A case can be made that Edward I was the greatest English king of the Middle Ages. A strong ruler, he was a man blessed with a strong sense of duty. Although he was no democrat, he believed the king should promote the general welfare and place himself above class or faction–a revolutionary concept in the 13th century. Although he has been called 'the English Justinian' because of his legal codes, Edward was first and foremost a military man, one of the great generals of the medieval world.

Edward was born in June 1239, the son of King Henry III. Weak and indecisive, Henry was not a bad man–just a bad king. He was devoted to his family and took great pleasure in art and architecture. One of his pet projects was the rebuilding of Westminster Abbey in the Gothic style that was just coming into vogue. Unfortunately, Henry's private virtues became public vices. Because of his devotion to his wife, he gave the queen's undeserving foreign relatives places at court. Worse still, Henry's building projects were a drain on the exchequer, and his excessive piety made him a dupe of the papacy. That mix of piety, politics and penury–he was always short of funds–bore bitter fruit. Simon de Montfort, leader of the baronial opposition, led an open revolt that defeated the king at the Battle of Lewes in 1264.

Lewes gave Prince Edward his first real taste of combat. As a headstrong young blade of 25, he took exception to the London troops of Montfort's army, sincerely believing they had insulted his mother. When the battle opened on May 14, Edward led a cavalry charge that scattered the London burghers like dead leaves in a windstorm. Intoxicated by the chase, he began a single-minded pursuit of his fleeing quarry that took him miles from the battlefield. Once his thirst for vengeance was appeased, Edward returned to Lewes–only to find that Montfort had defeated his father's main army. Assailed from both flanks by Montfort's knights, the dumbfounded prince was forced to surrender. But a great lesson had been learned–from then on, with few exceptions, his intellect would govern his passions.

Eventually Edward escaped, joined forces with Roger Mortimer, Earl of Gloucester, and together they defeated Simon de Montfort at Evesham on August 4, 1265. By then, Edward was king in all but name, since his father was growing old and was as self-absorbed as ever. Fired with chivalric zeal and a surfeit of youthful energy, Prince Edward 'took the cross'–that is, declared himself a crusader pledged to free the Holy Land from the grip of the Muslim 'infidels.'

In 1271, Edward reached the Middle East with a small army of 1,000 men and amazed everyone by chalking up a series of victories over the Muslim forces of the Mamluk Sultan Baybars Bundukdari of Egypt. The prince captured Nazareth, scoring a moral victory by liberating the hometown of Jesus Christ, but his forces were too small to consolidate his gains.

Once, when Edward was resting in his tent, a Muslim assassin broke in and attacked him with a poisoned knife. The prince quickly killed his assailant but was wounded in the arm. Soon the limb swelled, and the foul-smelling flesh grew black. Gangrene had set in. Handicapped by the lack of medical knowledge at the time, the doctors were baffled and lost hope. But one brave physician cut away the blackened tissue and hoped for the best. By some miracle, Edward survived. The next year, 1272, a truce was arranged between Baybars and the Crusaders, enabling Edward to go home at last. While en route to England, he received word that his father was dead and he was now king in his own right.

On August 2, 1274, the new king landed at Dover after an absence of four years. Crowds gave a tumultuous welcome to their new monarch, who, at 6 feet 2 inches, towered over contemporaries. He was handsome, but his piercing blue eyes were slightly offset by a drooping left eyelid. Like most of his Plantagenet dynasty, Edward had a volcanic temper that sometimes erupted into murderous rages. Generally, though, he was too intelligent to let his anger get the better of him.

A few years after his accession to the throne, Edward was forced to deal with Wales, the mountainous land to the west of England. Politically, Wales was a confusing mosaic of divided loyalties. In the south and central portions of the country, Anglo-Norman barons, called Marcher lords, managed to subdue and pacify the Welsh tribesmen, but in the north the situation was different. There, a line of Gwynedd princes high in the mountains of Snowdonia refused to submit to the English yoke. One Welsh ruler, Llewellyn-ap-Graffyd, declared himself prince of Wales and set about expanding his domain at the expense of the Marcher lords.

Initially Edward had little interest in Wales, and he might have accepted Llewellyn's independence if the latter had rendered lip service to his feudal obligations to the English crown. But Llewellyn's arrogance seemed to grow with his power, and he refused to render homage to Edward. Thoroughly aroused, the king was determined to bring his rebellious vassal to heel.

In July 1277, in the town of Worcester, Edward gathered one of the biggest armies ever seen in Britain. The feudal levy summoned 1,000 armored knights, while a number of English shires–Cheshire, Derbyshire, Shropshire and others–supplied about 15,000 foot soldiers, including many Welshmen and Gascon crossbowmen.

The northern Welsh under Llewellyn were not prepared to meet Edward on his own terms, so they melted back into the misty valleys and snow-dappled peaks of their mountainous homeland. Natural guerrillas, they lived off the land when fighting and generally preferred ambushes to pitched battles.

The men of southern Wales generally had spears, but the northern tribes possessed a formidable new weapon–the longbow. One chronicler described it as 'made of wild elm, unpolished, rude and uncouth,' but in the hands of a trained archer it was a formidable weapon, hitting targets with such force that a longbow shaft could pierce chain mail and pin a man to his horse.

Edward advanced along the north Welsh coast, marching slowly up the valleys of the Severn and the Dee. Leaving a chain of rising fortresses in his wake, Edward continued on until he reached the mouth of the Conway River. There, the king unveiled his trump card–sea power. Just off the coast, on the island of Anglesey, was some of the most fertile soil in Wales, the breadbasket of Llewellyn's tribes. Thanks to ships provided by Edward's Cinque Ports, Anglesey was quickly taken.

Ringed in by hostile troops and threatened by starvation, Llewellyn sued for peace. After a few years' respite, however, Llewellyn's brother David raised the standard of revolt. The 1282 rebellion was a replay of the 1277 campaign, but this time Llewellyn was killed in a chance encounter, and his head was sent to adorn London Bridge. David was captured and executed, and the rebellion he had hatched collapsed.

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