【Kings and Generals】凱爾特不列顛人：中世紀威爾士的起源

J.R.R. Tolkien 曾經說過 Welsh is of this soil, this island, the senior language of the men of Britain. Welsh is beautiful. Today, Wales is seen as the sleepy rural periphery of the United Kingdom, but deeply rooted in its idyllic rolling hills is the vibrant history of the Celtic Britons, a people who have had as many mighty warlords as they have pages of beautiful poetry. Even today, in a world so thoroughly dominated by a globalised English language, Wales retains its ancient culture, folklore and unique tongue. Welcome to our second series on the Celtic peoples of Europe, where we will explore the medieval history of the land where dragons roam. If, like Tolkien, you want to preserve the wild places of the planet, or you're in the market for a special gift linked to such lands, then we've got an interesting offer for you from our sponsor, Established Titles. 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So, act fast to join our little union of forest territories. Check out their early Black Friday sale for discounts. Plus, if you use our code kings, you'll get an extra 10% off. Go to establishedtitles.com slash kings to get yourself a title or give it as a gift, and help support the channel. The Celtic peoples have inhabited the British Isles since antiquity. But for the first four centuries of the Common Era, they did so under the overlordship of the Roman Empire. After imperial authority collapsed and the last legions departed from the island in 410 AD, a new form of occupier would take root in Britain. Throughout the 5th and 6th centuries AD, Germanic tribes like the Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians began making increasing headway into the Isle. Whether this was defined by large-scale invasion or by relatively peaceful assimilation is still up for debate. However, it is in this murky era that the legend of King Arthur is historically rooted. In any case, by 600 AD, the eastern lowlands of Britain were dominated by the Germanic ancestors of the English, while Celtic-speaking Polities, the ancestors of the Welsh, were pushed into the western highlands. Throughout medieval history, there was never a single Welsh state, but rather a multitude of smaller kingdoms united culturally through a shared corpus of folklore and similar languages. These small Polities were not just localised to what is now modern Wales, but also in parts of what is now England and the Scottish lowlands, where proto-Welsh kingdoms endured well into the Middle Ages. It also bears mentioning that the Welsh, who we will refer to interchangeably as the Britons, Britonic, Brythonic or Cumbric peoples, were not the only Celtic-speaking Polities in the Middle Ages. In Ireland, the Gaels predominated, from where they spread to the Scottish highlands, competing with the local Pictish tribes for dominance. Another medieval Celtic land of note is the French peninsula of Brittany. Culturally and linguistically closely related to the Welsh, the Bretons maintained their political autonomy from their Frankish and Norman neighbours for centuries, while maintaining regular contact with their cousins across the Channel. Before we get into the history of medieval Wales, let us briefly explore their culture and society. In the overall landscape of early Britain in the Middle Ages, the cultural achievements of the Celtic Britons are often sidelined in order to focus on those of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, or later the Norse invaders. Undeservedly so, for in contrast to the common narrative, which portrays them as the poorest periphery of Britain, the Welsh possessed as much high culture as anywhere else in Europe at the time. Old Welsh poetry, for example, is extremely extensive and complex. Any fans of modern Western fantasy will likely be familiar with the archetype of the bard, which was originally an ancient Celtic and later medieval Welsh word. Throughout the Brythonic world, bards were highly respected, and often invited to the courts of kings to compose grand epics which would glorify that monarch. Some bards would themselves become legends of great renown, such as Aneirin and Taliesin, two 6th century poets whose wide corpus of works includes everything from epic poems of great battles to children's lullabies. Their works survive to this day, albeit not in their original forms. Editorially, it can be said that what Homer was to the Greeks, Aneirin and Taliesin were to the Welsh. Another accomplished pillar of medieval Welsh society was its church. Christianity had taken root in Britain during the late Roman Empire, and by the 6th century AD had become the predominant faith among the Celtic Britons. Welsh Christianity had its own local flavour by virtue of its home-bred saints. Originally, these saints were Britons who had lived during Roman rule and had been martyred by the Augusti for their faith, such as Saint Alban. However, after the Roman departure, British saints often took on the form of pious royalty, such as Saint Kibbe, a prince of Cornwall who supposedly went on pilgrimage all the way to Jerusalem, and upon his return, turned down his rightful throne to instead preach and build churches throughout the realm. Holy sites to various Celtic saints dotted the lands of the medieval Cumbric peoples, and pilgrimages to them were regularly made by the common people. Between the 6th and 8th centuries, Celtic Christianity was fairly isolated from its mother church in Rome, and thus developed certain schismatic beliefs, such as a different method in calculating the date of Easter. However, by the 9th century, these schisms had largely been healed due to kings like Kingen Apcadeth of Powys, who were recorded to have made pilgrimages to Rome. It should be noted that, between the 5th and 7th centuries AD, interactions between the Britons and their Anglo-Saxon neighbours were often tinged with religious tension, for the former were largely Christian, while the latter still held