878
year
Year 878 (DCCCLXXVIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Julian calendar.
Events
By place
Europe
March–April – Wilfred the Hairy (ruler of the Catalan counties) with other supporters of Louis the Stammerer (King of West Francia) defeat noble supporters of the rebel Bernard of Gothia.
September 11 – Bernard of Gothia is dispossessed of his titles by Louis.
Britain
January 6 – Battle of Chippenham: King Alfred the Great of Wessex is surprised by a Viking attack at Chippenham in Wiltshire. He is forced to flee, with his retinue, into the Somerset Levels for safety. From his headquarters at Athelney, Alfred wages guerrilla warfare against the Vikings.
May – Battle of Edington: Supported by all the levies of Somerset, Wiltshire and Hampshire, Alfred the Great decisively defeats the main body of Danish Vikings, led by King Guthrum, at modern-day Edington, Wiltshire (near Bratton Castle).
Treaty of Wedmore: Guthrum agrees to a peace treaty and is baptised, taking the name of Aethelstan. England is divided between Wessex in the south, and the Vikings in the Danelaw up north. Guthrum returns to East Anglia.
“878” enters the record as year. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what year can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“878” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, year provides the most credible route into that argument.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q23910. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “878”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow 878 primary sources, 878 archive and year research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “878”?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “878” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.