Battle of Buttington | |||||||
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Part of the Viking invasions of England | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
Mercia, Wessex, Welsh | Vikings | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Æthelred, Lord of the Mercians Ealdorman Æthelhelm Ealdorman Æthelnoth | Hastein | ||||||
Strength | |||||||
unknown | unknown | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
unknown | unknown |
The Battle of Buttington was fought in 893 [lower-alpha 1] between a Viking army and an alliance of Anglo-Saxons and Welsh.
The annals for 893 reported that a large Viking army had landed in the Lympne Estuary, Kent and a smaller force had landed in the Thames estuary under the command of Danish king Hastein. These were reinforced by ships from the settled Danes of East Anglia and Northumbria, some of this contingent sailed round the coast to besiege a fortified place (known as a burh) and Exeter, both in Devon. The English king Alfred the Great, on hearing of Exeter's demise, led all his mounted men to relieve the city. He left his son-in-law Æthelred, Lord of the Mercians and ealdormen Æthelhelm, Æthelnoth, and others in charge of defending various towns and cities from the rest of the Viking army.
The king's thegns managed to assemble a great army consisting of both Saxons and Welsh. The combined army laid siege to the Vikings who had built a fortification at Buttington. After several weeks the starving Vikings broke out of their fortification only to be beaten by the combined English and Welsh army with many of the Vikings being put to flight.
Viking [lower-alpha 2] raids began in England in the late 8th century and Wales in the mid 9th century. [2] [3] [4] The raiding continued on and off until the 860s, when instead of raiding the Viking changed their tactics and sent a great army to invade England. This army was described by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as a "Great Heathen Army". [5] [6] Alfred defeated the Great Heathen Army at the Battle of Edington in 878. A treaty followed whereby Alfred ceded an enlarged East Anglia to the Danes. [7]
After Edington, Alfred reorganised the defences of Wessex, he built a navy and a standing army. He also built a series of fortified towns, known as burhs [lower-alpha 3] that ringed Wessex. To maintain the burhs, and the standing army, he set up a taxation system known as the Burghal Hidage. Viking raids still continued but his defences made it difficult for the Vikings to make progress. As the political system in Francia (part of modern day France) was in turmoil the Vikings concentrated their efforts there as the raiding was more profitable. [9] [10] [11]
By late 892, the leadership in Francia had become more stable and the Vikings were finding it difficult to make progress there too, so they again attempted a conquest of England. [12] In 893 two hundred and fifty ships [lower-alpha 4] landed an army in the Lympne Estuary [lower-alpha 5] in Kent where they built a fortification at Appledore. A smaller force of eighty ships under Hastein landed in the Thames estuary before entrenching themselves at Milton, also in Kent. [10] The invaders brought their wives and children with them, indicating a meaningful attempt at conquest and colonisation. Alfred took up a position from which he could observe both of the Viking armies. [14] The Vikings were further reinforced with 240 ships, that were provided by the Danes of East Anglia and Northumbria who had settled there after the wars of the 860s and 870s. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says that they did it "contrary to [their] pledges". [lower-alpha 6] [16] [15]
At some point Alfred's army captured Hastein's family. [16] The annals report that Alfred was in talks with Hastein, but do not say why. Horspool speculates that it may well be to do with Hastein's family, however while the talks were going on, the Danes at Appledore broke out and struck northwestwards. [10] [16] They were overtaken by Alfred's eldest son, Edward, and were defeated in a general engagement at Farnham in Surrey. They took refuge on an island of the River Colne near the village of Thorney where they were blockaded and were ultimately forced to submit. [14] The force fell back on Essex and, after suffering another defeat at Benfleet, joined Hastein's army at Shoebury. [10] [16]
Alfred had been on his way to relieve his son at Thorney when he heard that the Northumbrian and East Anglian Danes were besieging Exeter and an unnamed [lower-alpha 7] burh on the North Devon shore. Alfred at once hurried westward and when he arrived at Exeter, the Danes took to their ships. The siege of Exeter was lifted but the fate of the unnamed North Devon burh is not recorded. Meanwhile, the force under Hastein set out to march up the Thames Valley, possibly with the idea of assisting their friends in the west. [lower-alpha 8] But they were met by the Western army that consisted of West Saxons, Mercians, and some Welsh, it was led by three eldermen namely Æthelred the Lord of the Mercians, Æthelhelm the Ealdorman of Wiltshire, and Æthelnoth the Ealdorman of Somerset. The chronicle says that they "were drawn from every burh east of the Parret; both west and east of Selwood, also north of the Thames and west of the Severn as well as some part of the Welsh people". [lower-alpha 9] [5] Æthelred, although a Mercian, was married to Alfred's daughter and thus as his son in law was able to cross the borders of Wessex in pursuit of Vikings. The combined Anglo-Saxon and Welsh army forced the Vikings to the northwest, where they were finally overtaken and besieged at Buttington. [10]
