35 pages • 1-hour read
The Ballad of the White Horse
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Background
Literary Context: Chesterton and Alfred the Great
Chesterton usually wrote quickly and did not spend much time revising his work. However, he made an exception for the ballad, subjecting his drafts to much revision over the course of a few years before publication. As he prepared the work, he and his wife Frances drove to the places in England associated with Alfred—the Somerset marshes and then the White Horse on the Berkshire Downs, which is close to where the battle of Ethandune was fought.
Chesterton had been familiar with the story of Alfred since he was a child, when he read Charles Dickens's A Child's History of England, which contains not only the story of the burning of the cakes but also of Alfred's going incognito to the Danish camp as a minstrel. Chesterton believed—as any reader of the ballad would easily guess—that Christianity was the correct faith and paganism was wrong, and this was the reason that the Christians eventually triumphed. Chesterton also mentions Alfred in his own A Short History of England. The figure he describes is recognizable as the Alfred in the ballad:
[H]e combined an almost commonplace coolness, and readiness for the ceaseless small bargains and shifting combinations of all that period, with the flaming patience of saints in times of persecution. While he would dare anything for the faith, he would bargain in anything except the faith. He was a conqueror, with no ambition; a simple, concentrated, wary man, watching the fortunes of one thing, which he piloted both boldly and cautiously, and which he saved at last (p. 40).
Chesterton continues: "Alfred . . . as he himself wrote in words that are his challenge to the period, held that a Christian man was unconcerned with fate" (p. 41). This also is the Alfred in the ballad, who, inspired by the Virgin Mary, fights on without worrying about whether he will succeed.
Another key aspect of the ballad, that Christians should embody "joy without a cause" (Bk I, Line 260) is emphasized on the very last page of Orthodoxy, Chesterton's defense of Christianity from the perspective of reason, in which he writes that "by its [Christianity's] creed joy becomes something gigantic and sadness something special and small. . . . Joy is the gigantic secret of the Christian."
Historical Context: England at the End of the 9th Century
In the later part of the 9th century, England was close to being overrun by the Danish invaders. As Chesterton put it in his A Short History of England, over time, “All the monastic civilization which had grown up in Britain under a vague Roman protection perished unprotected. The toy kingdoms of the quarrelling Saxons were smashed like sticks” (p. 40). By the 870s, the only independent kingdom left was Wessex, and Alfred suffered one defeat after another that led him and his few followers to take refuge in isolated places. Nevertheless, Alfred managed to recruit enough men from the western part of Wessex to challenge the Danes again, and this time, at the Battle of Ethandune (or Edington) in May 878, he won a decisive victory.
Alfred’s army, which likely consisted of between 3,000 and 6,000 men, assembled, as in the ballad, at Egbert’s Stone, on the edge of Salisbury Plain. Then they advanced north in the direction of Chippenham in the modern-day county of Wiltshire. The opposing armies were equal in battle technology, using shield walls that created a defensive wall, as well as axes, swords, and spears. Alfred had an advantage, however, in that the Danes had been in control of that area for only five months, and they were less familiar with the terrain. The battle likely took place over a single day. The Danes were not totally defeated on the battlefield, but they got the worst of it and fled to Chippenham, where Alfred besieged them. (There is no historical support for Chesterton’s account in the ballad, in which Alfred and his men are almost defeated before they stage a final rally. Chesterton appears to have invented this for dramatic effect.) Under siege, the Danes capitulated within two weeks. A peace treaty, the Treaty of Wedmore, was then signed. The Danes agreed to leave Wessex, and King Guthrum agreed to undergo Christian baptism. Alfred then accepted him as a legitimate Christian king.
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