The Great Turning Points of British History Read Free Page B

of Stamford Bridge in that other momentous year, 1066. The victor in 1016 was the Danish king, Cnut (Canute), then a young man who had first come to England in 1013 with his father Swein Forkbeard. His opponent was similarly young and new to kingly power: Edmund, known as Ironside, son of Æthelred II, the infamously ‘unready’.
    Edmund did not die at Assandun, but the cream of the English army fell. In defeat Edmund was forced to make terms with Cnut and to divide England with him, retaining only Wessex for himself. How permanent such a division would prove was never tested, for Edmund died on 30 November of the same year and Cnut succeeded in persuading the English people to accept him as ruler of the entire kingdom. How did the realm that had so courageously defended itself against Viking attack in the ninth century, under King Alfred the Great, come to fall to that same enemy little more than a century later?
    The conquest of 1016 was the culmination of years of intense warfare and latterly a concerted campaign. Swein had joined the force of Scandinavian chieftains, including Olaf Trygvasson, king of Norway, that attacked England in 994; he had led another prolonged campaign in 1003. In 1013 Swein was bent on conquest and his son, Cnut, participated in his father’s military successes and saw him accepted as full king by all the English nation later that year.
    With the English king, Æthelred, in exile among his wife’s family in Normandy, this might have been the decisive moment of Danish conquest, bringing an end to years of warfare. Only the ‘happy event’ – in the words of the Abingdon chronicler – of Swein’s death on 3 February 1014 gave Æthelred a second chance. While the Danish fleet elected Cnut as king, ‘all the councillors who were in England’, churchmen and laymen sent for Æthelred, telling him that ‘no lord was dearer to them than their natural lord, if he would govern them more justly than he did before’. When Æthelred had made suitable promises, he came home to his people in the spring and was ‘gladly received by them all’.
    Whatever the extent of support for an English king in the south, the north was less loyal. The Anglo-Danish population of those regions where there had been substantial Scandinavian settlement during and after the First Viking Age were more ready to join Cnut. He made a base at Gainsborough in Lincolnshire, where he stayed until Easter. Before Cnut could attack Æthelred’s forces in the south the king, capitalizing on the mood of enthusiasm that marked his return from exile, attacked first and drove Cnut out. Cnut set sail for Denmark, pausing only to leave at Sandwich the hostages given to his father, having first cut off their hands, ears and noses.
    Again, this could have proved a decisive moment and the end of Danish hopes, but Æthelred’s restoration failed to resolve his problems. He was ailing, his eldest son Æthelstan died in June 1014, and (reports are confused) there were tensions both with his surviving son Edmund and with the fickle ealdorman, Eadric Streona. Besides, with his record, Cnut would hardly abandon the fight for England. That his younger brother Harald had refused to share the kingdom of Denmark with him did nothing to weaken Cnut’s resolve.
    Cnut’s campaign began at Sandwich in September 1015, from where he turned into Wessex and ravaged in Dorset, Wiltshire and Somerset. Meanwhile, divided English factions coalesced in two armies focused on Edmund Ironside and Ealdorman Eadric. Meeting Edmund but failing to fight, Eadric made a decision that was ultimately fatal to the English cause: he sided with Cnut, as did forty-five ships of Danish mercenaries, led by Thorkill the Tall. By Christmas 1015 the people of Wessex recognized the inevitable and accepted Cnut as their king, paying him and handing over hostages.
    Now the situation of 1013 was reversed, for Edmund continued to hold the loyalty of at least parts of the north.