As the year 1295 opened, England’s King Edward I and his troops were wintering in Conwy castle, besieged by Welsh rebels. Food was running low; all the drink that remained was one small barrel of wine, left for the king’s personal use. Edward had this distributed among his men, the action of a good commander.

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Wales had been in rebellion since the previous autumn; the Welsh had taken advantage of English pre-occupation with the war which had just started with France. The rising was a national one, headed by a then obscure figure, Madog ap Llywelyn. Wales had seemed conquered by 1283; now, the whole English achievement was under threat. Edward led a rapid raid from Conwy to the west, into the Lleyn peninsula, but it was elsewhere that the war was won. In March Madog was defeated in mid-Wales by forces under the earl of Warwick, at Maes Moydog.

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