893-6. Northumbrians and East Anglians break truces and join forces with newly-arrived Vikings
Viking raids on remaining English areas
After three years of fighting, the English see off the new arrivals
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle gives a quite detailed account of the attacks and counter-attacks of these years, and it emerges clearly from this that the England faced by the Vikings in the 890s was very different from the walkover they faced in the 860s. They face well-organized resistance and armies gathered on at least one occasion from large parts of England and Wales, they are chased up and down the country and holed up in sieges, and so it is no surprise that in the summer of 896 they split up, some of them retreating into Viking-held Northumbria and East Anglia, and the others returning to the Continent.
The Chronicle starts by condemning the Northumbrians and East Anglians for siding with the Vikings, even though they had sworn oaths to King Alfred and the East Anglians at least had given hostages. Given that the Northumbrians and East Anglians concerned are presumably the remnants or the descendants of Halfdan's "Great Heathen Army" (which settled Northumbria in 876) and Guthrum's "Great Summer Army" (which settled East Anglia in 880), their loyalty to the newly-arrived Vikings is not surprising.
In 893, after the Vikings had occupied their fortresses in Kent (see 892), Alfred gathered his army and took up a position between the enemy forces, so that he could reach either army if they left their fortresses. What the chronicler only relates later in the annal is that Alfred seems also to have come to an agreement with Hasteinn at this point, by which Alfred gave Hasteinn rich gifts of money, and Hasteinn gave Alfred oaths and hostages, and Hasteinn's two sons were baptized with the sponsorship of Alfred and Ealdorman Æthelred. This was presumably done to make peace with Hasteinn's forces, but Hasteinn then took his army from Milton to Benfleet and ravaged the province. The Vikings at Appledore went on a long raid inland, as far as Wessex, and ravaged Hampshire and Berkshire. They returned, loaded with booty, which they wanted to take back to their ships, but they were cut off at Farnham in Surrey by an army led by Alfred's son, Edward the Elder. Edward's army recovered the spoils and put the Vikings to flight, and eventually caught up with them and besieged them.
Meanwhile, the Vikings of Northumbria and East Anglia gathered a fleet together and besieged Exeter and a fortress on the north coast of Devon. Alfred, who had been going to help besiege the Vikings cut off by his son, turned instead and took most of his army to Exeter, where he attacked the Vikings. Alfred sent part of his army on to London, where they gathered reinforcements and stormed and took Hasteinn's camp at Benfleet, and destroyed or captured all of the ships there. (Hasteinn was away on a raid.)
While Alfred was in Exeter, the other Viking armies assembled at Shoebury in Essex, and built a fortress there, and went up along the Thames, where they received reinforcements from the Northumbrians and East Anglians, and then continued along the Severn. At Buttington by the Severn they were met by the English, led by the ealdormen Æthelred (of Mercia) and Æthelhelm (of Wiltshire) and Æthelnoth (of Somerset), and comprising men from Wessex and Mercia and Wales (the Chronicle notes king's thegns from every fortress east of the Parret, and both west and east of Selwood, and also north of the Thames and west of the Severn). This combined English/Welsh force besieged the Vikings at Buttington for several weeks, starving them out until finally the Vikings had to emerge and they were defeated there by the English and the Welsh: the surviving Vikings fled back to Essex.
The Vikings regrouped in Essex, again collected a large army from Northumbria and East Anglia, placed their women and ships and property in Viking-held East Anglia, and travelled to the deserted city of Chester. The English army could not overtake them before they reached the fortress, but they did besiege the fortress and seize all the cattle outside and burn or consume all the corn in the surrounding districts, so that, as at Buttington, the Vikings were starved out and had to leave the fortification.
The annal for 894 begins with the Viking army leaving Chester and raiding Wales, and then returning from Wales through Northumbria and East Anglia (where the English army could not reach them) to eastern Essex. These Vikings then rowed up the Thames and up the Lea, where they built a fortress, 20 miles above London, and stayed the winter there.
The other Viking army, which had gathered from Northumbria and East Anglia and attacked Exeter and then been besieged by Alfred in 893, also went home this year. Though they stopped and tried to ravage in Sussex near Chichester on the way, the locals put them to flight and killed hundreds of them and captured some of their ships.
In the summer of 895 the English from London and elsewhere marched on the fortress of the Vikings by the Lea, but they were put to flight. In the autumn, though, Alfred camped his army nearby to contain the Vikings, and built two fortresses lower down the river Lea so that the Vikings could not get their ships back out. When the Vikings discovered this, they abandoned their ships and went overland to Bridgnorth on the Severn where they built a fortress. The English army rode after the Vikings, and the men of London (as before with Hasteinn's fleet at Benfleet in Essex) fetched the ships from the camp by the Lea, and destroyed the ones they could not bring away. The Vikings stayed the winter at Bridgnorth.
In the summer of 896, as noted at the beginning of this entry, the Vikings gave up their assaults, and some of them went into East Anglia and some into Northumbria, and the rest went south across the sea to the Seine.