Battle of Ashdown
The Battle of Ashdown took place on 8 January 871 near Ashdown, Berkshire, England, instead.
Ashdown, derived from Old English Æscesdūn about Ashdune means Esch hill. The exact location is still unknown, since the name was very common, so only guesses are possible.
Prehistory
The Danes were the end of the year 870 Coming invaded from East Anglia, Wessex, to the last great Anglo-Saxon Kingdom ( Northumbria, Mercia and East Anglia had already been conquered by the Danes ) take. Having already had occurred the battles of Englefield and Reading, their troops rallied King Æthelred and his brother Alfred again.
Battle Record
On 8 January 871 the Anglo-Saxons meet at Ashdown on the Danes. Both armies were divided into two departments and entrenched themselves. Soon, Alfred moved its troops in a dense phalanx against the Danes on a hill before, during King Æthelred allegedly in his tent listening to a fair and pray for divine intervention. After the Danish king and his Bagsac Jarle Sidrac the Elder, Sidrac the Younger, Osborn, Frene and Harold had fallen with many men in a long and hard battle, the Danes were forced to flee. The Anglo-Saxons pursued them throughout the night and took down the fugitives.
The many thousands of fallen Danes are also greatly exaggerated, as tens of thousands of Anglo-Saxons. Symeon of Durham gives the number of casualties on both sides with a total of 1,150 to plus the many thousands killed on the run to. The death toll in the sources are generally often not very reliable; obviously, however, the Anglo-Saxons won a pretty clear victory, however, Alfred's biographer Asser addition to highlighting to emphasize Alfred.
Notwithstanding Asher handed Symeon of Durham, that Jarle Frana and Harald did not fall in the actual battle, but died on the run. The name of the second Danish king Halfdan has survived in only one manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
Swell
- Asser, Vita Alfredi
- Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
- Symeon of Durham, Historia regum Anglorum et Dacorum