The armies of Wessex, the so-called fyrds, were not levies en masse but select forces of king’s men and their retainers. In conception and practice, a fyrd was the king’s following arrayed for battle. At its core was the complement of royal household thegns, perhaps fifty to a hundred men, who repaid their royal lord’s gifts of rings, robes, and feasts with loyalty and service. This ‘standing’ force, however, was too small to conduct full-scale campaigns or engage in battles on its own. For that, Alfred needed to call upon the shire fyrds. These territorial forces, consisting mainly of landowners and their personal followings, were led by ealdormen, royal reeves, and local king’s thegns, either as battalions within the king’s army or, in many instances, as independent armies defending localities against raiders. Because they were raised on an ad hoc basis, in response to an ealdorman’s summons, shire fyrds, were ill-suited to meet the challenge presented by viking raiders. By the time an ealdormen had gathered his army from the various vills and estates scattered throughout a sparsely populated countryside, a highly mobile raiding party might well have already devastated a region and moved on. This led individual ealdormen and thegns to mount small-scale actions against the invaders in 871, presumably attacking bands of foragers as they scattered to plunder the countryside. We are assured by the Chronicler that Alfred himself often rode on such expeditions before he became king.