BBC英国史(四)：Nations 英国的民族

第04章 Nations 英国民族（1216 1348）威尔士，苏格兰和爱尔兰在放弃取走他们的民族统一身份之后，统一了他们的思想，宣言要从Edward I 残暴统治下独立。苏格兰对英格兰发动战争，并请威尔士加盟一同反对他们的最高统治者。而这却导致了爱尔兰血灾。威尔士，紧接着苏格兰，一个个倒在爱德华一世的铁锤下。爱德华一世建立了自罗马以来的最强大的帝国系统。英语字幕文本：In the last decades of the 13th century, the nations of Britain found their voices - loud, confident and defiant - and they were raised against England.(WELSHMAN) The people of Snowdon assert that even if their prince should give overlordship of them to the English king, they would refuse to do homage to any foreigner of whose language, customs and law they were ignorant.(IRISHMAN) On account of the perfidy of the English and to recover our native freedom, the Irish are compelled to enter a deadly war.(SCOTSMAN) For as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, we will yield in no least way to Englishdominion. We fight not for glory, nor riches, nor honour, but for freedom. We know these voices.Theyve been with us a long time now.All the same, its a shock to hear them this early, to discover the politics of birthplace uttered with such passion and such pain.Once said, they could not be unsaid.When the Welsh, the Scots and the Irish acted on their words, the bloody wars of the British nations became inevitable.And these would not just be battles about territories - they were battles for ideas, ideas about what a sovereign nation should be.An extension of the rulers will or something wider - something involving the people as well as the prince, something called the community of the realm.Those battles would be fought between the peoples of Britain.Welshmen would die in Scotland, Scotsmen would perish in Ireland, the English would kill and be killed everywhere.For the fight to the death between princes and principles, the battle for the making of a nation would begin in the very heart of England.One man was responsible for provoking the peoples of Britain into an awareness of their nationhood, and he was Englands own home-grown Caesar - Edward I.In 1774, those made curious by his fearsome reputation opened his tomb.The man inside was as awesome as contemporaries had recorded, dressed in the purple robe of a Roman emperor, an impressive six foot two tall, fully justifying his nickname, Longshanks.Upon that stark marble tomb, the only ornamentation reads.Edwardus Primus Scottorum malleus hic est. Hammer of the Scots.After a century of rule by kings who were essentially Frenchmen, Edward can be called the first truly English king - given an old Anglo-Saxon name and imbued with the frightening certainty that it was Englands imperial mission to take its rule to the four corners of the British islands.His many enemies compared him to one of the big cat predators.Perhaps he will rightly be called a leopard, Leo - brave, proud and fierce, the powered, wily, devious and treacherous.The Leopard Prince was born to splendid, impossible expectations.His father, Henry III, had named his son for Englands royal saint, Edward the Confessor - the paragon, it was thought, of kingly perfection.(MONKS CHANT) Though the Confessor had been dead for almost 200 years, Henry ate, drank and worshipped him, and finally created for the long-dead king a shrine of unparalleled magnificence.Of course, such a shrine would need a home that equalled its splendour - the new Westminster Abbey.Henry demolished the old basilica at Westminster and replaced it with an immense Gothic abbey, a building that now fitted his vision of an awe-inspiring English monarch.From now on, Westminster would be the symbolic heart of the kingdom, the place where all English monarchs would be crowned and buried.His father, King Henry III, reigned for 56 years.Hes not remembered for any stirring achievement or blood-soaked conquest, but Henrys time on the throne was driven by a magnificentobsession- he wanted to turn the monarchy into Englands dominant power.Henrys great gift to the nation was more than just a fine new church.Its secular counterpart was the great hall of the Palace of Westminster.The palace was both the seat of government and a residence for Henry who, unlike his Angevin ancestors, didnt much like being in the saddle.And the hall was a court in both the senses the word suggests - a place of judgement and a theatre of ceremony.At Westminster, the king had to be seen to be magnificent, but the king had also to be seen to be just.Westminster may have been the creation of themonarchy, but it also belonged to England - a nation of laws, the nation of Magna Carta.Henry had grown up with the charter, signed by his father King John in 1215, which put real limits on the power of the king.A bit of a blow for a king who wanted absolute authority.Kings could no longer ignore the complaints of their subjects.They could be forced to submit to a council of the barons.That council thought of itself as the voice of the community of the realm, and even now began to be called parliament.Its role would be to hold the king to his contract.Since Henry had become king as a boy of nine, hed had no choice but to swallow this bitter pill.However, as he grew older, Henry burned with frustration and became determined to get free of its shackles - to restore the unchallenged authority of the crown.Knowing that this couldnt happen without a fight, Henry accepted a compromise position for many years, that the king was not free to govern through pure royal will.But Henry III was also a Plantagenet, and Plantagenets dreamed dangerous dreams - expensive dreams of campaigns far abroad which no one in York or Canterbury could quite see the point of.When Plantagenets thought they might get unwelcome advice, they stopped listening - until, that is, they were made to.In 1258, in the very hall that defined his majesty, Westminster, seven of the most powerful barons confronted the king.Fully armed, they paused only to leave their swords