During the fifty years that followed it seemed as if the invaders might sweep away the Anglo-Saxons as completely as the ancestors of these Anglo-Saxons had exterminated the original British inhabitants and their Roman conquerors. That they failed was largely due to one of the most famous of English kings, Alfred ‘the Great’, a prince of the royal house of Wessex. Wessex was a province lying mainly to the south of the River Thames, and at Wantage in Berkshire in the year 849 Alfred was born, cradled in an atmosphere of war and danger. From boyhood he fought by the side of his brothers in a long campaign of which the very victories could not hold at bay the restless Danes. When Alfred succeeded to the throne he secured a temporary peace and began to build a fleet and reform his army; but in a few years his enemies broke across his boundaries once more, and he himself, overwhelmed by their numbers, was forced to take refuge in the marshes of Somerset. Here at Athelney he built a fort and, collecting round him the English warriors of the neighbouring counties, organized so strong a resistance that at last he inflicted a decisive defeat upon the Danish army. King Guthrum, his enemy, sued for peace and at the Treaty of Wedmore consented to become a Christian and to recognize Alfred as King of Wessex, while he himself retained the Danelaw to the north of the Thames. This was the beginning of a new England, for from this time Alfred and his descendants, having secured the freedom of Wessex, set themselves to win back bit by bit the territory held by the Danes. First of all under Edward ‘the Elder’, Alfred’s son, the middle kingdom of Mercia was won back, and the Danes beyond its border agreed to recognize the King of Wessex as their overlord, while later other Wessex rulers overran Northumbria and the South of Scotland, so that by the middle of the tenth century it could be said that ‘England from the Forth to the Channel was under one ruler’. The winning back of the Danelaw had not been merely a matter of hewing down Northmen, nor did Alfred earn his title of ‘the Great’ because he could wield a sword bravely and lead other men who could do the same. He was a successful general because in an age of wild fighting he recognized the value of discipline and training. In order to obtain the type of men he required he increased the number of ‘Thegns’, that is, of nobles whose duty it was to serve the King as horsemen, while he reorganized the ‘fyrd’ or local militia. Henceforth, instead of a large army of peasants, who must be sent to their homes every autumn to reap the harvest, he arranged for the maintenance of a small force that he could keep in the field as long as required. Its arms were to be supplied by fellow villagers released from the obligation to serve themselves on this condition.