Battle of Tettenhall (Wednesfield)
Who Fought
Allied forces of Mercia and Wessex on one side; Northumbrian Viking army on the other.
History & Significance
The Battle of Tettenhall (sometimes called the Battle of Wednesfield or Wōdnesfeld) took place, according to the chronicler Æthelweard, near Tettenhall on 5 August 910. The allied forces of Mercia and Wessex met an army of Northumbrian Vikings in Mercia.
After successful raids by Danish Vikings, significant parts of northeastern England, formerly Northumbria, were under their control. Danish attacks into central England had been resisted and effectively reduced by Alfred the Great, to the point where his son, King Edward of Wessex, could launch offensive attacks against the foreigners. Edward was allied with the Mercians under his sister Æthelflæd, and their combined forces were formidable. The allies launched a five-week campaign against Northumbrian Danes in 909.
The Vikings quickly sought retaliation for the Northern excursion. In 910, King Edward was in Kent waiting for a fleet he had summoned, and the Vikings, believing that most of the king's troops were on board ship, launched an invasion of Mercia. They raided as far as the Avon near Bristol, and then harried along the Severn until they reached the Bridgnorth area. They now moved east, followed by a joint Mercian and West Saxon army, which caught up with the Vikings near Tettenhall. The raiders were annihilated and three kings were killed: Ingwær, Eowils and Halfdan.
With the Northern Danes subdued, the forces of Wessex and Mercia could be focused against the Vikings who had settled further south, and there was no further incursion from the north for a generation.
Sean Miller, "Edward the Elder", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
The ground they fought on
The site of Battle of Tettenhall (Wednesfield) lies on Warwickshire Group, bedrock that formed in the Early Permian. The rock here is siltstone and sandstone with subordinate mudstone.
The completeness of the Viking defeat at Tettenhall was striking: not only was the raiding army annihilated, but three kings, Ingwær, Eowils and Halfdan, all perished in the battle, decapitating Northumbrian Danish leadership in a single engagement and ensuring that no fresh threat from the north would trouble Mercia or Wessex for a generation.
- Three Viking kings killed (Ingwær, Eowils and Halfdan); the Viking raiding army was described as annihilated.
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