page_title: Battle of Crogen
section_title: The battle
hierarchical_section_title: Battle of Crogen / The battle
caption_attribution_description: English: Battle of Crogen
context_page_description: The Battle of Crogen is the name given to an engagement said to have taken place in the Ceiriog Valley, Wales, during Henry II of England's summer 1165 campaign against an alliance of a number of Welsh princedoms led by Owain Gwynedd. Although outnumbered, the guerrilla tactics of a detachment from the Welsh forces aided them in inflicting an unknown number of casualties on the Anglo-Norman army. Henry subsequently abandoned the campaign after an attempt to cross the Berwyn Mountains was thwarted by severe weather.
  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. It has been suggested that the idea of a "battle" should be considered as folklore rather than as a genuine historical event. There are few contemporary accounts: 19th century and later accounts of the "battle" rely heavily on David Powel's 1584 Historie of Cambria, an unreliable historical source.
context_section_description: Contemporary sources are patchy and conflicting, and there has been a great deal of disagreement over events during the campaign. Some scholars, such as Austin Lane Poole, have concluded that no fighting actually took place at all in 1165.
  The main reasonably contemporary source for events in the Ceiriog Valley is the Brut y Tywysogion, which was based on now-lost materials contemporary with the battle. After describing Henry's arrival at Oswestry and Owain's at Corwen, it states: 
  after staying long in their tents there without the one daring to attack the other, [the king] moved his host into the wood of Dyffryn Ceiriog, and had the wood cut down and felled to the ground. And there a few picked Welshmen, who knew not how to suffer defeat, manfully encountered him in the absence of their leaders. And many of the doughtiest fell on both sides. And then the king, and the advanced forces along with him, encamped on the Berwyn Mountains.
  Henry II had ordered woodsmen to clear trees from the area, allowing his forces to move more freely through the pass, or perhaps in an attempt to force the Welsh into open battle. The Welsh chronicles suggest Henry's army was ambushed, possibly close to a gap in Offa's Dyke, by Welsh skirmishers, who inflicted a number of casualties. The more detailed account given by Powel in 1584 claimed that the skirmish happened while Henry and his main army "laie at Oswestry" and involved only a group "sent to trie the passages". It is unknown what sources Powel used for his information; he may have had access to oral traditions or manuscripts now lost.
  The Gwynedd chronicle O Oes Gwrtheyrn Gwrtheneu located this engagement at a place called "Coed Ceiriog"; Powel, writing several centuries later, was the first to identify it taking place at a narrow gap in "Offa's ditch, at the castle of Crogen". The name "Battle of Crogen" first appeared in 1778 in an account by Thomas Pennant: "This conflict is sometimes called the battle of Corwen; but with more propriety that of Crogen: for it happened beneath Castell Crogen, the present Chirk Castle". More recent scholarship has confirmed that the medieval "Castell Crogen" was in fact near Llandderfel: Pennant may have confused the name with the townships of Crogen Iddon and Crogen Wladys in the Ceiriog Valley.
  Some modern sources repeat a story that Hubert de St Clare, the Constable of Colchester Castle, sacrificed his own life when he threw himself in front of an arrow meant for Henry. This event in fact happened at the siege of Bridgnorth in 1155, the source of the confusion again being Powel, who inserted a passage from Holinshed's Chronicles into his account.
  Undeterred by their losses in the Ceiriog Valley, Henry's army continued into the Berwyns, possibly making for Corwen via a pass still known as the "English Road" (Ffordd y Saeson). While the mountains appeared easily passable in summer a spell of high winds and torrential rain, which made resupply impossible and caused men to start dying of exposure, forced Henry to retreat within a matter of days without bringing the main Welsh force to battle. The Brut y Tywysogion said that the army retreated after being "oppressed by a mighty tempest of wind and exceeding great torrents of rain": Henry's supporter Gerald of Wales, in his Itinerarium Cambriae, gave the same story but added that Henry had also made the mistake of failing to listen to his local advisors.
caption: Red plaque of the Battle of Crogen, unveiled in 2009; it has been suggested that the engagement might be better regarded as a "series of minor harassments"[8] than a single battle.
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