Campaigns by Johann Ohneland against Wales

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Wales around 1217. Yellow, the Principality of Llywelyn from Iorwerth, gray, the other Welsh principalities

With two campaigns against Wales , the English King John Ohneland was able to bring large parts of Wales under his control in 1211 . However, when there was a new Welsh revolt in 1212, the king planned another campaign in 1212 to completely subdue Wales. Due to a rebellion of his barons, however, he had to cancel the campaign. In the following years, the Welsh were able to recapture the territories lost in 1211.

prehistory

After the failed campaign of King Henry II in 1165 , neither Henry II nor his son and successor Richard the Lionheart had undertaken another campaign against the Welsh princes. It was not until the beginning of the 13th century that King Johann Ohneland became more involved in Wales. There had been power struggles there for years among the Welsh princes, in which Llywelyn ab Iorwerth , the prince of Gwynedd in north-west Wales, was able to fight for supremacy. In 1201 Johann had recognized Llywelyn as Prince of North Wales and in 1204 gave him his illegitimate daughter Johanna as his wife. In return, Llywelyn had recognized the English king as overlord. The relationship between Johann and Llywelyn remained tense. The conflict broke out again openly in 1208 when Llywelyn supported the Marcher Lord William de Braose , whom John accused of treason. Llywelyn and the king initially reconciled when the Braose rebellion in the Welsh Marches failed and Braose fled to Ireland. In 1210 the king crossed Pembrokeshire with an army to Ireland, where he subjugated Braose's supporters and took Braose's family prisoner. Braose himself had to flee to France, where he died in 1211. His extensive holdings in south east Wales remained under royal administration.

Campaigns of 1211

The first campaign in May 1211

After defeating Braose, Johann Llywelyn wanted to punish himself for supporting Braose. As early as November 1209 he had allied himself with Prince Gwenwynwyn of Powys , who had fled from Llywelyn . In May 1211 Johann then undertook a campaign against Llywelyn. Under the leadership of Justiciars Geoffrey Fitz Peter , who was supported by Bishop Peter des Roches and Earl Ranulph of Chester , the English army was able to advance to Deganwy Castle on Conwy, which was abandoned by the Welsh . However, the Welsh had previously given up the areas east of the Conwy and withdrew with their herds of cattle into the mountains of Snowdonia , while Welsh raiders attacked the English supplies from an ambush. Without having sufficient supplies and without having achieved success, the English had to withdraw again at the end of May. Thus the poorly prepared campaign of the English king had become a failure.

The July 1211 campaign

Just two months later, in July 1211, Johann again led an army to Gwynedd. This time he had prepared the campaign better. The king had provisions brought in from all over England to supply his army. Llywelyn had been politically isolated through alliances that were quickly made with the other Welsh rulers such as Madog ap Gruffydd Maelor of Powys Fadog and Maelgwn ap Rhys and Rhys Gryg of Deheubarth . Aided by these Welsh allies, an English army led by the King of Oswestry advanced west and crossed the Conwy. From there it advanced far into Snowdonia, while troops under Earl Ranulph of Chester conquered Perfeddwlad in northeast Wales. When Robert de Shrewsbury , the bishop of Bangor , refused to meet the excommunicated king, a raid raid on Bangor on the north Welsh coast, captured the bishop and burned the town. With that Johann had advanced further than any other English kings before to Wales. The Welsh again avoided an open battle, but the English secured their conquests with quickly built castles with earth and wood fortifications. In South Wales, Rhys Gryg captured Llandovery Castle with English help , and then the mercenary leader Falkes de Bréauté advanced to northern Ceredigion , where Rhys Ieuanc and Owain ap Gruffydd , the allies of Lord Llywelyn, had to submit to him. Falkes had them brought to England, where they had to pay homage to the king. To secure the occupied Ceredigion, he had Tan-y-Castell rebuilt on the west coast of Wales.

Hard terms of peace for Lord Llywelyn

In view of these successes, Llywelyn had to admit defeat to the English superiority. He sent his wife to her father, who had to ask him for peace on August 12th. In peace Llywelyn had to do without Perfeddwlad east of the Conwy. He had to host numerous high-ranking hostages, including his illegitimate son Gruffydd, as well as paying tribute to large numbers of horses and cattle. Contrary to traditional Welsh inheritance law, where illegitimate sons had the same inheritance rights as legitimate sons, Llywelyn even had to accept that if his marriage to Johanna remained childless, his land would fall to the English king. Llywelyn also had to renounce his supremacy over the South Welsh princes. With this victory King John had further expanded his position in Wales. In addition to his sovereignty over the Welsh principalities, he had direct control of Cardigan and Carmarthen Castle and Glamorgan and Gwynllŵg , as well as the occupied lands and castles of the Braoses in South Wales. John thus had more of Wales under control than any English king before him.

