“The high tide,” King Alfred cried. “The high tide and the turn!” Such was the battle cry of Alfred the Great, rallying the Anglo-Saxons against the pagan Danes, as imagined by G.K. Chesterton in his epic poem The Ballad of the White Horse. In singing the praises of the great Anglo-Saxon king, Chesterton was joining the chorus of consensus down the ages that Alfred the Great was indeed “great.