Free The Demon's Brood by Desmond Seward

estates in England, who had occupied the fertile south and east, and brought in settlers.
    While accepting Edward’s suzerainty, Llewelyn ap Gruffydd of Gwynedd, Prince of Wales, regarded himself as an independent sovereign and overlord of the Welsh chieftains in the south. Several times Edward ordered him to come to court and pay homage as his grandfather had done, but Llewelyn declined. In 1275 Llewelyn’s brother Dafydd fled to England after plotting to depose him, and was given sanctuary. When Simon de Montfort’s daughter Eleanor, to whom Llewelyn had been betrothed for ten years, sailed to Wales for their wedding, her ship was intercepted and she was taken to Windsor. The king refused to release her until the prince paid homage. At the end of 1276 Edward appointed commanders for north Wales, west Wales and the central Marches. Allying with disaffected Welsh chieftains, they quickly overran the new lands acquired by Llewelyn. 10
    The king understood Welsh tactics very well – to raid, then hide among trackless hills, hardy mountain ponies giving them mobility. Living in rough bothies, they could move their families and flocks at a moment’s notice, luring enemies into harsh country where bad weather and lack of provisions took a severe toll. ‘Grievous is war there, and hard to endure’, says a chronicler. ‘When it is summer elsewhere, it is winter in Wales.’ 11 Their weapons were spears, javelins and long knives, while men of the south used bows that could send an arrow through a church door. If unable to face a charge by mailed knights, they were lethally effective in ambushes.
    Edward did not intend to conquer Wales, however, merely to tame Llewelyn. In July 1277 he assembled an army 16,000 strong (with 9,000 mercenaries from south Wales) at Worcester, where munitions and food were stockpiled, and marched up to Flint. He brought woodmen and miners to build roads through the woods and mountains, to dig earthworks and erect stockades, as well as masons and labourers to construct castles. Thirty Cinque Port ships with supplies were stationed on the River Dee.
    From his headquarters at Flint, Edward invaded Gwynedd and Powys, destroying crops and livestock, capturing enemy strongholds. By 29 July he was at Deganwy on the River Conwy’s west bank, sending troops over to Anglesey, who burned the harvest on which the prince’s people relied to feed them in winter. His area commanders had already wrecked much of Llewelyn’s regime – and what was left disintegrated. Early in November 1277 at the treaty of Conwy, Llewelyn formally surrendered half his territory, agreeing to pay an indemnity of £50,000. When he did homage for his ‘fief’, the king not only remitted the indemnity but let him marry Eleanor de Montfort, giving a wedding banquet at Worcester in their honour.
    Having hoped to replace his brother as Prince of Wales, Dafydd was furious. Eventually, knowing that his fellow countrymen resented the arrival of new settlers and the replacement of the code of Hywel Dda with English law, on Easter Sunday 1282 Dafydd ‘went playing the fox’. 12 He and his men got into Hawarden Castle near Flint by bearing palms in token of peace, then slaughtered the garrison to show that he too hated Englishmen. Other castles fell, and even if they did not fall, the Welsh who lived around them rose, defeating the Earl of Gloucester at Llandeilo in June and massacring settlers. Realizing this was a revolt by the whole nation, Llewelyn assumed leadership. Trying to lessen the English campaign’s impact by broadening the front, he moved down to Powys.
    Llewelyn rushed back to Gwynedd, however, when ashipborne force under Luke de Tany occupied Anglesey in October, building a bridge of boats across the Menai Strait to attack western Snowdonia. Meanwhile, the king established his headquarters at Rhuddlan, subduing the Perfyddwlad (Flint and Denbighshire) and eastern