He built garrisoned towns along the rivers and roads of Wessex.

He created a horsed field force of noblemen and their retainers.

Before Alfred's reign, when the West Saxons needed an army they called up the able-bodied 'nobles' from the counties - maybe one county, maybe three or four - and rallied them at a given place, then marched them off to wherever they were needed: they might have to deal with raids or an invasion by another Anglo-Saxon country, one of the Welsh kingdoms, or by the Vikings.

After Alfred's victory over the Vikings (Danes) at Ethandun in 878, he established a permanent army with half of it on duty and ready for service at a moment's notice and the other half 'at home' dealing with their everyday business - usually farming. The two halves swapped over every six months. This was the first national 'English' army in history. The members of this army would have been the first to define and conduct themselves as soldiers rather than as farmers called up to act as soldiers and their focus - at least for six months - would have been soldiering rather than agriculture.

Second, Alfred established forts across the kingdom at strategic points, siting them so that nobody was more than twenty miles (or one day's walk) from the nearest garrison or garrison town. Some forts were built from scratch and others were incorporated into existing towns. He then manned these forts/garrisons with a set number of soldiers determined by the size of the fort: the longer the perimeter defences, the more soldiers were required. These soldiers were paid for out of a new tax levied on the inhabitants of the town and the local farms. The number of soldiers required by each garrison was laid down in a famous document of the day called the Burghal Hidage.