The Battle of Tintern

[Imperial Dave]

Doing the research (again) for this battle which could be anything from a raid to a medium sized multi-encounter

Said to have taken place around Tintern in the Wye Valley in the 5th/6th/7th century (yes, it's another nebulous one). It pits the Welsh under Tewdrig against the Saxons under an unnamed leader.

Various tales summarise that King Tewdrig comes out of monastic retirement to help his son Meurig fight off Saxon encroachment around the borders of Gwent along the River Wye. He fights the Saxons and wins but is mortally wounded and expires at Mathern on his way to his desired resting place (various islands in the Severn estuary).

I am trying to get enough flesh on the bones to provide a reasonable historical proposal and also to fight it on the tabletop.

It's thorny because we have little concrete evidence. The timeline is suspect for various reasons, we have no Saxon leader named or indeed the region of origin and no spades in the ground archaeology corroborating it.

I have no answer now but am just putting a marker down here to remind myself to do more research and to do a Slingshot article in the not too distant future for it.

FWIW, I think it's a border raid as the terrain in the area is very canalised with no flat open plains of note anywhere. I think it's a classic river crossing defence with potentially a secondary running battle later

Time will tell..maybe