The Dream of Macsen - a History of Wales

[Pishtaco]

Part I - Still Here

Dwyt ti'm yn cofio Macsen,
Does neb yn ei nabod o;
Mae mil a chwe chant o flynyddoedd
Yn amser rhy hir i'r co';
Pan aeth Magnus Maximus o Gymru
Yn y flwyddyn tri-chant-wyth-tri,
A'n gadael yn genedl gyfan
A heddiw: wele ni!

You don't remember Macsen,
Nobody ever knew him;
Sixteen hundred years
Is too long ago to recall;
But Magnus Maximus left Wales
In the year three hundred and eighty three,
And left the nation as one
And look at her today!

Yma O Hyd / We're Still Here, by Dafydd Iwan

Hello there. Yes, lovely morning for a walk, though they did say on the telly it would rain. Good for my sweet-peas, so you won't hear me complain. On holiday, are you? Up from Machynlleth, is it?

English eh? We don't see so many of those up here, no, not these days. Pleased to meet you sir. You must be staying at Mrs Hughes'?

Oh, I've been living alone up here for a long while, retired you might say, looking after my bit of garden. But they come to check up on me from town sometimes, and people drop in to say hello if they're passing, and I keep an ear open for the news.

How long? I don't keep track of that kind of thing, I know it would just make me feel closer each year to you-know-what. Have I seen a lot of changes? Hmph. Look you now, you don't want to go asking for an old man to bore you with stories about the old days, not unless you want to be stuck up here for weeks.

Oh, well, that's very kind. Well I'll tell you the best of them first. No offence to you sir, and it may sound strange now, but us Welsh were not always treated fairly by the English. Look at me. I don't look like much now, but I was a big man in my day, with a bit of land up at Glyndyfrdwy. But I had a, um, dispute with my neighbour, a great English landowner. Of course the courts took his side and, well, I got angry and ran wild. There was a lot of bad feeling in the country back then, and I was the hero of all Wales for a while. Ah yes, great days.

Oh no, no need to be alarmed, promise I'm harmless now, except to slugs that come near my lettuce. Anyway, my friends let me down in the end, and things got too hot for me, so I took voluntary retirement up here. The king's men never did get hold of me. The English king? Yes, yes, well, it was a while back. There you are, it's raining now, see. No, that would never do, Mrs Hughes would never let me hear the end of it if I let you walk back in this. You come inside and have a cup of tea. And oh my, I've forgotten my manners and not introduced myself. I'm Owen.


Owain Glyn Dwr, self-proclaimed Prince of Wales
Crowned 1404, disappeared 1415

[USA patriot]

land up at Glyndyfrdwy

How do you even pronounce that ?

Promising start, my celtic friend! Now teach those Anglosaxons a lesson they shall never forget! Despite all the new AARs that have been started, I am going to try to follow this one . One couldn't miss the Gaelic revenge on England .

[Wasa]

Yes..I would like to know a little about pronounciation as well....remember a train voyage some years ago when I met this welsh fellow and he almost drowned, trying to teach me..

[Pishtaco]

Originally posted by USA patriot
How do you even pronounce that ?

Ah, better not get started on that, or we'll all be wiping spittle off the monitor .

[USA patriot]

Originally posted by Pishtaco


Ah, better not get started on that, or we'll all be wiping spittle off the monitor .

Bad excuse

When will your first instalment be posted? And, don't forget screenies!!

[Pishtaco]

This is my first AAR and almost my first EUII grand campaign, so no need to expect any subtle or perceptive gameplay. I wrote a few Welsh events for the EEP, so I thought I should give the country a try. This is with EEP 1.1. I have made a couple of changes, turning the Mamelukes back to shiite, adding Welsh leader and army names, and changing Wales' colour to an attractive leek green.

I am playing on hard/normal with no particular goals at the moment. I won't use any blatant exploits (except bankruptcy). We'll see how far I get before I run out of steam.

[Pishtaco]

Part II - The Marcher Lords

Eu Ner a folant;
Eu hiaith a gadwant;
En tir a gollant -
Ond gwyllt Walia.

Their God they will praise;
Their speech they will keep;
Their land they will lose -
Except wild Wales.

Taliesin's prophecy

Here, sit down and I'll put the kettle on. Don't mind the mess. So... I lay pretty low after that, and didn't hear much about the outside world, and hoped that it didn't hear much about me, if you take my meaning. But what do you know, one day I was chopping wood around the back when this young man comes up, dressed for hunting. He was looking around nervously and I'll tell you, I was a bit nervous too, since it sounded like he had brought a party of men with him, and left them out front.