The English and Welsh army came up the River Severn, and besieged all sides of the fortification (at Buttington) where the Vikings had taken refuge. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says that "after many weeks had passed, some of the heathen [Vikings] died of hunger, but some, having by then eaten their horses, broke out of the fortress, and joined battle with those who were on the east bank of the river. But, when many thousands of pagans had been slain, and all the others had been put to flight, the Christians [English and Welsh] were masters of the place of death. In that battle, the most noble Ordheah and many of the king's thegns were killed". [10] [16]
The annals say that the Vikings came up the Severn from the Thames making the most likely candidate for the location of the battle as present-day Buttington, [18] Welshpool in the county of Powys, Wales. Another place that has been suggested is Buttington Tump at the mouth of the River Wye, where it flows into the Severn but this is seen as less likely. [19]
The Vikings who had taken to their ships after Alfred's arrival, at Exeter, sailed along the south coast and attempted to raid Chichester, a burh according to the Burghal Hidage, manned by 1,500 men. The chronicle says that the citizens "put many [Vikings] to flight and killed hundreds of them and captured some of their ships". [16]
According to the Anglo-Saxon historian Æthelweard writing nearly a hundred years later, "Hastein made a rush with a large force from Benfleet, and ravaged savagely through all the lands of the Mercians, until he and his men reached the borders of the Welsh; the army stationed then in the east of the country gave them support, and the Northumbrian one similarly. The famous Ealdorman Æthelhelm made open preparation with a cavalry force, and gave pursuit together with the western English army under the generalship of Æthelnoth. And King (sic) Æthelred of the Mercians was afterwards present with them, being at hand with a large army". [20]
The Buttington Oak was said to have been planted by local people to commemorate the battle and survived until February 2018. [21]
Alfred the Great was King of the West Saxons from 871 to 886, and King of the Anglo-Saxons from 886 until his death in 899. He was the youngest son of King Æthelwulf and his first wife Osburh, who both died when Alfred was young. Three of Alfred's brothers, Æthelbald, Æthelberht and Æthelred, reigned in turn before him. Under Alfred's rule, considerable administrative and military reforms were introduced, prompting lasting change in England.
The Kingdom of the West Saxons, also known as the Kingdom of Wessex, was an Anglo-Saxon kingdom in the south of Great Britain, from around 519 until Alfred the Great declared himself as King of the Anglo-Saxons in 886.
Æthelred I was King of Wessex from 865 until his death in 871. He was the fourth of five sons of King Æthelwulf of Wessex, four of whom in turn became king. Æthelred succeeded his elder brother Æthelberht and was followed by his youngest brother, Alfred the Great. Æthelred had two sons, Æthelhelm and Æthelwold, who were passed over for the kingship on their father's death because they were still infants. Alfred was succeeded by his son, Edward the Elder, and Æthelwold unsuccessfully disputed the throne with him.
Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians ruled Mercia in the English Midlands from 911 until her death. She was the eldest daughter of Alfred the Great, king of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex, and his wife Ealhswith.
Year 893 (DCCCXCIII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Julian calendar.
The Danelaw was the part of England in which the laws of the Danes held sway and dominated those of the Anglo-Saxons. The Danelaw contrasts with the West Saxon law and the Mercian law. The term is first recorded in the early 11th century as Dena lage. The areas that constituted the Danelaw lie in northern and eastern England, long occupied by Danes and other Norsemen.
Æthelred, Lord of the Mercians became ruler of English Mercia shortly after the death or disappearance of its last king, Ceolwulf II in 879. Æthelred's rule was confined to the western half, as eastern Mercia was then part of the Viking-ruled Danelaw. His ancestry is unknown. He was probably the leader of an unsuccessful Mercian invasion of Wales in 881, and soon afterwards he acknowledged the lordship of King Alfred the Great of Wessex. This alliance was cemented by the marriage of Æthelred to Alfred's daughter Æthelflæd.
