Made glorious summer by this sun of York
With this quote, which many of us will certainly be familiar with from English lessons, William Shakespeare lets his protagonist and giver of the play of the same name enter the stage. Richard III. Richard III was King of England from 1483 until his death in the Battle of Bosworth. He was the last English ruler from the House of Plantagenet and also the last English king to die on a battlefield. He went down in history as a tyrant and child murderer because he was accused of murdering his two nephews, the so-called Princes in the Tower of London, Edward V of England (1470 – 1483) and Richard of Shrewsbury, 1st Duke of York (1473 - 1483), the sons of King Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville. After he had them declared illegitimate and therefore incapable of inheriting after the death of King Edward IV, so that he could ascend the throne himself. However, to this day it has not been proven beyond doubt what actually happened to them after the brothers were placed in the Tower of London. Since they disappeared without a trace in the summer of 1483, it is generally assumed that they were murdered, the only question is by whom. Because they also posed a threat to Richard's opponent, Henry Tudor, later King Henry VII, for his own claim to the throne.
As we know, history is written by the victors, and the more they have to lose, the more they are influenced in their favour. The image we have of Richard is therefore strongly influenced by the actors of Tudor propaganda, especially William Shakespeare, who portrays the king in his drama as an unscrupulous man of power who is driven from one crime to the next in order to gain and secure power. And in doing so, he suffers from his physical ailments, a common sign of a bad character at the time. A fact that runs counter to recent research. Although Richard suffered from scoliosis (a severe misalignment of the spine), as evidenced by the examination of his skeleton, which was only found in 2012 during excavations in a parking lot, he did not suffer from a hump, which would have made it impossible for him to wear armour and fight on the battlefield.
House of Lancaster, Picture Christopher Head
However, if we only look at the end of Richard's reign, we are ignoring almost 30 years of war. A war that was fought, with interruptions, from 1455 to 1485. There is a good reason why this epic struggle between York and Lancaster for the crown did not leave behind a national trauma like the Thirty Years' War in Europe. In the 30 years from 1455 to 1485, all the military campaigns, rebellions and campaigns combined took up just over a year. If you add up the days on which there was actual fighting, you only get a few weeks. Moreover, there were no cases of excessive violence by soldiers against their own civilian population. Compared to the brutality with which the Hundred Years' War was fought in France, this war can be described as an almost humane conflict.
Leader Yorkist
Leader Lancastrian
The battles between the two rival English noble houses of York and Lancaster have gone down in history as the Wars of the Roses, as both family coats of arms contained a rose. The white rose represents the
House of York, the red rose that of the Lancasters. However, the battle for the throne and thus for power took a very high toll, if not among the civilian population, then at least among the British nobility, as around 25 percent of all English noble families were wiped out in the battles, including the male lines of the actual opponents, the Yorks and the Lancasters.
The question arises: where did the pretenders to the throne get their soldiers from? Basically, every duke or earl of the kingdom had a permanent troop of knights, archers and other foot soldiers, which could quickly be expanded to a small army in the event of war. In addition, so-called captains, as in the times of the Hundred Years' War, set up companies as "military subcontractors". There was no shortage of suitable volunteers at the time, as England was flooded with unemployed mercenaries after the Hundred Years' War.
These captains were usually recruited from the war-experienced nobility and were therefore knights. But there were also astonishing exceptions: in 1460 John Harowe, a cloth merchant from London, commanded a company of the Yorks, and on the Lancastrian side there was a leader who had earned his living as a simple tailor before his military career.
The bulk of the soldiers during the Wars of the Roses were still English and Welsh archers. It can be assumed that the ratio of archers to other foot soldiers was eight to one. They were equipped with a longbow and a short sword and a round shield for close combat. Muster rolls show that most also wore a helmet and a brigandine, a padded vest reinforced with iron plates or armour rings.