"Owen?" he said, "it's Ieuan ap Robert, from Gwydir. You remember me? You... you must help me out." Well, he'd grown a bit, but I had once stayed as the guest of his family, so I told him I'd hear what he had to say.

The big news in those days was the fighting in France. Germans you say? No, no, against the French. Oh, a long time ago. Anyway Ieuan, who I remembered had been a boastful little chap, span me this story about going over there, drinking, whoring -- pardon my French -- and fighting, and about the king's trouble with his barons and relatives, and him either saving the king's life or beating him in a drinking competition, or I don't know what, then going carousing with him and his companions, and the king saying "You have royal blood, dontcha, and the, ah, position's vacant, what? Chap like you, oughtta go back home and sort 'em all out. 'Nother bottle?" and before the lad knows it there he is in Cardiff with a letter saying he's Prince of Wales, a splitting headache, and a dozen English lords after his blood. Sugar for you?

Now, Wales had never been a united country for long, it was always broken up into little squabbling kingdoms. The kings in the south and east had been replaced by English nobles, the Marcher lords, they were called, but the principle stayed the same. So Ieuan, our new prince, had some control over the northwest, but very little power over his nobles and their lands. At first, of course, they were furious at having a Taff placed over them, but they soon saw the advantage of a ruler that they could control. Within a year or two, with their connivance, Ieuan stopped even acknowledging the English king Henry as his lord. By then Henry had sobered up, and things could have gone badly. But Henry died, and the new king was just a baby, and the French were giving trouble, so he got away with it.

Medieval Wales

Now, I don't know what Ieuan had told Henry about his royal blood; I certainly didn't find his claim too convincing. But he secured himself with a good marriage, and he seemed well suited to the job, at first.

"We had a grand time, me and the lads. Jousting, hunting, feasting, lots of wine, at least until the Poles took Bordeaux. Then we went to war alongside the English against the moors, and had... um... great fun reading the reports of the English battles! We weren't rich enough to actually send our own army of course, or at least, I wasn't. Don't know about the lads."

But the money trickled in to Ieuan and eventually he formed his own regiment, the Royal Welsh, under Colonel Howell. Then with a gift from a noble, he built a fleet of two ships, and employed some officials to help squeeze more taxes out of his people.

"I needed money, Owen" he told me. "We had to conquer Ireland."

Look out - no, no, don't say a word, those old books can take a lot of damage. Stay there, I'll get you another cup. So... it was quite a free-for-all around the Irish sea in those days, you see, and nobles in Wales liked nothing better than to go over to Ireland and carve out a chunk of land, sometimes in the name of the king of England, but mostly just for their own family. And the Irish were too disorganized to care about it, or were busy doing the same thing to someone else.

"The lads all thought it was a great idea. The Irish chieftans were mostly up having a spat with some Frenchmen in Ulster. So we made a deal with some of Fitzmartin's relatives around Dublin to let Howell land there, and marched into Leinster."

Of course this did nothing for Wales' good name, but Ieuan wasn't the lad to worry about that. Now, the fighting in France had still been going on all this time you see, on and off. We were on the side of the English, cheering them on you know, while the Scots were allied to the French. The Scots had raided our coast a few times, just as they had for centuries before, nothing too serious. But Ieuan had been so wrapped up in his own war that he was caught out when the English made a seperate peace with them, and left them free to concentrate on us.

"Owen, it was terrible. I had gone over to Dublin to see Howell off, and came back to find the place in ruins with a Scottish army camped around Cardiff. They had come across the Irish sea with no warning and caught us absolutely defenseless. Through a miracle our two ships sent theirs packing, but then the news came from Ireland that the locals had got themselves together and destroyed the Royal Welsh. So now I'm a vassal of the king of Scotland, with no army and no money, and I don't even feel safe hunting and jousting with the lads anymore. They've started making... jokes, you know." He glanced nervously towards the front of the house. "You must come back with me. You'll know what to do."

Well, this was news. "Ieuan ap Robert ap Maredudd, I'm not going anywhere. I'm retired. And look you, don't you go telling anyone that you found me here. I don't want trouble. But I knew your father and I'll give you a piece of advice. You need a victory now if you want to survive. You get hold of some money, don't worry about what it costs you, and sort out those Irish. Get some land over there and make sure you control it, not these nobles of yours. And you watch those bastards. Watch them closely, and wait for your moment. They betrayed me, and if they think it's worth their time, they'll betray you."

