Guthrum assumed control of the great pagan army following the deaths of Halvdan and Ivar the Boneless. He continued to wage war against the various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, but was eventually defeated by king Alfred the Great of Wessex in 878, and accepted baptism. Alfred was taken as his god-father, and thereafter Guthrum respected the established borders between his conquests and the lands controlled by Alfred, and eventually died in 890.