What Life Was Really Like in England in 878 — The Winter Alfred Almost Lost

January, the year 878. Three of the four English kingdoms have already fallen to the Danes. Only Wessex is left, and on the twelfth night of Christmas, while the court is still feasting, the Danish army rides out of the dark and takes it in a single night. The king escapes with a handful of men into the marshes of Somerset. Everyone else has to decide what to do next. This is what that winter was really like for the people who lived through it: the farmers who hid their grain, the men who rode to a fort on the Devon coast, the king who lived like an outlaw among the reeds, and the spring morning when they all walked out to fight the battle that decided whether England would exist at all. The night before this winter, in a castle three centuries later: https://youtu.be/24oxm6uqa0E The winter that started this channel: https://youtu.be/qB4S5rXfMjk Chapters: 0:00 Twelfth Night 1:20 The Last Kingdom 3:17 The Horses 4:54 What You Have to Lose 6:37 A Winter Day 10:16 Three Choices 12:06 The Riders Come 13:50 The King in the Marsh 15:57 The War Nobody Sees 17:39 The Raven 19:09 The Hungry Months 21:38 Easter at Athelney 23:14 The Stone 24:59 Edington 26:49 What the King Did Next 28:37 What We Kept New immersive history every week.