Aha, you mustn't go interrupting an old man's memories, or I'll lose where I am and have to go back to the beginning, and then where will we be? I didn't know if my advice was any good; mostly I just wanted to get rid of the poor lad. He went off, not looking happy. But he came back again, oh, thirty years or so later, it must have been. I remember because I was pruning my apple trees. He said that he had driven himself bankrupt doing it, and it had taken seven years, but that he had conquered Leinster, Munster and Connaught. Then things were quiet for a while, then the worst came and the Marcher lords threatened him with revolt if they were not granted more independence and more Irish land. He refused. Their men overran Wales and easily defeated the royal garrisons, but he brought a loyal army over from Ireland and crushed them.

The boy had done well. Things weren't easy for a prince those days, oh no. At the same time in England, see, there was open fighting for the crown. The Anglo-Irish in Meath were even left to rule themselves. Sorry to say Ieuan took advantage, and found some excuse to march in and take them over. Then the war with France heated up again and he took his revenge on the Scots, helping himself to Strathclyde while the English conquered the rest, leaving the Scottish king only Edinburgh. But he always had to watch his back. Hm, he died a few years after that.

Look you now, the rain's getting worse and worse. Tell you what, I think there's some bara brith in the kitchen. You sit tight and I'll butter you a slice.


Northwest Europe at the death of Ieuan I

[Wasa]

Excellent stuff so far..looking forward to more..

[USA patriot]

Wow! This is terribly...

.. good! Excellent! Fantastic! etc...

Great AAR for being your first, I like that you use Gaelic influence in your dialoges and explain your game play via that to.

But from which year was this screenshot taken? And is that Poland in the east? Wow, just imagine when they inherit Lithuania ! But by then you certainly have conquered Europe

[MrT]

What a great start Pishtaco!

I love the approach you're taking here, with the running dialogue refering to "another cup" and the "bara brith"...sets an excellent mood and feel for the whole story. It flows so smoothly and easily into the whole...excellent bit of writing, that.

Definitely looking forward to your future instalments.

[Pishtaco]

Thanks very much for your comments, gentlemen, it's very encouraging.

USA patriot: yes, those are the Poles. But I think Europe will be safe from the Welsh hordes for a few hundred years. No need to lock up your sheep yet.

[Lord Durham]

Great work, Pishtaco. I really like the style. It's like sitting in a cottage on the coast talking over olde tymes.

I look forward to see what you can do with this.

[Edgar Francis I]

Oooh, I got the shivers. In a good way.

Studied Welsh history all the way through graduate school. I was hoping someone would go through the trouble one day of doing up all the leaders and history the right way in EUII. Brilliant so far.

The first book I read on the subject was John Davies "A History of Wales". If anyone else is interested, go get it. It's utterly comprehensive, from the day the ice-caps receded up until 1987 (at least in the version I have. I wonder if subsequent add-on chapters deal with the devolution under Blair).

Could never find anywhere around here (California, USA) to learn to speak Welsh. Couldn't even find keyboard characters to write with the proper accents and punctuation for Welsh (but neither could I bring myself to write "Glendower" or however the name was Anglicized). Good luck to you on those counts.

Anyway, I'm enchanted. Tickled even. For God's sake, keep going.

EF1

[Hamlet]

Wanted to add my voice and say keep up the good work on a very enjoyable AAR. I had a shot as Wales (I created my own Wales with the scenario editor, but forgot to at least give myself Wales as a core province) and eventually the rebellions became to much. And all I had was Eire, I hadn't even managed to put a dent in the Scots. Good luck to you and I'm looking forward to more.

[Pishtaco]

Part III should be coming up later today. Here is my take on the pronunciation of the names - I don't guarantee that they're right. Ieuan is pronounced Yian, to rhyme with "Brian"; Maredudd is "Meredith"; Sion is pronounced like "shown" - like Ieuan it is a form of "John", and provides the long O in the surname "Jones"; Morus is "Morris".

Thanks again for all the kind words. Is John Davies' book the one that was originally published in Welsh? I used it as a reference for the events, but never read it through properly, and now someone else has it from the library .

EF1&Hamlet: You can see my events in the latest EEP1.1 distribution. They provide some flavour, and are largely what this AAR is based on, but it would be great if I could include a couple more to realistically reflect Welsh history (rather than what I thought would be interesting for the player). Any suggestions are welcome, particularly from anyone with a doctorate in the subject. The cosmetic changes I made are in this thread.

[Pontecorvo]

Great start and good local influence!!! I'm looking forward to some more from this Welch success story.

[Edgar Francis I]

Originally posted by Pishtaco


Thanks again for all the kind words. Is John Davies' book the one that was originally published in Welsh? I used it as a reference for the events, but never read it through properly, and now someone else has it from the library .

