Caergwynn: Difference between revisions

By the time the army reached Dol Awraidd in mid-December, it more resembled a victorious host than a defeated one. Yeomen and common peasants flocked to its banner, to kick out the incompetents who had lost the campaign and wasted so many lives. Meanwhile, the very presence of the mutinous army dissuaded most of the lords involved from attending or offering their side of the story, lest they become scapegoats for the army's wrath. And when the sea-traders and rich men of the cities were told that raising another army to suppress this one, or even just to keep the war going another year, would require another huge loan to replace the one that had been frittered away, their sympathies also fell towards Rhys and his mutineers. The Cyngor acknowledged the army at their gates as the legitimate army of the realm, invited Rhys and many of its officers in to sit in their ranks, and summarily expelled and attainted the nobles who had contributed to the fiasco.The cities would not give their coin, nor the yeomen of the cantrefs their blood, to an army and a state run by incompetent nobles. The radicalized Cyngor did raise enough in taxes (rather than just loans extracted from the merchant class) to fund another campaigning season, but it also enacted laws to firm up central administration in the cantrefs, suppress any noble retinues beyond small bands of bodyguards, and ensure that the (prosperous yeomen) farmers of the interior elected their representatives without lordly interference. Still in shock from the great defeat, and staring down the awful prospect of their only remaining fighting force abandoning them, the cowed nobility acquiesced. The Cyngor elected a new Arlywydd, a merchant from the north coast, and he led the renewed army to face off with the Fhain.