Alfred's Position Before The Battle
Guthrum and his men had applied the usual Danish strategy of occupying a fortified town and waiting for a peace “treaty,” involving money in return for a promise to leave the kingdom immediately; Alfred shadowed the army, trying to prevent more damage than had already occurred. This started in 875 when Guthrum's army “eluded the West Saxon levies and got into Wareham”. They then gave hostages and oaths to leave the country to Alfred, who paid them off. The Danes promptly slipped off to Exeter, even deeper into Alfred's kingdom, where they concluded in the autumn of 877 a "firm peace" with Alfred, under terms that entailed their leaving his kingdom and not returning. This they did, spending the rest of 877 (by the Gregorian calendar) in Gloucester. Alfred spent Christmas at Chippenham, thirty miles from Gloucester. The Danes attacked Chippenham "in midwinter after Twelfth Night", probably during the night of January 6–7, 878. They captured Chippenham (barely missing Alfred) and forced Alfred to retreat "with a small force" into the wilderness. It is to this period that the story of King Alfred burning the cakes belongs.
Alfred seems at this time to have chased ineffectually around Wessex, while the Danes were in a position to do as they pleased. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle attempts to convey the impression that Alfred held the initiative; it is "a bland chronicle which laconically charts the movements of the Danish victors while at the same time disingenuously striving to convey the impression that Alfred was in control", although it fails. Even if Alfred had caught up with the Danish force, it is unlikely that he could have accomplished anything. The fact that his army could not defend the fortified Chippenham, even in "an age... as yet untrained in siege warfare" casts great doubt on its ability to defeat the Danes in an open field, unaided by fortifications. There was little, beyond repeatedly paying the invaders off, that Alfred could do about the Danish menace between 875 and the end of 877.
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