The Dragon and the Raven; Book Outline

I just finished the book The Dragon and the Raven, by George Henty. This paper is an outline of the book, and warning: does include several spoiler alerts. The book is about the journey of a boy into manhood, and it's an especially hard time for him, because his father dies and a war is going on. The boys name is Edmund, and in the beginning of the book he lives with his uncle Egbert, and his father Eldred. The whole book the Danes are trying to take over the land of the Saxons (where Edmund lives), and there are many battles. Eldred dies during the first battle, and Edmund goes to the king to become a general. Edmund soon becomes a well known and very good general, for he strategizes well. There were several battles in the book where Edmund led his men to confuse the Danes by attacking them in the night and then strategically fighting them, because usually the Danes had more men and always had backups coming.

Something that I thought was interesting, was that the Danes were attacking all over Europe to win lots of money and gold, however the Saxons were only defending there country and not trying to destroy, and steal from others. Because of this the Saxons were welcomed to the places that they wanted to stay, because the people they stayed with were also enemies with the Danes.

A little more than halfway through the book, Edmund gets captured while he is on his boat which is called "The Dragon", and is taken back to the Danish Jarl of Seigbert. The daughter of Seigbert recognized Edmund and the man who spared her and her fathers life when he was fighting the Danes on one of the boats, and Jarl Seigbert immediately let Edmund become a free man. But first, the Danish people wanted him to fight another well known Danish warrior. His name was Sweyn. Sweyn wanted to wed Seigberts daughter Freda, and noticed that she was talking to Edmund and he didn't want her to like Edmund, so he challenged him to a duel. Edmund was forced to accept, and tried not to hurt Sweyn, but to end the fight, he chopped off Sweyn's arm. When Edmund left, Freda said she was sad to see him go and would wait for him to come back to her and marry her. Edmund went back to his country and found it in despair; the Danes had invaded most of there land and taken a lot gold, and the king was in hiding. The Saxons were overjoyed to see that Edmund was back and alive, and he led them to take back from the Danes what they had taken from them.

After the Saxons had succeeded in taking back most of their gold, Edmund was stopped, and a messenger told him that Jarl Seigbert wanted him, concerning his daughter. It turned out that Seigbert was badly wounded, and Sweyn had kidnapped Freda because she would not marry him. Edmund was very upset, and promised Seigbert that we would rescue Freda. He and a couple of men dressed as Danes were able to find Freda, and recapture her with there strategic plans. Freda then married Edmund, and he continued to be a well known general with Freda tagging along. The Danes however soon afterwards stopped attacking the Saxons all the time, because they usually lost the fights.

And that's it! It's a very action packed book with religion and battles and different nations involved, and its a very good book to read to learn about history, but actually get some joy out of it. Please tell me if you read it, I would love to hear what you think.