themselves". Guthrum, with two other unnamed kings, "departed for Cambridge in East Anglia". He made several attacks on Wessex, starting in 875, and in the last nearly captured Alfred in his winter fortress at Chippenham. By 878, the Danes held the east and northeast of England; their defeat at the Battle of Ashdown had paused but not halted their advance. Alfred the Great had spent the winter preceding the Battle of Edington in the Somerset marsh of Athelney, protected somewhat by the natural defences of the country. In the spring of 878, he summoned his West Saxon forces and marched to Edington, where he met the Danes, led by Guthrum, in battle. Alfred's position before the battle Guthrum and his men had adopted the usual Danish strategy of occupying a fortified town and waiting for a peace "treaty", involving money in return for a promise to leave the kingdom immediately; Alfred shadowed the army, trying to prevent more damage than had already occurred. This started in 875 when Guthrum's army "eluded the West Saxon levies and got into Wareham". They then gave hostages and oaths to leave the country to Alfred, who paid them off. The Danes promptly slipped off to Exeter, even deeper into Alfred's kingdom, where they concluded in the autumn of 877 a "firm peace" with Alfred, under terms that entailed their leaving his kingdom and not returning. This they did, spending the rest of 877 (by the Gregorian calendar) in Gloucester (in the kingdom of Mercia). Alfred spent Christmas at Chippenham (in Wessex), from Gloucester . The Danes attacked Chippenham "in midwinter after Twelfth Night", probably during the night of 6–7 January 878. They captured Chippenham and forced Alfred to retreat "with a small force" into the wilderness. (It is to this period that the story of Alfred burning the cakes belongs.) Alfred seems at this time to have ineffectually chased the Danes around Wessex, while the Danes were in a position to do as they pleased. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle attempts to convey the impression that Alfred held the initiative; it is "a bland chronicle which laconically charts the movements of the Danish victors while at the same time disingenuously striving to convey the impression that Alfred was in control", although it fails. Even if Alfred had caught up with the Danish force, it is unlikely that he could have accomplished anything. The fact that his