The importance of it was this. A part of the beaten host sailed away over seas. But the rest, under their king, Guthrum, agreed to accept Christian baptism, to withdraw out of Wessex and the western half of Mercia, and to settle peaceably in East Anglia, north of Thames. Guthrum, with thirty of his chiefs, came to Alfred’s stronghold, received at his baptism the Saxon name of Athelstan from his victor and god-father, remained twelve days with the king and gave large presents. By the Peace of Wedmore, 878, Wessex and West England were saved, and the ultimate incorporation of the Danes with Christendom was secured. At first sight and in strict form, Alfred had surrendered Eastern England to the conqueror. The Treaty was not honestly observed by the Danes, and Guthrum and his warriors again became enemies. But the core of England was saved; the amalgamation of Dane and Saxon was founded in principle and in distant effect. And the Peace of Wedmore was a stroke of genius more daring and more far-reaching in result than the splendid victory of Ethandune by which it had been won. Leaving the Danes for the present undisturbed in all Eastern England between Thames and Tees, Alfred occupied himself with restoring his shattered and desolated Kingdom of Wessex. His treasury was empty, the towns were in ruins, and civil government paralysed. He built forts, abbeys, and schools; repeopled and stocked waste districts; and set to work to establish something like a standing military force to meet the regular “army” of Danes. Hitherto Alfred had commanded loose levies of half-armed men, who by custom disbanded after two months’ service. This had enabled small but organised bands of Danes to overrun England, and to win practical successes even when beaten by numbers in the fields. Alfred, like William of Normandy in the eleventh, like Cromwell in the seventeenth century, saw, even so early as the ninth century, that victory belonged not to numbers but to regular armies. He organised what was at least a permanent local militia, with definite quotas of levies and an alternate system of reserves, besides the garrisons of fortified places. He rebuilt the broken fortresses, exercised his men in entrenchments, and adapted from the Danes their military arts. But his eye of genius foresaw that the country was not safe whilst the invaders had command of the seas. Thus he organised a fleet, and assessed the ports and maritime districts to support it. He himself ultimately designed a class of ship, longer and swifter than those in use, though at first he had to man his navy with mercenary Frisians and sea-rovers. Towards the close of his reign, and in that of his son and grandson, a genuine English navy asserted its command of the Channel, which two centuries later his feeble successors lost again.