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against him, citing the violation of the truce agreed to after the attack on Usk and the fact that the king had deprived him of lands and offices by decree, without any trial before his peers, for which he had repeatedly asked and by the decision of which he had sworn to abide. Under the calm exterior, however, Richard was boiling. Even at this late date, he would have seized on any honest and reasonable offer to negotiate an end to the conflict. Far from raising fear and awe in him, which he supposed had been the purpose, the arrogance of both messenger and message had only infuriated him and firmed his purpose. |
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Thus, when Simon relayed the information Siorl had brought, Richard cursed fluently at the timing but gathered his forces and ordered them to march out of Abergavenny and Usk. Those from Usk came northward along the river valley, but the movement of the wains that carried the great war ballistae and mangonels was slow. That portion of Pembroke's army camped at dusk where a tributary stream entered the Usk. At dawn, the wains continued northward, but most of the men who had started with them were gone. During the night, quietly as possible, they had moved onward along the tributary, eastward toward Monmouth. |
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From Abergavenny, Richard himself led his men, again with a large baggage train, toward the valley of the Dore. They started rather late in the day and struggled no farther than four or five miles along the difficult terrain of the route chosen, camping near Llanvihangel. The one advantage of that route was that it led nearly due north. Richard hoped that John of Monmouth was sufficiently ignorant regarding travel routes in that part of the country that he would not realize the army could have made better time the longer way round along the Usk valley. However, he decided to chance it rather than take his men so far out of the way of their real objective. |
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Having given the men time to eat and rest, Richard ordered that the camp fires be left burning. In addition, he gave instructions to the small guard, which would continue north with the carts and siege machines the next day, that all the fires should be fed during the night. After that, Richard led the bulk of his forces on a long, hard march around Skirridfawr southward to meet the men from Usk, who had come to rest, according to his orders, south of Wern-yr-healydd. They were nearly dead of exhaustion when they arrived, but Rich- |
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