EF1&Hamlet: You can see my events in the latest EEP1.1 distribution. They provide some flavour, and are largely what this AAR is based on, but it would be great if I could include a couple more to realistically reflect Welsh history (rather than what I thought would be interesting for the player). Any suggestions are welcome, particularly from anyone with a doctorate in the subject. The cosmetic changes I made are in this thread.

Yes, the John Davies book was originally published in Welsh (I think the title is _Hanes Cymru_ or some such... ) It's a bit heavy for a straight read through (and I mean that literally, at around 700 pages), but an invaluable resource as you've already noted.

And I didn't mean to misprepresent myself, I do NOT in fact have a PhD in the subject. I said I WENT to graduate school, not finished.

My master's thesis was on some Welsh myth, resistance and the Acts of 'Union', but my forté was Reformation history. It's probably too narrow to be acutally helpful for a hefty, broad grand campaign AAR.

OK, I'm teetering on the brink of becoming a slobbering bore. Please write more.

EF1

[Norgesvenn]

Pishtaco, excellent writing and a great story!

The luck of the Welsh is not that well known, and I'm really looking forward to learning more about it!

I thought you were an experienced campaigner, being an EEP provider and all! (With regards to the introduction)


Anyway, having read through those events, I wish you the best of luck!

[Pishtaco]

Part III – Y Ddraig Goch

As Vortigern, king of the Britons, was sitting upon the bank of the drained pond, the two dragons, one of which was white, the other red, came forth, and approaching one another, began a terrible fight, and cast forth fire with their breath. But the white dragon had the advantage, and made the other fly to the end of the lake. And he, for grief at his flight, renewed the assault upon his pursuer, and forced him to retire.

Historia Regum Britanniae, Geoffrey of Monmouth

There you are, I’ll put the plate here. Ah, I wondered if that would catch your eye. Can you make out the writing on it – “MAREDUDD BRITANNIORUM REX” - and his head, handsome, eh? And on the other side, a dragon. Yes, it's beautiful isn't it? But look, where the silver's rubbed off, that's copper underneath, see? Minted by Maredudd the first, to pay for his wars against the English.

Forty years, they lasted. Too long. Sometimes... when I’m working outside in the morning, if the wind is right, I could swear I can hear the soldiers again, singing as they march up the valley, about how they are going to drive the Saxons back into the sea; or I can smell the smoke of another village burning, or feel the hunger of those winters again. Oh, those were sad days, terrible days. A man doesn’t forget things like that.


And why did we fight, when we had been allies? Look you now, the English hadn’t liked Ieuan’s conquests in Ireland, and they certainly didn’t like the way he took over Dublin, no, not at all. But Ieuan was a man of the world and knew how to rub along with people, and he made sure we stayed mostly friends, you see. Maybe it couldn’t be helped that things would turn bad after he died.


Maredudd I

Here, give me a hand moving the books off this chest, and I’ll show you something that’s worth seeing. There, you take that end, and I’ll unfold it – careful, careful. I found this up in the woods, wrapped around a soldier against the cold. Hadn’t done him a lot of good. I thought I had better keep it here in case it caused more trouble. There, how about that eh? Henry Tudor’s standard, that he raised when he landed at Milford Haven. That's the red dragon of the legions, as flown by Cadwaladr, the last king of old Britannia.

Now the Tudors, they were a marcher family with some Welsh blood in them. Their good fortune had started when Henry’s grandfather Owain ap Maredudd ap Tudur ap Goronwy charmed his way into the Queen of England’s bed; and it had ended, everyone thought, when Prince Maredudd completed his father’s work and brought the marches under royal control. He chose his time well; the powerful families were all mixed up in the war in England and had been slowly destroying each other. He carefully forced his remaining enemies into open revolt, then gave some of their land to loyal Welshmen and took the rest for the crown. And he decreed that from then on, one law would govern all Wales.

Now a lot of them just moved to their estates in England, and that did nothing for our good relations with the English. The Tudors, though, had ended up on the losing side in the civil war and they fled to France. But the English royals were killing themselves off left and right you see, and one day Henry Tudor found that his grandfather’s antics had given him a solid claim to the throne. All he needed was an army, to turf out the incumbent, as they say.

His uncle tried to smooth the way for him by commissioning bards to remind people of all the old legends, that a hero would appear to lead Wales back to greatness and take revenge for centuries of English oppression. Perhaps Arthur would return, or Macsen. There was even one story that Owain Glyn Dwr himself was still living in these hills, and would come to his country’s rescue in its hour of greatest need. Hmph. That reminds me though, would you be wanting another cup of tea? Something stronger? No?

