King Edward I: Invasion of Wales

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Perched high among the branches of a sturdy oak, a Welsh scout beheld an unbelievable sight. A path, more than a bowshot wide, was being cleared through the woods. Making its way through this clearing was an endless column of warriors displaying a sea of brilliant colors that stood in stark contrast to the dull gray autumn sky. Prominent among the lead group was a nobleman who, at over 6 feet, towered above his comrades. He appeared to be in his late 30s. His face was comely, though flawed by a drooping left eyelid, above which hung a few dirty blond curls peeking out beneath a crown. This was Edward I, king of England.

While we have some idea of King Edward’s appearance, there are no surviving descriptions of his Welsh counterpart, Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, an imbalance typical of knowledge about the conquest of Wales. Only a few brief passages in the Welsh annals and in the generally hostile accounts by English chroniclers must stand against the vast volume of material that presents the conquest from the English viewpoint. As a result, most historians have ignored or discounted the activities of the Welsh. By looking at the ‘other side of the hill, however, a different picture of Edward’s Welsh wars begins to emerge.

The native inhabitants of medieval Wales were descended from the Celtic Britons, whom the Anglo-Saxons had driven out of the island’s fertile midlands (the term Welsh was the Anglo-Saxon word for foreigner). In the 8th century the Anglo-Saxons established the traditional Anglo-Welsh border by erecting King Offa’s Dyke, an earthwork barrier running from the city of Chester in the north to the Bristol Channel in the south. While Offa’s Dyke marked the end of Anglo-Saxon annexation of Welsh territory, the status quo was shattered in the 11th century by the arrival of the Normans, who conquered a border zone in Wales known as the Marches (from a French word meaning frontier). Norman warlords known as Marcher lords oversaw the conquered lands and prevented incursions by outsiders. Over time, a hybrid society developed in this frontier area as Welsh, Anglo-Saxon and Norman peoples and cultures mixed together. Until Edward’s invasion in 1277, the country remained divided between Marcher Wales and native Wales.

Native Wales consisted of a number of separate kingdoms ruled by leaders known as princes (from the Latin princeps for the principal citizen). The most important realms were Deheubarth in the south, Gwynedd in the north and Powys in the east. Those kingdoms, however, were not inhabited by tribes of uncouth barbarians, as English historians have represented them. Welsh society underwent a profound transformation during this period, and by the 13th century it had as much in common with feudal England as with its Celtic past.

The Welsh lifestyle was dictated by an unforgiving landscape. The 12th-century chronicler Gerald of Wales (Giraldus Cambrensis) noted: Because of its high mountains, deep valleys and extensive forests, not to mention its rivers and marshes, it is not easy of access. As a result, the Welsh economy was predominantly pastoral rather than agricultural. In contrast with feudal society, that emphasis on livestock meant that the object in Welsh warfare was to seize an enemy’s herds rather than his territory. Because of the practice of seasonal migration between summer and winter pastures, the Welsh were highly mobile and, therefore, difficult to control.

After their first encounters with the Normans, the Welsh princes learned to avoid open level ground, which favored heavily armed knights. Instead, they relied upon the cover provided by more rugged terrain to harass the slow-moving Norman columns, which were usually restricted to traveling along river valleys or coastal plains. Unlike the Welsh, however, the Normans were able to impose a more permanent degree of control over the lowlands through their use of motte (moat) and bailey earthwork fortifications–rustic substitutes for more permanent castles. It is no accident that the Marcher lords were strongest in the broad, coastal plains of the south.

The balance of power between natives and settlers began to change in the 12th century. According to Gerald of Wales, The Welsh have gradually learned from the English and the Normans how to manage their weapons and to use horses in battle, for they have frequented the court and been sent to England as hostages. By imitating the Normans’ use of castles and armored cavalry, the princes achieved a more equal footing with the Marcher lords. They were now able to increase both the size of their domains and the degree of control they had over their subjects. The success of the princes in establishing greater order within their realms was reflected in their ability to imitate the more peaceful pursuits of the Normans. One late-12th-century Welsh source noted that they began to make orchards and gardens, and surround them with walls and ditches, and to construct walled buildings, and to support themselves from the fruit of the earth after the fashion of the Romans. As a result of a greater emphasis on agriculture in the 13th century, settlements became more permanent, and modest towns were established, to which the princes granted charters for trade. In turn, the princes’ revenues increased, allowing them to erect stone castles and employ siege engines against enemy fortresses. The growing power of the Welsh princes did not go unnoticed in London.

