The finding of such a retreat would have been great good fortune for these wretched fugitives if there had been any large force in the country to come soon to their deliverance; but, as they were without provisions and without water, they soon began to perceive that, unless they obtained some speedy help from without, they had only escaped the Saxon lances and swords to die a ten times more bitter death of thirst and famine; and there was no force to relieve them.  The army which had been thus defeated was the great central force of the Danes upon the island.  The other detachments and independent bands which were scattered about the land were thunderstruck at the news of this terrible defeat.  The Saxons, too, were every where aroused to the highest pitch of enthusiasm at the reappearance of their king and the tidings of his victory.  The whole country was in arms.  Guthrum, however, shut up in his castle, and closely invested with Alfred’s forces, had no means of knowing what was passing without.  His numbers were so small in comparison with those besieging him that it would have been madness for him to have attempted a sally; and he would not surrender.  He waited day after day, hoping against hope that some succor would come.  His half-famished sentinels gazed from the watch-towers of the castle all around, looking for some cloud of distant dust, or weapon glancing in the sun, which might denote the approach of friends coming to their rescue.  This lasted fourteen days.  At the end of that time, the number within this wretched prison who were raving in the delirium of famine and thirst, or dying in agony, became too great for Guthrum to persist any longer.  He surrendered.  Alfred was once more in possession of his kingdom.

During the fourteen days that elapsed between the victory on the field of battle and the final surrender of Guthrum, Alfred, feeling that the power was now in his hands, had had ample time to reflect on the course which he should pursue with his subjugated enemies; and the result to which he came, and the measure which he adopted, evince, as much as any act of his life, the greatness, and originality, and nobleness of his character.  Here were two distinct and independent races on the same island, that had been engaged for many years in a most fierce and sanguinary struggle, each gaining at times a temporary and partial victory, but neither able entirely to subdue or exterminate the other.  The Danes, it is true, might be considered as the aggressors in this contest, and, as such, wholly in the wrong; but then, on the other hand, it was to be remembered that the ancestors of the Saxons had been guilty of precisely the same aggressions upon the Britons, who held the island before them; so that the Danes were, after all, only intruding upon intruders.  It was, besides, the general maxim of the age, that the territories of the world were prizes open for competition, and that the right to possess and to govern vested naturally and justly in those who could show