consequences

The strict rule of royal officials like Engelard de Cigogné , the sheriff of Gloucestershire and Herefordshire , embittered the Welsh. Faced with the danger of permanent establishment of English supremacy, the quarreling Welsh princes reunited. Prince Llywelyn visited the king in Cambridge at Easter 1212 , but at the end of June a general uprising began in Wales. Cadwallon ap Ifor Bach , the Welsh Lord of Senghenydd , had already invaded the English territories of Glamorgan , but the revolt came unexpectedly for the English. The Welsh were able to quickly regain dominance in large parts. Maelgwn ap Rhys and Rhys Gryg forced the crew of the new Tan-y-Castell in West Wales to surrender, and even Swansea in South Wales was burned to the ground by Rhys Gryg. King John first sent a small punitive expedition under Brian de Lisle to Wales, and the garrison under Robert de Vieuxpont in the beleaguered Mathrafal Castle in Powys was detained. Originally the king wanted to set out on a campaign to France with his army that summer, but then he decided to finally subdue Wales with another campaign. He called his feudal army to Chester , where it was reinforced by mercenaries from Ireland, Scotland and Flanders. Several thousand workers were to accompany the army to build new castles in Wales and thus to secure the occupied land. In north-east Wales he put the Welsh Owain ap Dafydd and Gruffydd ap Rhodri , two cousins ​​of Llywelyn, as Welsh lords, who also had inheritance claims to Gwynedd themselves. On August 14, 1212, he mercilessly hung 28 youthful hostages in Nottingham that the Welsh had given him the previous year . There he learned, among other things from his daughter Johanna, of a conspiracy by several English barons who wanted to murder him during the planned campaign to Wales or hand him over to the Welsh. Thereupon he broke off the planned campaign to Wales. The Welsh under Lord Llywelyn took advantage of this to capture Deganwyn and Rhuddlan Castle , with which they were able to regain all of Perfeddwlad. In view of the continued opposition to the nobility and the war with France, Johann concluded an armistice with Prince Llywelyn before June 1213.

When it came to the civil war between the English aristocratic opposition and the king in the spring of 1215, the Welsh under Llywelyn took advantage of this and advanced to Shrewsbury . In June 1215, Prince Llywelyn in the Magna Carta was able to get the king to accept the reconquest and release the remaining hostages. When an open war of the barons broke out in England in the autumn of 1215 , the Welsh men intervened on the side of the aristocratic opposition and in December 1215 captured numerous castles in South Wales, even Carmarthen and Cardigan Castle, in a swift campaign . Prince Llywelyn was able to extend his supremacy over the Welsh princes in the Aberdyfi Agreement of 1216. In 1217 he conquered Gower , so that only Pembrokeshire and South East Wales remained under firm English rule. It was not until March 1218, six months after the end of the war of the barons, that the Regency Council, which led the government in England after the death of King John, through the mediation of the papal legate Guala, was able to conclude the treaty of Worcester with Prince Llywelyn and thus the war in Wales break up.

literature

  • Rees R. Davies: The Age of Conquest. Wales 1063-1415 . Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford 1991, ISBN 0-19-820198-2
  • John Edward Lloyd: History of Wales from the earliest times to the edwardian conquest , Part 2, Longmans, Green, London 1912

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rees R. Davies: The Age of Conquest. Wales 1063-1415 . Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford 1991, ISBN 0-19-820198-2 , p. 293
  2. ^ David Walker: Medieval Wales . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1990. ISBN 978-0-521-31153-3 , p. 93
  3. ^ AD Carr: Anglo-Welsh Relations 1066-1282. In: England and her neighbors, 1066-1453. Essays in honor of Pierre Chaplais . Hambledon, London 1989. ISBN 1-85285-014-0 , p. 128
  4. ^ Rees R. Davies: The Age of Conquest. Wales 1063-1415 . Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford 1991, ISBN 0-19-820198-2 , p. 293
  5. ^ Rees R. Davies: The Age of Conquest. Wales 1063-1415 . Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford 1991, ISBN 0-19-820198-2 , p. 294
  6. ↑ SD Church (ed.): King John. New interpretations . Boydell, Woodbridge 1999, ISBN 0-85115-947-8 , p. 284
  7. ↑ Wilfred L. Warren: King John . University of California Press, Berkeley 1978, ISBN 0-520-03494-5 , p. 199
  8. ^ Diane M. Williams: Gower. A Guide to ancient and historic monuments on the Gower peninsula . Cadw, Cardiff 1998. ISBN 1-85760-073-8 , p. 7
  9. ^ David Walker: Medieval Wales . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1990. ISBN 978-0-521-31153-3 , p. 94
  10. ^ John Gillingham: John (1167-1216). In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of 2004
  11. ^ Rees R. Davies: The Age of Conquest. Wales 1063-1415 . Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford 1991, ISBN 0-19-820198-2 , p. 297