BretwaldaBretwaldaby Mike Demana (article originally appeared in The Herald #26)
After one year of warfare across the lenght of Britian, the Brewalda campaign had recorded its share of winners and losers. The Scots kingdom of Dal Riata had been swallowed by the Picts. Anglian Mercia had lost more than half its provinces, the victim of a three player "Saxon Coalition" (Wessex, Essex, Kent/Sussex). Meanwhile, the lands of some kingdoms -- most notably the Picts and Wessex -- were swelling with conquered provinces.
Spring began with the Danes wresting Londinium from Essex after four months of siege. A month later, the Danes themselves were besieged when a too-late relieving army finally arrived. Despite their rumors of ferocity, the Danish warriors proved reluctant to engage in battle. A Kentish army pushed them away from their southern capital of Dover, then chased them back across the chalk hills into northern Kent. By Spring's close, the Danes were sheltering behind the walls of Rochester.
Perhaps the
Danes were just being crafty, though. Their Norse cousins had laid siege
to Kentish Sussex in April. With only one field army, could Kent afford
to wait in front of the walls of Rochester while another of its provinces
was besieged? The Danes seemed content to wait and see.
The Norse, on the other hand, were almost recklessly aggressive, their longships spreading fear the length of Britain. In addition to Sussex, they also laid siege to the capitals of Wessex Dorset in the south and the Pictish Orkney Islands in the far north.
Meanwhile, Wessex tightened its choke hold on Mercia. Brushing aside the beleaguered kingdom's Winter siege of Warwick, King Egbert's armies drove north and encircled the capital of Chester. When one of the two remaining Mercian armies marched to break through and relieve it, they were routed with thousands slain. Reduced to a shell of its former strength, how long before King Coenwulf's Mercia fell entirely?
The island's other seeming juggernaut, the ancient kingdom of the Picts, was overrunning the Britons of Strathclyde. Tattooed tribesmen ringed the Briton capital of Dumbarton Rock, while another horde drove south into Galloway, besieging that province's capital. The Britons pieced together an army and sailed north through the Hebridean Sea to free their capital. Pictish King Circinn showed tactical skill, though, his deployment tempting to the Britons to split their forces across a river. When they did, he rushed forward and bowled over their infantry, while their vaunted heavy cavalry could only watch (and later join in) the rout. A kingdom that had weathered the Roman invasion many centuries earlier seemed poised to make short work of the last of their descendents.