As with the Anglo-Saxons before them, the Normans occasionally forced the Celtic rulers of Scotland and Wales to acknowledge the king of England as their overlord. Using the legal structure of feudalism, as well as military might to back it up, the Normans were able to establish a permanent relationship of dominance. This meant that the Welsh princes were now answerable to the king for their dealings with the Marcher lords and each other.

Nonetheless, Llywelyn ab Iorwerth of Gwynedd, also known as Llywelyn Fawr (the Great), became the Prince of Wales in 1233, when the lesser princes recognized him as their immediate overlord, rather than swearing direct homage to the English king. His grandson, Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, went further in 1265, when he supported the rebellious baron Simon de Montfort against King Henry III and obtained Montfort’s recognition as Prince of Wales. That alliance was undone when Henry’s son, Edward, slew Montfort at the Battle of Evesham a year later, but in 1267 Henry III signed the Treaty of Montgomery, which again confirmed Llywelyn’s title and his right to the homage of all other Welsh princes.

Upon Edward’s succession to the throne in 1274, the question uppermost in Llywelyn ap Gruffydd’s mind was whether the new king would also recognize him as the Prince of Wales. Edward demanded that Llywelyn do homage to him before he would acknowledge his title, but Llywelyn, suspicious of Edward, procrastinated. His suspicions soon seemed justified when Edward provided sanctuary for Llywelyn’s brother Daffydd ap Gruffydd and Prince Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn of Powys, both of whom Llywelyn had expelled for plotting his assassination. To make matters worse, Edward seized Llywelyn’s fiancée, Eleanor de Montfort, while en route to Wales. (Because her late husband, Simon de Montfort, had led the rebel barons against his father in 1264, the king feared that this marriage would revive opposition to the throne.) Prince Llywelyn refused to pay homage before those issues were settled, while King Edward refused to address those issues until Llywelyn did homage. On November 12, 1276, Edward resolved to force Llywelyn into submission.

Edward had his work cut out for him, for Llywelyn’s center of power, the realm of Gwynedd, was a natural stronghold. Beyond the buffer zone of subject states, there was the deep Conway (now spelled Conwy) River valley, which acted like a moat for the fortresslike mountains of Snowdonia. Northwest of Snowdonia was the large, fertile island of Anglesey, separated from the mainland by the narrow Menai Strait. Through a program of castle building, the various princes of Gwynedd had tried to improve upon their realm’s natural defenses, but while those modest stone fortresses could repulse the attacks of fellow princes and Marcher lords, they were helpless in the face of a powerful royal army.

The weakness of Prince Llywelyn’s castles reflected the David and Goliath nature of the forthcoming struggle. The entire population of Wales in the 13th century has been estimated at 300,000, whereas the population of England was at least 4 million. Not only could Edward raise more troops than Llywelyn, but, coming from a larger and wealthier country, his forces would be better equipped.

Welsh armies were composed of a prince’s teulu, or personal war band, supported by a large number of milwyr traed, or foot soldiers, provided by a common levy. According to Gerald of Wales, Welsh infantrymen, armed with little more than spears and bows, were lightly equipped so as not to impede their agility. As such, they were better suited for skirmishing than hand-to-hand combat. In an effort to increase the number of infantrymen in his army, Llywelyn resorted to drafting both free tenants below the normal military age of 14 as well as unfree tenants.

Llywelyn maintained a teulu of 240 armored cavalrymen. Nevertheless, in cavalry–the centerpiece of medieval warfare–the Welsh remained inferior to their English counterparts. For the most part they were not as heavily armed as the English and could not afford to support the larger breeds of war horses that were in use on the Continent. In contrast, Edward imported more than 100 war horses from France in 1277, merely to supplement those already maintained by his knights.

With his limitations in mind, Llywelyn chose to rely on the traditional strategy of using the rugged Welsh terrain to elude the more powerful English, rather than confront them in open battle. In order to follow that strategy, however, the Welsh would have to abandon their newly acquired castles, settlements and crops. Caught between the more mobile, pastoral lifestyle of the past and their dependence on the more sedentary, agricultural lifestyle of the future, the Welsh seemed unable to effectively pursue either their traditional strategy of evasion or a new, more conventional strategy of open confrontation.

Tags: Ancient-Medieval, Historical Conflicts, Historical Figures

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