outside.They demanded that Henry meet them at a parliament in Oxford and stop trying to turn his European dreams into reality.The barons were led, in all but name, by the most improbable revolutionary in all of British history - Simon de Montfort.Here at Kenilworth, he presided over a little empire of culture.A Frencharistocratwho inherited the earldom of Leicester, Simon became convinced that he was more English than the English.What was good for de Montfort was good for the nation.Love him or hate him, everyone knew that Simon de Montfort was a man with a mission.That mission, embarked on with his fellow barons, was to bring the wayward, self-glorifying monarchy to book, to make it the servant, not the master of the realm.At Oxford, amidst wildfire rumours, a camp of soldiers, and the growling hunger of a famine, Henry III was treated to the emasculation of his sovereignty.A document was drawn up for the king to sign - not discuss, just to accept.What it said was so startling, so genuinely revolutionary, that 1258 ought to be one of those dates engraved on the national memory.The Provisions of Oxford were at least as important as Magna Carta.In effect, the crown had been replaced by a new council of nobles and clergy.That council now virtually ruled England.Foreign courtiers were made to disappear.It has been ordained that there are to be three parliaments a year to view the state of the kingdom.It is provided that from each county there are chosen four worthy knights to hear all complaints for the common benefit of the whole kingdom. When the assembled community of the realm, including the king and Prince Edward, swore an oath to uphold the provisions, they could have been in no doubt about its significance for the fate of the nation.And so Henry IIIs facade of omnipotent rule had come crashing down around his ears.But he was not the only royal with a stake in events.How did the 19-year-old Edward feel about the drastic shrinkage in the power of the crown - his crown?Well, for some time, even the prince was dazzled by the intense magnetism of Simon de Montforts personality, and, for a while, Edward went along with it.But, inevitably, divisions opened up between the reformers.It was all very well to make the king answerable to the barons, but ought the barons be answerable to their inferiors?De Montfort thought yes.The earls thought no.And as those divisions opened wider, the Leopard Prince began to change his spots and sharpen his claws.It became increasingly clear that the struggle over who was to rule England and how they were going to do it centred on two men - Simon and Edward.Neither could prevail without the others total defeat.Over five years, Henry and Edward manoeuvred against de Montfort for power until, finally, words ran out.For this was no three-month paper revolution, like the original signing of the Magna Carta.The issue could now only be settled on the field of battle.For the first time since the Norman Conquest, the political fate of England was completely fluid, its eventual outcome uncertain.In 1264, de Montfort won the first round at the Battle of Lewes on the Sussex Downs.King Henry and Edward were both taken prisoner.The year which followed, with de Montfort in charge, was the closest England came to a republic until the days of Oliver Cromwell.And in Parliament, not just aristocrats and bishops, but ordinary knights of the shire and even burgesses from the towns presumed to discuss the fate of their superiors - a prince and a king.But like the later republic, this one quickly gained the attributes of a dictatorship.With power going to his head, Simon seemed more the vainglorious adventurer than a messianic reformer.In the end, he simply repelled more people than he attracted.With the impotent Henry III firmly under lock and key, the crowns future lay with Edward, who outwitted his captors and made a dashing horseback getaway.Even at this stage, there was something extraordinary about Edward.He radiated the kind of charisma that drew confused responses of both fear and adoration.He purposely kept his signals mixed - the better to convert them into loyalty.Edward led his following to Evesham in Worcestershire, where de Montforts now outnumbered army camped near the abbey.Under stormy skies, the battle was a slaughter.(BATTLE CRIES) Told that his son had been killed, Simon replied, Then it is time to die.He charged into the fray and was slain on foot, his devoted knights falling with him.Edward ignored the rules of war.The wounded were stabbed where they lay.Simons head, hands, feet and testicles were cut off.the genitals hung around his nose.The crown had won, but only after overcoming Kenilworths mighty defences in a siege that lasted nine months.But Edward had been given a serious early lesson in the political realities of England.He wouldnt cringe before the barons, but he would have to make them his allies.As partners, they would go on to create an English empire of their own, the reincarnation of Roman Britannia.In 1274, Edward Is coronation finally took place in a magnificent sanctuary created by his father.The Westminster in which he was crowned would, if Edward had anything to do with it, be the capital not just of England, but of Britain.It was in Wales that Edward first made the seriousness of his ambitions clear.Here, the dominant prince was Llewellyn ap Gruffydd, ruler of the mountainous kingdom of Gwynedd, Greater Snowdonia.Knowing that the difficult, not to say impossible terrain of his country had been the graveyard of English armies, Llewellyn was determined to resist attempts to subdue central Wales.Here, the native Welsh clung on to their language, customs and laws, lords in their own lands, but still subjects of the English king.By the 13th century, Wales had become divided into the Principality of Gwynedd, the disputed centre, and