Talk:Battle of Crogen

Amendments

Thanks for the article, Maedin. I came across it just now as I've written an article on the battle on the Welsh wikipedia today (by incredible coincidence!) - yesterday evening by now - and checked in case there was anything here on "en." for a link to it. I made a few corrections which I hope you will see as being reasonable. In particular:

Location. All my sources give Dyffryn Ceiriog, near Tregeiriog, about halfway up the valley. Castell Crogen was in fact on the other side of the Berwyn (still a tiny hamlet there called Crogen, not far from Bala; see the Welsh article); I know of no reference to Chirk castle by that name.

Owain Cyfeiliog. He was indeed in the alliance but had gone over to the English crown by summer 1165 so could not have been one of the allies present. Owain Gwynedd confiscated most of his lands later for that reason.

Lewis's Topographical Dictionary is great reading and contains a wealth of information on early 19th century Wales, but it is very antiquated as a source for medieval history. He was a compiler and not in a position to critically judge the potted histories given to him by his local sources. Anything he says for that period should be checked and a modern source - not a website relying on the TDW - should preferably be used instead.

I haven't changed it, but why on earth would H. II choose to climb the Berwyn to reach Rhuddlan and Basingwerk (check the map and consider the terrain: wooded, hilly, isolated, exposed....)? What's the source?

Hope you don't think I'm being too critical, but I think these points are valid. Enaidmawr (talk) 00:38, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

I appreciate your comments, Enaidmawr; they are certainly valid points and I'm interested in seeing the article improved, especially factually, so thank you! I have to plead ignorance, though; I spotted this article in New Pages (created by Tlle1 (talk · contribs)) and decided to have a go at expanding it, which involved several tedious hours of research, some of it pretty much from scratch. I actually have no particular knowledge of the subject, so I did rely very heavily on the information I could find online.

Location: As you can probably tell, my source for Castell Crogen & Chirk Castle came directly from Lewis. He states that the battle took place "in a deep and picturesque valley, along which runs the river Ceiriog, on the west and south sides of Chirk Castle". A paragraph later, he says that Chirk Castle is on the site of an "erection of a prior edifice, called Castell Crogen". I tried to confirm this as best I could using maps; having found Chirk Castle, I did see the river Ceiriog sort of south and west, and a wooded area called something Crogen. I realised that the article was missing information on the location so I added it. By all means: if you have better sources, I certainly advocate the article being correct!

Owain Cyfeiliog: I didn't find anything that indicated Cyfeiliog had left the alliance by the time of the battle—but my sources are inferior, so that's ok!

Lewis and his Topographical Dictionary: I did wonder about this source, which is one of the reasons why I attempted to find other references. I appreciate you pointing out that his facts should be checked; now I know for the future ;-)

Berwyn: Well, it doesn't seem like the most direct route, granted! At least a few things seem to agree on the whole Berwyn mountains thing though, from what I could find. The Kingdom of Gwynedd article, using the source of Lloyd, J.E. A History of Wales; From the Norman Invasion to the Edwardian Conquest says "The Angevin army advanced from Oswestry into Wales crossing the mountains towards Mur Castell, and found itself in the thick forest of the Ceiriog Valley..." Lewis, with a pinch of salt, says that following the battle, "The English monarch took up his position on the ridge of the Berwyn chain of mountains..." This source (which isn't very good, I know!) was the most detailed, stating, "He gathered his forces at Shrewsbury, marched to Oswestry, intending to make his way along the Ceiriog valley and across the Berwyn mountains to relieve the besieged fortresses of Rhuddlan and Basingwerk." The supposed source for that text is at the bottom of the website. Whether all of that means he really was heading for the hills is still a guess, I think!

I'd like to have books on the subject, but my local library is small and probably won't have what is needed. In any case, feel free to change and expand the article as you feel necessary, but if so, do please add sources; an article with rubbish information isn't much better than a correct article with no references! Maedin\^talk 08:32, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Oh, and also, thank you very much for actually commenting on the talk page. It would have been easy for you to make the changes to the article, unexplained, so I appreciate you taking the time to post here. It was very helpful to me, :-) Maedin\^talk 08:49, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Your welcome, Maedin. On the last point (H. II's aim in trying to cross the Berwyn), most scholars would agree with J. E. Lloyd - the doyen of Welsh historians - when he says, as you note, "crossing the mountains towards Mur Castell...". Mur y Castell/Tomen y Mur is near the western coast and comparatively easy to reach; this would also have cut the link between the northern and southern Welsh forces. Rhuddlan and Basingwerk on the other hand were within relatively easy reach by land and sea from Chester. I must admit I'd never heard of the Rhuddlan & Basingwerk hypotheses until now; it makes no strategic sense at all and the risks would have been huge. I'll try to get around to improving the article in the near future, with more modern sources (Lloyd's fine, still the classic standard source), but first there's the small matter of Christmas. Meanwhile, I'll wish you Nadolig Llawen! Enaidmawr (talk) 00:31, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Crogen

I saw there was some discussion of this name above. There has been a good analysis of the historiography by J. Veninger in a recent thesis.

The main source of the name "Crogen" is the 1589 History of Cambria by David Powel. None of the medieval texts mentioning the skirmish, (including the most important Welsh source, the Brut y Tywysogion), give this name for it and it may be that Powel 'enhanced' his information, as he is known to have done elsewhere, given that he appears to be relying on the same manuscript sources as everyone else. 'Crogen' seems to relate to the township names of Crogen Iddon and Crogen Wladus (or 'Crogen-y-ladies' as gazetteers sometimes had it) with the battle site lying within Crogen Iddon. Powel's name for the battle was taken up by a lot of 19th century antiquarians, and the account of the battle given in the 2011 film and associated materials funded by the Council seems to have again been derived wholly from Powel's account. The only account to consider contemporary / earlier sources is the one noted above, J. E. Lloyd's 1912 text A History of Wales from the Earliest Times to the Edwardian Conquest.

