"how much did Alfred really accomplish?" Topic

Since the Danes managed to conquer "England" a generation later anyway; how much of a difference would have it made had Alfred failed in his generation?

Well, he helped pull Batman out of his deep depressions, & was the real father figure to Robin.

My wife's ancestors might have settled somewhere else since Angle-land would already have been full of Germans?

A generation later, methinks you have a very sparse knowledge of what a generation is? Alfred died in 899 AD, and Canute "won" in 1016, hardly a generation later. A lot can happen in an 100+ years.
Alfred is not called "the Great" for nothing, he basically secured England for the English, brought in education, and built up a good military foundation of army & navy. His successors then reconquered the lost areas of the kingdom, and accepted the colonist Danes into the general population.
It was due to Ethelred's disastrous reign that the Danes were able to come back and "conquer" England as you put it, although Edmund Ironside put up a strong fight and had won at least a "draw", if he hadn't suddenly died (either assassinated or succumbed to his wounds).

The fact you are reading this in English answers the question.

Well, Alfred wasn't speaking anything that much like English. Modern English has a lot of old German in it, along with some French brought over by William the Bastard.

Our most frequently used swear word is straight from old Anglo-Saxon.

Huscarle – I was using the term loosely. WWI was 100 years ago – yet my grandfather fought there – a "generation" ago.

As for the others, I am not questioning whether Alfred was great or not…

They say he saved England from the Danes, but they ruled 100 years later anyway – yet we don't speak Danish.

How much a difference would it have made if he lost?

Korvessa
By dint of the fact it was your grandfather, that should be two generations ago (your fathers and your grandfathers), as did my grandfather, although it will be three generations for my children and four for my grand-children.

Re language, depending upon which part of the UK you come from, then we speak a melange of Celtic, Gaelic (Scottish, Irish and Cornish etc), Latin, German/Anglo Saxon, French/Norman, Scottish, Irish, and Norse/Danish. Many of the words in North Eastern English dialects originate from Norse/Danish for instance, because that's where they were longest settled.
This is the same as dialects the world over, including the US, who, as well as mainly English (modified), are influenced by French, German, Dutch, Spanish, African and native American languages, to name but a few.

"This generation" can accurately be defined as all those living. Realistically this spans three generations that can communicate with each other, young children to c. centenarians. So Korvessa's "loose" generation is an acceptable definition. Now, can we move on?

Alfred the Great would be forgotten as a footnote in history if he had died without accomplishing the end of Danish aggression. If Wessex had gone down, England would have adopted far more Scandinavian into its language, it would have accomplished as radical a change on the Anglo-Saxon as later French did under the Normans. There would have been no Norman Conquest either, since the "right line of Cerdic" would have ended with Alfred, ergo no Edward the Confessor to supposedly promise the succession to the Norman duke. There would have possibly been marriages between Normandy and England, but they would have been Anglo-Danish alliances, which would have led to unknown dynastic interplays. So history would have been completely altered with Alfred failing.

How would England have been different? Language, of course, as has been pointed out. I think that militarily England would have been much like Denmark. Would that have been stronger or the same? England successfully held off Danish invasions after Cnut. Does that mean that Anglo-Danish and Anglo-Saxon England (under Edward and Harold II) was the military equal or superior of Denmark?

Culturally, England would have influenced the Danes far more than the other way around. The Danish kings would have become Christian anyway. Cnut fostered English culture and learning, and brought much continental cultural input back to England from his journeys abroad. He was, or became, a cultured "Englishman" of his time. I think that earlier Danish kings of England would have likely gone a similar way.

England would not have become some benighted, depopulated, pagan wasteland under the Danes, if Alfred had died in defeat….

Alfred is not called "the Great" for nothing

Is Alfred called "the Great" because of his achievements or because of his relative size, as Great Britain (Grand Bretagne) is larger than Brittany (Bretagne)? For example, Peter the Great would be better translated as Peter the Big.

Druzhina
Illustrations of Costume & Soldiers

Thanks Ace (on both points) that is the kind of answer I was looking for

In reply to Druzhina,

No, he is called the Great for his achievements, the only English ruler to get the title, there is no translation issue.

I always think Great Britain would be better thought of as Greater Britain, referring to the whole island of Egland – Wales – Scotland rather than just the Celtic / British western fringes. It is not to do with a size comparison with Brittany. It is like the terms Greater London or Greater Manchester used to refer to the whole conurbation centred upon rather than just the strict central areas of the cities of London or Manchester which are quite small.

From what I know of him, I would consider Peter the Great to be great, not just big. Still, it would not have been easy to have been one of his subjects, I admit.

Had Peter just been big, the name would not have made it into the history books. He is called the great for his achievements, just like Alfred.

Alfred's resistance to the Danes enabled Athelstan and Edgar to build a unified country with its centre in the South of England. The last Viking king of York was Eric Bloodaxe in 956 and there was a very real danger that the country would be split between North and South. When Sweyn and Canute conquered the country it was a united England. The Danes took political control, but it was only a change at the very top.
Before Alfred we have the heptarchy if seven kingdoms which had rubbed along disunited for 350 years.

So what Alfred did was stop the Danes taking over and start the process of unification . He is called the Great because he was down, at one point to hiding in the marshes with a few good men and from there reconquered Wessex Kent and Mercia.

I understand that he was originally called Alfred the Grate in reference to burning those cakes.

I'll get my coat…