It had been a wet November. Rivers and streams were swollen with run off from the hills. Penda’s army was wet, miserable and, for reasons that are not entirely clear, disgruntled.
Unlike his elder brother, Oswiu received no saintly dream visitor telling him to attack, even though he had given oath to give his daughter, Ælfflæd, to the church and to found many monasteries should he win victory. So it was most likely his perception of a sudden tactical advantage that decided Oswiu to attack.
When report came back from his scouts that Penda’s army was struggling to cross a swollen river, with some of the army on the far bank and the rest stuck on the near bank, Oswiu saw his opportunity.
After 13 years of choosing discretion, Oswiu had decided that the time had come for valour. Quite why Oswiu made the decision when he did, we don’t know. He may have simply been following Penda’s army to ensure that they really were leaving his realm but then, seeing an opportunity, he decided to take it.
Or he may have decided that his own rule would be fatally weakened if he did not finally confront Penda. A weak king could no longer attract warriors to his warband, and Oswiu’s supporters, fleeced again to pay for their king’s survival, might have indicated that they would give no more to save his skin.
Whatever the reason, Oswiu decided to place his life and future into the scale of battle. The old gods had sustained Penda through his reign as he threw down the newly Christian kings around him. Although the monks of Lindisfarne had translated Oswald’s death into martyrdom, for the battle warriors of the time the gods, or the God, had to deliver where it mattered most: on the battlefield.
We all know just how miserable the weather can be in November. In the year 655, it was wetter than usual. Penda’s thoroughly bedraggled army struggled south over muddy roads and across swollen rivers.
Apparently dissatisfied with the results of their great northern expedition, dissension among Penda’s allies increased. Cadafael, king of Gwynedd, decided to make his own way home and, taking his men, left Penda’s army while they were camped (thereby earning himself the nickname Cadomedd (‘battle-shirker’ although, as matters turned out, he’d have been better named ‘far-sighted’). For Oswiu was shadowing Penda south.
Oswiu’s bribe worked. Penda withdrew. Maybe it was the money. Anglo-Saxon kings needed gold to cement their positions as kingship required the pouring out of gold in gift rather than its hoarding.
It may have been Oswiu’s reluctance to give battle. Withdrawing to one of his strongholds – most likely Stirling on this occasion (which shows how far north Northumbria stretched at this time) – Oswiu was nigh impregnable. Early medieval armies did not have command of siege machines capable of breaching a defended stronghold.
Nor were the armies large enough to effectively besiege a stronghold long enough for starvation to force surrender. This force of Penda’s might have been large enough to lay siege to Stirling but it is likely that it did not have the logistics necessary to sustain the army in siege for the length of time necessary.
So Oswiu bought Penda off again. The campaign had dragged on much longer than usual. War was generally an activity of summer and early autumn but by the time Penda and his allies started heading south, it was well into November.
Angels continues the Oxford Very Short Introduction writing streak: it’s excellent. A short (as it says) introduction to angels, from their first appearances in Near Eastern Mythology, their spread through Judaism, Christianity and Islam, to their modern reinvention as figures of the New Age. The book runs parallel threads through history, theology and art history, using each to inform the other.
Robert Heinlein was the Jekyll and Hyde of SF writers. Dr Jekyll wrote tightly plotted stories that whisked the reader into a future that was assumed as part of the story’s structure so that it did not require any long explanations as to how the young hero might be able to ride a rocket to the asteroid belt. And it always was a young hero, for these stories were aimed at teenagers – they’re now called Heinlein’s juveniles. There’s not a wasted word in them.
Mr Heinlein’s Hyde wrote interminable novels with only vaguely discernible plots whose main points appeared to be to advocate for guilt-free sex for everyone and, in particular, for men with their mothers (yucky but true), where no woman appeared whose nipples did not go ‘sproing!’ within a few moments of meeting our narrative hero. I was a teenage boy when I read these stories and the female form was a matter of intense interest and complete mystery to me at the time but I still thought this was icky. These stories were supposedly for adults and they are almost all dreadful.
I grew up with Heinlein’s juveniles and loved them. I moved on to his adult books and, having read the few decent ones early (The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Starship Troopers) manfully ploughed through the nipple-springing dross (Time Enough For Love, I Will Fear No Evil) before finally giving up on The Number of the Beast.
I thought I had read all Heinlein’s juveniles so it was with delight that I discovered one that I had missed: Citizen of the Galaxy. I settled down to it, expecting to return to the effortless storytelling that had transplanted me into the future when I was young… only to be bored. Reader, I am truly sorry to say this story does something unique for Heinlein. It is tedious. It is humdrum. It drags on until you start looking to see how many pages before it ends. Looking at when it was written, 1957, it stands just on the cusp of when Heinlein stood on the brink of becoming a preacher rather than a writer. While it doesn’t have the worst excesses of his later works, there are signs. Read his earlier works instead.
If you were young in the late 1970s, early ’80s, you might remember this book. I certainly do. It had a huge impact on me when I read it, changing me from a strident teenage materialistic atheist into… well, something else entirely.
Today, I discovered my old copy, tucked away on a bookshelf in my parents’ house. It’s the 1978 reprint so I must have read it when I was 15. And I still think it has the best book tagline ever.
