Dragon and the Raven (Annotated)

For many years England was assailed by Danish hordes whose barbarians reduced the Saxons to pitiable legions of disconnected and ravished communities. In the later 800's A.D. a man named Alfred emerged from the darkened European scene and by his wisdom and knowledge and bravery, he gathered together an army of valorous warriors who banished the Vikings back to the North. This true historic tale of the battles and the siege of Paris and the journeys across myriad oceans revolves around a fictional boy, Edmund, who is a witness to the different traditions of diverse cultures and to the slaughter and misery of his own people. He joins the service of King Alfred, in this time of bitter confusion, to be trained as a knight and marshal a zealous corps of pikemen to recapture the empire. Please Note: This book has been reformatted to be easy to read in true text, not scanned images that can sometimes be difficult to decipher. The Microsoft eBook has a contents page linked to the chapter headings for easy navigation. The Adobe eBook has bookmarks at chapter headings and is printable up to two full copies per year. Both versions are text searchable. This title is available as a free ebook from Project Gutenberg, in plain text, html, and many other formats. Living in the present days of peace and tranquillity it is difficult to picture the life of our ancestors in the days of King Alfred, when the whole country was for years overrun by hordes of pagan barbarians, who slaughtered, plundered, and destroyed at will. You may gain, perhaps, a fair conception of the state of things if you imagine that at the time of the great mutiny the English population of India approached that of the natives, and that the mutiny was everywhere triumphant. The wholesale massacres and outrages which would in such a case have been inflicted upon the conquered whites could be no worse than those suffered by the Saxons at the hands of the Danes. From this terrible state of subjection and suf