The first instance we have of the bent of Alfred’s mind after he came to maturity occurs in connection with this feeling on his part that to fight the Danes was a religious work. In 871, just before he came to the throne, the pagan army fought against the Earl of Berkshire at Englefield, and the Christians gained the victory. Four days later, Alfred and his brother King Ethelred attacked the pagans at Reading, where they had strong fortifications. They cut to pieces such of the pagans as they found outside the fortifications; but the main body of the pagans sallied forth, and the Christians fled. Four days after, the pagan army was on strong ground at Æscesdun, the hill of the ash, and the Christians, in shame and indignation, roused by the calamity at Reading, determined to attack them under Ethelred and Alfred. Ethelred was a religious man, as Alfred was, but his religion took practically a different form. The king prepared for the fight by hearing mass, and the army waited for him. The pagans did not wait. Time pressed. Alfred, who was second in command, became very anxious. The king, who commanded the force arrayed against the pagan king, was still set in prayer. He declared he would not depart, alive, till the priest had done, nor leave the divine service. Alfred was to deal with the two pagan jarls; he must either retreat or charge without waiting for his brother. Relying on the divine counsels he charged, and after a long and severe fight, in which many of the leading pagans were killed, the Christians won the day. They strewed the whole plain of Æscesdun with pagans, slaughtered in their flight. Alfred himself, it should be observed, was from childhood a frequent visitor of holy places, for the sake of prayer and almsgiving. It was certainly not from any disregard of prayer or of God’s house and the public worship of God that he fought while Ethelred heard mass. That same year, after another great fight at Basing in which the pagans got the victory, Alfred became king on the death of his brother; Ethelred’s son Ethelwold being too young to reign. A month later the pagans defeated him at Wilton. Eight pitched battles in one year, besides endless skirmishes by night and day in which Alfred and his chief men were engaged without rest or cessation against the pagans: that is Asser’s summary of the year which saw Alfred mount the throne of the West Saxons.