Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

fidelity to David, son of Llywelyn; and in 1240 Llywelyn, Prince of Kymru, died, ' after taking the habit of religion,' and was buried at Aberconway. He reigned fifty-six years, and some call him 'Llywelyn the Great.' He had showed personal force enough to keep supremacy in Wales over his rivals, and had stemmed the English tide for a while with fair success.

Wales disturbed: Prince David. General Insurrection. (12401245.)

Llywelyn's two sons contended for the mastery; David made Griffith prisoner; and the country was disturbed. King Henry invaded Wales by way of Chester, in a hot summer, marshes and mountains dry; then David submitted and did homage, and his brother Griffith was transferred as prisoner to the Tower of London, whence attempt ing to escape from a window, and the rope breaking, he fell and was killed. In the spring of 1244 all over Wales the Kymry, under Prince David, broke out once more into insurrection. They wanted their own laws and language and leaders, their own customs, their own country.

David, Princeps Norwalliae, now hit on a scheme to counterbalance the hitherto irresistible Saxon neighbour: he sent to the Pope, with gifts, offering to hold his principality as a fief of the Papal See. Pope (Innocent IV.) considers, enquires; soon finds it his interest to hold by the Saxon King. David nevertheless fights fiercely against the Lords Marchers; and at last King Henry comes on the scene, with the determination (which so

many have had before him) of utterly subduing all Wales; and once again the nut proves too hard to crack. The King in August or September (year 1245) with his army arrive at Tyganwy, which the English call Gannock, a castle at the mouth of the river Conway, on the east bank. They found the country difficult, and often lost men to little purpose in sallies and excursions. The King strengthened the castle, and drew a body of troops from Ireland, knowing them to have an extreme hatred against the Welsh,' to devastate Anglesea, which they did with fire and sword, 'even more thoroughly than they cious is Kelt against Kelt. were ordered.'2 So strangely fero

Besides this, the King cut off all Welsh; and having strengthened supplies of food from the miserable the castle of Gannock, a thorn in their eye,' Henry returned to England, leaving many of his soldiers dead and unburied, some having

been slain and others drowned.3 A year most cruel to the Welsh,' says Matthew Paris.4

David dies: his Nephews make a Convention with King Henry III. Poverty, taxes, discontent. (1246-1254.)

[blocks in formation]

1 Brut, Ann. Camb.

Matthew Paris, Historia Anglorum, Treasury Series, ii. 507; and Abbrev. Chron. iii. 296.

Brut, anno 1245. Ann. Camb. anno 1245.
Matthew Paris, Hist. Ang. ii. 511.

5 Brut.

6

[ocr errors]

6

the English advances. The cause of Wales for the Welsh,' slowly but continually losing ground, here has its loss put on record. In this conventio' four cantreds in North Wales are ceded to the King, 'et tota Rivera de Cuneway,' and also the district de Monte Alto: the rest of North Wales to belong to Owen and Llywelyn and their heirs, on condition of their furnishing Dominus Rex with a certain number of horse and foot soldiers, and doing other usual feudal services. If Owen and Llywelyn or their heirs shall break this treaty, they shall lose all their lands, and these shall belong in perpetuity to Dominus Rex and his heirs. Done at Woodstock, April 30th, 1247.

In this year the Welsh were very ill off; bad weather and bad crops, famine and pestilence.

In 1250 they have to complain of heavy taxation, increased by demands for the New Crusade-unlucky Crusade of Saint Louis.

The young English Prince Edward comes to the front. Llywelyn ap Griffith, grandson of Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, having overcome his brother, fights against Prince Edward during several years. (1254 1264.)

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

'with a great army' against their eldest brother Llywelyn; were beaten; and Llywelyn took possession of the territory of Owen and David without any opposition.4 Next year, in August, Edward, son of King Henry, Earl of Chester, took a survey of his castles and lands in Gwynedd [Northern division of Wales]; and after he had returned to England, the nobles of Wales came to Llywelyn, the son of Griffith, and declared they would rather be killed in war for their liberty than trodden down by strangers in bondage. Llywelyn, moved by their complaints, invaded the midland country, along with Meredith, son of Rhys the Hoarse, and subdued it before a week's time.5

After this Llywelyn attacked and subdued certain Welsh magnates who stood out against him; and for several years to come he held his own against Edward Longshanks, who exercised severe rule in his own Welsh earldom, and made frequent military excursions beyond it, and whose determination to reduce all Wales to subjection must already have been apparent.

