Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: April 30, 2025
It was a shock of no small magnitude to that prince to hear that his foe was thus employing himself; and leaving the fastnesses of Snowdon with a picked band of his hardiest men, amongst whom he numbered Llewelyn and Howel, he marched southward himself, hoping to overthrow this new force before it had gathered power sufficient to be dangerous.
All the available marcher forces and every trooper of the royal household were despatched to enable them to operate during the winter and spring. Their movements were brilliantly successful. On the reappearance of its ancient lord, the middle march threw off the yoke of Llewelyn and went back to its obedience to Mortimer.
Llewelyn wasted the border; the Cinque Ports held the sea; the garrison of Kenilworth pushed their raids as far as Oxford; Baldewin Wake with a band of the Disinherited threw himself into the woods and harried the eastern counties; Sir Adam Gurdon, a knight of gigantic size and renowned prowess, wasted with a smaller party the shires of the south.
The general resolve was not to be shaken by the clamour of a faction, and Mortimer's rout at Brecknock by Llewelyn, the one defeat that chequered the tide of success, had damaged that leader's influence. Backed by Edward and Earl Gilbert, the legate met their opposition with a threat of excommunication, and Mortimer withdrew sullenly from the camp.
Indeed they knew the worst: their prince dead; the flower of their army slain their own brother among the number the rest dispersed; the remaining forces without a leader, without a rallying point, without a hope. What need of farther words? Presently Llewelyn spoke again, this time with more strength, but still with the sullenness of despair: "It was a mere skirmish on the banks of the Wye.
The chieftains who had so lately sworn fealty to Llewelyn in the southern and central parts of the country deserted him to join his English enemies in their attack; an English fleet reduced Anglesea; and the Prince was cooped up in his mountain fastnesses and forced to throw himself on Edward's mercy.
The persuasions of his brother David, who had deserted him in the previous war but who deemed his desertion insufficiently rewarded by an English lordship, roused Llewelyn to a fresh revolt.
The futility of marriage alliances in modifying policy was already made clear by the attitude of Llewelyn ap Iorwerth, the husband of Henry's bastard sister Joan. This resourceful prince had already raised himself to a high position by a statecraft which lacked neither strength nor duplicity.
Raoul had hated the Dynevor brothers ever since he had detected in Arthyn an interest in and sympathy for them, ever since he had found her in close talk in their own tongue with the dark-browed twins, whose antagonism to the English was scarcely disguised. He had done all he knew to stir the hot blood in Llewelyn and Howel, and that with some success.
Wendot might uneasily wonder what passed in that quiet room of the old man's, but he never knew or guessed. He would better have liked to hear Llewelyn burst forth into the old passionate invective. He was uneasy at this chronic state of gloom and sullen silence on the vexed question of English supremacy. But seldom a word passed the lips of either twin.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking