incessantly renewed of all foreign invasions, those of the Northmen,
ceased to threaten France. The vagabond pirates had a country to
cultivate and defend; the Northmen were becoming French.




CAREER OF ALFRED THE GREAT

A.D. 871-901

T. HUGHES

J.R. GREEN


(Alfred the Great was the grandson of Egbert, King of the West Saxons,
who during a reign of thirty-seven years consolidated in the Saxon
heptarchy the seven Teutonic kingdoms into which Anglia or England had
been divided, since the expulsion of the Britons by the Saxons about
585. In the latter part of Egbert's reign the Danish Northmen appeared
in the estuaries and rivers of England, sacking and burning the towns
along their banks. Ethelwulf who had been made King of Kent in 828, and
succeeded his father Egbert as King of Anglia in 837, was early occupied
in resisting and repelling attacks along his coasts, and by several
successful pitched battles with the Danish invaders obtained comparative
freedom from their visits for eight years. Ethelwulf had married
Osburga, the daughter of Oslac his cup-bearer, and had a daughter and
five sons, of whom Alfred, the youngest, was born in 849. Part of
Alfred's childhood was spent in Rome. At Compiègne and Verberie among