[ocr errors]

This Llywelyn, son of Griffith, was the last Welsh Prince of Wales.' But there is more to tell, month's space will allow. ere we write Finis Wallic, than this

[ocr errors][merged small]

See Rymer (1704), i. 501, Feb. 14. Ann. Camb. Brut puts it at 1254.

• Brut. $ Ibid.

who extended England's physical dominion in the earth to an extent that not Elizabeth nor her servant Mr. William Shakespeare ever dreamed of. Robert Clive, obscure Shropshire boy, M.P. for Shrewsbury, conqueror of India, suicide. I walked over the 'Welsh Bridge,' its defensive tower and gateway now gone; and saw far off from higher ground the blue tops of mountains, to which the Shrewsbury folk must often have looked with apprehension as the haunt of the marauding and murderous Welsh. No doubt Shrewsbury nurses and children knew well the ditty:

Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief; Taffy came to my house and stole a piece of beef;

I went to Taffy's house-he was not at home;

dence, part old, part modern, built on the spot where stood the mounded and palisaded British fortress of Pengwern [Head or Hilltop of the Alder Wood]. Pengwern was the capital of the Kymric realm of Powys. The Saxons drove out the Kymry, built a fortress of their own here, and named the place Scrobesbyrig-Shrubby Fort, as it were-now turned into Shrewsbury.' The Kymry of Powys fleeing farther into the mountains set up their head place at Mathravel in Montgomeryshire, and kept it there many centuries.

[ocr errors]

Around the house-crowded hill, of bovine shape, Severn coils, making it almost an island, the Welsh bridge to the west, and the English bridge to the east. Over the latter on your way to the huge station you catch a glimpse of the

(which was indeed the usual state beautiful old Abbey Church, and of the case)

Taffy came to my house and stole a mutton bone;

I went to Taffy's house, Taffy was in bed; (caught for once)

I took the mutton bone, and beat him on the head.

A one-sided statement, certainly; but which was founded on facts too familiar to the borderers.

The long High Street climbs from the ugliness of a vast Railway Station and runs crookedly along the hill-back to the pleasantness of a richly wooded public garden, with fine linden-trees. Halfway or so, stands Shrewsbury Castle, of dark red stone, now a private resi

a rich stone pulpit standing alone in a garden close by. Then away with whistle and roar, and the town, the castle, and lastly St. Mary's tall spire, are soon lost sight of.

I sped to Hereford; thence to Ross; and launched on the Wye early on an autumn morning ere the mist was lifted from the beautiful river and its wooded shores.

Down we glided some fifty miles, on the stream that once divided Wales from England; with time to think of old Kings, Princes, Bards; of Edward Longshanks; of Owen Glendower; and (what chiefly interested me all through) to meditate on the nature and fate of the Keltic phase of civilisation.

Giraldus, Descriptio Kambr.

THE COMMUNE OF 1871.

HE Revolution of March 18 has

THE

been too generally regarded in England as the effect of an unpremeditated impulse favoured by unforeseen circumstances. Similarly, the system of Commune Government in Paris established as the result of that Revolution, has been described as a crude and hasty arrangement, adopted without much of serious consideration and founded upon no very definite or solid basis of political thought and plan. Those who have followed with a careful eye the course of events in Paris, since the Revolution of September, know that this latter movement cannot be explained or accounted for in any such off-hand way; that its causes are to be sought for deeper in the political sentiments of the Parisians, and that its outbreak was only the realisation of a scheme that had long been preparing and maturing in the heart of the French capital. It is true that the coup d'état of the twenty-seventh Ventôse owed much of its success to adventitious circumstances, which its leaders could not have foreseen. But even without such unexpected help the insurrection must have taken place it would have been quelled as it probably will be quelled, before these pages are published, perhaps much more easily; but Fortune, as we shall see, was not altogether on the side of the insurgents. Although they gained in Paris, by her aid, a material strength disproportionate to their most sanguine hopes, they lost in the provinces that support, both physical and moral, which they had every reason to count upon. They lost, through the alienation of certain men, whom they had regarded as their natural chiefs and leaders, that directing and moderating power which alone could have guided them to permanent success.

