and the faithful alike their due reward. The time finally came to reclaim the city, and Alfred took Gunthrum by force, and soon received the besieged Gunthrum’s plea for mercy. In previous years other Danes had run into defeated British kings who also made similar pleas for mercy. The Dane’s responded by filling a King Edmund “with arrows till he bristled like a hedgehog,” and sacrificed a King Aelle to Odin by pulling his ribs apart in the ‘blood eagle,’ and then tearing his throbbing lungs out. With the tables turned, Alfred too, decided to sacrifice Gunthrum to Alfred’s God. Alfred devoted Gunthrum to God by baptism, declaring himself the godfather of the new convert, and after the baptism of the white robed Dane, celebrated with all of his house 12 days straight, each day full of feasting and festivities and entertainment, commemorating the day Aethelstan, no longer Gunthrum, became a newborn Christian. In true Christian and Anglo-Saxon hospitality, King Alfred rained down on his enemy instead of famine, feasting; instead of slaughter, gold and silver; instead of vengeance, joyful forgiveness. When the feasting was over Alfred gave Gunthrum, now Aethelstan back to his army. Aethelstan immediately marched out of Wessex, and ruled in Mercia to the end of his days, ignoring all cries from other Danes to join in plundering again. When Aethelstan died, the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, a chronicle written around Alfred’s lifetime, referred to the Dane by his Christian name, Aethelstan: there was no record of his previous life as Gunthrum: “he was simply Alfred’s grandson” (143).


A similar situation occurred when the warlord Hastein descended on Wessex. Hastein’s long career of pillaging and ravaging had passed into legend, not least of which was his attempt at plundering Rome itself by means of his and his family’s baptism into Christianity (read the book!). Hastien tried the same baptism and plunder play on Alfred, and his two sons became godsons in baptism to Alfred. However by the time Hastein arrived in Wessex, Alfred’s reforms had already taken place and no amount of trickery could give the warlord a lasting foothold in Wessex. While fleeing Alfred, Hastein’s wife and sons were captured and transported to London where Alfred met them to judge their fate: Hastein and his family were baptised and had therefore committed their pillaging and slaughtering of Wessex as Christians: it was completely lawful for Alfred in his nobleman’s eyes to execute the three vikings. Instead, Alfred reminded those there that he was godfather to both sons: though neither Hastein nor his family considered the baptism binding, that was irrelevant: Alfred considered the baptism binding and held them to it. Alfred therefore embraced Hastein’s family as his own, showered them with gifts and feasting, and then ensured their safe travel back to Hanstein. In response, Hanstein with his family returned to Europe, never setting foot on Wessex again, and leaving the remaining viking forces to fend for themselves. To appreciate Alfred’s acts, consider Paul’s argument that “our weapons are not carnal but spiritual mighty for pulling down strongholds” [emphasis mine] (2 Cor 10:4 NKJV). Consider Peter’s example of one such spiritual weapon: “for this is the will of God, that by doing good you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men” (1 Peter 2:15). Consider also that Jehosaphat put the choir praising God on the front lines of his army, which resulted in 3 days worth of plunder for the Isrealites. In both scenarios Alfred, in a tremendous act of faith, saw a very dangerous enemy and so dropped the carnal weapons and instead pulled out the really big guns: doing righteously, praising God, and feasting.


Conclusion


The last remarkable trait, which has really been the theme the whole time, is Alfred’s faithfulness, specifically his generational faithfulness. Alfred started a hundred and one reforms, and though he did see some fruit of his work in his own day (a successful defense against Hastein’s army notably), he died three years after this success of a sickness he developed in his youth. His educational ambition, his reformation of British law, and most importantly the return of wisdom and faith to his people Alfred would never see. But his sons and son’s son Aethelstan would reap the great harvest Alfred sowed with his own life. I haven’t met Alfred yet, but considering how he planted military, economic, educational, and judicial seeds for later Britains to harvest, considering how he began to reform his kingdom into wisdom lovers, and considering how he gave his hungry enemies drink and his thirsty nemesis drink, it is clear Alfred was a man after God’s own heart, a Kingly Christian and a brother to wisdom: in Dr Merkle’s words “he was practically a myth and a much needed reality: he was the king of the whitehorse—Alfred the Great.


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