Photo by By David Rowan, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery
The payments and hostages bought Oswiu time but it’s clear that he knew they were all only stopgaps: this was Danegeld before the Danes had turned up but already it was clear that the payment was never enough: Penda would always come back for more. He was farming the neighbouring kingdoms, harvesting their riches at regular intervals.
With such store of treasure, and with the deserved reputation as the greatest warrior of his time, Penda had no difficult attracting warriors, and petty kings, to his cause. In 655, Penda decided that Oswiu was ripe for another shearing. This time, he gathered not only his own warband but the warband of the allied kingdoms: they would all feast on the Northumbrians. For the time, it must have been a vast army; Bede records that it was composed of 30 warbands, including those of the kings of Gwynedd, East Anglia and Deira (an unkind cut, that last, for Oswiu, as the man leading the Deirans was Œthelwold, his nephew, Oswald’s son).
In the face of such an army, Oswiu did as he’d done before: he dissembled and withdrew. Rather than offering battle, he offered money, aiming to buy off Penda and his allies.
Sigeberht ruled East Anglia from 629 to 634. But in 634, Sigeberht abdicated in favour of his co-ruler Ecgric and entered a monastery. This was remarkable in itself: Sigeberht was the first Anglo-Saxon king to abandon power for the religious life. It’s an indication of how deeply the new religion had penetrated the warrior class even during the first generation of converts. Sigeberht was completely sincere in his renunciation of the life of the warrior, although it seems that not all his people were convinced. For at some point after he entered the monastery, King Penda came calling with his Mercian army. King Ecgric fell back before the advancing Mercians but Penda pursued them. Remembering Sigeberht’s pre-abdication abilities as a warrior and battle leader, Ecgric sent messengers to the once king, asking him to leave the monastery and join him in defending the realm. But Sigeberht refused, reiterating the final nature of his renunciation of the world; he would bear arms no longer.
With the situation desperate, Ecgric refused to accept Sigeberht’s answer and had him dragged from his monastery. But even when forced from the monastic life, Sigeberht refused to resume the life of war. He was a monk now and would no longer bear arms nor trade in lives. Ecgric tried to delay, withdrawing into the marshes, but his army was tracked down by Penda’s scouts. The East Anglians had no choice but to give battle.
Even at the end, Sigeberht clove to his vows and refused to take up weapons, wielding only a staff in his own defence.
To no avail. The Mercians cut down the East Anglians, killing Ecgric and Sigeberht, and significantly reducing East Anglian power.
However, it turned out that reduction was not sufficient for Penda for when their successor, King Anna, looked on course to restore East Anglian power Penda invaded again, killing another king.
Sigeberht, who ruled East Anglia from 629 to 634. But in 634, Sigeberht abdicated in favour of his co-ruler Ecgric and entered a monastery. This was remarkable in itself: Sigeberht was the first Anglo-Saxon king to abandon power for the religious life. It’s an indication of how deeply the new religion had penetrated the warrior class even during the first generation of converts. Sigeberht was completely sincere in his renunciation of the life of the warrior, although it seems that not all his people were convinced. For at some point after he entered the monastery, King Penda came calling with his Mercian army. King Ecgric fell back before the advancing Mercians but Penda pursued them. Remembering Sigeberht’s pre-abdication abilities as a warrior and battle leader, Ecgric sent messengers to the once king, asking him to leave the monastery and join him in defending the realm. But Sigeberht refused, reiterating the final nature of his renunciation of the world; he would bear arms no longer. With the situation desperate, Ecgric refused to accept Sigeberht’s answer and had him dragged from his monastery. But even when forced from the monastic life, Sigeberht refused to resume the life of war. He was a monk now and would no longer bear arms nor trade in lives. Ecgric tried to delay, withdrawing into the marshes, but his army was tracked down by Penda’s scouts. The East Anglians had no choice but to give battle.Even at the end, Sigeberht clove to his vows and refused to take up weapons, wielding only a staff in his own defence. To no avail. The Mercians cut down the East Anglians, killing Ecgric and Sigeberht, and significantly reducing East Anglian power.However, it turned out that reduction was not sufficient for Penda for when their successor, King Anna, looked on course to restore East Anglian power Penda invaded again, killing another king.
The brooding figure of Penda of Mercia loomed over Oswiu’s rule. Following his defeat of Oswald, Penda became the pre-eminent king in the land. Although he does not seem to have made any serious efforts to enlarge Mercia by incorporating surrounding kingdoms into his own, he was able to remove bordering kings who displeased him, apparently at will. He disposed of three kings of East Anglia, two during their reign and the third in his retirement.
Alongside his exploits as a killer of kings, Penda also forced Cenwalh, the king of Wessex, into exile, as well as repeatedly raiding into Northumbria, at one point laying siege to Oswiu in his Bamburgh stronghold. On that occasion, the prayers of Aidan turned back the flames by which Penda was attempting to burn Oswiu out of his stronghold. But there were other occasions when Penda ravaged the north: Oswiu quite literally bought his kingdom and his life, handing over a vast haul of treasure to Penda. (The Staffordshire Hoard might represent some of this treasure as much of the items appear to have been of Northumbrian origin, although if that is the case quite why the hoard should have been buried and forgotten is a mystery. It wasn’t just treasure Oswiu handed over: Penda took his son, Ecgfrith, as hostage for his father.
