About this time his father, over sixty years of age, married a French princess of the name of Judith, only fourteen years of age,—­even in that rude age a great scandal, which nearly resulted in his dethronement.  He lived but two years longer; and his youthful widow, to the still greater scandal of the realm and Church, married her late husband’s eldest son, Ethelbald, who inherited the crown.  It was through this woman, and her subsequent husband Baldwin, called Bras de Fer, Count of Flanders, that the English kings, since the Conqueror, trace their descent from Alfred and Charlemagne; for her son, the second Count of Flanders, married Elfrida, the daughter of Alfred.  From this union descended the Conqueror’s wife Matilda.  Thus the present royal family of England can trace a direct descent through William the Conqueror, Alfred, and Charlemagne, and is allied by blood, remotely indeed, with most of the reigning princes of Europe.

The three elder brothers of Alfred reigned successively over Wessex,—­to whom all England owned allegiance.  It was during their short reigns that the great invasion of the Danes took place, which reduced the whole island to desolation and misery.  These Danes were of the same stock as the Saxons, but more enterprising and bold.  It seems that they drove the Saxons before them, as the Saxons, three hundred years before, had driven the Britons.  In their destructive ravages they sacked and burned Croyland, Peterborough, Huntington, Ely, and other wealthy abbeys,—­the glory of the kingdom,—­together with their valuable libraries.

It was then that Alfred (already the king’s most capable general) began his reign, A.D. 871, at the age of twenty-three, on the death of his brother Ethelred,—­a brave and pious prince, mortally wounded at the battle of Merton.

It was Alfred’s memorable struggle with the Danes which gave to him his military fame.  When he ascended the throne these barbarians had gained a foothold, and in a few years nearly the whole of England was in their hands.  Wave followed wave in the dreadful invasion; fleet after fleet and army after army was destroyed, and the Saxons were driven nearly to despair; for added to the evils of pillage and destruction were pestilence and famine, the usual attendants of desolating wars.  In the year 878 the heroic leader of the disheartened people was compelled to hide himself, with a few faithful followers, in the forest of Selwood, amid the marshes of Somersetshire.  Yet Alfred—­a fugitive—­succeeded at last in rescuing his kingdom of Wessex from the dominion of Pagan barbarians, and restoring it to a higher state of prosperity than it had ever attained before.  He preserved both Christianity and civilization.  For these exalted services he is called “the Great;” and no prince ever more heroically earned the title.