Free The Demon's Brood by Desmond Seward Page A

Gwynedd. At the same time, Marchers cowed the Welsh in their area, burning churches and slaughtering men, women and children – including babies at the breast. Yet Edward was so alarmed that secretly he offered Llewelyn an English earldom in exchange for Gwynedd.
    In October the Welsh were encouraged by the death of Roger Mortimer, a Marcher lord who had been one of the king’s principal commanders. In November it seemed they might win. Ambushed on the way back from a raid, Luke de Tany was drowned with many troops (including twenty knights) when the pontoon bridge collapsed into the sea as they retreated. The English counteroffensive had stalled, and Llewelyn finally rejected peace offers.
    This only hardened Edward’s determination. He did not see the struggle as conquest – he was punishing rebellion. To avoid being starved out of Snowdonia, Llewelyn returned to Powys, where on 11 December 1282 during a skirmish at a bridge over the River Irfon near Builth, he was run through with a lance by a knight who did not recognize him. His head was displayed on a stake at London, crowned with an ivy wreath. After the death of ‘Llewelyn the Last’, who despite his volatility had been a superb leader, the spirit went out of the Welsh.
    The war was not over, as his successor, his brother Prince Dafydd, knew he could expect no mercy. Ignoring the winter weather, Edward marched into Snowdonia in January 1283, taking the enemy’s remaining castles. When Castell-y-Bere, the last stronghold in Welsh hands, fell in April, Dafydd fled into the mountains. Betrayed by a fellow countryman, he was caught hiding in a marsh and taken in chains to the king at Rhuddlan, then tried at Shrewsbury in September by a ‘parliament’ of barons. It condemned him to be drawn on a hurdle to a gallows,half-hanged, then cut down alive for castration, disembowelment and quartering – the first to suffer this ghastly penalty.
    The Welsh had never stood a chance, overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Mustering so many men was a remarkable achievement by Edward’s bureaucracy. 13 Munitions as well as men were assembled in huge quantities, crossbow bolts ordered by tens of thousands. The king’s tactics may sometimes be questioned, but not his logistics.
    In spring 1284 Edward issued the Statutes of Wales, replacing Welsh cantreds with English shires and hundreds in regions annexed by the Crown such as Gwynedd, although Marcher lordships retained their autonomy. English criminal law was introduced, but this time the Welsh kept some of Hywel Dda’s code for civil matters. New towns were founded in freshly conquered areas, five defended by huge castles where settlers could take refuge. Because of thirteenth-century land hunger there was no shortage of ‘Saxon’ immigrants, who were encouraged to settle by the king.
    The biggest of eight new castles was Caernarfon, with its polygonal towers; almost a town. Edward’s architect was James of Savoy, whose work he had seen when returning from the Holy Land. Operating from Harlech, which he had designed and where he was castellan, James constructed all eight. Intended to hold down a conquered country, they were within close reach of the sea, so that troops and supplies could be rushed in by ship.
    In 1294, when Edward was preparing for war with France, there was a dangerous revolt in north Wales, led by Madog ap Llewelyn, a member of the old ruling family, who called himself Prince of Wales. Still only half-built, Caernarfon was captured, but at Harlech forty men held off Madog’s entire army. The size of the force Edward sent to deal with the rising, twice as big as in 1277 and formed of troops needed in Gascony, shows his alarm. He took charge of operations in December, but his baggage train was ambushed and he found himself besieged in Conwy – sharing his one barrel of wine with his men. Madogwas decisively defeated in March, however, all resistance petering