saw himself on the brink of utter and absolute
destruction. Shut up with his famished soldiers in a gloomy castle,
with the enemy, bitter and implacable, as he supposed, thundering at
the gates, the only alternatives before him seemed to be to die of
starvation and phrensy within the walls which covered him, or by a
cruel military execution in the event of surrender. He surrendered at
last, as it would seem, only because the utmost that human cruelty
can inflict is more tolerable than the horrid agonies of thirst and
hunger.

We can not but hope that Alfred was led, in some degree, by a generous
principle of Christian forgiveness in proposing the terms which he did
to his fallen enemy, and also that Guthrum, in accepting them,
was influenced, in part at least, by emotions of gratitude and by
admiration of the high example of Christian virtue which Alfred thus
exhibited. At any rate, he did accept them. The army of the Danes were
liberated from their confinement, and commenced their march to the
eastward; Guthrum himself, attended by thirty of his chiefs and many
other followers, became Alfred's guest for some weeks, until the most
pressing measures for the organization of Alfred's government could be
attended to, and the necessary preparations for the baptism could
be made. At length, some weeks after the surrender, the parties all
repaired together, now firm friends and allies, to a place near
Ethelney, where the ceremony of baptism was to be performed.

The admission of this pagan chieftain into the Christian Church did
not probably mark any real change in his opinions on the question of
paganism and Christianity, but it was not the less important in its
consequences on that account. The moral effect of it upon the minds
of his followers was of great value. It opened the way for their
reception of the Christian faith, if any of them should be disposed to
receive it. Then it changed wholly the feeling which prevailed among
the Saxon soldiery, and also the Saxon chieftains, in respect to these
enemies. A great deal of the bitterness of exasperation with which
they had regarded them arose from the fact that they were pagans,
the haters and despisers of the rites and institutions of religion.
Guthrum's approaching baptism was to change all this; and Alfred, in
leading him to the baptismal font, was achieving, in the estimation
not only of all England, but of France and of Rome, a far greater
and nobler victory than whe