Wales and its History

 This post was inspired by comments made by Neil Kinnock, who called Welsh kings and princes ''ennobled brigands.'' This comment is so far from the truth , you need to ask , has this man ever read a Welsh history book? If he had, he surely himself would know he is talking utter rubbish; the kings and princes of Wales built grand abbeys and castles, held courts, created charters, led armies of 10,000 or more, had relations with other countries and were recognised by popes The motive for his comment is to discredit the very idea of a Welsh nation. During the 1979 devolution referendum campaign, the no-to-devolution side was extremely negative and anti-Welsh. Their job was to convince the Welsh people that Wales is a glorified county with no history and no achievements, held back by a language that should have died long ago. Anything that gave Wales a separate identity or made Welsh people proud was attacked. Anyway, back to the comment, I did a post a while back showing w...

 Throughout medieval times Gwynedd seemed to be the most powerful of Welsh kingdoms, there were times when Deheubarth took the crown , for example hywel dda and Rhys ap Gruffydd but for the vast majority of times it was Gwynedd. Why though? Was the population of Gwynedd higher than the other kingdoms, so they had bigger armies?  Rhodri Mawr gwynedd Hywel Dda Maredudd ab Owain Llywelyn ap Seisyll Gwynedd, Powys, and Deheubarth Bleddyn ap Cynfyn Gwynedd 1063–1075 Powys 1063–1075 Gruffydd ap Llywelyn Gwynedd 1039–1063 Powys 1039–1063 Deheubarth 1055–1063

The same people who like to put the Welsh down and try to discredit everything about Welsh history by dismissing anything Welsh people can be proud of as "nationalist fantasy", also often come up with the words "Welsh fought each other more than anyone else".  So to see if this was true I went through my 77 pages of Welsh wars, battles, sieges, skirmishes, raids etc and counted them.  This is what I found. Welsh vs Saxons – 57 = 17% Welsh vs Normans – 118 = 37% Welsh vs Vikings – 45 = 14% Welsh vs Welsh – 56 = 17% Nobody could tell me when the Normans become English, so I simply called them Normans up to the Glyndŵr rising  Welsh vs English  - 41 = 12% Total  317 Total Battles that wasn't Welsh vs Welsh   272 Here are the dates. Welsh vs saxons   616 620 - 626 630  630  633 633 642  655  658 658 682   720   722  728  735 743  753   760  765  769 776   778 784 78...