One of the most tragic and most troubling aspects of English history was the reign of King Aethelred, known rather unkindly in history as Aethelred Unread. Though his name means “wise counsel,” the unmitigated disaster of his poor rule led him to be given the name “bad counsel” as well, to state the ironic nature of his name. What made his reign particularly disastrous was his response to the attacks of the Vikings on his kingdom. Despite having a large and wealthy kingdom blessed with a spirited population capable of self-defense even under extreme difficulties, the rot at the top was too much for his kingdom to endure. Aethelred became infamous for attempting to bribe his way out of troubles and then resort to force too late to use it successfully. As a result, his kindgom lurched from defeat to defeat.

The consequences of this defeat were far greater than is often understood. While England under the rule of Alfred the Great and his immediate successors had been able to preserve English freedom and self-rule, the weakness of Aethelred left England open to conquest, an opening that was quick to materialize. By the end of Aethelred’s disastrous reign, his kingdom was in dire peril. His son, Edmund Ironsides, showed valor in five battles fought in a single year against desperate odds and the powerful forces of King Canute, but even though he fought the Vikings to a draw, he died of his wounds and Canute gained a conquest over England in 1016. From this moment, England’s independence was in grave peril. While some future kings like Edward the Confessor, one of the sons of Aethelred, preserved English independence for a time, eventually the wealth of England combined with the weakness of its leadership led to too many interested parties in conquest. When Norman troops prevailed on the field of Hastings in 1066, England began a lengthy history of rulership by dynasties of Norman, French, Welsh, Scottish, and German ancestry. English would not be seen as a language worthy of cultural excellence for hundreds of years, which is how long it took for England’s kings to speak English as a regular rule.

The lessons of King Aethelred Unread are rather stark. For one, while we are prone to celebrating the skill of our people, in our courage and in our wealth and freedoms, all too often we fail to understand the need for good leadership to put those skills into something useful. During the reign of King Aethelred, there were many lesser nobles who tried to provide the leadership that was lacking at the top, and these efforts, lacking coordination, ended up in failure in the face of the vastly more unified Viking conquerers, whose military excellence gave them their own large section of land known as the Danelaw and provided a safe base for the eventual conquest of England under Canute and then a point of weakness where England was unable to unify before facing the Norman adventurers who ended up taking over their land and establishing themselves as a governing elite. Regardless of how wealthy or unified a nation is, if it lacks strong leadership, its wealth only makes it a target for peoples who are more ably led.

We ignore this problem at our peril. The problem of leadership in nations and institutions around the world is a massive problem, and most peoples are neither as wealthy nor as brave as the English were in the twilight of their initial period of freedom. If a nation as courageous and brave as the English failed to stem the tide against fairly small amounts of admittedly skilled Viking and Norman invaders, simply because their leadership lacked wisdom for several generations, then how can nations and institutions with fewer resources manage without better leadership. Aethelred was not a brave man, lacking in the moral courage to do the right thing–for even when he decided on violence he used it in ways that proved to lead to his dishonor rather than help serve the best interests of the people, and he wasted the valor of his people through constant bribes as well as a lack of support for unified efforts against the enemies of his realm. May we learn wise counsel and develop leadership that is capable of providing the moral fiber that is needed to defend our nations and institutions in deeply troubled times.