Æthelwold or Æthelwald was the younger of two known sons of Æthelred I, King of Wessex from 865 to 871. Æthelwold and his brother Æthelhelm were still infants when their father the king died while fighting a Danish Viking invasion. The throne passed to the king's younger brother Alfred the Great, who carried on the war against the Vikings and won a crucial victory at the Battle of Edington in 878.
Anglo-Saxon England or Early Medieval England, existing from the 5th to the 11th centuries from soon after the end of Roman Britain until the Norman Conquest in 1066, consisted of various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms until 927, when it was united as the Kingdom of England by King Æthelstan. It became part of the short-lived North Sea Empire of Cnut, a personal union between England, Denmark and Norway in the 11th century.
A burh or burg was an Anglo-Saxon fortification or fortified settlement. In the 9th century, raids and invasions by Vikings prompted Alfred the Great to develop a network of burhs and roads to use against such attackers. Some were new constructions; others were situated at the site of Iron Age hillforts or Roman forts and employed materials from the original fortifications. As at Lundenburh, many were also situated on rivers: this facilitated internal lines of supply while aiming to restrict access to the interior of the kingdom for attackers in shallow-draught vessels such as longships.
The Great Heathen Army, also known as the Viking Great Army, was a coalition of Scandinavian warriors who invaded England in AD 865. Since the late 8th century, the Vikings had been engaging in raids on centres of wealth, such as monasteries. The Great Heathen Army was much larger and aimed to conquer and occupy the four kingdoms of East Anglia, Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex.
Hastein was a Viking chieftain of the late 9th century who made several raiding voyages.
The ancient Selwood Forest ran approximately between Gillingham in Dorset and Chippenham in Wiltshire. It is described by the historian Barbara Yorke as a "formidable natural obstacle" in the Anglo-Saxon period, which was a significant boundary between east and west Wessex. It may earlier have been a negotiated frontier between Wessex and the British kingdom of Dumnonia which was important in the later development of the West Saxon shires, and later boundaries between Wiltshire and Somerset and north Dorset run through the forest. The boundaries through the forest and Bokerley Dyke which separated Somerset and Dorset from eastern counties may date to the fifth or sixth centuries. Selwood's importance as a boundary was also recognised in 705 when the bishopric of Sherborne was established for those "west of Selwood".
The Burghal Hidage is an Anglo-Saxon document providing a list of over thirty fortified places (burhs), the majority being in the ancient Kingdom of Wessex, and the taxes assigned for their maintenance. The document, so named by Frederic William Maitland in 1897, survives in two versions of medieval and early modern date. Version A, Cotton Otho B.xi was badly damaged in a fire at Ashburnham House in 1731 but the body of the text survives in a transcript made by the antiquary Laurence Nowell in 1562. Version B survives as a composite part of seven further manuscripts, usually given the title De numero hydarum Anglie in Britannia. There are several discrepancies in the lists recorded in the two versions of the document: Version A includes references to Burpham, Wareham and Bridport but omits Shaftesbury and Barnstaple which are listed in Version B. Version B also names Worcester and Warwick in an appended list.
The Anglo-Saxon period of the history of London lasted from the 7th to the 11th centuries.
Edward the Elder was King of the Anglo-Saxons from 899 until his death in 924. He was the elder son of Alfred the Great and his wife Ealhswith. When Edward succeeded to the throne, he had to defeat a challenge from his cousin Æthelwold, who had a strong claim to the throne as the son of Alfred's elder brother and predecessor, Æthelred I.
Events from the 10th century in the Kingdom of England.
Events from the 9th century in England.
Eorpeburnan is the first place identified in the Burghal Hidage, a document created in the late 9th or early 10th century, that provides a list of thirty one fortified places in Wessex. It details the location of fortifications designed to defend the West Saxon kingdom from the Vikings but also the relative size of burghal defences and their garrisons. Eorpeburnan is designated as having a hidage of 324, its precise location is lost in history, but scholars have suggested some possible sites.
The Battle of Benfleet was an 894 battle between the Vikings and the Anglo-Saxons commanded by Edward the Elder and Æthelred, Lord of the Mercians, the son and son-in-law of Alfred the Great respectively. The battle was part of a campaign started by the Vikings in 892 to raid and potentially occupy lands in England, having been defeated by the armies of France. As part of this campaign the invaders were supported by those Vikings who had settled in England following an earlier invasion launched in 865. The battle was a victory for the Anglo-Saxons who successfully captured a number of women and children, as well as capturing or destroying the Viking ships.