As far as the aftermath goes, the Brut comments that Henry was undeterred by the losses in the Ceiriog Valley and pushed on into the Berwyns, possibly to the hillfort at Cerrig Gwynion. Gerald of Wales claimed that his troops pillaged several churches, but Henry remained indecisive and they eventually discontinued their advance due to bad weather (the Brut again.) This is where Lloyd got his overall view of the 1165 campaign. It is a rather different picture than some rather fanciful modern sources are painting, some of which talk of thousands of troops etc.Svejk74 (talk) 12:58, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

More info

I've added a bit more to the article which hopefully clears up some issues on the problematic nature of the 'battle' and the 1165 campaign in general. Some recent non academic sources have presented it as a great Welsh victory in battle over English forces attempting to "conquer" Wales, but this is completely misleading. The issues are;

• The Welsh chronicles still regarded Henry and his lords as "French" not English
• Most of the chronicles give little information about what happened, conflict with each other and are, for political reasons, unreliable
• No contemporary source talks about a 'battle' as such, as opposed to a few skirmishes, (the Brut doesn't even call it a Welsh victory): the first sources to do so are at least 400 years later
• We do not know Henry's objective in the campaign and it has been suggested that one of the main objectives was actually to reinforce the position of the smaller Welsh princedoms of Powys against expansion by Gwynedd
• The only clear info. we have is that Henry assembled a large army in the borders (for which there is financial evidence in the Pipe Rolls) in mid 1165 but then withdrew without any major battles occurring
• His decision to advance into the mountains of Powys makes little sense - Powys was on good terms with him and there were easier ways to attack Gwynedd if that was his target; no one has really worked out why Henry's army was on the Berwyns and it's not even clear whether Owain was at Corwen in response to Henry's advance, or vice versa
• Owain Gwynedd had been attempting to annex Owain Brogyntyns Powys cantref of Penllyn and the chronicles disagree on how involved the Powys lords were in Owain's campaign - the majority of them were back on good terms with Henry within months
• Even the name 'Crogen' is based on a later misunderstanding; sources closer to the time talk about 'Coed Ceiriog' or the Berwyns

Hopefully this explains the general logic of the edits and sourcing. Svejk74 (talk) 15:21, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Recent edits by Rwilliams0415

Speaking as someone responsible for most of the current "ill researched and incorrect" article text, I wonder what your issues with it can be.

The information there at present is sourced from respected (I hope!) relatively modern historians and journals. There are a range of opinions about Henry's 1165 campaign but they mostly agree that little if any fighting took place.

There is a lot of interesting political context to the 1165 campaign, but I'm afraid the 'accounts' of the battle out there come mainly from the fevered imaginations of 19th century writers and guidebooks (e.g. Lewis's 'Topographical Dictionary'). Unfortuately these are the ones that a local historical re-enactment group chose to run with and which have influenced what you might call the popular historiography, as opposed to the academic one.

The same group has more recently been pushing the idea that a placename 'Croesau Cochion', the "red crosses", on the hills above Tregeiriog is evidence of some kind of major battle there too. I think is taken from a speculative suggestion made in an article "Hafod Adam and some Antiquities in Dyffryn Ceiriog, Denbighshire" printed in Arch. Cambrensis in 1882 - not very sound evidence for anything, but it shows how these stories tend to grow in the telling. Academic historians need to be more cautious.

I have tried to be fair in the article itself by indicating that opinion varies on what happened in 1165 ("It is unclear whether events in the Ceiriog Valley represented a pitched battle, a series of smaller engagements or a minor skirmish: all three have been argued, as well as the possibility no fighting took place during the 1165 campaign").

We know exactly what contemporary references exist to the campaign. There are some brief mentions in Welsh chronicles compiled a few years later (as quoted in the article) along with a mention by Giraldus Cambrensis (also noted in the article). The Brut, the main source, says "Ac yno yd ymerbynnyawd ac ef ynn wrawl ychydic o Gymry etholedigyon, y rei ny wydynt odef y goruot, ynn abssenn y tywyssogyon" - "a few picked Welshmen [...] manfully encountered him in the absence of their leaders". It does not suggest a major battle, hence the varied assessments of what might have happened.

Nearly everything else is based on Powel, who was writing hundreds of years later and is an unreliable source (and even he said the fighting involved only a group of men 'sent to try the passages' while Henry's army was at Oswestry).

Powel was picked up by Pennant, another two centuries later, in his Tours in Wales, and Pennant was copied by nearly everyone else. I am interested to see what a 'full account of the battle and campaign' might contain when the only contemporary references are those mentioned above, and they add up to practically nothing. What additional sources have you found?

The 'Chronicles' (if you mean the contemporary Welsh ones) relay to us nothing about the death of St Clare. Contemporary chroniclers (e.g. Ralph Niger) say he died at Bridgnorth; this is well attested since the manner of his death was seen as something worthy of record. The information placing it in the Ceiriog Valley comes from Powel, who as noted was writing hundreds of years after the event, and he simply got it wrong.

The real shame in all of this is that it obscures the real interest of the 1165 campaign, namely that Henry decided to go down the route of diplomacy instead and was on good terms with the Welsh princes a matter of months later, while the Marcher lords turned their attention to Ireland instead (setting in motion a whole chain of events with far-reaching implications).

Svejk74 (talk) 21:53, 10 August 2019 (UTC)