Bowmen Edward IV, Richard III
Bowmen Henry Tudor
The noble fighters wore a complete suite of plate armour weighing around 30 kilograms, protecting the whole body, which made the shield superfluous. However, since this weight was evenly distributed over the whole body, a well-trained fighter could move in it with astonishing speed and agility. This was also necessary, because the nobility also usually fought on foot in the Wars of the Roses. The days in which, as often shown in films, the knightly cavalry decided the battles were long gone. This is also evidenced by many reports from contemporary witnesses who described the battles, such as the Italian Mancini. According to his description, the English knights did not fight on horseback, but only used their horses to reach the battlefield well rested. Which is why they would ride any kind of horse, even pack horses.
However, it must also be noted that this tactic could have economic reasons, since a trained warhorse cost a small fortune to buy and maintain. And this investment often did not pay off in the rare conflicts.
Men At Arms on foot
But it is not just the absence of mounted knights in many battles that contradicts our image of knightly warfare. The use of the still relatively new weapon type: the artillery, also played a significant role in this conflict. On the battlefields of Europe in the final phase of the Hundred Years' War, mobile field guns had been the French's wonder weapon and were now also used in England as a result - assuming, of course, that the weather played along.
The gun crews were well-paid specialists from abroad, often from Germany or Flanders. They fired at the enemy from primitive handguns in addition to cannons. Even if these weapons had more of a psychological effect than an actual effect. A good archer shot faster and more precisely than his competitor with black powder.
War of the Roses Artillery
However, it was not only the gunners who came from abroad. The infantry was also sometimes recruited from mercenaries, for example Henry Tudor's invasion troops when he landed on the Welsh coast consisted largely of French and Scottish mercenaries.
As most of the troops consisted of mercenaries or simple soldiers and were not part of a well-trained and experienced standing army, this meant that sophisticated tactics or even military brilliance were missing in many of the war's battles. Often it was only numerical superiority that led to victory, as in the Battle of Hexham on May 15, 1464.
The Lancastrian troops there numbered just 500 men, facing the almost 4,000 men of the Yorks. As a result, a wing of the Lancastrian army under Lord Roos left the battlefield at the beginning of the Yorkist attack, as they saw their salvation in flight rather than in what they considered a senseless slaughter. As a result, the coordinated resistance quickly collapsed and the leader of the Lancastrian troops, Henry Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset, was captured and executed.
Mercenary Scottish Spearmen
But numerical superiority did not always mean victory. In the Battle of Bosworth mentioned at the beginning, in which the armies of Richard III and Henry Tudor met at Bosworth Field on August 22nd, 1485, Richard had the numerical superiority, and yet Henry won, not least because part of Richard's army under Lord Stanley switched sides, or, as in the case of the Earl of Northumberland, remained largely neutral in the battle through inactivity.
These examples offer countless possibilities for scenarios in which the loyalty of individual subordinates can be questioned using event cards. Will they carry out orders? Or will they even defect to the enemy?
These wars were seen by those involved as more of a game of power and influence. It was purely about their own personal power and the influence of the nobles who supported the heirs to the throne. And every nobleman had to think carefully about whom he supported and when, because only the victor could ensure that his power and influence were retained.
And yet the Battle of Bosworth is also a sign of personal courage and commitment. For a brief moment during the battle, there was a chance that Richard could win the battle, when Richard and his personal entourage advanced to Henry and almost managed to kill him. However, this moment was ruined by Lord Stanley's betrayal when he intervened in the battle on Henry's behalf, whereupon Richard and his entourage were encircled and Richard was killed on the battlefield.
The Battle of Bosworth marked the end of the Wars of the Roses and also the end of the House of York.
The powerful Henry, as a representative of the "Red Rose", albeit only a distant relative of the former House of Lancaster, married the daughter of the late King Edward IV after the victorious battle and thus an heiress from the House of York. In this way, he managed to end the bitter feud between the two noble houses, consolidate his claim to the throne and establish his own dynasty, that of the Tudors.
I hope you enjoyed this short excursion into English history and literature and we'll see you here again soon.
Hopefully see you soon,
Your Martin