King Alfred inciting the Anglo-Saxons to repel the invasion of the Danes in AD 876, from ‘Illustrations of English and Scottish History’ Volume I by George Frederick Watts
With such garniture then of one kind or another, gathered together in these early years, the young crown prince stands loyally by the side of the young king his brother, looking from their western home over an England already growing dark under the shadow of a tremendous storm. When it bursts, will it spend itself on these Nothumbrian and East Anglian coasts and kingdoms, or shall we too feel its rage? These must have been anxious thoughts for the young prince, questionings to which the answer was becoming month by month plainer and clearer at the time of his marriage. Within some six weeks of that ceremony he was already in arms in Mercia. Before the birth of his first child he was himself king, and nine pitched battles had been fought in his own kingdom of Wessex under his leadership.
Thomas Hughes, Alfred the Great (New York: MacMillan and Co., 1891), 35.
Short Stories on Honor, Chivalry, and the World of Nobility—no. 281