to a pantheon of pagan gods, similar to the ones made famous by Norse Vikings in later centuries. However, by the 700s AD, the forebears of the English had embraced Roman Christianity. What we have thus far covered of early Welsh society barely scratches the surface of its depth and complexity, and there's much more that can be explored, such as their nuanced legal codes, refined artwork, and sophisticated court culture, but for brevity's sake, we will now have to move on. Let us take a tour of Western Britain in the 6th and 7th centuries, and examine how the Kimrick peoples from Somerset to Lancashire interacted with the various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms to their immediate east. In doing this, we must consider the nature of the surviving textual evidence from this era. Although English monks, like the Venerable Bede, and Welsh chroniclers and poets, like Nennius, and the aforementioned Aneirin, provide us with invaluable insights into the events of their age, their accounting of events is often clouded by the biases of their time, and should be examined through a critical lens. With that covered, let us begin with Ehenoglaeth, the Old North, a region home to major Brittonic kingdoms, like Elmet, Godothin, Praeged, and Strathclyde, who by the 6th century shared an eastern border with the Anglic kingdoms of Benicia and Dara. During their natal years, these Proto-English kingdoms appear to have been smaller and weaker than their Briton neighbours, and Benicia may have even intermittently been a tributary state to the Cumbric kings of the Dothan. This, however, would change with the ascension of Aethelfrith, the King of Benicia, who, according to Bede, was a most powerful king who more than all leaders of the English harried the peoples of the Britons. This is seemingly corroborated in Anerin's old Welsh poem E. Godothin, an elegy to King Minithog Munfar of Godothin, who around 600 AD lost his kingdom to the Angles, who were probably aided by the kingdom of Reged. Aethelfrith's successor, Edwin, shared his predecessor's expansionist ambitions, and both Bede and Nennius seemed to agree that he conquered Elmet, the second of the four major Northwestern Brittonic kingdoms. However, this ambition would provoke retaliation in the form of Catwaghlon ap Cadfan, King of Gwynedd. In response to Edwin's encroachment on his territory, Catwaghlon forged an alliance with Pender, a Prince of Mercia, and with his help, led the Britons of the north into open rebellion against Edwin. At the Battle of Hatfield Chase in October of 633, Catwaghlon crushed Edwin's armies, then conquered the entirety of northern England. Catwaghlon's ascendancy would be short-lived, for he would be killed in the Battle of Heavensfield by Oswald, son of Æthelfrith, allowing the Venetian royal line to once more assert dominance in the north of England in the ensuing decade, and unite with Daerar to form the kingdom of Northumbria. The legacy of Catwaghlon ap Cadfan of Gwynedd is seemingly divided along ethnic lines. English commentators like Bede portray him as the most tyrannical despot the English ever faced, while Welsh poems portray him as the greatest hero among the Briton warrior kings. If we as modern observers can draw any takeaways from Catwaghlon's reign, it is that his cooperation with Pender of Mercia tells us that there was never a binary struggle between Celtic Britain and Anglo-Saxon, but rather a deeply complex political landscape, where cooperation often extended beyond religious, ethnic and linguistic lines. Indeed, the frequent cross-pollination of Picts, Gaels, Angles, Saxons and Britons in the Old North often blurred the lines where one culture ended and another began. By 731, most of the Brythonic lands of Ehenoglaeth were once more under Northumbrian lordship, save for Strathclyde, which would survive as a distinct political entity into the 11th century. However, textual evidence suggests that in lands ruled by the Northumbrians, the Celtic language of northern Britons survived for centuries, even after their kingdoms had been extinguished. Now let us move from the northern end of the medieval Brythonic world to the very south of it. For much of history, the peninsula of Cornwall was a distinctly Celtic land. In the early Middle Ages, Cornwall, alongside Devon, were part of the kingdom of Dumnonia. In times past, Dumnonia had been joined by land to its sister kingdoms in Wales proper, but this connection was severed after the Battle of Durham in 577, wherein Worcester and Gloucester became part of the Saxon kingdom of Wheatshire, later a Mercian client state. Whereas the histories of the northern Celtic Britons were defined primarily by their relationship to the northern Angles, their southern cousins were defined by their relationship with the West Saxons, and as a general trend, the 8th century saw the Dumnonii gradually pushed westward by the kingdom of Wessex. The exact nature of these conflicts is obscured by a lack of detailed surviving sources. For example, the Annales Cambriae, a medieval Latin anthology of Welsh history, notes that in 722, the southern Britons won a victory at the Battle of Hayhill, located somewhere in Devon. The Annales do not specify who this victory was won against, but most historians agree it was likely against Wessex, thereby allowing the Britons to successfully stymie West Saxon expansion for a time. This, however, would be temporary, and by the reign of Alfred the Great, Devon had long since been absorbed into the kingdom of Essex, and the Cornish Peninsula, while maintaining some form of Brittonic autonomy, would be under the political domination of the West Saxon kings. With that said, although Cornwall would eventually become an integral part of the kingdom of England, the Brittonic language spoken there survived for nearly a millennia afterwards. Let us now shift our focus to central Britain, where kingdoms like Gwent, Deved, Powys, and the aforementioned Gwynedd thrived. Throughout