HISTORY IS WRITTEN BY THE VICTORS or JUST WHOSE SIDE WERE THE GEWISSEI ON, ANYWAY?

Liddington Castle (Badbury)

From https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2019/12/arthur-as-cerdic-of-wessex-hero-or.html:

...the arrangement of the Gewissei battles on the map forces us to consider two possibilities.  One, is this arrangement merely an artificial construction, i.e. something conjured in a later period to "draw the early boundaries" of what was imagined to be the process of kingdom formation?  I'm not sure this question can be answered, as one either respects the integrity of the ASC or one does not.  If perceived as traditional material rather than history, then any or all the battles might be construed as problematic, even suspect.

Second, were the Gewissei fighting to take the nucleus of Wessex, or were they in actuality attempting to stem the tide of the English, who already held the territory within the area circumscribed by the battles?  For we have two choices here.  If Arthur/Cerdic/Ceredig son of Cunedda of the Gewissei were serving the high king of Wales (who appears to have been based at Viroconium) against British enemies to the south, then his allying himself with the Saxons pushing into Wessex makes perfect sense.  This is what we glean from the pages of the ASC.  But if Arthur were fighting the Saxons, as the HB claims, along with the kings of the Britons, then his push up through Hampshire and taking of the Isle of Wight would be a counter-offensive against the Germanic barbarians.

I've mentioned above that the name Gewissei [1] does not, in fact, automatically imply that this mercenary or federate force was allied with the Saxons.  It instead was a term invented to describe the followers or descendants of Cerdic.  Yet what if the term were interpreted by Saxon chroniclers centuries later as meaning 'allies'?  Could these Irish or Irish-British warriors have been mistakenly identified as the founders of Wessex when, in fact, they were in reality defending British territory against the Saxons?

In the past, I have been unwilling to accept the testimony of the Welsh.  But is it any more unreasonable to assume that the high king in Wales sent Irish mercenaries/federates to fight the Saxons in the southwest than it does to have the same king send the same men to fight alongside allied Saxons who were themselves acting in opposition to other Britons?

One of the problems one faces when comparing the Welsh and English sources is the reversal of generations of the Gewissei and Cunedda's sons.  Ever since I was able to identify the leaders of the Gewissei with Cunedda and his sons, I was aware of the strange and somewhat unaccountable fact that the line of descent for these Irish or Hiberno-British "federates" was reversed in the ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE.  Until now, however, I'd not really had the chance to consider what this reversal might actually mean.  Obviously, it creates a major chronological problem for the list of ASC battles featuring the Gewissei.  

Precedence must be given to the order established in the early British sources.  It is impossible, as far as I'm concerned, for the Welsh to have gotten the order of the Cunedda dynasty backwards.  That they did not is supported by the inscription of the Cunorix Stone at Wroxeter, where Cunorix/Cynric is the son of Cunedda/Maquicoline/Ceawlin (for my identification of Ceawlin with Cunedda Maquicoline, see my book THE BEAR KING and related blog posts).  In the ASC, it is implied that Ceawlin is the son of Cynric.

 Here is the order of the princes of the Gewissei, from both the Welsh and English sources:

Welsh:  Hyddwyn (from hydd, stag, hart) son of Cerdic   son of Cunedda Maquicoline

             Iusay (= Gewis/sei/sae)                son of Cerdic   son of Cunedda M.

                                                                             Cunorix son of Cunedda M.

English: Ceawlin (=Cunedda) son of (?) Cynric son of Cerdic son of Elesa/Esla (conflated with Aluca/Aloc from the Bernician pedigree), also Elafius, 'stag, hart', son of Gewis (eponym for the Gewissei)

The question that faces us, given this reversal of the Gewissei pedigree, is quite simply (and profoundly!) this: if Cunedda and his sons appear in reverse order in the ASC, are we to rearrange them in accordance with the order of the battles set down in that source or, even more radically, should the battle order itself be flipped on its head? In other words, do we maintain the battles as they are presented to us, and suggest only that the wrong leaders were assigned to them? Do we assume Cunedda and his sons all fought together and that some were present at various battles, even if their names are not to be found in this or that year entry? Or do we go even further and propose that some or all of the battles from 495 (the advent of Cerdic) to 593 (the death of Ceawlin) should be considered an incorrect and possibly artificial arrangement? 

If we go by the questionable tradition found embedded in the HB, we know that Vortigern is blamed for inviting in the Saxons.  That at first he did this because he needed their help, but that once they had established themselves in the southwest they rebelled and began their piecemeal conquest of England.  Going by the ASC dates alone (as they are all we have!), Vortigern is mentioned in the period from 449-455.  He himself is said to have fought the Saxons in the entry for 455.  In the HB account, where the aim of the narrative is to fully villify Vortigern, his place is taken by Vortimer. Cerdic does not appear in the ASC until 495, fully 40 years later.  By Cerdic's time the so-called Saxon Rebellion was a thing of the past.   

Logically, then, we can say that by the time Ceredig son of Cunedda shows up on the scene, things have been going badly for the Britons for decades.  It would not make sense in this context, surely, for a high king of Wales to send Irish or Hiberno-British mercenaries against the Britons who lay between himself and the enemy.  Instead, we would expect for them to be sent against the Saxons, and to have been supporting those Britons whose lands lay along the limes. 

And even if we allow for Cadell, founder of the Northern Powys dynasty, to be a pet name for Cunorix/Cynric son of Cunedda  (see https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2019/12/cadell-ddyrnllug-cunorix-son-of-cunedda.html), we cannot easily account for why the Gewissei would be allying themselves with the Saxons to conquer the future Wessex from the Britons. 

In this regard, the Gewissei would not be Saxon allies, and they were not the founders of Wessex.  I'm suggested before that a conquest of the nucleus of the future kingdom of the West Saxons could have been confused to a conquest of west Wales.  It was west Wales (called the 'western part of Britain' in the HB) that Cunedda and his sons either took or were granted by Vortigern (if I'm right and the Ambrosius placed at Dinas Emrys in Gwynedd was substituted for Edern father of Cunedda; see https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2019/12/dinas-emrys-before-vortigern-and.html). 

I now think it quite possible that the Gewissei were co-opted by the early English as their own, when, in fact, they were allies of the Britons, whose high king at the time ruled from Viroconium.  Cunorix/Cynric son of Cunedda was buried in this city, doubtless in honor of his service against the Saxons.

A more complicated scenario would have the Irish Gewissei in league with Saxon federates against non-federated Saxons.  But, in this case, the Gewissei would still be on the side of the British.  We might better be able to account for the conflicting Welsh and English traditions if we allow for both to be true: Arthur was fighting against the Saxons, but he was also fighting with them. However, arguing against this possibility is the fact that the Saxon federates had rebelled in the days of Vortigern.  If Cerdic were fighting with Saxon troops still loyal to the British, then they were a group unrelated to the previous Germanic federates.  

[1] The term Gewissei is from AS gewis, and Dr. Richard Coates long ago showed that it meant something like the 'sure or certain ones'.  He thought my suggestion that it had been made up to account for the supposed meaning of Cerdic's name (often spelled Certic) - one related fancifully by the English to Latin certus, 'certain; trusty/reliable; sure' - "ingenius." In the past it was thought to designate those non-English fighters who were known and reliable, i.e. allies.  This was in opposition to the designation wealas or 'Welsh', originally an AS name for the British which meant 'foreigner, stranger.'