Hitherto, save at Ashdown, it has been impossible to separate Alfred’s doings from those of Ethelred. We may guess that much of the untiring energy shown by the men of Wessex was due to the activity of the Etheling rather than to that of his pious elder brother; but we can prove nothing. When, however, Alfred begins to reign in his own right, we can at last make him personally responsible for the conduct of the war. At first, it must be confessed, we can detect little more than mere courage and perseverance in the young king’s conduct. Of generalship we find no evidence. His first battle was a disaster. The victors of Marton, strengthened by a large new “summer-army” from over-seas, pressed deeper into Wiltshire. Ere Alfred had been a month on the throne, he met them near Wilton, but his army was small. The spirit of Wessex had begun to fail after a year in which eight engagements with the invaders had already been fought, four of which had been bloody defeats. The thegnhood was terribly worn down in numbers, the shire-levies so discouraged that they came to the muster in number far smaller than usual. But Alfred nevertheless offered battle. Taking up a strong position on a hill, he repulsed the Danes with great slaughter when they attacked him. But his army, carried away by their ardour, charged down from its favourable post to cut up the defeated enemy. The Vikings rallied, and turned on their scattered pursuers, whom they finally drove from the field. Thus inauspiciously began Alfred’s independent military career. But in spite of their victory the Danes, who had suffered almost as much as the English in this year of battles, consented to retire from Wessex on receiving a moderate sum of money. Alfred paid them, though he must have been aware that he was only buying a short respite. Time, however, was all-valuable to a king who wished to reorganise his exhausted realm. For the next four years (872-875) there was comparative peace in Wessex: the enemy was employed partly on the Continent, partly in the conquest of Mercia, whose eastern half they annexed in 874, handing over the western part as a vassal kingdom to “an unwise thegn named Ceolwulf,” who fondly thought that it was possible to settle down as a vassal of the greedy Northmen. Alfred’s main endeavour in these years was to develop a navy; he “built galleys and long-ships,” and exerted himself to find trained crews for them, hiring “pirates”—converted Danes, we may suppose—to teach his own men seamanship. The beginnings of this national fleet must have been modest, for the chronicler thinks it a fact of note that the king’s galleys were able in 875 to attack seven Viking ships, take one, and chase the rest out to sea. Two years later, however, the squadron, as we shall see from its doings, must have developed to a more formidable strength.