the 7th century, these Brittonic polities bordered the Mercians, who for the most part, they enjoyed amiable relations with. As it was in the Old North, the ethnic boundaries between these lands were blurred, with plenty of cultural cross-pollination and intermarriage occurring across ethnic lines. Moreover, both Britain and Mercian kings had a common enemy, the Angles of Northumbria. We have already covered how Cadwachlon of Gwynedd and Prince Pender of Mercia teamed up to defeat Edwin of Deira, however, this would not be the last time that Britons and Mercians fought side by side. In 642, Pender, now King of the Mercians, would once more meet the northern Angles in battle alongside an alliance of Britain warriors from Powys and Gwynedd, the latter of whom had been sent by King Cadwalader, son of the infamous Cadwachlon. With well-shade, Pender was able to slay the Benecian king Oswald in battle. Pender's victories over the Northumbrians made him the most powerful Anglo-Saxon ruler in Britain, laying the foundations for an era of Mercian supremacy. Thus, the early medieval Welsh kingdoms not only were masters of their own destiny, but through their role in elevating Pender, crucial power players in the politics of their Anglo-Saxon neighbours as well. Over time, the relationship the Britons enjoyed with Mercia began to sour. The catalyst for this occurred in 685, when the Picts crushed the army of the Northumbrian king Ecfrith at the Battle of Dunnachteyn. This defeat was the capstone in the collapse of Northumbria's expansionist ambitions. In its place, Mercia became the most imperialistic kingdom in Britain, expanding its dominance throughout the Midlands and the south of England throughout the 700s AD, and looking to Wales for further territorial gains. In the modern parish of Chlantysilio-Unial is a stone column known as the Pillar of Elisec. Erected during the reign of King Cungen ap Cadell of Powys, the stone is inscribed in Latin with the deeds of that king's ancestors. Among these are the victories of Cungen's great-grandfather, Elise Apguilog, who seized the inheritance of Powys from the power of the English by force. Through this we can deduce that around the mid-700s, Powys had come under Mercian domination, but Elise Apguilog launched a successful rebellion to reclaim his realm. This may have occurred in 757 when the murder of King Æthelbald threw Mercia into a succession crisis. After this succession crisis, King Offa would ascend to the throne of Mercia and rule from late 757 to 796. The Annales Cambriae records that Offa frequently campaigned against the Britons on his western frontier, with his most likely enemy being the resurgent Kingdom of Powys, if we take the inscriptions on the Pillar of Elisec into account. Evidently, the Welsh became troublesome enough that late in his reign, Offa sponsored the creation of a massive earthen ditch and wall to be dug out along the frontier lands between his domain and the Kingdom of Powys. This 132-kilometre-long fortification, known titularly as Offa's Dyke, indents the landscape to this day, although historians still debate its true nature and purpose. Ostensibly, a giant border ditch seems like an antagonistic act. However, at certain points, the path of the dyke veers eastwards to leave key fortresses and fertile valleys in Welsh hands, indicating that the dyke was a mutually agreed-upon boundary rather than an act of Mercian territorial aggression. Moreover, while the previously blurred ethnic boundaries between Britain and Anglo-Saxon became more strictly defined after the erection of Offa's Dyke, some but not all historians assert that cross-border movement for trade and other purposes continued in a more tightly controlled manner even after the dyke's construction. The erection of Offa's Dyke did not affect the Mercian desire to establish a zone of hegemony over the Welsh kingdoms, as they had with other periphery zones like Kent and Wessex. According to the Annales Cambriae, Offa's successor, King Cowenwolf, waged war on Divyd and Gwynedd in 798, during which the latter's king, Caradagap Merion, perished in battle. However, the gains Cuenwolf achieved through these victories did not seem to be major or particularly permanent. Ultimately, surviving historical evidence from this era is scant. But the existence of Offa's Dyke and the inscriptions on the Pillar of Eliseg come together to form a basic historical narrative where throughout the 700s and 800s AD, Mercia would intermittently use political or military force to establish supremacy over various Welsh border kingdoms, but the Welsh would usually manage to reassert their sovereignty and re-establish civil-political relations with their Anglo-Saxon neighbours. In 865 AD, the balance of power in Britain was severely disrupted as a new player entered the game in the form of a great heathen army, and it is here that we will end the first episode of our history of the Welsh. The story of the Vikings in Britain has been told exhaustively from the perspective of the Anglo-Saxons and the Norsemen, but in our next episode, we will tell that era of history from the perspective of the Celtic Britons, as dynamic rulers like Rodri the Great and Hjulfa unite the Welsh kingdoms, fend off the incursions of the Danes, and usher in an age of learning and prosperity, while Strathclyde, the last Briton kingdom of the Old North, experiences its twilight years. Thanks again to our sponsor, Established Titles. Buy a small plot of land in Scotland and become a lady or a lord, or give this title as an amazing and easy gift. In return, Established Titles plants a tree to protect the pristine forests of our planet. Take advantage of their early Black Friday sale and use our discount code Kings at establishedtitles.com slash kings to get a further 10% off. More medieval Celtic history is on the way, so make sure you are subscribed and have pressed the bell button to see it. 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