There’s gold under them thar fields

I thrill to Bernard Cornwell’s The Last Kingdom books and TV series (Netflix). Long-haired Danes attack Anglo-Saxon defenders with sword, axe and spear. Bones shatter and flesh is pierced. However, while the graphic depictions of the befores, durings and afters of that long ago struggle for England are doubtless accurate, history indicates that most of those warriors – unless they had a Darwin Award death wish – were usually circumspect about getting into a fight unless they were pretty sure they were going to win. Battles tended to be difficult to predict and the consequences of defeat could be cataclysmic. Nearly the entire Anglo-Saxon (English) ruling class was wiped out at Hastings in 1066.

Imagine yourself a soldier before a fight, whether against a band of berserker Vikings, the cocksure French at Agincourt or, even as late as 1815, the imperious Napoleon at Waterloo. Your wealth, whether you were a noble or a peasant, was pretty much your land, your animal(s), the objects in your home and what you carried on you. For