Treason of the Long Knives

Not to be confused with Night of the Long Knives.

The Treason of the Long Knives[1] (Welsh: Brad y Cyllyll Hirion) is an account of a massacre of British Celtic chieftains by Anglo-Saxon soldiers at a peace conference on Salisbury Plain in the 5th century. The story is thought to be pseudohistorical as the only surviving records mentioning it are centuries later in the semi-mythological histories of the Historia Brittonum and the Historia Regum Britanniae. Though a popular cautionary tale in medieval Europe, there is no other historical evidence for The Treason of the Long Knives. Most historians interpret the story as a purely literary construction.[2]

  1. ^ Davies, John; Baines, Menna; Jenkins, Nigel; Lynch, Peredur I., eds. (2008). The Welsh Academy Encyclopaedia of Wales. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. p. 882. ISBN 9780708319536.
  2. ^ John Morris, Nennius: British History and the Welsh Annals (Phillimore, London & Chichester 1980), pp. 3–5.