The movement which resulted in the Communal Revolution may, in fact, be traced with tolerable accuracy, as it gradually matured its plans and collected its forces during the six months preceding the outbreak. The fortnight immediately succeeding September 4 sufficed to show plainly that the new Republic, or rather its Government of twelve, had no intention of recognising the municipal rights of Paris, as understood by the true Communists.' The greater part, undoubtedly, of those who raised to power the Government of National Defence did so in the confident belief that their new rulers would give them a Commune possessing, at least, powers of considerable extent. But of all the twelve, Rochefort alone declared in favour of the Municipal election. It was evident that, except upon compulsion, the men of the Hôtel de Ville would not admit, as a partner or rival in power, any such body as that which, in the old famous Revolution, reigned by terror over Paris. From this moment Communists, Socialists, and Trades Unionists-all the Red Republicans, in fact-declared a mortal enmity against the Men of the National Defence. These began silently to collect around those wellknown centres of political discontent, in the head-quarters of working Paris-at Belleville and La Villette-a nucleus of agitators, schemers, and, to use the plain term, conspirators. From that moment every mistake of the Government

and their mistakes were not few nor slight-was laid hold of and made up into political capital by the orators of the insurrectionary clubs. Every disaster in the field, every error in the cabinet, was ascribed to one cause alone-the non-existence of the Commune-the Commune was the panacea for every evil and

every disease of Paris and of France. Thus, in those attacks upon the Hôtel de Ville, which at first, as on October 8, took the form of demonstrations merely, which afterwards, as on October 31 and January 22, threatened actual violence and bloodshed, the Commune was always the war-cry of the malcontents, the standard around which they had been collected, and the creed for which they were half prepared to fight. In the brief hour of success which crowned the attempt of October 31, the very first care of the rebellious chiefs was to take steps for the immediate election of a Commune. Had Paris acquiesced at that time in the rule of those men, as she did four and a half months later on, MM. Pyat and Deslescluze would have stepped then instead of afterwards into the place of Jules Favre and Trochu; and the Commune would have earned the disgrace or credit resulting from the siege. But on that occasion Paris -or rather the troops in Parisdeclared against against the insurgent party: the Mobiles of Brittany and the Gardes Nationaux of the central districts suppressed the abortive revolution, and its leaders marched back (under a treaty, be it remembered, with the Government) to their lurking-places in the ill-affected outskirts. Here, throughout the siege, they organised and drilled their battalions, not for the fight against the Prussians, but for the political struggle looming in the future. Full and strong regiments they were; vigorous, energetic, and well equipped. Often during the autumn months has the writer watched, with interest and not without uneasy forebodings, their drill on the heights of Chaumont and the terraces of Menilmontant.

It must have been known to the Government of Paris at the time of the capitulation that at least onehalf of the National Guard were more or less disaffected. Dire ex

perience had taught them, one would think, that a good fourth part of the citizen army were prepared to fight fiercely for what-rightly or wrongly-they considered their municipal rights. The National Guard is as naturally and certainly the bulwark of the Commune as a Prætorian Guard is of Imperialism. Yet, the Government of National Defence committed, with their eyes open, the egregiously rash act of allowing this ill-affected soldiery to retain their arms and even to assume ostensibly the internal government, and become the police of the capital. A way was opened for the deliberate development of the plans of the malcontents-for the consolidation of their forces, the expression of their ideas, and the perfecting of their discipline. The period which elapsed from the capitulation of Paris to the outbreak of March 18 forms a second epoch in the history of the growth of the Communal rebellion-the epoch of final preparation, and almost assured victory.

Three

It was during this period that Fortune began to smile upon the efforts of the Communists. pieces of good luck may be especially mentioned as conducing to their ultimate success. The first was the stipulation, already alluded to, in the Armistice Convention that the Garde Nationale should retain its arms. The second was the happy attempt to carry off, on a feigned and ridiculous plea, the cannon which, by another unlucky blunder, had been left within their power. A third and most important assistance-not material but moral-was afforded to the Communists by the attitude of the National Assembly at Bordeaux. Its reactionary' character, and its ill-concealed contempt of Democratic principles, alienated from it the revolutionary party in France, and enlisted them on the side of the Commune. The rejection by it of the capital as the seat of Government, the insulting

[ocr errors]
« ZurückWeiter »