the encroaching English baronial and crown lands.Encroaching, that is, until 1258, when Llewellyn was strong enough to have himself declared princeps Wallie - Prince of Wales.Exploiting the civil war in England and allying with de Montfort, Llewellyns armies overran the now undefended centre.But he then overreached himself, marrying de Montforts daughter, an offence Edward was unlikely to forgive or to forget.Years later, Llewellyn handed Edward the perfect pretext for retribution.He failed to show up at Edwards coronation and ignored a total of five summonses to pay homage to his new king.Edward, who needed no tutorials on the connection between ceremonies and power, immediately took this as a slap in the face, an act of virtual rebellion.In 1276, a huge army, the biggest seen in Britain since the Norman Conquest, invaded Gwynedd, penetrating right to its furthest corners, to Snowdonia and to Anglesey.Faced with this invasion, Llewellyn was forced to surrender.But, as so often in these years, humiliation bred defiance.In 1282, the Welsh launched a surprise attack on an English garrison.Edward now bore down again with an even bigger army, but this campaign was far from being a walkover.Realising this, the Archbishop of Canterbury attempted to conciliate between the warring factions, offering Llewellyn land and title in England if he would renounce his rights in Wales.And the answer to this offer was blunt.That they must stand by their laws and rights in defence of all Wales.The people preferred to die rather than to live under English rule.They would not do homage to any stranger of whose language, manners and laws they were ignorant.They would fight in defence of nostra natsu - our nation against the English.When the war was renewed, it was with fresh and unsparing savagery.No quarter was given by either side.The Welsh exploited the land, ambushed slow-moving companies of knights, and then disappeared off again into the hills and forests.(BATTLE CRIES) Then, in a minor skirmish in central Wales, Llewellyn was killed by an anonymous English spearman.The finalannihilationof resistance took another six months before the king could claim Wales to be pacified.However, the subjugation of Wales was far more subtle than the surgical application of brute force.Edward had the chilling, uncannily-modern knowledge that to break your enemy you must strip him of his cultural identity.Before this place became called Conway by the English, it was Aberconwy.It was a monastery that housed the tomb of the most powerful Welsh prince and was home to a sacred relic that the Welsh believed to be a piece of the true Cross.Naturally, the monastery became a fortress and the Cross was taken to London along with Llewellyns crown.The lords call themselves Princes of Wales.Fine.From 1301, they will be the most English of the English, the first son of the king, the heir to the throne, the emperor in waiting.The most titanic of all the signs of the English empire were its castles, a granite ring of fortresses stretching from Builth to Hope, most of them supplied from the sea, depriving the Welsh of any hope of liberation.For the Welsh of Snowdonia, the great stone fortresses in their midst were what one of them called the magnificent badges of our subjection.The symbol not of imperial grandeur, but of crushing national annihilation;a permanent, daily, wounding reminder of conquest and humiliation.The most colossal exercise, in fact, in colonial domination anywhere in medieval Europe.Beneath the lion standard of Edward Plantagenet, the Welsh inhabitants had now become second-class citizens in their own country.Well, those natives were treated for the most part like naughty children, not allowed to bear arms, of course, but even forced to ask permission if they wanted strangers to stay at their house overnight.Worst of all, I think, the Welsh were doomed by English superiority to become objects of terminal quaintness.The quaint language, the quaint songs, those amusing choirs and chants.It could have been worse, and for the Jews of England, it was.The Welsh wars cost ten times the kings annual revenue, and the price of victory and castle building had so exhaustively bled the Jews - the usual source of loans and taxation - that they had nothing left to yield, and so could be dispensed with altogether.Early in his reign, Edward, perhaps acting from religious conviction, outlawed money lending, putting most of Englands Jews out of business.He then forced them to wear yellow felt badges of identification and so be recognised as the sub-species of humanity he undoubtedly believed they were.A year after his first Welsh invasion, Edward arrested all the heads of the Jewish households and hanged nearly 300 in the Tower.Not satisfied with this, he expelled the entire community, perhaps 3,000 people, in 1290, an act so overwhelmingly popular, especially with the Church, that it awarded him a huge tax grant.So its Edwards England which became the first country to perform a little act of ethnic cleansing on its Jews, the violent uprooting of communities in York, Lincoln and London. (MOURNFUL SINGING) It was not plain sailing for the Jews on one deportation boat in the Thames.At Queenborough, the captain encouraged his Jewish passengers to stretch their legs as the ship beached on the receding tide.As it returned, he barred them from getting back aboard, challenging them to call on their god to part the waves as he had with the Red Sea.But there was no miracle this time.They all drowned.In Lincoln Cathedral lie the entrails of Eleanor of Castile, Queen to Edward I.She died within months of the expulsions, leaving her husband, normally so thick-skinned and emotionally coarse, distraught, plunged into grief.Edwards devotion is reflected in a monument unique in medieval kingship - twelve crosses he built to mark the p