Maredudd must have heard some of these stories and wondered whether he was the man for the job. So he wasn’t happy when Henry turned up near the Tudors’ old place in Pembroke with a few mercenaries, raised his standard and claimed he was Cadwaladr’s heir and was going to reconquer England, and would reward whoever helped him with land in England and a place in his court. Maredudd’s reply was that he was the heir of Cadwaladr, Arthur and Brutus, that as such he would never play second fiddle to an English scoundrel like Henry, and that he would execute any Welshman who took a penny from him.

Well, it was touch and go, but Henry made it out of Wales and soon he was king of England. But he left his banner behind look you, and Maredudd sat and brooded on it, and trained his soldiers, and ordered his scholars to look up the old title of King of the Britons. A few years after that our alliance with England lapsed and before we could arrange another, Henry declared war.


Henry Tudor's standard

Maredudd was in Strathclyde just then and rode out himself, carrying Henry’s own red dragon, to campaign in the north – the English had taken over Scotland by then, see. But the English marched into Wales and slaughtered us here, and soon Maredudd was happy to make peace in exchange for giving them an interest in the west of Ireland. Then he set about finding an ally. He tried the French of course, but they still didn’t trust us, nor us them. Thanks to his father’s diplomacy, though, he had family links with their Catholic Majesties in Spain, so when the truce expired and Henry declared war again we had the comfort of the Spanish on our side.

By now England had recovered from her domestic difficulties, and Henry was able to muster vast armies to send into Wales and Strathclyde. But we beat them off, and chased them back across England. Soon, though, Maredudd bought peace rather than let the harvest rot in the fields.

He was waiting for the right time to attack himself, you see. It came a few years later when Henry got caught up in a long war in defence of England’s trade; there were stories of an army from the Baltic laying waste to Northumberland. Maredudd wanted to regain what he had lost, and may even have had some lunatic dream of reuniting under the red dragon the ancient lands of the Cymry, from the Severn to the Clyde, or of who knows what. For look you now, we had shown that we could defeat the English in a fair fight, and he hoped that we could make hay while they were busy in the Baltic, the Mediterranean, and now, thanks to our alliance, in an expedition to northern Spain.

Now, he made sure that we had enough money to fight, but after a year or two it was clear that we didn’t have enough men. In those days a Welsh soldier could give his English cousin a thrashing and have the energy left over to make free with his women and leave his country in flames. Begging your pardon sir, but there it was. However, after his hundredth Englishman, he grew tired, poor fellow.

So we were forced back step by step, until our armies were driven out of Wales. Then Henry would turn his attention to Strathclyde, and we would retake Wales, and burn a few English towns besides. Then another flood of Englishmen would turn up, and so it would go on. But one day our galleys were going to lose control of the Irish sea, and that would be the end. Eventually Maredudd let them have Munster rather than continue what he knew was hopeless.

He had been badly wounded when he lost both his regiment and his banner chasing a retreating army, three times his size, into Yorkshire. He lay a cripple in his bed in Cardiff, desperately trying to find ways to appease the English. But no, he wasn’t the diplomat his father was. It was all he could do to maintain the alliance with Spain through the twisting and turning of the wars and successions on the continent. So when Henry’s son invaded us everywhere at once, and bottled our fleet up in Dublin, he gave up Leinster as soon as he was asked rather than fight another war. Then he died.

After that the Tudors were finished with us. We had been punished enough for Ieuan’s conquest of Ireland and we were no longer worth a war with Spain. And they were busy again with their own problems, which Maredudd’s successors refused to be drawn into, even when Mary came to power and most of England and Scotland fell to protestant rebels. With both Henry and Maredudd dead there was no reason to continue the feud. Instead we concentrated on rebuilding the country and gave prayers of thanks when the day came that Elizabeth Tudor reluctantly brought England into the Spanish alliance. We had seen the worst, and we were still here.

But oh dear I’ve been rabbiting on haven’t I? Not let you get a word in. You looked like you had some questions a while ago. Wondering what I’m still doing up and about after all these years, I expect. Well go on, ask away, sir. Sir? Ah, resting your eyes is it? You stay there then, I’ll just go and make sure the rain isn’t drowning my seedlings. Maybe think about getting the fire going.


Europe at the death of Maredudd I

[Edgar Francis I]

Ah, Cadwaladr, Brutus, Arthur, Milford Haven... it all stirs the blood. And then the news of the string of defeats and backward steps and that map at the end... Looks hopeless from a gameplay standpoint, but it wouldn't be Welsh history if it didn't look hopeless now would it?

You might have a better shot if Scotland and/or Ireland still hung around, but just you vs. England... Hell, they don't even have any continental holdings left to speak of to keep them occupied.

Whoever said Wales was the hardest one to play was probably right.

EF1